Isn’t that a bit restrictive meaning all your friends must all make a char on the same faction to make sure you play with each other? I don’t really want to have to level up 2 chars at the same time just so i can play with all my friends.
Specialisation and character niches
Sssaap
(Sssaap)
#82
Indeed, and I never ever heard of someone (seriously) complaining because everyone is joining the other team, I think it’s up to them if they want to switch sides - without needing to change characters.
“Balanced teams” option should do the trick so you will always have somewhat fair teams imo.(if your team gets destroyed - improve your gameplay:P)
I really see no point in restricting something as usual as changing teams, leaving matches, change classes(/body seize) and many other things, I really don’t see how this is supposed to destroy the fun for certain people - if you like a challange stay in the weaker team(or because you want to attack/defend) if you want to have some easy fun join the stronger team - maybe because you’re new and just get annihilated and find it hard to learn the game that way or test something out on your own.
If the gamesettings are preffered by quite some folks you won’t even have problems with always having a full game so you won’t even notice that someone left.
shirosae
(shirosae)
#83
I’m pretty sure that at least the ‘hardcore’ mode that Rahdo’s been talking about is basically 8v8 normal multi-player, so I think we’ll all be able to ignore the campaign stuff if it has dumb no team-swapping restrictions.
Whilst talking about the campaign stuff, Rahdo didn’t specifically state it, but it seems like he hadn’t thought that people might want to play through the campaigns against their friends. I’m not sure if that means the campaigns are co-op only (so they’re basically two separate campaigns that you take your guy through against bots), or if it means that teams swap so you face random teams each mission.
All of that seems to fit what’s been said so far, except the ‘no distinction between single and multi player’ thing they’ve been talking about.
tokamak
(tokamak)
#84
How did you plan to follow a single campaign line with two friends if it’s possible to switch sides then? Both campaigns go their own course.
darthmob
(darthmob)
#85
Read carefully tokamak. It makes sense to distinguish between cooperative play and “normal” multiplayer when it comes to switching teams as shirosae says.
From what I’ve read so far and seen at the presentation you have the same character for Resistance and Security with different outfits. If the other customizations differ as well is unclear.
Forcing someone to play only on one side with a character makes no sense for regular multiplayer and I’m sure you’ll see the point when thinking about it.
DarkangelUK
(DarkangelUK)
#86
They always said there was no distinguishing between single player, coop or multiplayer… one min you’re single player, a friend joins and it’s turned into coop, he switches team and it’s now vs.
Rahdo
(Rahdo)
#87
My expectation would be that by default, swapping sides isn’t allowed, in the interest of auto-balancing sides, but that players could set up special matches that did allow for it, and if it is allowed, you go to the limbo screen and do it. Seem reasonable?
Rahdo
(Rahdo)
#88
yup, if you’re playing through the game trying to get the full ‘storyline campaign’ experience, you’ll always find your next mission puts you on the correct side for whichever storyline you’re going through. that’s regardless of whether it’s solo, or online, competitive or co-op with a party of friends. in the case of online matches, this can obviously make matchmaking quite a bit tougher than what a “normal” online game has to deal with 
but that’s our plan.
also, it’s very important to me that friends (i.e. people on buddy lists) always find it easy to play together, regardless of which team they’re on, what level they are, etc. the only circumstance where you wouldn’t be able to play with a buddy would be when he’s on a team and all other 7 slots on his team are full. but even then, i want to put systems in place to make it easy for them to get together regardless (more info on stuff like this coming in the future )
tokamak
(tokamak)
#89
[QUOTE=darthmob;197645]Read carefully tokamak. It makes sense to distinguish between cooperative play and “normal” multiplayer when it comes to switching teams as shirosae says.
From what I’ve read so far and seen at the presentation you have the same character for Resistance and Security with different outfits. If the other customizations differ as well is unclear.
Forcing someone to play only on one side with a character makes no sense for regular multiplayer and I’m sure you’ll see the point when thinking about it.[/QUOTE]
No I don’t see it actually. It takes the entire point of starting a character and advancing it trough the storyline away. It makes no sense to distinguish between normal multiplayer and coop, that’s totally defeating the point of having one game that is both multi and single player at the same time.
They always said there was no distinguishing between single player, coop or multiplayer… one min you’re single player, a friend joins and it’s turned into coop, he switches team and it’s now vs.
Until you proceed to the next map… Both factions have their very own campaign.
DarkangelUK
(DarkangelUK)
#90
No, they have the one overall story from their own POV that is progressed depending on how the previous map has ended. They don’t suddenly split off into independent stories.
For talking sake, map 1 resistance have to blow up a bunker to allow them into a facility to steal some codes. If they win, then map 2 is them in the facility and they have to to steal the codes, security progress to map 2 as on defence and have to stop them stealing the codes. If security win map 1, then resistance fall back to base and the security have to infiltrate the base to gather intelligence… all the while the teams have stayed the same, on the same server. The story is based on the outcome of the map, what would be the point in finishing the map, then that outcome having absolutely no correspondence to the story at all?
darthmob
(darthmob)
#91
Ok, let me try.
one character for both factions
The qcon / gamescom / pax demonstration showed the customization. The outfit was selected for your character for both factions (to swap between them you pressed R1 / L1 if I remember correctly). I think it makes sense as I imagine the story to be event driven and not by your character. You do not play the great hero who singlehandedly saves mankind but one guy of the Resistance or Security forces. The story is driven by the success of your team in doing the objectives. Having one character for both factions makes sense as well from a gameplay perspective. You want to have fun and not grind all the xp twice just because you want to experience both sides.
the campaign and server stuff
What I meant with normal multiplayer and I’m pretty sure shirosae meant the same with the hardcore mode is the way it was in ET. A serveradmin can set up different map rotations. No matter how one map ends, the next map in the rotation will be the next map played. In this scenario it makes a lot of sense to switch between the teams to maintain the balance or to just play the side you like more. Except for disconnects / rebalances you will play against the same players for the complete rotation.
Cooperative gameplay on the other side most likely follows the maps according to the story. You play together with friends or random other players against bots. As speculated in some threads you may play against different human enemies every map as the storyline of your team and the enemy diverge.
DarkangelUK
(DarkangelUK)
#93
Never seen Rhados response there, oops!
In that case, does it mean XP and leveling is carried across per char, regardless of what team you choose to be on per story campaign? I don’t really want to have to level up two characters.
EDIT: In fact scratch that, it’s one overall story… how would the outcome of a map suddenly send the 2 sides spiralling onto separate story lines? They both had the same outcome for that ‘scene’ as it were. They always said it was the one story that can be experienced from the Resistance POV or the Security POV, from what you’re saying there’s 2 stories that don’t correlate, and map outcome has no influence on the story at all… which to me makes no sense.
Just to dumb it down more, my thought was as follows…
If map A won by Resistance, go to map B, else if won by Security, then go to map C.
Zhou_Yu
(Zhou Yu)
#94
[QUOTE=DarkangelUK;197695]
If map A won by Resistance, go to map B, else if won by Security, then go to map C.[/QUOTE]
Hmm, I’m not sure about this mostly because Dark Messiah of Might and Magic did something quite similar in regards to its “campaign” multiplayer mode:
map 1 <-> map 2 <-> map 3 <-> map 4 <-> map 5
dependent on which team wins,
Unfortunately, since the servers started on map 3 this tended to mean that you played map 3 a lot and very rarely got to map 5 or 1, since it required two wins in a row on the long (30mins - 1hr) public games.
I’m curious as to how this whole thing works out, as it seems to almost contradict itself. In the first paragraph you are saying that online experience in general will be somehow guided towards being on the correct side for your current campaign. Your second paragraph then says that friends will always be able to play together. What happens when two friends are on the correct side of their current campaign, but those sides happen to be fighting each other?
Obviously its early days, but it sounds like it could a wide departure from the standard dedicated server model pc gamers are used to.
Edit: I fail, saw that that only applied to the “storyline” mode effectively, which makes me as curious but less worried 
DarkangelUK
(DarkangelUK)
#95
If map A has been done, and we’ve moved to map B or C, you can’t go back to map A cos that’s been done… the wall has been blown, the documents have been stolen, the intel gathered etc, so it’d be on to map D or E depending on the outcome of the other maps.
tokamak
(tokamak)
#96
With ‘playing together’ he doesn’t mean playing versus each other. Friends can stick together in co-op but cant walk trough the campaign against each other.
The only way for a bunch of friends to stay together is to ‘break’ to the storyline and treat each level as an individual map. And with a bit of clever tinkering, it could even be possible for co-oping players to hop by on ‘VS’ maps without them even knowing.
Rahdo
(Rahdo)
#97
Correctamundo
Close…
If you’re on resistance:
If you win map A, go to map B
If you lose map A, try again
If you’re on resistance:
If you win map A, go to map X
If you lose map A, try again
Those ‘try agains’ are totally optional, however. If you want, you can continue moving forward in the story (in fact, right from the get go, you can choose any ‘chapter’ of the campaign -i.e. any map- and play it, so if you want, you can see the story out of order. It’s up to you. I talked about it a bit in this interview… the only journalist out there to actually ask questions about it: http://www.e3coverage.com/2009/day-3-e3-2009-brink-bethesda-softworks-interview/
Rahdo
(Rahdo)
#98
Yup, and that’s EXACTLY how it’ll work for most players… they won’t even know they’re jumping from server to server between maps. to them, it looks like they’re just following a storyline, similary to how they’d play a traditional co-op game…
tokamak
(tokamak)
#99
I assume that at the end of the map players enter a (possibly hidden while a cinematic runs) lobby system that pitches them against other players that are about to enter the same map in their own campaign. So players entering into each other’s storyline would work perfectly, but I can see problems with combining this with servers that don’t run storyline modes but just separate maps (supposing that’s possible).
It’s still guessing at what you guys are actually trying to do as it’s just completely different from the conventional system which makes you chose the server before anything else.
DarkangelUK
(DarkangelUK)
#100
[QUOTE=Rahdo;197733]
Close…
If you’re on resistance:
If you win map A, go to map B
If you lose map A, try again
If you’re on resistance:
If you win map A, go to map X
If you lose map A, try again
Those ‘try agains’ are totally optional, however. If you want, you can continue moving forward in the story (in fact, right from the get go, you can choose any ‘chapter’ of the campaign -i.e. any map- and play it, so if you want, you can see the story out of order. It’s up to you. I talked about it a bit in this interview… the only journalist out there to actually ask questions about it: http://www.e3coverage.com/2009/day-3-e3-2009-brink-bethesda-softworks-interview/[/QUOTE]
Hmmm, i’m not a fan of “try again”, but also not a fan of the “well go forward anyway for story progressions sake” either. I much prefer the idea that the outcome of the map drives the story, branching if you like with several paths and several possible outcomes. This would keep the story diverse and fresh each time you’re co-oping through the campaign, combined with the ninja server hopping would mean that a campaign would be unique each time you play rather than knowing what map is next and what to expect in the story.