The game platform is great, save for some design problems, but I want to address what could be done with the necvars and balancing the game out.
#1
SMG’s are too stable.
You can run around hip blasting people with relative ease with dual SMGs that both have drum barrels attached to the bottom and front grips in front. This is a “Spray and Pray” gamer’s wet dream. You rarely run out of ammo (with drum barrels), don’t miss (with front grips) and usually put so many bullets into your enemy so quickly that you win most firefights with very little skill involved.
Don’t get me wrong, I love doing this, it just doesn’t require skill.
#2
One Shot Kills
The game was not supposed to have any, and yet an un-buffed and un-upgraded character on medium body type can get 1 shot in the head, and light body types can get 1 shot in the head and chest … given that the enemy is using the right rifle and add ons.
#3
There are not enough objectives.
On most maps there is 1 primary objective and 1 or 2 secondary objectives. There is not much need for different classes when there are so few objectives to do. Most games become a Team Deathmatch firefight really quickly with complete disregard for the secondary objectives.
#4
The skill tree is … not a tree
On the engineer you have the two smaller turrets as pre-requisites for the Gatling turret. No other skills have pre-requisites. Therefore for 8 skill points you can have the rank 5 skill for each class and have 12 points left over. This makes it way to easy to ‘specialize’ in all 4 classes. In most skill trees about half of the skills are nearly or completely useless anyway. A rank 5 skill should require at least 4 or 5 points spent in the tree to unlock, otherwise I can run around as an Operative with EMP Grenades and still have 19 points left over.
#5
Turrets are a joke
Due to their super slow target acquisition time any half-decent player can out maneuver a turret. They cannot be repaired when damaged, they are fast to hack and really don’t pose a thread to anything but a mindless bot.
#6
Assault rifles are not worth using
See #1. Due to the fact that SMGs fire faster and are more stable and accurate there is no purpose to using Assault Rifles. Assault Rifles should be more effective than SMGs at a distance and should not be so unstable when firing in bursts with ACOG/RedDot
#7
Body Size Types
The advantage of a light body size doesn’t really seem to play a role. There is very little you can parkour around that other body types can’t. Being a light body type might save you 5 seconds to get to the front of the firefight, but because of your health penalty, you’ll die 10 seconds faster. Counter to this, being a heavy doesn’t give you enough bonus life to be worth running like the world’s slowest marathoner.
And on the flip side of this problem … if your team has the engineer upgraded health command post and you have the upgraded medic 2 pip health buff with upgraded kevlar … you could be a light body type blitzing around the map and have more health and damage resistance than the enemys’ heavies.
#8
Déjà vu
There are so few maps to play on… you feel like you are doing the same thing over and over and over and over … you see the point. I know they plan on the first DLC to be adding in maps but until them … this gets tedious.
#9
Gun Balance
Most of the weapons are not well balanced. Most players gravitate towards two weapons for the most part, Carb9 and Euston. I was looking forward to weapons having trade-offs like more magazine for longer reload, slower fire rate for more damage, unstable for high rate of fire, short range for damage, long range but slow, etc. Instead of using different weapons for different situations (like Grenade Launcher for clusters of players) you can just use your cookie cutter Carb9 that works in all situations. Too bad, because with 24 weapons only 3 or 4 gets used.
#9.5
& Gun Addons
Speaking of gun balance … I don’t really see the disadvantage to drum barrels. There seems to be no reason not to equip a drum barrel. So with that in mind, any gun that can handle a drum barrel will have a drum barrel. I don’t see any reason not to use front grips, so with that in mind every gun that can handle front grips will have them. Why give us a variety of add ons when only 2 of the add ons are ever worth using?
#10
MEDIC SCOREBOARD LEET HAX WINS
Playing an aggressive medic that actively revives, heals and kills causes the medic class to climb REALLY QUICKLY to the top of the scoreboard of any/every game. Medics gain way too many points for team actions. Revives are worth 175 points while arming a secondary objective is worth 100 or potentially 200. It takes a second to gain 175 points as a medic, but takes 45 seconds to gain 200 as a soldier. The same applies to hacking, repairing, etc.
Also … why don’t you show kill/death ratios on the scoreboard?
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I was really looking forward to Brink and despite it being a great platform, it falls short on many fronts as a PC game. Maybe you designed, geared and catered to consoles a bit too much, but the PC game is rather flat, boring, unbalanced and un-re-playable. Also, as mentioned many times, I don’t see how it can ever become a competition game with the way it is now. #10 is This Post because I deeply regret ever having to write a post in the first place.
And with that said feel free to agree/disagree with me.
-Ben
