The king of all "concern" threads.

(Jess Alon) #21

Actually they’d be so confused. They wouldn’t know what threads to lock and who to send where.

(Linsolv) #22

“Perfect information” means that everything that is inside the game is illuminated. The parts about the information and patterns isn’t inside the game. It’s “meta-game,” and while it’s generally recommended that you know a bit about it, are you saying that if I opened with, say… Ware’s Opening (1. a4) that because my move was outside the standards of “accepted” patterns, we’re not playing chess any more? Let’s say, even crazier, then I make more essentially random moves, with no pattern or rhyme or reason. Are we not still playing chess? Chess isn’t what you described. You’ve described the chess “scene.” Chess is just a bunch of pieces on an 8 by 8 board.

On the other hand, Brink is not a game with perfect information. It’s a game where the opponent can run through the whole map that ISN’T directly in front of your eyes and be very nearly undetectable. All the rim lighting does is make some information more prevalent: the position of the enemy, and only when he’s in Line of Sight (even the examples given where he was out of line of sight were NPCs and through soft cover).

Is it God Mode for you to be able to see your opponent’s Chessmen without line of sight? You might enjoy Dark chess, a chess variant wherein you can only see your opponent’s chessmen if they are directly attacked by one of your pieces.

(Apples) #23

While its usually vets that run the biggest community servers / events / tourny / lotery stuffs, and that usually them who also do the mapping, stunning paradox isnt it?

(xTriXxy) #24

you mean games like sim city 4 , the sims, public transport tycoon or candy’s sweet shop tycoon rright? games made for modders, not players.

we players need fast, easy shooter with at least 500 rankings, and xp earning, fast, nothing complicated, just to relax, who cares about game code, pings, autoaims, console ports…

and now do game for both groups and you win:)

(Apples) #25

[QUOTE=xTriXxy;271083]you mean games like sim city 4 , the sims, public transport tycoon or candy’s sweet shop tycoon rright? games made for modders, not players.

we players need fast, easy shooter with at least 500 rankings, and xp earning, fast, nothing complicated, just to relax, who cares about game code, pings, autoaims, console ports…

and now do game for both groups and you win:)[/QUOTE]

Yeah because game without any fresh content are known to live long… :rolleyes: I would allways rather a community made map / mod over any DLC or fix or whatever, because usually the people talk together and the fix / mod / map is well suited / balanced for the general audience. But well, if its not “official” heh…

If big community servers doesnt exist, the game will have a hard time to drop, this is indeed working in a little community environment, because with a bazzilion of players, all the server (even the most crappy ones) are allways populated. I rather smaller communities where you can know almost every player and his / her shooting and moving style, I must be old fashioned.

And why do you assume that modders arent players in the first place… this is plain stoopid, how do you want to make a great map if you dont know perfectly the game’s mechanics?

And they call me a troll… meh

Peace

(xTriXxy) #26

it was metaphor only

(JeP) #27

Just my take on the “simplification” of Brink, sent to apples after the lock of “enemy glowing” thread :

I really don’t think SD are dumbing down their game. Sure, some parts will be easier to master, like SMART, but you can still make your moves manually, like regen or things like that, but that’s just keeping you in battle.
What I see in all this, mostly, is that they don’t want people to be good from the start, they want them to have fun. That means, not dying instantly from grenades or snipers or people spawn camping, and being able to help their team without good killing skills.

Still, I’m sure skilled people will need time to master the game, to balance their perks, to move efficiently, to know the good spots, like in any other games. And to shoot quick and kill noobs.

SD has made some good games for the hardcore community, I really don’t think they’re going to betray them. Sure, Brink won’t be as fast paced and hard as W:ET, and I understand some people will be/are sad from that… but games have changed, and the direction SD has taken, is most satisfying to me.

Plus, they seems to have made options for lots of things, modding will be possible as they promise, so I’m really not worried. People that don’t like rim lighting will buy servers with it deselected, and they will play together and that will be fine. And I will probably play on that servers.

(Shadowcat) #28

[QUOTE=Seyu;271002]What? Chess is about unpredictability, you are required to to decipher information and patterns from your opponent’s previous moves. No information in chess is ever handed over to you. It’s the fact that the opponent’s intentions and weaknesses remain unknown unless you understand his previous moves is what makes cognitive psychology the most important aspect of the game.

Now think how chaotic and random chess would be each player knew what moves the other would make with his pawns.[/QUOTE]

And by having the players lit up, you suddenly know what their next move is? Chess IS a game of perfect information, look it up. The only thing that remains hidden from you is what is in their mind. In an FPS, no amount of added information would tell you what skills your opponents lack, or what they plan to do next.

Knowing more information tends to lead to deeper levels of thought and strategy. Assuming, of course, that the opponent knows just as much as you do.

(DonkeyDong) #29

That statement sorta rings true. If you think about it, a vet is someone who’s played games a bit, and playing games for a “longer then short duration” gives you certain tastes…

But those are who not vets can be easier persuaded into different development ideas or tactics.

So if vets are the ones who play a while, wouldn’t the opinion of theirs matter ‘just a bit more’? (The answer to this question comes from a world where $ doesn’t matter, but we all know it does so don’t get hung on that sentence).

**
My guess is gaming has a high attrition rate (many players start playing, have spent their money and then stop playing after a short time). As a software company I would be happy with a player playing for a short while or a long while, because I have benefited from the support regardless of the time spent.

Sooooooooooo interesting idea. If all games were based on how long people actually stick around and play the game then we at that point would be more concerned on ‘keeping player playing’…

**
Semi-solution is to have Brink, subscription based. Take your 50$ and pay that towards 10 months of 5$ paying. I know I would pay brink 5$ a month for 10 years, so as long as they keep enhancing the game to those that actually play it for a long time.

(Linsolv) #30

Subscription based is fail. Would not purchase a subscription based console game, and only under a very certain set of circumstances would I purchase a subscription based PC game. I don’t expect anyone to listen to DonkeyDong on that one, but oh my, how I disagree with him so.

(Seyu) #31

Linsolv, if by perfect information you are referring to ‘whole information’, the one that pertains to game theory, then you are taking things out of context. To make a comparison between chess and an ET game I left out the aspect of whole information because it is absent in Brink, or any other fps, and instead drew parallels with things that are unknown in chess, that is, the opponent’s intentions.

“All the rim lighting does is make some information more prevalent: the position of the enemy, and only when he’s in Line of Sight.”

My issue is what the developers have chosen to highlight and the change in focus it is going to bring. If it was just about making distinguishing factions easier, SD could have added rim lighting to team-mates. It has deeper implications than that.

“Is it God Mode for you to be able to see your opponent’s Chessmen without line of sight?”

You misread by comment, I was talking about how making certain facets of the opponent’s intentions known would lead to a change in focus, that is, handing out information outside of what is wanted or needed would only make things chaotic rather than simplify them.

I wasn’t concerned with what chess is but what chess is about. One could run around, randomly shooting people in Brink and technically be playing Brink but the game isn’t about that.

(Linsolv) #32

What is Brink about, then? Is it about trying to see in the dark? Is it about hardcore players ****ing all over newbies, like DotA? Is it about making Enemy Territory 3? I don’t see where you guys are coming off with all these complaints. If you want a game that’s just like ET, there’s two of them depending on if you like sci-fi or WW2. They’re both good, even.

(Otto) #33

I didn’t want to start another thread about this so i thought this is my biggest concern why not here.

This could be one of the best made games of all time, but the marketing just seems to fail at every turn,
The every day gamer, dose not know it exists
The Nerd clan gamer dose not know it exists
The Average Steam customer dose not know it exists
Every Major store’s personal I talk to don’t know that it exist even tho they have pre-order boxes on display in some corner collecting dust.

This isn’t a COD or Halo title that you can throw up on a shelf at a moments notice and people will buy it any way at the last minute.
Know one really knows about the game except for a few die-hard SD fans. This could be one of the greatest made games in the last 5 years but it just seems that marketing just keeps marketing ( I want to say bad moves) no moves, not really.
In contrast, every one who has played an xbox know’s about Skyrim, and a smaller majority of them knows about Rage.

I’m inclined to point a big finger at Bethesda, they seem to be so preoccupation with their own Rage/Skyrim projects that they could careless about Brink. It’s like they’re going to put bare minimum level of effort into marketing this thing, if it fails, no big deal they still made money, its not our time and money invested into making it… right? They have their own projects and in their own agenda don’t really want to steal any thunder away from them even tho those projects wont be seen till 4th quoter
http://www.bethsoft.com/eng/games/games_main.html notice who’s on the bottom of the list of games in dev.

Please some one politely answer me : I am I crazy? Am I seeing shadows of concern where there are none? Does anything I say hold water? Is it normal for, not only me, but a large community of fans to be this concerned about this games well being? No one every really seems concerned about the launch of the next BF game… Is the concern shown by so many who care about this game valid basis for my thinking?

(Linsolv) #34

You’re mistaken. Brink is known in every community that I’ve ever been in. It’s just not getting the sort of coverage of a Battlefield 3 or a Black Ops. Bethesda’s started really ramping up the advertisements lately, but they don’t have the kind of capital EA or Activision does.

(Otto) #35

I hope your right and my experience is just an Isolated one. I would feel MUCH better, if the per-order poster was posted on the front page store… I haven’t seen the steam store page for brink update its basic info like launch date or game play styles(co-op, mulit, etc) just a newer movie trailer.

You want to get crazy good sales? Get valve to make a TF2 hat for pre-order, it will sell out faster then ps3 on launch day.

(Linsolv) #36

With the PC community, I can’t ever predict what they’ll do. But with the console community, there seems to be a relatively small niche that’s really excited, and about 70% who say “Eh, it might be good.”

(Herandar) #37

You aren’t crazy, but your excitement for this game is biasing your view. The marketing for this game will be similar to most other game releases out there. It is still too early. (I think I’m going to have to save the text to my previous response on the marketing threads so I can quickly cut and paste it in response to all of the marketing posts over the next month.)

Also, ‘dose’ and ‘does’ mean very different things. Only pointing it out because you used in three times in a row incorrectly. One typo copied three times, perhaps.

On the other hand, “Best of All Time”? Maybe you are crazy.

(Bridger) #38

[QUOTE=Seyu;271002]Shadowcat, the title wasn’t meant to be taken seriously.
There are other, relatively minor issues like how SMART handholds you to the objective but I am willing to overlook them. It’s not just the rim lighting that gets my goat but it’s the reasoning behind adding it. It may be possible to disable it but that doesn’t negate the purpose for which it was added or the new style of play, with a different focus, that will be born from it. I feel that the rim lighting is basically just one of the gears in the machine.[/QUOTE]

Why do you think it was added? Mechanically, it reduces the impact of the a specific skill in the game (identifying friend from foe, identifying avatar from backdrop). I think the vast majority of people who post in these forums have enough FPS experience to have honed this skill very well. I don’t think any of us would have any problems identifying an enemy at distance or picking him out from the background. With enough experience it seems like a relatively trivial skill (in well lit games).

It’s not really challenging nor does it have a very high ceiling. You get faster at it over time, but pretty much all players are going to hit the same plateau given enough FPS experience. However, being in the right place at the right time, and having the same kind of movement/aiming skill is a much wider field. Some players will get much further ahead of others. These skills have a much higher skill ceiling and are therefore much more interesting to perfect. You almost always can get better at moving, shooting, and knowing what weapon/grenade/ability to use in a given situation.

Considering all this, the impact of rim lighting is to lower the skill ceiling on a skill everyone perfects anyway. The further ramifications of this is that newer players will be able to concentrate more on practicing the skills that have a high ceiling and are more interesting/impressive to perform.

Think about it: You’ve probably been playing a game, maybe spectating, maybe watching a video, and said to yourself “wow that was an amazing move he did there!” More than likely what you were commenting on was a sneaky trick grenade or an amazing round-the-corner headshot.

Seems unlikely that you would be thinking “man! Look how he picked that opponent out of the background so easily!” You wouldn’t be thinking this, because us FPS players do this automatically now, it’s not hard for us at all. So if anything this move shortens the experience gap for new players, but doesn’t remove any actual challenge from experienced players.

Seems fine to me.

(Seyu) #39

As has been said before, if that was the only issue rim lighting on team-mates should have sufficed.

(Bridger) #40

Well not to drive the thread too far off topic, but this is the reason that Genre’s exist at all in the games industry. Today’s RTS games are a LOT more complicated than Warcraft1 or C&C1. And our FPS games are a lot more complicated than Quake. This is precisely because most of the fun from games comes from the act of learning/mastering the game. Once you grok/master the game’s system, the game becomes trivial to you and thus boring.

So once players get good at a type of game, they will not be satisfied by any new games where they can apply those same exact skills. They need to be tested in new ways.

So yes, vets want games made for them, because they have already mastered the mechanics of last generation. The game companies, on the other hand, want to make their game as widely accessible as possible in order to have the biggest audience. So often they will make compromises to try and draw players from both pools. Some compromises work better than others.

So the concept of a “genre” is basically designed to say “hey you liked C&C right? But got bored of it and need something new to grok?” Games have become progressively more complex but they build upon skills that players from previous generations have already mastered. Games of today (especially RTS games) can be very daunting for any new player. Without the inherent training from older, simpler games, getting into new games will be a lot harder, even with all the (or lack of) trouble developers put into tutorials.