This whole quote is just rubbish. You could say this exact same thing about any game ever, even the worst designed games of all time, and it would still make no sense.
Philosophical Discussions on gaming is down the hall in room 305. This is Game Design 101. You can stay here if you want but you have to actually participate in our discussion.
Lets start with a simple question: If one side is artificially placed at a disadvantage outside of their control, is that acceptable? For example: If one side has to choose A or B, and they choose wrong they then suffer a 10% health penalty for the rest of the match, is that OK with you? The choice certainly has weight, so why shouldn’t we add it to the game?
They’re really useful, yeah, but not more useful than the class-specific abilities. The only one I know of so far that I’m pretty sure everyone is going to take is the one that gives you an extra health chunk. The others all seem to have relatively small effects when compared to the class-specific skills.
It’s like, you can be much better at a certain class, or a little bit better in general. Not unbalanced at all, if you ask me.
Reducing the potency is a pretty cheap way of making it balanced. If you make the universal skills strong (and not give them their own skill slot) then that means people can create classes for roles that don’t particularly have much to do with the class itself, or invent the use for a class in a completely new way.
Blegh, missed opportunity. Now it’s just a phony way of suggesting progress.
[QUOTE=Exedore;272878]There’s a few bits of incorrectness in this thread:
When you first create a character, you have to pick a racial archetype and voice, and those are permanent. Only a few clothing customization pieces are available at the start, and more unlock each time you level up. As soon as something is unlocked, it’s unlocked for any character created with that profile.
The Heavy bodytype is available at level 5 and Light is available at level 7, and those can be switched in the front end for no cost.
Credits for abilities are one per level, and there is no trial period. Abilities can be completely reset for the hefty price of subtracting one whole level.[/QUOTE]
So why do lights get unlocked last? I am sure there is a good reason.
I’d guess it’s so that you really notice the health reduction. People come into the game wanting to try SMART, and so their natural inclination is to go for Lights. The tradeoff is how little health you have, so if you know how much health you’re losing then it’s a choice you can make.
If you only ever play Lights, you’ll just assume it’s a lag issue that’s causing opponents to live as long as they do. Medal of Honor was exactly like this when I played it—I had to hit opponents 5-6 times to kill, while I had times when I only saw myself getting hit with one bullet before I die when the opponent is using an identical gun.
Also probably just to force people to at least give the Heavy a chance. It’s the least popular bodytype, if I recall correctly. Everyone is all hyped up to jump around as a Light guy, and I’m sure there are plenty of people out there who would never give Medium or Heavy a fair chance if they could start out as a Light dude.
Quitting is always an option in life. I never implied any sort of morality, and I wasn’t telling you what to do. I was clarifying what the choice was, as you labelled it a “false choice”.
[QUOTE=Bridger;273591]I truely never expect to be on an artificially-disadvantaged side.[/QUOTE] Where is this artificial disadvantage? You can not switch from one specialized character to another in the game. The guys you are shooting at can not do this either. To drop out of the game so that you can switch to a different could very well be considered an artificial advantage, though abandoning your team for a period of time so that you can gain a couple of perks probably counters this.
Even if one team is randomly worse than the other, it is not an artifical disadvantage. Everyone on your team (and the other team) has the ability to change classes at the command post. (Also can be translated as ‘recognizing and fixing’.) You (specifically) are the person that is refusing to do this because you might lose some perks. Yes, other players may have the same mental barrier that they won’t play as the non-specialized classes with their precious specialized character. The game doesn’t prevent the player from switching class. To blame this on game design when you are the one with problem is the height of arrogance and offends me.
What is the “X factor” here? That you can’t change your class, or that you can’t control your teammates classes? What part of the game design is failing so that you feel compelled to call it out? That you can’t have a character with all the abilities unlocked? As long as the same limits apply to each player/bot, it is not an X Factor. It is a limitation which is intentionally in the game, to force a degree of variety, and I would guess also to keep the characters balanced.
Forcing variety may not be your cup of tea, but there are already enough bland shooters out there where eveyone picks out the same weapons and the same perks. If you think balance and parity is a flaw, there may not be any help for you.
I think you are really overestimating the effect that the abilities will have on your game. No one has to select an ability. We could play the game perfectly fine without them. They might give you a slight edge, but they have been play-tested to ensure that no ability redically changes the gameplay balance. If you really want a handicap to show off your ‘skillz’, don’t pick any abilities. Everyone else has access to the abilities at the same rate. Choosing to specialize or be an all-around type is not handicapping oneself, it is making a choice that may (or may not) complement one’s play style.
Even “selfish douches” are still an asset to the team, as long as they support the team in acheiving the objectives, and there are multiple ways to do this.
Non-specialized characters are not just cannon fodder waiting to be killed by the specialized. The game isn’t preventing any player in the game from switching classes. The game lets each player make that choice, so once again, the onus is not with the game design, it comes from poor decision-making by the players. If you are aware of the need, why don’t you switch to medic? I can easily imagine that there will be a lot of Spec Medics playing too.
Yes, I am able to read and understand English. No need to be that impressed.
If the game design is so flawed, why are you the only person suggesting dropping out of the game to switch characters?
It’s not my game. Splash Damage created it. If it was up to me, there would only be one character, and most choices would be permanent. Body type would be one of the few things that isn’t. You could slowly bulk up or lose weight as time went by, and it would be a range with variable sizes, not just three distinct phases. My other ideas are typically equally unrealistic, from a coding and development aspect.
I don’t consider it punishment at all. Playing without abilities that are optimal for your playing style is not an active or even a passive punishment. I suspect everyone will be playing sub-optimally most of the time. If specialized characters are over-powered, then I consider it more akin to losing a crutch you’ve come to rely upon.
I will agree that if there is a system that punishes players, it is a poor choice. REwards work much better than punishment.
The varied objectives and multiple methods to acheive them will keep the game from becoming stale. Some players will not switch classes much, others will change constantly. Again, the game lets the players make their own decisions. We can even remap our console controllers on the fly!
Only if they want to switch from their current character to a specialized Operative character in the middle of the game. Otherwise, they have to only go to the nearest (or farthest… They can go to any) command post, and change classes. If they feel that they shouldn’t have to play by the game’s rules, then, yeah, there are negative consequences. They might lose XP depending on how frequently the game/servers save data. Also, they are hurting their team with their absence, if there is no AI replacement.
I truly hope you have picked up on this by now, but I’ll restate it one more time. The game does not prevent players from being flexible. The game provides a ridiculous amount of options to customize, when compared to current FPS standards. Every option becomes a choice for players. Some people are paralyzed by too much choice. Some people will choose to specialize, and they will not want to play the non-specialized classes with their specialized avatar. This is not the design preventing behavior. It is the player who is stuck on a particular character and class. If the player can’t see outside of the artificial restriction they have placed on themselves, it is not because of the developers allowed them to specialize their character.
Non-specced characters can run and gun, snipe, and take damage.
The game is still 50 days away from being released, and you’ve already realized that! Congratulations!! Why do you think this would ever change? Oh, right, comp gaming… Stick to your pre-defined role.
No, Brink’s game design says that you (generally) can change your class and weapon loadouts at a command post to adjust to whatever the terrain and the other team throws at you. You are in control of your avatar. You can create turrets. You can heal or revive your teammates. You can hunt down opposing players. You can try to flank and sneak. You can run and gun. You can unleash the full fury of an mini-gun. You can run, jump, slide, climb, vault, mantle, wall-hop or just stand still. You can choose to adapt, you can choose not to. You can blame your teammates and you can blame the game design, but you’d be wrong. And if you quit, it is your choice. The game is never going to quit on you.
TL;DR: Brink’s game design gives players the choice to customize dramatically. You can not blame the game design for people that don’t let themselves have choices. Adapt or die.
All you gotta do is to play with one caracter only, preferably rambo medic, and this way you’ll never be disapointed
On a more serious note, the core will stay the same, you will pew-pew people in the face, but I agree mucho that if the restrictions are too strict and the adaptability void, the level of frustration will be veeeeeery high!
ie : “We didnt lost because we were less good, we lost because we chose blindly some classes / bodytypes and couldnt even stand a chance in front of their classes / bodytypes”
Once again it introduces RANDOM versus SKILLS, and dont even dare to say it add complexity as you cant possibly predict what the other team will be, so there isnt even a notion of choice here, because for that notion to appear you need to have some knowledge of the opponent whatsoever, its just two randoms samples one versus the other, and whoever got the most luck can win.
In most games you buy/pick your guns/classes without any knowledge of the other team’s composition until first interaction, after that if you choose to switch tactics or guns, you can, and so can the enemy at any given moment. You can either stick with what you have and try to get good enough with it that you have an even chance in most situations, or you can try to meta-game to gain a mechanical advantage, both are usually equally viable in most FPS’s, I doubt Brink will be different in this regard as far as weapons and classes go.
Also consider the sheer unlikelyhood that a situation will ever come up where you absolutely need to switch class. On an 8 person team, the chances of everyone not having any points in the same class are incredibly small, and outside of that, it really seems like shooting skill and other FPS traits are going to matter more than your skill points.
Well not really, but you didnt follow the phrases I’ve put before this one me think, in quake for exemple its not random, its static, everyone have the same thing in the beginning, therefore most skills = WIN.
If you cant change loadout / classes or bodytype ingame, its becoming random, because you can be more skilled in the game than your opponent, but you’ve chosen a loadout / class / stuff that is not compatible versus his in this peculiar situation, so you loose just because you had the wrond deck, not because you played less good than him. Yeah it’s all about choices etc etc, but I’m not playing magic, the gathering here, I’m playing an FPS.
To me the most powerfull point of an FPS (especialy a team based one) is that you can adapt on the fly versus your opponents, this is the thing that brings the most replayability and makes sure that you dont get bored after 3 hours once you’ve played all the maps. As already stated, I dont really care as in the end it’s all about pew-pew and QQ, but still, restricting things like that = we tend forward a RPG, and we let go the FPS part a bit more.
@Kaizoku : regarding the classes I pretty much doubt it’ll be that uncommon… How often in a 12V12 in ETQW I’ve seen a team without any engeneer when a defuse was needed, and in this game you can change classes easily, so I can imagine that happening in Brink also, and I wouldnt be surprised if it would be relatively common.
All in all, SD are trying to make a MP-FPS a bit different from he random FPS we encounter nowadays, and that’s good. I really hope they will continue to make THEIR game, and not listen to people whining cause this bit is not like “battlef of duty insert-a-number-here”, or like one of their previous games.
I don’t know for sure that the game will be good, but I can’t wait to play it and to adapt to the choices they made.
For the “lack of this class in one team”, even in TF2 you often find yourself in teams where nobody wants to be a medic, less now but before the Medic Update, that was flagrant. Being quite the altruist I often did the sacrifice to make myself one, I eventually really enjoyed being a key element to random teams, and that became my primary class. The thing is, in TF2 when you change your class, you change your speed, health, weapons, etc and there’s like perhaps 5 minutes during which you get used to it once again. Here in Brink, you won’t have that problem, if the team really needs a medic, you can become one easily, with no gameplay change, same weapon, speed, health, except for a few different perk. You still are winning XP for the same character, even quicker cause less people in one class means more room for you to gain XP.
I really don’t see the problem, perks aren’t overpowered, I don’t see that as the more unbalanced thing, compared to body types, weapons and presence of teammates.
If its a problem in TF2 imagine how it will be in Brink where there are both strong incentives against changing class and classes that are necessary to win a stage with.
I read your post but didn’t feel it worth responding to in full because of how subjective it was. I don’t have a problem switching betwen classes in TF2 though that may be because I only play hitscan classes. You’ve also made a bunch of assumptions such as that perks will not be overpowered and that you can gain XP in a rare class faster than a perked out common class.
No. We know several, and we know they aren’t that powerful. We can infer from the ones that we do know, and because of the multiple discussions by the developers about abilities, game balance, etc., that the abilities are not that powerful.
