'Skill' in Brink

(Verticae) #1

Critical view based on PC play. Console players and fanboys need not apply.

Since I’m one of the people suffering from the timeouts during connects, I couldn’t play Brink online after the DLC. Today, however, I got a couple of rounds in at my friends’ place… Using a laptop running the game at 20 FPS, and a mouse that was (literally) held together by ducttape. I got most frags every round. And suddenly it dawned on me: The skilled players have long left Brink.

I know I’m not a skilled aimer (at a competitive level); I’m a supporting player through and through. However, in Brink, I literally don’t even have to try - the kills just rain in. Public servers seem to be full of people who simply don’t understand how the game works. Whining ‘CARB9 NOOB GTFO’, is stupid; you can just as easily pick it up yourself. You choose to go play Hjammerdeim, you deal with staring at the respawn screen. Simple as.

Don’t get me wrong, this is not an accusation, but moreso an observation. I see people in these forums go on and on about how it’s not about gunplay but teamplay: I’m seeing none of it. Occasionally reviving/buffing people around you isn’t very tactical, especially not when you simply go and stand still next to your spawn while bashing F repeatedly. There’s no tactical positioning, no group movement, no adrenaline trains; nothing. The level of teamplay in Brink pub is utterly low.

What I’m curious about is how it came to this state. Why did all the good (or even decent) players leave? Personally, I still believe it’s because player skill in Brink just isn’t rewarded. Anyone who can aim better than an arthritic sperm whale flapping around its fins on a touchpad has to enroll in the Brink lottery, where the outcome of a play is based on spread, buffs and whether your teammate understands how to get his crosshair in the general direction of the opponent.

I’m hoping the upcoming weapon tweaks will change things for the better, but I very much doubt it’ll lure the masses back to Brink. It’s a shame to see a Splash Damage title go down like this.

(coolstory) #2

[QUOTE=Verticae;371490]

What I’m curious about is how it came to this state. Why did all the good (or even decent) players leave? [/QUOTE]

Lot of things…

-Inaccurate gun play (no skill required to spam and hope your bullets hit)
-Lot of actions on oney key (F)
-Laggy F key (especially with latency…sometimes you have to stand still to get a lock on)
-SMART…no movement skill required, dont have to really time anything and even if you time there rarely is any advantage.
-Cluttered HUD (hard to see whats going on)
-Lack of crosshair/UI options
-Poor VOIP
-Distorting effects (sound going on and off, screen going dark, etc)

These are definably some of the things that drove good players away.

(Thundermuffin) #3

Exactly what coolstory said.

Bad map design also turned away lots of people; double, triple, quadruple, etc., full holds made people realize how bad this game was without even having to play it.

Another thing is grenade shooting; I know it made a lot of my friends hate the game, because the fights weren’t about even spray n praying towards the other player, it was about spray n praying towards your grenades and then the other player. That just isn’t fun.

(Jimmy James) #4

Way to take a dump on your thread before it even gets started.

Good times,
JJ

(Humate) #5

*Console feel
*Gunplay
*Auto-Vsays
*Low Skill cap
*Cutscenes
*No momentum b/w objectives
*Plant Here Objectives
*No threat counter system
*No Banks
*Damage model
*Equip speed = useless
*No class models
*Dated
*No custom crosshairs (:wink:)
*Annoying sound
*Screen Saturation
*No /kill
*Auto-spotting
*Homing Beacon wall hacks
*Nade shooting
*Bots on servers

(BioSnark) #6

Agree with Thundermuffin and coolstory completely (and only largely so with Humate :d)! One thing I’d add is sound.

Sound is a funny beast in Brink. In ETQW, I can hear where people are, what direction they’re shooting from and where grenades and bullets are landing in relation to me. Brink sound is extremely muffled to the point that it’s no longer a tool for directional situational awareness.

Do people with an awesome soundcards have a different experience with it? May be my realtek mobo integrated being outclassed by the game.

(DrD3ath) #7

Look the game has issues. We all know that. However, like all games that require teamplay, you won’t just find randomly good teamplay. You need to find the servers where it happens. People who want teamplay gravitate to servers where similar players play. That is the joy of dedicated servers. Again, people have life outside of the times they play. Evening time in your time zone. After work. I don’t know of any game or game server where the gameplay is always top notch. (public)

No matter how good or bad the game is, it is up to players on servers to even out games, skills wise, human player count wise (when is force balance for that coming). Even now, with approx 200 regular ETQW players, there are still very unbalanced games. Pick your server, frequent it, get to know who plays. Don’t expect joining random servers is going to find you the best game. I am sure you know this already, but you say you played on a server where some n00b was complaining about carb-9. Just find another server.

I agree with the second post. I’d prefer a dot crosshair (and it can be done in game because the coga scopes on aiming down sights loses the surround circle), Using the F key is random. (we want to individually assign abilities to keys). The HUD doesn’t bother me much coz i dont really look at it. Smart I can’t really say as I don’t use it much. etc etc

But teamplay is teamplay, and each side has the same issues in game. Every game, no matter how good, has unbalanced multiplayer moments and that includes RTCW, W:ET, ETQW,Quake 3 and any other multiplayer game you care to mention.

(coolstory) #8

[QUOTE=BioSnark;371521]

Sound is a funny beast in Brink. In ETQW, I can hear where people are, what direction they’re shooting from and where grenades and bullets are landing in relation to me. Brink sound is extremely muffled to the point that it’s no longer a tool for directional situational awareness.

Do people with an awesome soundcards have a different experience with it? May be my realtek mobo integrated being outclassed by the game.[/QUOTE]

Nope same for me. Everything sounds like a mess…whenever I play brink I turn off the in game volume…have music or on mumble with teammates. Also I cant stand the way the guns sound and the sound going in out when you get shot.

(ZernoK) #9

The 3 main things that I dislike with this game is the maps, gunplay and interactions.

Maps: The maps are so so small, as if to prevent the newbs to get lost on the maps themselves.
Because of this I feel really “chocked” when I play. It allows no mindgames, flanking, getting behind enemy lines. Instead I’m forced to go bang my head against a wall of enemies all the time, it gets VERY boring, VERY fast.It’s like they copied Goldrush and removed the entire truck escort path from the map to ensure you always run into enemies and make sure newbs don’t get lost.

Guns: This has been covered a thousand times before, I don’t think I need to repeat it too.

Interactions: You had this **** down for 2 games… DON’T FIX WHAT ISN’T BROKEN!

The 2 only Lock-On I would be fine with in Brink would be medic health buff and while using the command post. (Edit: engi buffs, other medic buffs works fine too because they are selectable tools)
Lock-On while arming landmines, capturing command posts, turrets, arming HE’s, engineer build objectives… Countless of deaths has been had because of this implemented feature, and I dare say all these deaths could’ve been prevented by the player but the games Lock-On + freeze movement/spin around prevents us from attempting any sort of escape while doing these. In short… trying to disconnect from a Lock-On takes way too long and gets you killed

It’s sad that I actually have started to just try to finish the animation itself than trying to break it while under fire, both (usually) results in death.

You had it right in W:ET, ET:QW, drop item on ground/place it on wall, use arming item. No Lock-On required, no movement imparing effects.

I would love the medic class to death if I could have a “Lazarus Grenade” as a default reviving tool, with of course lower splash radius and could only be thrown about as far as a normal syringe ingame. Even a selectable medic buff/revive tool could also fix so much when it comes to medic gameplay as well… I just hope it won’t **** with us at Gamescom…

(Verticae) #10

The problem is that ‘teamwork’ in Brink is barely existent compared to similar titles. Of course it depends on the server, and that’s why this isn’t solely based on one afternoon. :wink:

(INF3RN0) #11

Br0 you just need to play sum of dem high skillzor MLG Brink comp clans on console. They’ll show you the games more than just carb-9 nubz in their Clan vs Bots battles derp.

To be perfectly honest though, when your a below average gamer (or on console) with nothing but junky game titles under your belt, you might be inclined to think that Brink is a gem. If that’s not the case however, you would probably end up uninstalling considering you will experience everything the game has to offer within the first 100 hours and become plain bored with it all. SMART is limited by map design, the overall movement speed is a bit slow, the gun game is extremely sub-par and SMGs are the best suited for nearly all the maps (cramped objective areas), most of the large areas on maps are underplayed due to lack of forward spawns, the “teamwork” revolves around pressing F, and the list goes on. The majority of interest from those that stuck with Brink appears to revolve around posting stat pages, getting achievements, making the maximum limit of characters, posting screenies of uber cool customizations, making “brink haters” forum threads, coming up with ideas for more paid DLC hats, etc.

I’ll try most any game, but I stick with the ones that have polished game play over the rest of the perks. Brink however was flat out boring in comparison to what I am used to for all of these reasons. I wouldn’t expect much if Brink wasn’t from SD, who already made games like this that actually made me want to keep playing. I don’t care if Brink becomes the game I want it to be, BUT I do hope SD realizes that Brink sold well enough because of what customers expected the game to be and it died so quickly because of what it actually turned out to be. I wouldn’t expect a Brink 2 to do so well if it’s game play stayed within the current parameters.

(INF3RN0) #12

Brink “teamwork” was quite a simple concept at the design table I think. Step 1, eliminate aim skill by creating unreliable spray guns to prevent noobs raging that pro aim negates teamwork. Step 2, add buffs that do cool things like double weapon damage and HP effectively forcing teammates to constantly press F at each other and feel like they are being rewarded for “working as a team”. Step 3, eliminate forward spawns so that people won’t be inclined to wander (making about 60% of the map unused). Step 4, motivate players to make actions based on what will reward them with the most XP predetermined as being the most “helpful”.

I might be alone, but I like it when a game has a high skill cap in solo game play in combination with the availability of versatile opportunities for teamwork. Brink feels so much more limited in strategic teamwork than past SD games, and the “teamwork” available in Brink feels forced and fake. Trying to force an even class layout via buffs and motivating team actions via XP rewards is so scripted, not to mention how a player’s entire play style is somewhat locked for an entire game by how they spec’d their character. Even though these things can be seen as good ideas in some ways, I find much more enjoyment from an unrestricted and spontaneous environment. Whenever I play Brink it always feels like I am being confined to playing in a specific way, which really makes me appreciate the freedoms you get in other games.

(coolstory) #13

Exactly this…and since there’s not individual skill the game becomes boring.

(.Chris.) #14

I think you’ve stumbled onto something here regarding the ‘teamplay’, now that you mention it, it does indeed feel artificial and forced.

I remember during some of the interviews they were talking about other things such as bribing players with XP to help each other, that doesn’t seem to be the best way to promote teamplay.

Also regarding buffs, having a buff party at each respawn isn’t ‘proper’ team work however it’s the only real way to stand a chance otherwise you’ll end up with mismatched players when you enter a fire fight, plus you get lots of XP which is nice right?

So you’ll either buff to make sure you can survive for longer than 5seconds or to get lots of XP to buy new clothes, not because you want to but because the game almost forces you to do so with either a carrot (XP) or a stick (your team will suck).

In past games team work naturally formed, teams figured out how best to help each other, now we are been told what to do instead. Any ET players remember the first time you figured out to take a disguise and have an engineer follow you to the last stage and sneak in a plant in Fueldump? That’s teamwork, pure and unadulterated, was no tool-tips or XP bonuses involved just thinking of ways to work together as a team to get the upper hand.

(murka) #15

It’s indeed this excessive handholding that makes the game too linear and artificial. Given a single goal and a handhold of tools you’ll figure out what to do and have millions of possibilities plus you’ll enjoy it, but Brink really forces the “we design how you play”.
Lets say you figured out trickjumping, you then looked for places to use it, thinking outside the box you find it useful and make reaching your one and only goal easier.
The same can be said about teamplay in other titles. You start out playing solo, but once you help a teammate in a specific way, you find yourself more useful and reaching the goal much easier. It’s this finding stuff out that really makes a game enjoyable. One other thing that makes games enjoyable is seeing that someone is better than you and practicing to become better. When you are better, you look back and feel joy.

The problem with Brink is that every objective is separate, side paths to objective are really the same path(think of directions, in founders last both teams come from the same direction to the big room!!!), etc. Some might say that there is teamplay, gunplay and everything, but once you get used to the game, you see them as cardboard cutouts that resemble the real thing only from the distance. A pro player will only feel someone holding their leash.

(Stormchild) #16

Good memories overflow, arg !

I remember in the early days of the game…

“I’m a covert ops”
“Hold your fire!”
“Hold your fire!”
“I’m in disguise”
“I’m in disguise”
“I’m in disguise”
“Follow me!”
“Follow me!”
“Follow me!”

<3

(light_sh4v0r) #17

This is EXACTLY what I see in Brink too. Playing together with 1 mate on voicecomms it takes very little effort to completely crush any opposing team, racking up most kills, best overall and best classes between the 2 of us. We played together 1 night, about 6 maps and lost none. We came across some good individual players, but no coordination, no teamwork.

Like Vert, I’m still playing at roughly 10 fps in gunfights, so I can only imagine how easy this would get if it runs better.

(Hortey) #18

There are really 2 conceivable options in brink.

  1. Let loose the chains of the carb 9 light class character and experiment with other weapons, attachments, specs, and body types. This keeps the game fresh, and while you are not going to be top player all the time especially if you use certain weapons and body types… you are having fun. At least until the carb 9 hero’s with grenade shooting come around and roflstomp entire rooms of people easily.

  2. Stick with light, grenade shooting, carb 9 toting gameplay. Get lots of kills while having to listen to people yell and scream at you for using the most OP and unrivaled body/weapon setup in the game so you can inflate your ego. Then realize that the reason the competitive players are gone is because there is a single way to play competitively, otherwise you are screwed. At this point you find a game where you can be competetive without playing the same… dang… class… using… the… same… dang… weapon… and… the… same… dang… spec…

(murka) #19

The thing is, it’s human nature to try and be on top so i use any possible method(except cheating and such) to do so. If you think taking some useless weapon and strolling around is fun then…

For me the most fun moments of pubbing were in etqw. I just remembber those moments where my team was crap, but i did everything in my power to do the objective. I was sneaky, used different classes right and left. Used vehicles. All in a short time span to counter everything my team isn’t doing properly and go for the objective. I could actually feel my heart pounding as i did a sneaky trickplant, killed some 5 guys, died and looked at the defuse bar racing with the timer bar. THIS is fun.

(Verticae) #20

Hortey, what you’re basically saying is that you need to handicap yourself in this game to have fun. It’s like amputating your leg because you think riding a bike is boring with two of them; it makes no sense. This is a flaw in game design rather than a user error.