As I said in some other thread, you’re right - It doesn’t have to make sense
If we can’t change CHARACTER mid-game, then what is the point in specializing in one class with the talent points? We would have to make ‘‘handyman’’ characters with points in multiple classes
And what on earth made Splash change the bodytype thing? Why is it not permanent anymore? :l
[QUOTE=Schwarzeis;273390]As I said in some other thread, you’re right - It doesn’t have to make sense
If we can’t change CHARACTER mid-game, then what is the point in specializing in one class with the talent points? We would have to make ‘‘handyman’’ characters with points in multiple classes
And what on earth made Splash change the bodytype thing? Why is it not permanent anymore? :l[/QUOTE]
Bodytype was never permanent. It was always able to be changed, its just previously in one iteration you had to pay XP to change. Now Exedore says its free.
Why do you believe we can change character mid-game? If we can’t change bodytype midgame, why do you believe we can change character mid-game?
So let me get this straight. We have to pick 3 abilities that may or may not work depending on what class we play in game, and we can’t change them in game?
That’s going to be a really bad design. I can easily imagine situations where all the players in a given game have a character specced out with soldier/engineer/operative abilities but nobody is playing a medic. The team could really use a medic, but nobody wants to switch because they will be less effective. This is stupid design if this is the case. I want to experience ALL the content in brink, not just 10% of it at a time. Being able to respond to what your opponent is doing is one of the dynamic and innovative moments in multiplayer games. If we have to disconnect, change something, then reconnect, it’s going to be very frustrating.
Basically, i have to roll the dice and hope that my team is going to need an engineer this time. The alternative is to only choose universal abilities, which means I’m going to be missing a good deal of customization in the game.
So the choice is: Be a good team player or miss out on content :\
Push it back a few weeks and fix this.
[QUOTE=Bridger;273417]So let me get this straight. We have to pick 3 abilities that may or may not work depending on what class we play in game, and we can’t change them in game?
That’s going to be a really bad design. I can easily imagine situations where all the players in a given game have a character specced out with soldier/engineer/operative abilities but nobody is playing a medic. The team could really use a medic, but nobody wants to switch because they will be less effective. This is stupid design if this is the case. I want to experience ALL the content in brink, not just 10% of it at a time. Being able to respond to what your opponent is doing is one of the dynamic and innovative moments in multiplayer games. If we have to disconnect, change something, then reconnect, it’s going to be very frustrating.
Push it back a few weeks and fix this.[/QUOTE]
We get to pick more than 3 abilities. Each level gives you a credit for ability buying, but I don’t think we know if abilities have different prices or whatever. Looking at one video, there looked to be a limit to how many abilities you could buy for one class on a character.
My guess is that a level 20 character could certainly buy a full complement of universal abilities and abilities for one class and probably have some change.
Check that other topic : http://www.splashdamage.com/forums/showthread.php?t=23761
You can only take 5 abilities by “class” (universal included).
[QUOTE=JeP;273435]Check that other topic : http://www.splashdamage.com/forums/showthread.php?t=23761
You can only take 5 abilities by “classes” (universal included).[/QUOTE]
So when you switch classes it switches your abilities? That makes much more sense. I’m happy with that.
[QUOTE=Bridger;273417]So let me get this straight. We have to pick 3 abilities that may or may not work depending on what class we play in game, and we can’t change them in game?
That’s going to be a really bad design. I can easily imagine situations where all the players in a given game have a character specced out with soldier/engineer/operative abilities but nobody is playing a medic. The team could really use a medic, but nobody wants to switch because they will be less effective. This is stupid design if this is the case. I want to experience ALL the content in brink, not just 10% of it at a time. Being able to respond to what your opponent is doing is one of the dynamic and innovative moments in multiplayer games. If we have to disconnect, change something, then reconnect, it’s going to be very frustrating.
Basically, i have to roll the dice and hope that my team is going to need an engineer this time. The alternative is to only choose universal abilities, which means I’m going to be missing a good deal of customization in the game.
So the choice is: Be a good team player or miss out on content :\
Push it back a few weeks and fix this.[/QUOTE]
There was a looong discussion about that some time ago and I was basically saying what you are saying now all the time.
One year or so ago you could actually change your character in game which was imo really cool. You could have all these different characters with different abilities and bodytypes and change mid game whenever you wanted. Kinda like… playing TF2 or ET:QW or W:ET… and less like playing WoW.
Now you can definitely not change your bodytype and as far as I understand you can’t change your abilities whilst in the game either, which is one of the decisions that really pisses me off ever since.
As you said, if you join your server the team composition is completely random. You can adjust your class and your weapon but you can’t adjust what abilities and bodytype you have.
I have very very little experience with DotA games. But I would imagine it would really suck if your team just gets random characters. Yes you can choose your items and stuff you want to level, but still, random character selection sounds really stupid.
Now that I think about it, DotA games are really good comparison for the XP grinding dilemma, too. Imagine if you could only have all the spells/abilities on a character if you spent like 10 hours previously levelling him up. You can’t even be like “well today I’m just going to try how character xy works”. No, you’d have to be like “well, next week I’ll want to try character xy out. I better start getting them XP so I can use his stuff”.
One last comparison: Anyone here played AoE3? It’s basically like AoE2 except that for each civilization you had to make a “hometown” and level it up to get certain stuff.
I don’t have to tell you that it just sucked, no more “I’ll just try to play this civ” when you always have to level up to level 20 before you could actually play strategies that everybody else was doing!
Devs have to understand that this totally sucks for the hardcore community. I’m not saying don’t do it in general, I’m just saying please give the more hardcore community an option to turn **** like this off. We want to be flexible, adaptable. We want to evolve the metagame and figure the game out. We can’t do that efficiently if you hinder us with XPs and levels and character restriction and stuff, and we have to do senseless levelling every time we want to try something out. As well as being stuck with unfortunate variables depending on random teams and also depending on the enemies composition and strategy because we can’t change enough when in the game.
I just don’t want to have thoughts like “if only we weren’t all heavys and none of us specialized in medic” or “if only the enemy’s team composition was randomly so much better and they could just easily abuse strategy xy why we couldn’t change our bodytypes/abilities accordingly”. I always want to be in control of things and adapt according to the situation.
edit: Forgot that abilities change when you change class. That’s good at least.
I don’t want to sound too harsh, I’ll certainly play as much BRINK as I can from day1 and I’ll love it.
But that’s how I feel about certain stuff and I’m rather overly hysterical when expressing my opinion than being so modest and neutral that nobody notices I expressed an opinion at all.
Exactly ! Changing to operative won’t stuck you with none ability, but medic ones if you have chosen some (and still, you’ll have basic class abilities).
Or you could NOT disconnect, NOT change your character/abilities, and just play sub-optimally for a few minutes. Adapt.
This stuff has never sat right with me. Some say it adds depth and complexity, to me I see it as hurdles I’m forced to jump over in order to play a class based FPS. I say this in the full knowledge that a massive segment of the market just love those hurdles.
That’s a false choice. If our team is randomly poor composition and the other team is randomly a good composition, we’ll be playing at a disadvantage. In other class-based games players can recognize and fix that issue.
It’d be like if one side starts with 15% more health than us and the only way to fix it is to have a few of our players disconnect and reconnect. Then you tell me that is stupid and I should just “Adapt” to playing with less health.
I think the problem with people who see this mechanic as a “hurdle” or “fault” like you do, is that they are expecting a class based FPS to play a certain way - like there is some sort of golden rule or guideline that all class based FPS games must follow. For the SD vets, I think you are expecting or wanting Brink to be more like past SD games than it is turning out to be.
In other words, it appears you don’t want the class based FPS formula to change too much from what you’re used to, and when you discover things that don;t sit well with you, you cry foul. It isn;t actually a foul, just something you don’t like.
Can someone give me a source of information that supposedly when you change classes in Brink mid match that your abilities somehow change as well. I don’t recall seeing that anywhere as official information but yet several people up thread are stating it as fact.
or is this just more misinformation that is countering other misinformation within this thread?
Deal with what you have or quit. How exactly is that false? You truly expect to never be on the losing side in any game?
The true choice, of course, was in picking your abilities. If YOU CHOOSE to specialize, then you also chose to limit your capabilities with the other classes. You could, alternatively, choose to pick more universal abilities, and not specialize in any class.
Based on your responses, Bridger, you (specifically) would rather drop from the game so that you can switch from your super-spec’d medic to your super-spec’d engineer, because having to choose between specialization and adaptability is something you feel is ?unfair?? You want to have the optimal potential at all times. You don’t want to max/min your character within the game’s ruleset, you want to break out of the games limitations entirely. Why are you even playing the game then?
If you aren’t interested in a fair, limited and balanced game, go outside and shoot defenseless animals.
Your example is ridiculous. It would never occur, unless a game is being manually unbalanced. If the other team had 15% more health than you, how would you know?
[quote=H0RSE;273493]I think the problem with people who see this mechanic as a “hurdle” or “fault” like you do, is that they are expecting a class based FPS to play a certain way - like there is some sort of golden rule or guideline that all class based FPS games must follow. For the SD vets, I think you are expecting or wanting Brink to be more like past SD games than it is turning out to be.
In other words, it appears you don’t want the class based FPS formula to change too much from what you’re used to, and when you discover things that don;t sit well with you, you cry foul. It isn;t actually a foul, just something you don’t like.[/quote]
SD are putting in stuff to appeal to a different market, you admit as much above. How does that not make it a hurdle? Just because you enjoy jumping over hurdles doesn’t make them something else and doesn’t mean everyone should enjoy jumping over them. Ultimately it’s something put in your way that you have to navigate to play the core game.
Now I’m not crying about this and saying I’ll never buy the game. I just have zero interest in playing an RPG on top of an FPS. I have even less excitement over dealing with all the dicks who’ll focus on the RPG to the detriment of the FPS.
I don’t think your abilities change, per se, but rather that if you choose skills for a class they only activate when you are that class. So when you’re decking out your guy’s skills, you can select skills for a bunch of different classes, and then you use those skills when, and only when, you play as that class. It’s not separate skill loadouts or anything. It’s like “I can do this, this, and this when I’m a Medic, and I can do this and this when I’m an Operative, and I can do this as a Soldier. I’m not very good as an Engineer, but I’m a great Medic and a pretty good Operative.” Universal skills are always on though.
No they’re not, universal means that they can be used by any class, they still take up the same slots. Right now universal skills seem very cost-effective for when you chose to go higher tiers with other classes.
To clarify, I meant that if you select them, they are active (lol, and passive) no matter which class you are.
I’m afraid this is correct. Pretty sure Maawdawg specifically said that your abilities don’t switch in-game, and he played it at PAX East.