Requests For Competition Tweaks

(aimology) #101

[QUOTE=Nail;197249]gee, with all that money and an ego that large, I would have thought you’d have a decent game rig, I was mistaken

:tongue:

“hope, no… PRAY that the SD team message me, call me, come to my house with their entire development team and ASK for all the knowledge I have about gaming and this will be an success”

yeah, they’re sure to do that[/QUOTE]

No, my ego carries me the extra mile * there is obvious sarcasm in there * unlike most nerds online, I have a sense of humor… More on the Family guy side of things.
:wink:

(aimology) #102

[QUOTE=Rahdo;197135]That’s a perfect example of how I think casual and competitive play can be supported in one game, because as a more casual shooter player myself, I don’t want to hear any of it (given or taken). So if you jump into a standard match in Brink, you’ll find all VoiP is turned off, with no way to turn it on (you can still have voice chat channels open with your friends and what not, but no public channel).

If you instead opt for a ‘hardcore’ or competitive match, that limit is removed (or at least, is controlled by the guy who set the match up). Easy peasy lemon squeezey, everyone’s happy.

Now just need a thorough list of all the other stuff that needs to be settable, and then

…

and then profit! :D[/QUOTE]

Controlled by the guy who setup the match? hmmm, I will admit I might of missed something on this note. How are the servers going to be hosted? cause this is an extremely important part of gaming, so Im not quite understanding on that one little note " the guy who setup the match" part.

you mean dedicated server config or… peer 2 peer type deal?

This Im not aware of and I must of missed it, if it was mentioned.

(Nail) #103

afaik, it was mentioned dedicated servers for PC, for consoles ? #care

well, as “competition settings” are usually server side restrictions, an editable server.cfg is really all that’s needed, should be fairly easy to hash out.

It’s the arrogance and elitism on top of the potty mouth that dissuades people from taking your view seriously, but to suggest you have a clue how to make a game successful is laughable. You may know the requirements for a game to succeed at league level, but 98% of people don’t play in leagues and probably 80% of them never heard of them.

(Rahdo) #104

Aim freely admits can be a bit arrogant, and I’d say he’s unfortunately too quick to call people stupid instead of saying “i respectfully disagree” (which I’d prefer), but then he wasn’t the first to start slagging off people’s girlfriends or saying “get a job” as a means of having a debate. That came from the supposed “moderate casual side”.

I hope you guys can see that no one has to call anyone names here, or insult anyone, really. All it does is turn a good discussion into a shouting match, even if it did start out as simple meaningless jibes. I’m looking at you especially Joe, with continued “get a job” type replies instead of actual responses to valid points (even if those points where preluded with an unfortunate “i’m smarter than you” attitude).

Aim, I did appreciate the increased banana count :slight_smile:

As for how matches are set up, that’s something that’s still being worked out, but I’d love to hear thoughts on what everyone thinks is best means for that as well…

(Nail) #105

for PC, dedicated servers, no ranked servers please, just like W:ET
for consoles, I have no idea what works

(DarkangelUK) #106

you obviously dont know how to read, because if you did you would of saw in the Q and A ( I think ) they said there are vehicles with ANTI vehicle weapons of some statue. I dont know exactly word for word, but it was something like that. I think its just not vehicle “heavy”

Take your own advice next team and take the time to read instead of jumping on the e-rage bandwagon.

We’ve made the potentially controversial decision to stay away from vehicles for Brink. We want this to be very much about infantry squad action, up close and VERY personal, for a number of reasons. Vehicles are great, but they create a different type of play, where people are more separated, and one is shooting at a big steel box instead of actual people. Like ETW, however, we will have rideable vehicles with mountable defensive measures…

As in the traintrack tank escorts in ET where you escort the tank, can ride on it and fire the turret but don’t have actual control over it in general.

Wrong, It is a huge selling point. People watch live matchs like they did for cevo with TF2 finals and COD 2 finals and lans, then they go out and purchase the game. People will be scared to buy brink at first, but if they have demos from spectator views and POV from spectators shoutcasting matchs, well guess what thats card… MARKETING … Take some business classes you will learn this.

The most played game of this year and last is Halo 3, last nights count of online players was 163,100… that has no spectating features. Halo 2 was equally as popular, that had no spectating features. It proves a HUGE point that no it’s NOT a huge selling point. You still seem to be failing to grasp this fact that the comp crowd is VERY small compared to the general market… 4million general players compared to 4000 pub players. I know your ego is big, but it’s not that big.

Thats pretty funny to hear, because this will be modded by someone just like COD and WOLFENSTEIN so honestly I dont care either way, it will be fixed by the community if not by then with an ( option to disable )

This is also funny to hear, cos you lot can’t seem to make your mind up about what you want. Dashiva was shouting about getting all this functionality out of the box, and you’re saying you don’t need cos the community will do it. It has already been said the base tools will be provided to allow the community to do what they want, but some are a tad lazy and want everything done for them there and then… and basically want their own version of the game for a market that makes ups 2% if you’re lucky.

I admit, sometimes my attitude does suck, but leave competition things to competition gamers please , Im also aware that competitive gamers are smaller then pubbers, but our word of mouth sells titles as well. It spreads with live feeds and irc and gaming sites like esreality and gotfrag.

If your arguement is helping them sell games, then i’d rather they work on movie making tools, full range capturing, in game frame blending, spline cameras and entity tracking. Not everyone likes competition to sit and log into the game and watch a match, movies are easier acessible and a movie doesn’t sit there and whine at you. So drop all the comp stuff SD and work on proper movie making tools, you don’t see movie makers on here bitching and moaning.

You keep going on about the games being modded by the community for the community, why not just wait till the game is out and mod it? SD has always made their games mod friendly, what gives you idea it won’t be this time?

(tokamak) #107

I don’t think competition gamers need to justify their existence with how well their presence will sell games. The fear of being ignored is understandable with all the talk of making shooters more accessible to the public. But so far SD’s support to the comp scene has been great. And if you look at Brink’s basics, 8v8 and no vehicles, it’s already a move to a more competition orientated game than Quake Wars.

One thing SD can do is not only make multilpayer more accessible to he public but also make competition more accessible to the multiplayers. Getting casuals to join competition is the same thing as drawing people out of their comfortable singleplayer into multiplayer.

(madness) #108

I’m all for supporting competition play and what not, but first and foremost I think a game has to have smooth gameplay and a lag-free experience, otherwise nobody would even play it, “pubbers” nor “pro-gamers.”
Only when this is achieved they should worry about competition modes/demo recording/spectating features.

(Rahdo) #109

well, if i could help out with the netcode, i would, but i’m just a simple caveman, so all i can do is write design docs and talk to you guys about how stuff could work… :slight_smile:

(Joe999) #110

can you please elaborate on that and why it isn’t a valid point? i don’t see the dev side. first that comes to mind is maybe losing money. i see it from a totally neutral point of view: if you can’t afford a decent enough pc in order to keep up with recent games, my conclusion is to start thinking if continued gaming leads you out of this problem. i’m curious to hear good alternatives, there’s always sth new to learn.

or in other words how do you reply to:

when at the same time you need to get to the same level of ultra-low gfx settings with your pc in order to not become frag food?

(-a-holly) #111

[QUOTE=DarkangelUK;196975]As far as I’m aware, there were quite a few clans in the ET:QW beta, and rather than use their scrims and clan wars to give feedback, they used them to create tactics before the game was released to give them the upper hand in up-coming leagues… and gave very little feedback at all, most gave absolutely none at all. That was after they would hijack servers, kick users, stack on normal pub games etc… you know, the usual clan stuff.

To put it politely, they had their chance with ET:QW and screwed it up.[/QUOTE]

I was in the ETQW private beta around May 2007 and gave very good suggestions and feedback to Splash Damage via the private forums. Many people like yourself DarkAngel did not agree with me and said the game was perfectly fine “it’s too late to make changes”. Look how competition turned out in ETQW? I was accepted into the beta under Team Affliction by sending an email to badman. The other 10 members on the team hated the game after playing 15 minutes of it.

Unlike them I stuck with ETQW, played through the annoying spam, deployables and vehicles both in competition and public play. I ended up dominating the statistics boards (see Hollywood-) and was both a “pubber” and a “comp” player winning every match I played in include several high priced prizes worth over $4,000.

ETQW was a very good public / pubber friendly game but was not very good completion wise once released. After quakecon 2007, you couldn’t even beg teams to sign up for free online tournaments with full of cash and prizes because there wasn’t limitation of the amount of spam. I still have scares on my back from the spam I took on mp_valley as an engineer trying to move the MCP 2 inches while being shot by APT’s,AVT’s, Plasma Mortars, a couple of aggressive lacerators, infiltrators with accurized lacerators, flyers and a desecrator. Don’t foget about the 2 railguns hiding in the mountain. The game was terrible with the amount of spam during competitive play. It took over 7 months until etpro was released to limit the spam and by that time hardly any teams were left to play competition.

The point aimology is trying to make is that Splash Damage needs to release a competitive mod with brink during the release in order to have a competitive competition community at the start of the game. Leave all the spam you want in public play. Competition needs to be tune down with restrictions!!!

(DarkangelUK) #112

I am honestly quite flattered that you think I have so much influence within the game development industry that i rendered all of your feedback redundant. Honestly, is it your view that me saying “no it’s fine” is what caused everything? Really is that what you think? o_O

(-a-holly) #113

DarkAngel, you said it first. You were one of the first ones into the private beta… why wouldn’t SD look for you for feedback? I posted in the private forums giving ideas to improve competition because of the amount of spam and many competitive players uninstalled the game after 15 minutes and did not give any feedback. May people in the private beta (all the public players did not agree with me and flamed my input(including your self). How did ETQW turn out competition wise? Not very successful.

You can still enjoy your public play with massive amounts of spam, vehicles and deployables in your pubs and not have to touch or play competition. Make a game that suites both pub warriors and competition players.

Look at ETQW now… you join a pub and 3/4 of the team is either GMPG or hyperblaster. zzzzzzzz

Q: would you love for Brink to have a highly successful pub game along with a successful competitive and active competition community?

if yes we should all be on the same page here.

(DarkangelUK) #114

The most successful comp games have came from the community creating their own competition mods to their own standards (Q3 OSP/CPMA, RTCW OSP, ETPro, CS was a full conversion mod!), somewhere a long the way the comp community for some strange reason are demanding that the devs now do all the work for them and feel they can just shout what they want and get it. The problem with that is, you can’t all decide on what you want, leagues want different things, hell even countries want their own rules and settings, so the best thing to do is leave it to yourselves to make something YOU want. It has already been stated numerous times that there will be basic tools available that will allow the comp community to create their own competition mod and settings, why is this no longer good enough? Really why isn’t it? I’d like an answer to that.

Sure a thriving competition scene would be good, but not at the expense of development time and more important features. If something is lacking in the main game, that can’t be resolved by the community, but competition settings can.

I feel the same way about movie making abilities within games, and I spent many hours working on guides and tutes for ETQW, and yes i asked many times to get ingame tools… at the end of the day those weren’t deemed as important as other stuff that needed work (and movies can help promote a game just as much as the comp scene).

EDIT: i just saw your updated response. I’d like to say at this point that you’re wayyyy off base, I NEVER flamed in the beta forums, I was far too active in the closed beta IRC channel and can def say i would’ve been beaten and slapped around by bob and the others for any types of flames. So please stop with these bogus accusations.

(-a-holly) #115

First impressions are everything for new games. That is why competition players are requesting the developers include competition settings at release. Brink is scheduled to come out at a perfect time, MW2 is released in November and by Spring people would realizes its another cod series and uninstall.

We can create league standards earlier by invite active teams into the brink beta in order to setup competition settings. There were teams in the etqw private beta that didn’t care for actually “beta testing” and used their invite to get ahead in competition. People, like myself, saw a big flaw in the game but was alienated by public players who cared at the time. As I said earlier, ETQW was a great pub game and I enjoyed it, however the competition for it was horrible with the spam until a mod was released.

The problem with creating a “mod” is that it takes time. Etqwpro was released 7 months after full version release, this is way too long and most teams left for other completive games due to spam. Another problem with a third party mod is that it segregates the casual pub players, new players and competitive players because you need to download a separate .exe or files from a URL / FTP and not in game. If this option was available through in game we would have a lot more new players that may be interested into the competition community that never have the chance to play a competition mod.

All a competition mod does is limit spam and classes and tweak the game play a little bit in order to make it more enjoyable for competition players. For ideas on what is needed with the mod is to look at previous versions of mods:

Timing out tools to pause the game if a player drops
Spectator mode for TV viewing for hundreds of people
An option to limit classes, weapons, land mines in game

These are just some stuff that should come standard with in a game but for some reasons it takes months to be implemented via third party.

(Mordenkainen) #116

[QUOTE=-a-holly;197337]The problem with creating a “mod” is that it takes time. Etqwpro was released 7 months after full version release, this is way too long and most teams left for other completive games due to spam. Another problem with a third party mod is that it segregates the casual pub players, new players and competitive players because you need to download a separate .exe or files from a URL / FTP and not in game. If this option was available through in game we would have a lot more new players that may be interested into the competition community that never have the chance to play a competition mod.

All a competition mod does is limit spam and classes and tweak the game play a little bit in order to make it more enjoyable for competition players.
<snip>

These are just some stuff that should come standard with in a game but for some reasons it takes months to be implemented via third party.[/QUOTE]

Maybe the reason it takes months is that you have a finite budget and human resources and in software development, throwing people at the problem is a sure way to have it take longer and cost more. So what are you willing to give up to get what you want? One less class, five less perks, suboptimal server browser, worse netcode, delay the game to 2011? Need I go on?

If ETQW is any indication some players might not even like the game. When the public beta hit, most reasons I saw for rage-quitting was the speed of the game and netcode, not the spam.

I understand the needs of a Comp mod but I hope you understand SD will be getting paid for the Pub mod of the game. That’s what most buyers will play, that’s what SD has to nail first. If Comp mode has to come after the game ships, so be it.

(Zhou Yu) #117

Hmmm, just a thought here but I can’t help but get the impression that terminology is getting somewhat confused, leading to unnecessary back and forth when actually players want the same thing (generally!).

The main issue I see is between:

Competition “settings” which I would assume to be server-side variables that competition players can alter to affect already present game stuff, class limits, weapon removals or similar.
This is stuff which Rahdo has already said he wants to do over on Crossfire, and which would be really immediately useful for a competition scene right off the bat.

To my mind, a competition “mod” is more encompassing and involves significantly more work as it includes stuff like the TV system many have asked for, a strong demo system and other advanced features.

This is all pretty general, but I think its quite important to really define what is wanted in terms of competition settings, even if its as prosaic and boring as a list of “Feature 1 + Why I want it + How much I need it (priority). Feature 2 + why I want it + How much I need it.”

Saying that you want feature X from compmod Y is less useful than really defining what you would be looking for in a Brink compmod (though obviously its a little early to be hyper-specific), mostly because there are people like me or even Rahdo who haven’t played compmod Y.

Specific requests for specific features give a much stronger aggregate for these features to be built around in the future and clear the water so we can actually discuss specific points rather than the general COMP V.S. PUB hubbub we have had so far.

(-a-holly) #118

Easy solution - Get hannes and his crew of 2 people into the private beta. They did a fantastic job with etqwpro and wolfpro and are use to the idtech4 engine. Just make sure there work is included in the final product so no external downloads are required.

(Rahdo) #119

Yeah, I have to admit my biggest concern for solving the competitve equation is coming up with something “the first time” that can work as a defacto standard that everyone is comfortable with and adheres too. holly’s last suggestion there might be the best bet :slight_smile:

and joe, i wasn’t saying you weren’t making valid points, just that you were egging on conflict with your delivery of said points a few times… :slight_smile:

(Nail) #120

SD made a comp mod for ET:QW, unfortunately they had the 1.5 patch to work on first. So there should be a usable base