Warning: I know this post is a waste of my time and that outside of the Rahdo thread I will probably never get any response. But, things are dead around here so why not…
Like the title says I’d love to hear from any SD staff whether they actually learned any lessons from the release/development of Brink? I think this is actually what a lot of other fans would like to hear as well. Something like “Lotto spread = bad idea,” “classes weren’t as meaningful as we hoped,” “should have had SDK,” “one button to do everything doesn’t work…,” etc. We’ve heard from all the players where they think things went wrong, but we haven’t heard much from you if at all on this issue.
I think a lot of people had hoped you got these things from the conversations that occurred during development, however it appears you weren’t paying attention. A lot of claims were also made about Brink pre-release that you failed to deliver on.
So SD, what did you learn from Brink and what do you plan to do differently in the future to ensure this does not happen again? The community questions, etc. inspire hope, but I’ve been told a similar feedback and idea seeking process was used in the development of Brink as well.
I believe exedore did a talk about the game, with slides about what went wrong/right but most of it was related to smart. edit: link
I was part of the group of posters here that gave negative constructive feedback, and they responded to some of those criticisms.The response to most of those were - “we think this is far more interesting” or “its designed this way because we believe it to be more fun” Occasionally they would actually give honest detailed reasoning. But I wouldnt hold your breath. They gain nothing from responding, as a collective.From an individual standpoint, I think a few of them have something to gain.
I think the lesson they learned was doing another ET:QW is the answer to every problem they faced doing Brink, or using that game as the blueprint. That’s my wild guess. Because, most other companies now a days are just re-skinning previous successful titles.
As for the topic, I asked myself the same question after ET:QW, still not sure I know the answer, on the surface it may appear to be a big fat hell no but perhaps they just wanted to try something quite different and we got Brink instead of something that built on the strengths of ET and ET:QW with none of their weaknesses. No Wolf’ no, just no, no one wanted a copy of ET or ET:QW that wasn’t what that statement means, just no, stop, no. (seriously no).
I hope that they realise that the release state of brink was horrible and that they will never release a game in that state again. Next splashdamage title will be pirated first by me. I also hope that they will be more open towards the community (tell us what they are working on etc).
I think SD were actually on the right lines with Brink, we live in an age, whether we like it or not, where today’s gamers want customisation, characterisation, unlocks, bits and bobs to add to their “stuff” as they go along, I don’t see anything wrong with that, and the basic objective game play is there, and they tried to make it accessible.
Where I think SD went wrong is they totally underestimated how “good” the average FPS gamer is, they targetted the game at Johnny Newb who’s never played a computer game before, let alone an FPS, and decided he needed help to hit everything, regardless of where he pointed his gun, so gave them all massive spread. And they figured everyone would be so bad at the game that if just a few on the attacking team worked together they’d roll the defense so made every map hugely biased to the defending team, and decided that none of us would ever willingly help a team-mate so condensed “teamwork” into “mash the F key”.
I think the lesson they should learn is: give us a bit of credit, we’re not all Johnny Newb, some of us have done this before, we can use more than one key, we can co-operate on a basic level sometimes, and by making the maps so defensively biased you actually cut off your own nose, some of us hardly got to see all of your lovely creations cos we were spawn camping / got camped at first stage and didn’t get to see the rest of the map.
Assume most of your future customers will have played something before, assume most of them will be better at gaming than you, assume they’ll figure stuff out, don’t patronise us, and if you make a game for PC ever again, make a game for PC, don’t port the console version and tell us you “made sacrifices” just to manage that much.
[QUOTE=SockDog;389845]They identified the right problems but introduced worse solutions in many cases. I think that pretty much sums it up.[/QUOTE]Some of it seems to be related to lack of funding, as if a determination was made no longer to support any further development, even before it was released? That’s the impression I get sometimes looking at some of the key features that were removed or changed at the last minute. Not sure. Still, all in all, the game is a niche game. Whether some people thought it’d be otherwise, is another matter, and perhaps that’s a problem on the marketing end, but I never thought the game was gonna be mainstream. I thought it’d fill a place for someone who was not a Multiplayer Vet, but wanted to play as part of a team and have the simulated feel of playing a multiplayer game in a team concept and have success, without the baggage that comes with playing against people. The game has a layer that acts as a screen for the negative experience that the online play can devolve into very quickly.
Well this is another point, the game was delayed for a year (?) before it was pushed out in the condition it was in. ETQW was the same. SD needs to address their production issues, half finishing features or implementing them six months after release is not going to work in their favour.
Yet, while there is some blur there, clear design choices were made regardless of the implementation level, choices aimed at solving accessibility issues and which ultimately broke the game. Things like removing voice comms (solution), sure you didn’t get intimidated or hear nasty stuff (problem) but it also meant the ability to coordinate with your team was reduced (payoff). It’s like taking a brick and taking off all the hard corners so people won’t hurt their hands, what you’re left with is still essentially a brick but good luck making a wall with it. Instead perhaps they should have given people the option to wear protective gloves and left the brick as is? Much like a thorough mute/block system could have been used to weed out the dicks on voice comms while still leaving it as an effective means to communicate.
Still, all in all, the game is a niche game. Whether some people thought it’d be otherwise, is another matter, and perhaps that’s a problem on the marketing end, but I never thought the game was gonna be mainstream. I thought it’d fill a place for someone who was not a Multiplayer Vet, but wanted to play as part of a team and have the simulated feel of playing a multiplayer game in a team concept and have success, without the baggage that comes with playing against people. The game has a layer that acts as a screen for the negative experience that the online play can devolve into very quickly.
No, the game was always meant to break out of the niche W:ET and ETQW were in, they didn’t sully (IMO) the game with XP grinding customisation BS to appeal to a niche market, they did it because a big turn off for ETQW was the fact that CoD4 allowed you to unlock guns and other cool stuff and ETQW was “dumb and stupid” for “taking away my ****”. But here again you see that in addressing that problem they broke the game, encouraging people to invest in class skills that deter the very class swapping dynamics that make their games work.
So no, Brink was never intended to be a niche game, it was meant to be a huge, accessible, popular game (you know one that would have more than 5 active clans on it’s clan website). The fact it became a niche game of a niche genre just underlines what a misdirection they took in understanding the game and it’s audience. The only short term positive was that the marketing gave it enough sales to “pay the bills” the question will be, at what cost to SDs reputation and their next game?
Something else I felt in Brink was conflict, the game, to me at least felt… unsure of itself. It was like one half of SD was making a W:ET game and the other half a CoD (for want of a better extreme example) game. The end result was an awkward mix of two extremes and at worst a compromise that satisfied neither player. Pains me to say it but SD has to also decide on one or the other.
Yes I learned that I shall not trust the interviews and reviews i read before release, but buy the game openminded and draw my own conclusion about what i feel.
i like to play a game of Brink from time to time, i even let our server running just for that, but i was expecting brink to be the next ET, after reading interviews, i also expected to see a linux server, after reading interviews before release, i was expecting a game that was ment for hardcore clanmatches, after reading interviews before release, etc etc
anyway game is ok for a few fun hours on a random base, but it was not what i was expecting, and by looking at the playerbase, im not the only one feeling like that
I fully agree. There are core design choices that are contradictory in this game, as I once said not long after the game was out. The whole character-based setting with its own level/unlocks/specialization etc does not go well with the will to have easy and fast class-switching during a match. I rarely used command posts to switch class in-game (I mean I mostly used the mainbase command post just like a limbo menu), and that would almost only be to switch to a class that my char had skills with.
The big setback in communication means you described well too.
It’s frustrating because now I am playing BF3 instead. It feels sluggish compared to an ET game but at least the whole package is coherent with itself in terms of gameplay design.
Of course we think we’ve learned, but honestly, what could we tell you to make you feel better? You all are the ones that actually decide whether we’ve learned, and you can’t do that until you have the next thing to evaluate.
We’d love to communicate the specifics, but that’s simply not an option. That is one thing I can say we’re absolutely trying to sort out for future projects.
And I probably will buy it once more without question. Truth be told, even if Brink didn’t meet up to expectations, the endless stream of self-righteous posts I got out of them made the money more than worth.
I’d tend to agree but I think that in the case of Brink would it have made any difference? We’ve been told countless times that things which just didn’t work well wouldn’t be changed in patches because they touched too many systems. Sure a Beta would have caught other stuff but there are fundamentals there which are set in stone long before a wide beta could be considered.
I think this is something that SD needs to work on internally. Specifically, maintaining a critical and objective view while working so closely to the project, being able and willing to throw away something that doesn’t work and being realistic in their goals and planning.
And I guess it’s worth repeating.
Fork off PC development early
Play to the PC’s strengths
Recognise the PC is a different market to consoles and plan accordingly.
