On the BRINK of disappointement or exaultation…
… a report and plee to SD from me, Catwiesel (casual enthusiast gamer, 29, Germany)
First of all, hello. My name is Catwiesel, I am 29, work as an IT specialist and from Germany.
I’ve been playing all kinds of games since I’ve been a kid, maybe even a little too much as my marks in school might attest to. I’ve been the leader of a succesfull wow guild, I’ve helped lead funclans for some shooters, the most current being BoS (or QEG as it used to be named).
I first became aware of SD when a game called ET:W landed on my HDD. Oh what a lovely game that kept me playing alone, without a clan, for years. Sure, it wasnt perfect, but it was free and a huge modding community kept polishing the rough edges off. But with time it got old and we all (well, some probably diddnt) had to move on…
I almost forgot about SD when some dark night, just after assembling a new computer I was on the lookout for new games that I could be playing with the new hardware when I happened to come across ET:QW. Could it be? The awesomeness of ET combined with the speed and general perfectness of Quake? A demo? Damn, why diddnt I get the faster internet speed, 600k/s download isnt fast enough…
Long story short, after some time waiting the demo did indeed finish but did not let me go anymore, the full version was ordered within 1hr of playing the demo for the first time. ETQW did not disappoint. It was hard, it was fun, it was competetive. I know, not competetive enough for some, but for some “old” dude who just wanted to play a few hrs objective based teamplay while shooting some freaking aliens (or humans as it were) each week with friends it was good enough. Best of all, it felt solid. Sure, there were some small issues. With time and more experience even more came up that I felt could have been better, but still, I’ve had that game (still do) installed since I’ve played the demo shortly after release. Yet again, it got old, too many friends stopped playing, and I started the beloved ET:QW desktop shortcut less and less.
But there was hope on the horizon. BRINK
Man, I was looking forward to the game. It looked, sounded, smelled, felt awesome. Everything cried out “THIS IS IT”. The next game that will capture me like et:qw did. Maybe even more so. SD must have learned from the mistakes made in QW…
So I preordered the game well in advance. What could go wrong? Objective based teamplay, made by SD, everybit information available promising a fun time.
Then the 13th of may finally arrived, a day later the game did. So what am I trying to say? Why post such a long and quite possibly bloated post?
Because I am exilerated. I am disappointed. I am confused. I am happy and sad. But most important, I am still hopefull that some of the trouble can be fixed. I emplore SD, BS and everyone else who might help to really REALLY listen and think about what is being said about the game and take it seriously.
Maybe its too late for “my suggestions” and BRINK, then maybe the next game will not fall short on the same corners. Maybe its not too late and the next patches (and possible future mods) can fix some problems that I and possibly many others are seeing.
First, I like BRINK. I do not feel ripped off or want my money back. I know it will be fun for the next few months, maybe even years. Still, there is soo much that makes me sad when I play that I do not feel my time wasted writing an hour long post of the slim chance that it may help BRINK or the next game in some small way to stop hurting ever again…
I also understand some concerns that many others have talked about. Some I dont care for myself.
The story and single player mode is a nice to have, nothing I would expect and must have in a multiplayer focused game. I realise the advertising was a bit heavy on that aspect and there were disappointements. Understandable, but honestly, I dont care. Maybe next time, dont advertise a game as the next ultimate story line driven shooter when in fact, you have 8 multiplayer maps with bots to play alone on…
The graphic is well acceptable. For a Q4-engine based game (it is DX9 based, right?), it actually is pretty impressive. I know, much work has been done there and still, some people feel it is not good enough. Compared with other shooters available, I even understand where they are coming from. But for me, BRINK looks good enough. And honestly, how many people playing multiplayer shooters out there will own a bad ass pc, possible with multiple gpus, and still cut down the graphics to have 200+ fps?
The sound. I will just go into this since I became aware of something small that confuses me.
There is a pretty well known gameplay video out there from SD, release a few years back. The game did sound much better then then it does today. What happened to the awesome sound, the player ducking behind the metal sheets, the enemies shooting at him, the bullets flying, hitting metal… You had a real feeling of being shot at and the number of enemies trying to kill you. Now the game is released and when I cover behind the same door (container city, first obj) and am being shot at, it sounds nowhere near as impressive?
Also, what is up with the sliding noise that can be heard through the whole map, but an unskilled huge lv1 meatsack running 3ft behind me is almost unhearable?
ET:W and especially ET:QW helped with sounds ALOT. I fear BRINK does not. at all…
PLEASE THINK ABOUT THE SLIDING NOISE, FOOTSTEPS AND MAYBE THE HIT SOUND OF BULLETS ON DIFFERENT MATERIAL
Weapons, Balancing, Grenades, Levels, XP, Bonus etc:
Its all fine as far as I can see. Everything that I could say here might just be personal preference.
Stupid Players:
unfortunately we will never get rid of people unwilling to help the team. I think here SD has made a big step forward in helping people help their team. Its not perfect, maybe its as good as it can possibly get, maybe some smarter guy than me can figure out better ways to make newbs and xp wh*res help their team. I, however, have to let it stand as it is…
Bugs/Glitches/Technical Problems:
I have yet to encounter any real gamebreaking problems.
The sound dropping out is not yet 100% fixed, but I am confident it will be soon.
Our clan server seems to go offline now and then. My research shows this may be due to steam and their server(trouble). In any case (lets assume it is not our rootserver and/or our config) I hope it will get fixed and/or a workaround being released (like why have brink servers shut down if a steam server goes down for a minute?)
The UI and customability of the UI.
This is the big weakness of BRINK. ET:QW had a much better interface. It was customisable.
Where are my alterantive key bindings? Where is the UI scale? Why isnt it modular anymore? what happened?
I feel the console happened. I do not mind a game being developed for consoles too. If you need the console sales, so be it! But why must I suffer? Why is everything so big, so “newbie”, so unflexible, so CONSOLE (and funny enough, more difficult to find for eg. fireteam)
The server browser is another example of a huge step backwards. why cascade it? let us switch between lan, friends, favorites, internet on the same page as the servers are listed. and why the ***** cant the browser remember settings like no passworded servers or max ping? (also, why have it switch through all the settings when clicking instead of having a “pulldown menu”…)
PLEASE GIVE US BACK A MORE CUSTOMIZABLE, FLEXIBLE, RESIZABLE UI & PRI. AND ALT. KEY BINDINGS
AND PLEASE GIVE US A BETTER SERVER BROWSER!!!
And where is the smart context chat? Why not give us a button to call a medic when down? or spot an enemy? give orders to bots / ask for help in a multiplayer game? I know the game does it on its own. Still, I feel the context orders/chat menu should be implemented in brink too.
PLEASE GIVE US BACK A CONTEXT CHAT / ORDER MENU
And was it absolutely neccesary to make the limbo menu almost useless? why not let you decide your class/loadout when lying dead on the floor? I understand the command posts were a great idea. Would it hurt to have the “old” limbo menu as well?
MAYBE GIVE US A MORE USEFULL LIMBO MENU
My last concern. No maps. No I dont mean the 8 maps that came with the game and are being played on. I mean the overview of these maps. Where am I, where is my team. What does the map look like, what are the objectives (and what are the obj/will they be) etc. ET:QW had pretty good maps (of the maps). BRINK should too!
PLEASE ADD MAPS (not the playable kind, that would be nice too) but the visual overview of the current playing area.
Wow, we made it. Thank you for reading my post. Thank you for enduring my english and typos. Thank you SD for the awesome games you made and will continue to make. And maybe, just maybe, thank you for improving BRINK, too!
Catwiesel
PS: Tapirs rock! :stroggtapir: