Real concerns over Brinks Rank system

(H0RSE) #261

On a platform that doesn’t gave the convenience of a server browser, easy, fast and reliable matchmsking is a must if the developers want their game to still be popular years after launch.

yeah, because people don’t play Halo still…

(ultraddtd) #262

Well, ok. Halo is a bad example, but that’s only because it has a rabid fan base that was built up for years, back when online console gaming was pretty much new.

(MILFandCookies) #263

Had a quick re read of the thread and missed this post:

By my definition of an excellent reviver, they would need to eliminate the threat(s) first before they even attempt to revive.

(INF3RN0) #264

Reviving was not really an adequate example as you can’t improve your revive ability through practice. Reviving someone after you kill another or med chaining just means that the other person failed to kill you in the first place, and these can be done by anyone. I would say that being able to dodge and heal might be a better example, but again it still comes back to the other guy’s aim.

(tokamak) #265

If aim/kill was the only thing that matters then the medics that didn’t touch their revive tool and only focussed on shooting would be the best medics a team can have.

Surely you guys can’t think that’s right.

right?

(MILFandCookies) #266

[QUOTE=tokamak;222065]If aim/kill was the only thing that matters then the medics that didn’t touch their revive tool and only focussed on shooting would be the best medics a team can have.

Surely you guys can’t think that’s right.

right?[/QUOTE]

Thats not what is being said here.
The act of reviving [the use of the revive tool] matters, but it isn’t a skillful act. Its a useful one.
And against a team of aimers - a player with average aim isn’t likely to be alive much to revive anyone. That is why their ability to aim is pretty important.

(H0RSE) #267

Thats not what is being said here.
The act of reviving [the use of the revive tool] matters, but it isn’t a skillful act. Its a useful one.
And against a team of aimers - a player with average aim isn’t likely to be alive much to revive anyone. That is why their ability to aim is pretty important.

Not unless they could just revive teammates who have better aim, and leave the killing to them…avoiding enemy fire while going for a revive is a skill a medic should have. In my clan/tourney days, I didn’t do much shooting as a medic, but I didn’t have to. I was good at keeping guys alive, and reviving the one’s I didn’t in the heat of battle. I had an uncanny ability of avoiding enemy fire - It was one of my strongest attributes, and a reason I was so adored as the team medic.

(INF3RN0) #268

[QUOTE=tokamak;222065]If aim/kill was the only thing that matters then the medics that didn’t touch their revive tool and only focussed on shooting would be the best medics a team can have.

Surely you guys can’t think that’s right.

right?[/QUOTE]

It’s right, but your looking at it like an alternative to something. There is a difference between killing and being smart, but for the most part being smart is used more effectively to be a better killer (note being a good killer does not mean you simply get random kills). If you have a medic who is confident of their aim, they are better off killing first and reviving after (unless it is worthwhile in terms of the objective or pure #s). Even a medic who plays only for themselves can be as helpful as one that revives, given they play towards an objective and can actually clear it out. It’s a decision poised towards what will help your team the most; A. Do I spend my time reviving fallen teammates even if I think I will be more useful in the moment alone. OR B. Do I have a better chance at clearing the objective first and reviving my teammates after. You can have a killing machine medic who doesn’t revive as much as you think he should, but I can guarantee that if there was more focus on the revives on their part by others’ standards, it wouldn’t necessarily better the situation or chances of winning. The point is you can’t win if you purely base your strategy on using the tools provided and playing your class generically with its description (medics revive, etc), but rather need to use them to make your killing more progressive towards completing an objective. The problem is you think that when we say “focusing on killing” everyone means random killing with no coherent correlation with the objective, which is where your wrong. Unless you think that someone relying purely on their ability to use tools or sneak an objective has the same chance at winning as those who use these tools to make ground through effectively killing their enemies (again not randomly or without the obj in mind), then you are probably on the same page as everyone else. There are plenty of times when a suicide revive or just a normal revive is a priority, a last tap (assuming that you can defend it) on the objective, or capping an enemy spawn. Anything can be done incorrectly and whether one is more helpful than another in winning the game is entirely situational. Overall though, I find it much more affective to ensure that everyone focuses on doing what will be most helpful to their team and that tends to be stopping the enemy in its tracks by killing them (though this strategy tends to use all the tools provided), but whether or not players make the best decisions in any situation is a different matter all together (I would call the whole thing “strategical killing” if anything). How this relates to the XP distribution? It’s simply saying that a medic who revives and packs teammates more so than they kill enemies can be just as unhelpful as one who plays greedily, which is why I don’t want to be forced to play one way or the other and think both deserve equal rewards. Hope that makes sense.

(INF3RN0) #269

^ which is exactly what I mentioned. The only difference is that your reasoning behind reviving is to compensate for your lack of ability to aim as well as others. The outcome still comes down to getting those kills. If you were more confident that you would better your chances by doing something other than performing your revive ability, I am sure that you would do it first.

(H0RSE) #270

It all comes down to platystyle. If you are a medic and can make the revives and heal your team with minimal killing (like me) than do it. At the same time, if you have great aim, use it to your advantage. The key to both strategies being successful is how you apply them. Know when and who to revive or heal, and the same with killing. Medics and killers are mainly support roles anyway, making the job easier for the actual objective doers. Because without them, all the heals and kills in the world amount to nothing.

(H0RSE) #271

lol, it wasn’t so much that I had a “lack of ability to aim,” it was that 9 times out of 10, I knew I could make the revive without having to shoot - so I didn’t bother. Then afterwards, it would either be 2v1 anyway, or my teammate could cover me while I made more revives/heals.

(INF3RN0) #272

Well you get the general idea :wink:.

(tokamak) #273

You seem to be making some excellent points that don’t help the case for a pure kill/accuracy based skill indicator at all here.

  • Yes, shooting is more than randomly racking up kills, there lies skill in having priorities and killing the most important targets first. Something that with all the variables and complexity can take a lot of experience and insight to get right.
    But pointing this out, and I wish I had thought of it instead of you (:tongue:) only is an argument against sorting players by how good they’re at aiming and making kills, simply because this statistic does NOT include the importance of the targets they killed.

See, xp (/hour) DOES include this to some extend because in Brink the xp rewarded for a kill is related to what mission you picked, (the mission the other guy picked ?) and the proximity to an objective.

Even a medic who plays only for themselves can be as helpful as one that revives, given they play towards an objective and can actually clear it out. It’s a decision poised towards what will help your team the most; A. Do I spend my time reviving fallen teammates even if I think I will be more useful in the moment alone. OR B. Do I have a better chance at clearing the objective first and reviving my teammates after. You can have a killing machine medic who doesn’t revive as much as you think he should, but I can guarantee that if there was more focus on the revives on their part by others’ standards, it wouldn’t necessarily better the situation or chances of winning. The point is you can’t win if you purely base your strategy on using the tools provided and playing your class generically with its description (medics revive, etc), but rather need to use them to make your killing more progressive towards completing an objective.

I fully agree, but I’m not arguing for people who purely use tools and don’t pull the trigger. It’s the people that know what to do, and where and when to do it. Sometimes it’s best to kill players, sometimes it’s best to revive team-mates, the skill lies partially in making that decision.
And kills+accuracy do not reflect this at all, at least xp rewards both things, hopefully context based as well.

Overall though, I find it much more affective to ensure that everyone focuses on doing what will be most helpful to their team and that tends to be stopping the enemy in its tracks by killing them (though this strategy tends to use all the tools provided)[/QUOTE

Now you can’t have your cake and eat it. Either you admit that using all the tools provided (in the right way) should be rewarded, or you stick to your argument that killing is the only thing that counts.

Two teams of equally skilled players, one team restricts itself to shooting (after all, that’s the only thing that matters), and the other team uses everything they have, buffs, heals, revives, whatever they can get their hands on. You KNOW that the team with all the tools will wtfpwn the team that just shoots. So why would you only use the shooting as an indicator?

[QUOTE], but whether or not players make the best decisions in any situation is a different matter all together (I would call the whole thing “strategical killing” if anything). How this relates to the XP distribution? It’s simply saying that a medic who revives and packs teammates more so than they kill enemies can be just as unhelpful as one who plays greedily, which is why I don’t want to be forced to play one way or the other and think both deserve equal rewards. Hope that makes sense.

It totally seems like we’re on the same page. Did I misread something or are you agreeing that xp is the best way to go as an indicator? And that’s a genuine question, I’m honestly confused here. After all, it’s xp that doesn’t force anyone by awarding as many different things based on how helpful they are to the team instead of just killing.

(INF3RN0) #274

[QUOTE=tokamak;222133]Now you can’t have your cake and eat it. Either you admit that using all the tools provided (in the right way) should be rewarded, or you stick to your argument that killing is the only thing that counts.

Two teams of equally skilled players, one team restricts itself to shooting (after all, that’s the only thing that matters), and the other team uses everything they have, buffs, heals, revives, whatever they can get their hands on. You KNOW that the team with all the tools will wtfpwn the team that just shoots. So why would you only use the shooting as an indicator?[/QUOTE]

Yea this was where it became a two-sided argument. Basically the way I see it is that the tools provided are used to better one’s chances of getting kills and coming out on top. If using the tools had a learning curve and allowed you to eventually double everyone’s base HP or something, then it would be different. The tools that are provided however, are designed to prolong a fight and those who actually use them will have a much better chance of succeeding (not that it always guarantees they will). The tools provided however do not offer a lot of room for improvement, and so when you have two people that can make decent decisions when using their tools, it comes down to who will be able to out shoot the other. In this sense I think that you have to rely on both your tools and your aim, but in the end you need to kill your opponents. In Brink the buffs might make such things more significant, but for the most part even objective based tactical shooters tend to focus everything towards killing. The difference is that you have to make the kills count.

[QUOTE=tokamak;222133]
It totally seems like we’re on the same page. Did I misread something or are you agreeing that xp is the best way to go as an indicator? And that’s a genuine question, I’m honestly confused here. After all, it’s xp that doesn’t force anyone by awarding as many different things based on how helpful they are to the team instead of just killing.[/QUOTE]

Yea I was fairly sure everyone was talking about the same stuff here, but then it got drawn out into two opposing arguments when really everything goes hand in hand. The problem was that most people who find killing to be the most important aspect, is because everything else that the game provides is viewed as being second nature. When you have already mastered the tools, it comes down to the kills (and you don’t just have to be a good aim to get them, but it helps greatly). My main concern to begin with was that the XP for killing was not going to be balanced with doing anything else (class specific). I liked the idea of killing towards an objective as giving a greater reward, but it just didn’t seem like non-killing activity was going to receive the same scrutiny. Sure you get more XP for helping a teammate rather than yourself, which is a good internal system, but there is plenty of situations where this can be just as unhelpful as killing someone on the outskirts of the map. Also I am all for the support classes actually supporting their teammates as well, but I hope that they are not significantly limited in this aspect. Even in competition the “rambo med” was a viable strategy, but just as anything else it was one of those things that you didn’t want an over concentation of. Just kind of a random thought, but I always thought it wouldn’t be too bad of an idea to allow the soldier class to receive more XP for killing than other classes.

(INF3RN0) #275

Smart player>Better Shooter. Smart player+good shooter is always going to beat the smart player. I think for the most part though, enough imbalance between shooting and smarts can make shooting seem more significant, but that is usually only in pubs.

(tokamak) #276

That’s what I suspected yeah, the idea that killing would be undervalued in xp. There’s a lot of things that can be argued over within the xp distribution system. I’m really curious how the mission select plays out (and how easy it is to tell what other people are doing). It would be great when players (regardless of their class though) could simply select the ‘killing players’ role as a default so the rest could know where to fill in the other spots.

As of now the selection seems pretty dynamic and very precise. Which could give an information overload and be messy. Maybe colour indicators could reveal the ‘type’ of objective so a simple team/score browser could reveal what people are doing without even having to read the specifics.

(INF3RN0) #277

[QUOTE=tokamak;222236]That’s what I suspected yeah, the idea that killing would be undervalued in xp. There’s a lot of things that can be argued over within the xp distribution system. I’m really curious how the mission select plays out (and how easy it is to tell what other people are doing). It would be great when players (regardless of their class though) could simply select the ‘killing players’ role as a default so the rest could know where to fill in the other spots.

As of now the selection seems pretty dynamic and very precise. Which could give an information overload and be messy. Maybe colour indicators could reveal the ‘type’ of objective so a simple team/score browser could reveal what people are doing without even having to read the specifics.[/QUOTE]

Well I know regardless of my class I focus on getting to the objective and holding it, while performing my support role along the way. I wouldn’t however be the engineer who constructs all the guard towers or the guy who blows up all the alternative routes. I would let someone who felt less confident about being more useful at killing to have at it. It would be nice to have some way to see what missions others are on through some sort of display tab. I think it would be another good step towards reaching a more organized pub.

(MILFandCookies) #278

[QUOTE=tokamak;222236] It would be great when players (regardless of their class though) could simply select the ‘killing players’ role as a default so the rest could know where to fill in the other spots.

[/QUOTE]

The problem is killing isn’t a role. Its a requirement.

(tokamak) #279

Completing objectives is the requirement, killing is a (important) role like any other.

(MILFandCookies) #280

yeh scoring in basketball is the requirement, the ability to catch the ball is only important.