Will wait for the reviews next time around before pre-ordering a game without a beta/demo .The one reason I got ETQW was because of Verticae & GoldenApe from EU who convinced me with the screenshots and posts about their game play experiences of the demo.
Game releasing on both consoles & PC at the same time : Might think of keeping away for a bit unless there are decent reviews of it not being a console port.
I do play games on consoles as well and so I don’t intend on flaming any platform here. I play BRINK on PC and so writing this from that perspective.
As I have always posted this :
How did Refuel pass the QA ?
How did they decide to release the game one week prior, when there were obvious issues which they didnt have fixes for at that time ( Demo which was cut off because of game crashes) ?
[QUOTE=Exedore;357903]The second sentence is but a small part of it… it’s just fascinating and revealing to see what people can map on to a general statement.
There are some things I wish we could have changed, and other things that some have griped about that I absolutely wouldn’t.[/QUOTE]
Fair enough. We are here to play the games SD makes. SD is not necessarily there to make the games we demand. The details that arise from a crosstalk within that distinction become flammable. Now, please reduce weapons spread, different binds for sprint and smart, fleshing out of the admin system for clans (heck, just some official documentation), and enable easier in-game socializing (fireteam creation and voip going to be done right in the coming updates?). Sounds like alot but it isn’t really and there you kinda have your basics covered for pub (I help run a pub clan, nobody was happy) and you are halfway there with only really needing to get the first person spec in order. I kinda kid.
i think the discussion about console&pc gets a bit too general here. its not that brink feels like a 100% console port. for me personally it feels like a pc game mostly.
i want to get a bit more specific on what elements should be changed in order to make brink a game targeted at the pc crowd.
i wrote that things down several times now, but since we have some good activity here, i write them down again.
the interaction system. i think this is probably my biggest problem with brink. and i think this is a feature that is very important for console players, but not necessary for pc players. i also think that this has to be changed in order to make brink a better game. i think the effort to improve the system is appropriate.
remove all automation systems from the pc regarding the player interactions. no more autofocus, no more autofollow. no more automatic…! the system as it is right now does not help players at all, it does the opposite.
just dont think about the fatties who will be unable to buff faster players. actually i think if you remove the automation, more teamplay is encouraged. people who want buffs will find the fatty and will get buffed.
im a bit afraid to go further… if i think through it, i think all the other interactions like disguising, throw syringes, repairing objectives, require a major design change and some massive reprogramming. but this needs to be done imho.
this really is my biggest concern as a “casual hardcore” players/fan.
i personally dont care about things like recording and first person spectator. i would consider this as standard though. i even dont care as much about the spread and the random recoild of the weapons, since i only play light with submachine guns. but obviously this is also a big deal for a lot of people.
one other thing for me is the interface. there are cvars on pc which alter the hud to what i would like it to be. there are the interaction symbols and the halorendering. the commands are there, they are functional, but they are locked.
do us all a favor and just unlock these values if its too much work to implement a gui costumization option/tool.
and what about a costum crosshair? a static dot or cross really that difficult to implement? also, there are cvars for this but they dont work currently.
so, this are the things that can be changed with the less possible effort i think. unlocking the cvars could actually be patched with a hotfix i think. why dont you just do it to show some good will to the people who still play and enjoy your game? does it need to be approved by bethesda to unlock some cvars? i dont understand it.
thanks, and i hope someone consider this productive critisism.
[QUOTE=Kendle;357888]Yes, and deliberately so, because there seems to be an opinion around here (to be expected I suppose) that SD are the Gods of the objective team game, when they’re not and we shouldn’t be putting them on such a pedestal.
Yes, they’ve done some good stuff, but mostly what contributed to ET’s success, and a lesser extent ET:QW’s, isn’t of SD’s design, they inherited most of the core mechanics of objective based teamplay from other people, and a lot of the success of their previous titles was also the result of someone else’s work rather than their own.[/QUOTE]
Yeah I see what your saying but on the flip side there is another opinion around that SD are the worst devs in the world who don’t know how to make games and such, I see them as a growing studio who are trying to find their feet still.
[QUOTE=wolfnemesis75;357884]A lot of the changes I’d suggest to improve Brink are mainly cosmetic rather than radical changes. Like maybe destructible environments, larger explosions with more smoke. More character lines when you’re playing; just more stuff to enhance immersion.
My name keeps coming up in posts, but honestly, it often smacks of gamers lashing out in anger rather than actually reading what I’ve said, or accepting that there are other perspectives of the game that have merit.[/QUOTE]
There are destructible environments. Gates, objectives. If you’re saying people should be able to blow holes in walls… that would totally disrupt the balance. People would breach objective rooms and make the game absolutely annoying. Also if you’re saying you should be able to destroy random small things… that’s one of the good things Brink has going for it. The level of detail put into the levels. Why would you want to smash it? Ok so we’ve all said the smoke grenade would be useful… but imagine a whole team spamming that and moving through to the objective. That would degrade the quality of a match. I’m not sure what you mean by more lines… I myself would like more voices but NOT more lines. These guys are talkative enough in game.
Second part: Wolf you can’t be surprised that people react to you the way they do when it’s perceived that you take a zero tolerance hard line approach to people criticizing the game. You’re coming off as a watchdog and a troll to people who are just trying to communicate about their issues. If you want your perspective to be valid then you need to start validating their perspective and showing that you understand where they are coming from by relating to them in their plight. Because some of my PC friends have PMed me asking exactly what you mean because they don’t want to get into it with you all over again. Or get into a flamewar with you via PM and get warnings handed down to them. I think you should consider that their are people who understand where you’re coming from but feel YOU are not listening to THEM. We don’t need people holding grudges around here and we should take the time to be more respectful of each other. I’m not trying to police any conversations or anything like that. I’m just saying some mutual respect and diplomacy will go a lot farther then calling PC players self-entitled or PC players calling console players children.
Also I’ve been here a decent amount of time… or at least long enough to observe how things were handled before the influx of players. And I’ve seen PC players have long drawn out conversations about things with differing views without it ever turning disrespectful. And when the thread was done with it sunk to the bottom.
Now there are people who argue just to argue, criticize because they want to see the reaction, or have a valid point and it takes wisdom to know the difference between the two. Because arguing with a troll that has the correct perspective from someone else’s point of view is just going to make you look like the troll.
SD are most definitely awesome, one of my favorite developers simply because of ETQW and their seemingly “id centric” style at first. I want them to concentrate on iphone level mobile devices and move away from consoles. Mobile device gaming is the future and console gaming is dying lol rolls eyes. but yeah, give us “app store” strat titles pls.
[QUOTE=Exedore;357904]Rawr!
Staying away because the title of the thread denotes it being another’s realm. If you’ve got something for others to address, just make another thread.[/QUOTE]
Yeah, apologies for the bluntness - but I hope you appreciate my position Also, my main complaints have been done to death in several threads - including the PC Feedback thread, which was un-stickied and therefore tends to live beyond most people’s awareness these days. I wish that meant all of the feedback had been addressed. Since I haven’t seen a single SD reply that related to the key binding situation, I unfortunately have no confidence that a new thread would achieve anything more.
I did originally have confidence that you’d revert what I see as a massive (but simple) design flaw - that confidence has since faded away. All negative posts (and many, many positive ones) I’ve made have been about this binding situation, and how it combines with the “auto highlight” to create a complete mess for medics. So many people have given feedback on this exact problem, and I haven’t seen a single SD post that even acknowledged the issue. And still, I cannot understand how this got through playtesting and QA, as it happens so often as a medic that I had to apply bandages to my own tooth-marked hands mid-game. It really is terrible. Operative shares the pain, but since so few players even bother with the Operative, it seems to go unnoticed.
[QUOTE=Exedore;357904]Rawr!
Staying away because the title of the thread denotes it being another’s realm. If you’ve got something for others to address, just make another thread.[/QUOTE]
You’re welcome to change it to something along the lines of ‘Rahdo and Exodore turn out cooler than anticipated’!
Rahdo, kudos for reading and posting! See, after this thread all further grilling while discussing the game’s issues with the community will be an easy feat
2 questions though:
What happened to a guy who programmed GUI for ETQW? Who was it and why wasn’t he there for doing similar great job in brink?
What is SD currently doing (or planning to do) to imporve the game apart from DLC? I didn’t see any answers to that except for the stuff that you said that you hesitate to promise things. And I don’t think sharing a bit of information about the current workabouts would really come into contradiction with the secrecy agreement with Beth or whatever you have there in place.
As Tok said, if the hindsight is in better planning the development then that’s awesome news. If it’s a jab at people criticising the game after it’s done, then well, they were pointing it out WAY before the game came out. I won’t waste the time pulling the actual threads but I recall being part of the following discussions several times.
VOIP being off by default
Single Player/Merging the line
SMART and Manual overrides
Tractor Beaming
Single key for multiple functions
Is the game a port or not
etc, etc, etc.
Leading on from that. People saying SD shouldn’t do a PC version. Maybe that’s a little strong, I think they could learn to make viable PC versions, certainly much better than other console-centric developers. That said, I don’t think those versions would necessarily appeal to their existing fanbase which is perhaps why no version at all would seem preferable. Just be careful what you wish for!
To repeat myself though, what would be nicer would be for them to contract a separate deal for a PC version, so that once the console version was done they’d have a budget to rework the game for the PC then release.
Our frustrations often lay in the fact that we expect the best and compromise rarely achieves that. In fact compromise on a single platform must be hard enough but when you’re also trying to balance two very different platforms into the same game it seems doomed to failure, or at least mediocrity. So the point is surely, don’t do that, develop to each platforms strengths and make two similar but different games and not try to make a unified mess.
[QUOTE=Exedore;357904]Rawr!
Staying away because the title of the thread denotes it being another’s realm. If you’ve got something for others to address, just make another thread.[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=riptide;357820]Here’s the best E3 Interview I’ve seen in a long time and it’s from one of the most respected programmers in the world. He is usually ahead of the curve and I think that’s demonstrated here yet again. Hopefully he isn’t the only developer that takes this stance.
To paraphrase one important point “build/optimize for pc and deploy on console”[/QUOTE]
WOW! Thank you for posting that video. I fell like id or Carmack specifically really understands what I have been thinking for a long time now. Technology has progressed to a point where I do not care so much about the capabilities or the visual effects anymore than about the core game being fun. Every game today can look awesome even without effects, it is the artist who makes it look great not the technology anymore.
Having said that I think the style of Brink is great but the performance just sucks. And that goes hand in hand with what Carmack said about shooters having to be responsive. I was really stunned by the fact that they actually did a case study and looked at it scientifically with cameras and stuff. Though after watchin the video I gotta say I am able to ‘feel’ the difference between 60Hz and 120Hz Quake Live
But even if I magically mange to get 60Hz in an actual firefight in Brink it still feels very unresponsive and it is extremely hard to aim at an opponont who is trying to dodge your bullets because there is a lag between your mouse-movement and the actual translation of it into your ingame view moving. I have yet to see any game that comes even close to those id Tech 3 games in this regard. ET:QW doesnt even feel that responsive as Quake Live does not even at 120Hz.
[quote=brutt01d;357941]2) What is SD currently doing (or planning to do) to imporve the game apart from DLC? I didn’t see any answers to that except for the stuff that you said that you hesitate to promise things. And I don’t think sharing a bit of information about the current workabouts would really come into contradiction with the secrecy agreement with Beth or whatever you have there in place.
Well… they already know how to make viable PC versions, since that’s 100% their background I know you know that, so don’t get me wrong - I’m not correcting you, I’m just lamenting the current situation. They know exactly how to make PC games, which is why Brink PC is even more painful to swallow. There shouldn’t have been a PC version of Brink - that much is proven by the woeful stats, regardless of how much spin SD attempt to put on that. If I’d have understood the realities of the PC version before release, I wouldn’t have handed over my money - and I’m sure a good number of PC players would have made that same decision.
Most developers will assert that the decision to avoid beta testing is purely down to resources, cost, and time shortages. I call bull****, simply because we have no way of proving it’s true - and with such a disappointing PC version, SD had every reason to want to avoid early exposure to the game. If I worked for SD right now, I certainly wouldn’t have wanted the PC community to get their hands on Brink pre-release. Promo footage certainly didn’t inform me that one button worked almost everything, and that this choice, coupled with poor auto-selecting of targets for abilities and crap general binding decisions, would completely ruin my enjoyment of the game. A beta would certainly have highlighted this within minutes of my first play through, and that would have been the end of my purchasing.
Personally - and I know this is vindictive, but frankly ***** it - if there was an option to get a refund that actually resulted in SD not profiting from my purchase, I would take it. Yes, I’m evil and twisted - sorry, but you already knew that. I’m sure SD have profited nicely from the sheer number console sales alone, so I’d prefer to give SD exactly what I feel they’ve given the PC player base - nothing. I feel somewhat horrible for suggesting that, but so be it - that’s how I feel about Brink, and what it has taught me about SD’s current (and potentially future) direction. I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again - catering for the mainstream console market is wholly acceptable these days, doing so at the almost complete expense of your PC player base is a whole different ball game. Something like a 97% reduction since release - this does not equate to “some of the PC players didn’t like it”, but more like “some of the PC players did like it” - a completely different scenario, unless you’re holding a psychology lecture entitled “Glass 3% full - how to remain positive”.
And now, I’m thinking we’ve passed the time where Brink has a chance of redeeming itself on the PC, and we’ll only see minor changes to balance, most of which are achieved through netvars rather than traditional updates. You know, that “sorry guys, but the budget is done with!” point that many developers seem to reach just a few weeks after release, when they’re already working on the next unfinished project they plan to ship. If anything is killing PC gaming, it’s this attitude. Release something unfinished because your ambitions got the better of you, reap the rewards, then claim you have no budget to “fix” the game beyond some simple early patching. Seriously, if your budget and abilities cannot match your ambition and design, don’t even go there - if Brink was left on consoles only, you might even be able to claim a success without us PC idiots jumping on your backs. I wonder how SD would feel if all of those PC purchases could be returned, at your own expense? Well, I cannot speak for others - but again, those stats do not lie. At a minimum, I’d expect to see 20,000 refunds being requested - and have no real reason to think it wouldn’t go higher than that.
Amounts to next to nothing, for most players though Anthony. Although it’s nice to see comp.-targeted improvements, even though I’m not a comp. player myself. Aside from the weapon balancing (which isn’t really detailed at all), I think most players would see these things as “peripheral” changes rather than core improvements, and simply token gestures compared with fixing the main problems. Likewise, DLC is going to do nothing to help the almost non-existent PC player base to recover. I guess we’re to assume that most of the SD team are already working on a future mystery title rather than fixing the shiny new thing released in May? God knows. And he doesn’t even exist, so we can’t ask him.
I have a question… are lobbies going to be implemented on console? And will “clan support” work within the stats site? Meaning will your clan tag show up for “clan matches” next to your name? What will it look like?
When the decision was made to put most vital functions on one key, did anyone at any point put their hand up and go, “Hay I’ve played BC2(PC), it was so massively frustrating that at points I wanted to smash my keyboard. Maybe we should rethink it?”
…and if they did and they were ignored, why? I fear I may have read the ‘why’ answer already in another thread, but what the hell.
Agreed, they know. In sadness though I’m talking more that they could make PC versions (like IW made PC versions of CoD) and reap the profits. Unfortunately within the small PC market is an even smaller group of players like us. The majority there, as with consoles are going to lap up the derp-dur-herp pew pew crap. So for the cheap cost of throwing in a dev console and M+KB controls they get those guys too, good for SD business, bad for gaming in general.
I wouldn’t have handed over my money - and I’m sure a good number of PC players would have made that same decision.
My purchasing decision certainly was based on prior products and information that I gained from these forums. It’s not SD’s fault I made that decision but it is their fault that I won’t be doing it again.
Most developers will assert that the decision to avoid beta testing is purely down to resources, cost, and time shortages. I call bull****, simply because we have no way of proving it’s true - and with such a disappointing PC version, SD had every reason to want to avoid early exposure to the game.
Again, I don’t think they were even focused on the PC version until the console versions were in the bag. I was actually indifferent to there being a beta given the negative impressions people tend to walk away with when it’s really an actual beta and not a PR demo labelled beta. However, now, I think they would have benefited greatly from releasing a PC beta alongside the console release and then using that data to make a solid PC game instead of a mash of compromises.
It does raise the simple question on how subjective their testing of design ideas was. An example is the mission wheel. Something that still doesn’t work well and resulted in multiple other items in the game being cut or disabled. Sometimes you can be too close to something and not see the problems.
if there was an option to get a refund that actually resulted in SD not profiting from my purchase, I would take it. Yes, I’m evil and twisted - sorry, but you already knew that. I’m sure SD have profited nicely from the sheer number console sales alone,
I’ve paid for and played worse games but I get your point. It raises a question for me though. Perhaps if we’re going to get these half baked products then maybe the price needs to be half baked too. Never happen I know but it would seem fairer to sell a console port on the PC at a discount than expect to just forget what you used to get for that full price and accept less and less.
Something like a 97% reduction since release - this does not equate to “some of the PC players didn’t like it”, but more like “some of the PC players did like it” - a completely different scenario, unless you’re holding a psychology lecture entitled “Glass 3% full - how to remain positive”.
Peak numbers don’t tell the full picture but they do tell you that at best you can hope that at 6pm GMT there will be 600 player online around the world. I’d really like to know how this is doing on consoles too, I think some of the game’s issues go beyond even a lack of attention to the PC.
And now, I’m thinking we’ve passed the time where Brink has a chance of redeeming itself on the PC,
This hurts me the most. That a game has taken this long to walk to the bus stop only to be thrown under the bus at the last minute. I’d hope there are people at SD who find that as tragically sad as the rest of us. IMO SD need to plan better or stop placing itself in positions where the plans are unachieveable.
I kinda kid.
Also, my main complaints have been done to death in several threads - including the PC Feedback thread, which was un-stickied and therefore tends to live beyond most people’s awareness these days. I wish that meant all of the feedback had been addressed. Since I haven’t seen a single SD reply that related to the key binding situation, I unfortunately have no confidence that a new thread would achieve anything more.