[QUOTE=wolfnemesis75;345677]The SMART system in Brink is just enough for it to be part of a whole rather than a stand-alone feature. So that it doesn’t get in the way of the Objective, Team based play. You don’t want the game to be overly about the movement as the emphasis, then you potentially run the risk of people free running around the level and map and ignoring the rest of the players trying to complete objectives, thus becoming a deterrent ruining other people’s experience. I’ve seen it in other games when a feature becomes a meta game that ruins other people’s fun. Sometimes its not an actual game mechanic, its a glitch, but sometimes it can be a game mechanic. For example: Players used Snipers in Gears of War as duels 2 feet away from each other. Is it fun. Sure. Can it run the risk of ruining everyone else’s enjoyment. You bet.
My main point: You get just enough SMART movement in Brink to keep the game squarely focused on objectives.
For example: SD could’ve made Brink’s SMART movement so you were like Crackdown and free run and jump over everything and all over the level. But, the game would devolve into Free running rather than playing attack and defend objs.
And I do sympathize with your feeling of lament.[/QUOTE]
I think you missed my point, I want the movement to be a learning curve, therefore those taking the time to learn the intricacies of it can reap it’s benefits… therefore you don’t have people free-running the entire level and ignoring the rest of the players.
We know for a fact that insane movement garnered through the intricate learning of a system with broad limits doesn’t cause people to run around tricking everywhere, because we have games like that already and that never happened. RtCW, W:ET, and to a point ET:QW were all objective based games that had movement with a steep learning curve and high reward for learning it… in no way did that infringe upon or take away from the objectives themselves. Your worry is unnecessary.
[QUOTE=DarkangelUK;345683]I think you missed my point, I want the movement to be a learning curve, therefore those taking the time to learn the intricacies of it can reap it’s benefits… therefore you don’t have people free-running the entire level and ignoring the rest of the players.
We know for a fact that insane movement garnered through the intricate learning of a system with broad limits doesn’t cause people to run around tricking everywhere, because we have games like that already and that never happened. RtCW, W:ET, and to a point ET:QW were all objective based games that had movement with a steep learning curve and high reward for learning it… in no way did that infringe upon or take away from the objectives themselves. Your worry is unnecessary.[/QUOTE]
My point is the opposite, and more along the lines of how Brink is designed specifically. I’d not want a complicated/intricate set of buttons/moves just to free run over a rail. In real life, I’d just do it part instinct, part athletics. Transfer that to the game and idea of Free running. For Brink it adds it into the movement so that you are not trying to hit a set of combined buttons and timed combos. It just frees up your movement to focus on the strategy of flanking, coordinating, and attacking or defending points on the maps in an effort to complete objectives and teamwork. It doesn’t always work perfectly, as you say when you want to jump over to something you think you should be able to do but can’t. Similar to hitting an invisible wall in an RPG when its suppose to be open world. Sometimes less is more.
But we’re not talking about what you want, we’re talking about expectations, and how players new to SD games or those from the console world seem perplexed as to why the PC crowd don’t like it. We were told Brink was the spiritual successor to ET, it’s an SD game, and in both their past games that were objective based, they had intricate, meaningful movement… therefore it was assumed Brink would have this as well, and various post and interviews lead to this assumption as well (you can read one here). The fact they went down this half-realistic route only tells us one thing… but I’m not going to say it, it’s been said enough.
The colourful movement was opened up to all, and the insane possibilities were sliced off and innovation from the player themselves removed. The console took a step forward, and PC took a step back.
[QUOTE=DarkangelUK;345705]But we’re not talking about what you want, we’re talking about expectations, and how players new to SD games or those from the console world seem perplexed as to why the PC crowd don’t like it. We were told Brink was the spiritual successor to ET, it’s an SD game, and in both their past games that were objective based, they had intricate, meaningful movement… therefore it was assumed Brink would have this as well, and various post and interviews lead to this assumption as well (you can read one here). The fact they went down this half-realistic route only tells us one thing… but I’m not going to say it, it’s been said enough.
The colourful movement was opened up to all, and the insane possibilities were sliced off and innovation from the player themselves removed. The console took a step forward, and PC took a step back.[/QUOTE]
This game is fighting many preconceived notions. I did not believe that everyone would like this game. I watched vids of the game and all dev diaries. I never thought it’d be like ET:QW out of all the games I thought it’d be like, it’d be TF2, Mirror’s Edge, Assassin’s Creed, and Teamplay like Gears of War, which is what I got. I could tell in the vid docs that it’d take a ton of bullets to down people. Here is the vid doc I watched about the movement where it talked about how the Free running would work: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXWV8N4yBLY
I researched this game to the point of watching videos with 3 views on Youtube. So I knew what I was getting into and not getting into with this game.
I already touched on this point, no where what so ever was any PC footage released at all to show how the movement worked with a mouse and keyboard… in fact no PC footage was released… period. And no way would a game dev ever show the possibilities beyond their scope, or beyond their knowledge.
Do you think SD knew all the movement intricacies of ET and ETQW? Not at all.
I’m gonna double post for funsies as I’m off to bed. The footage released, to have given it’s true 100% expectation to the PC players, would need to have come with an official statement that simply said “WYSIWYG”… basically you’re never going to be able to produce anything beyond the standard movement as the innovation has been curbed. The problem is, we were given the opposite indication, especially in that post I linked.
So a couple of people have mentioned how the W:ET type gameplay is in the past and we should move on. My question is simple. Why? We know that it IS fun. It was fun back then and it is fun NOW so why not continue that winning formula? SD tried your route and look at the result. NOBODY likes it. At least not enough people like it to make the game last any decent amount of time. So you already lost this debate based on the results of this game.
I would love to hear from SD as to why the decision was made to move away from the GAMEPLAY that previous ET games had. Shooting mechanics and movement in particular. What was the reasoning? I guarantee that if Brink was released with similar shooting and movement along with SMART and the 1000 pieces of clothing to make casuals happy this game would have been more popular and have more replayability. As it stands right now it plays like a B shooter. You know…a notch below what would be considered a AAA title today.
I have yet to hear a good argument from anyone as to why W:ET type GAMEPLAY wouldn’t work today. Other than it was popular in the past. What the hell does that mean? Just because it was popular years ago means it won’t be fun anymore today? What kind of logic is that? People still play the damn game TODAY! Most gamers have never played a FPS with the shooting and movement mechanics of W:ET. The gameplay would actually be NEW to them. How do you know they wouldn’t like it? IMO they would love it and embrace it as new and innovative. Instead SD made a game that plays like everything else just a little worse and now we are all surprised it has failed?
This is what happens when you go away from your roots. When you lose your identity. Maybe they didn’t even know what that was which is even worse. It almost sounds like they think those games were popular due to objectives and class based gameplay alone which would make them completely wrong. That was only half of it. Valve is a perfect example of a dev who does NOT forget their roots and look at the results. TF2 is not COD TF. They stayed true to their core gameplay that was popular…GASP…years ago. AND PEOPLE LIKE IT?!! WOW. Amazing.
So if you are going to claim old gameplay doesn’t belong in todays games…address my points. Don’t just make statements without supporting what you are saying. Everything I have typed I have supported with some type of example. Just like the Valve TF2 example.
Very true. Brink was released in a tough time. It is its own game, though. To the last poster, I think the barrier to this type of game is more psychological than anything else. People play games to get instant gratification primarily, and that goes against the team concept. The team concept requires time invested and risk taken for the team. Recent popular fps games have brainwashed people into thinking a certain way about “team” shooters. Then there is the issue of the game’s “predecessor”, quake wars, which to me seems to be a very different sort of game (much more open and faster) using the same basic gametype.
I think the main reason why the shooting and movement is different in Brink is because of the map design. The game is all about fast up-close combat that allows you to see the animations and customizations of the characters. The maps are designed to support this with maximum engagement ranges at ~30m or less. This is why it feels so easy to shoot people for fps veterans new to this game. The level of detail and speed of action rivals other team shooters, but the targets are just bigger due to the game design (in your face).
I read about 3 pages into this thread, so maybe someone pointed this out before:
BRINK was designed like this because games with a higher learning curve (like Quake, RTCW:ET, etc.) repell the casual customer who just wants to have a bit of fun shooting guns in a game. And 98% of all gamers fall into that casual category. So every game that wants to sell a lot has to cater to this crowd. The average gamer would have no fun at all in a skill based shooter because a skillfull opponent would win every time. That’s why they made bullet deviation random and so excessive. If it wasn’t someone with good aim could wipe out noobs every time. The way it is now you can not because the noobs have a chance of killing you even if their aim is way off.
TL;DR: Games that require skill don’t sell well, so no big upcoming game will be a skillbased game, regardless of what devs/publishers say.
We can only hope for some Indie studio to come up with something great.
the problem with those games is that no one plays them. they are niche games and thats the reason no serious developer developes them anymore.
want to try something with skill? go play quake, rtcw … the games are still there. im asking myself what people really want? same shooters from the old days with new graphics?
if you like the oldschool shooters so much, play them. its that easy.
[QUOTE=kilL_888;345812]
im asking myself what people really want? same shooters from the old days with new graphics?[/QUOTE]
What they want is not new graphics but a fresh and thriving community on a new game. I personally skipped W:ET because i felt the spread hitscan machinegun gameplay was a step down from what i was used to, and at the time played NS and Tribes 3 instead, although it looks like W:ET did improve somewhat from my initial impressions of it. Those games are dead.
There are some old school shooters with small communities still going, but if for example you wanted to play CPMA, which is a fantastic game, you will find that although there are still servers for it, the only people left are a tiny community of extremely dedicated players. Who have been at it for years, have perfect knowledge of every map trick and duelling strategy, and are obscenely obscenely good at the game, to the point that you can’t really “play” with them. Breaking into this scene is pretty much impossible, there is no entry level or mid level gameplay available to participate in.
I consider myself a fairly decent player, but i’m nowhere close to the level of CPMA money tournaments, i have limited gaming time and a job. However i want a game that challenges me, and which i feel i have room to develop my ability at, where the game design allows enough depth for me to advance my own skills. I also want a game with a community of players, and people at similar skill levels for me to play with, where my friends can pick up the game and we can compete as a team in scrimms like the good old days.
This isn’t an unrealistic request, PC FPS gaming was like this for a long time, the old games we keep referring to were once new games, and had massive thriving communities of players at all skill levels. This isn’t strange distorted nostalgia, and i don’t think i’m alone in my opinion on this.
You guys who want accurate guns with no spread… you are only talking about the starting accuracy right?
You guys don’t want the guns to remain accurate under sustained fire, do you? I hope not, because shooting full auto is boring…and almost unaesthetic even.
If they made the starting accuracy pinpoint, then I would be completely fine with it as long as the spread expands rapidly. Shooting in short bursts is a lot more fun.
But to be honest, I don’t really understand why people think that having a spread makes it easy to kill people? It makes it harder. If you have pinpoint accuracy, then you can shoot anywhere on the body. When you have a spread, you need to hit center enough that the spread does not expand past the body…so basically your target is smaller for effective shooting.
You guys sound like you are saying that if the spread is really big, then the beginner doesn’t have to aim…but spraying with a big spread is far too inefficient and slow. Sure, they might eventually kill an opponent if the opponent never fires back…but it takes so long to kill by spraying with something like an assault rifle, that they are at a huge disadvantage.
SMGs are effective for spraying in Brink, not because their spread is big…but because it is relatively small. So, it is the more accurate guns that make it easier to kill.
brink doesnt favor good players with good aim(random spread), can’t hear footsteps(we have wtfradar in silly place at the bottom right corner[ it might be good when you’re playing at console cause you dont have headphones like most of the pc player]). too much team play is not good either, you have to favor individuality(watching rambos getting tons of frags is fun) and players do love fragmovies with lots of ultra and monster kills, wont happen in brink cause of lots of reasons besides those i’ve mentioned(SUP DEMO RECORDING). Also i would add customizing ur character is kind of silly cause in clan games you can’t tell if you’re shooting soldier,engineer or covert(it’s obviously more important to kill objective class) etc even if you have those icons(they are red which gives terrible visibility
You sound sincere, so I’m going to give you some proper answers.
[QUOTE=tangoliber;345857]You guys who want accurate guns with no spread… you are only talking about the starting accuracy right?
You guys don’t want the guns to remain accurate under sustained fire, do you? I hope not, because shooting full auto is boring…and almost unaesthetic even.[/quote]
It seems so, until you play a game where the movement is also good, and you realise that the trick is no longer sitting behind cover leaning out and burst firing to control your spread, but is in trying to track a moving opponent’s head whilst moving in a way to fake him into missing yours.
The result is that gunfights:
Are much, much faster.
Have a much higher skill ceiling.
Are much more engaging.
If you’ve gotten used to that kind of gameplay, this artificial cone-of-fire nonsense feels like you’re acting as a chauffeur for a random number generator.
Note: Depending on the game, a small amount of randomness on top of a centre-weighted cone that expands as the burst lengthens is okay (imo) since it acts as a seed that influences gunfights. If it doesn’t utterly overwhelm the players’ aim, turning gunfights into a lottery, I’m okay with it.
ETQW:pro dealt with this fairly well, actually.
If you were close enough that movement was a viable tactic (so your movement made it harder to hit your head), then you were also close enough to hipfire and aim for headshots.
If you were at long distance, you could still ironsight and burst fire. This wasn’t as much fun as getting in close and dancing, though.
It also makes it harder for others to kill you. That slows the game down. The tracking skills required to get headshots under pressure is absent. Someone might be significantly better at aiming than you, and it doesn’t matter, because the RNG will decide who wins.
If you want to win, you play as dodgily as you can. You backrage, you screw with timing and crossfire from unusual positions… and all that other stuff that you do in games with proper gunplay anyway.
Essentially the difference between lottery spread systems and narrow cones of fire is that lottery spread removes that up-close dancing face-to-face gunfight, and replaces it with a diceroll. This was the hardest bit. Also the most fun
And so, instead of players having to track their headshots under pressure, the determining factor in who wins is where the random number generator sends the bullets.
Anyone can slowly put a cursor over the centre mass of an opponent moving incredibly slowly at maximum firing distance.
That kind of aiming skills required to do that are nothing compared to the kind of aiming skills required to track a quickly-moving head up close whilst it’s shooting back at you.
I suppose the biggest issue the console players have with the PC complaints is this “spray and pray” meme. It’s a misnomer at best, but it’s especially wrong when applied to the ET players. The whole point of ET was that the guns were accurate enough with a slow enough refire rate that head-tracking skills were paramount.
By claiming that these players want to ‘spray’, you misunderstand what they’re trying to do.
If you really, genuinely want to understand this, I recommend you watch some ET gunplay. The one that comes to mind right now is Hannes’ Ultraviolet (showing ETQW:pro). It has some nice zoom-ins on the crosshair as players are firing. If you look very, very closely at what the aiming player is doing as he fires, you’ll see it: They aren’t spraying, they’re aiming at heads.
[QUOTE=burawura;345791]Very true. Brink was released in a tough time. It is its own game, though. To the last poster, I think the barrier to this type of game is more psychological than anything else. People play games to get instant gratification primarily, and that goes against the team concept. The team concept requires time invested and risk taken for the team. Recent popular fps games have brainwashed people into thinking a certain way about “team” shooters. Then there is the issue of the game’s “predecessor”, quake wars, which to me seems to be a very different sort of game (much more open and faster) using the same basic gametype.
I think the main reason why the shooting and movement is different in Brink is because of the map design. The game is all about fast up-close combat that allows you to see the animations and customizations of the characters. The maps are designed to support this with maximum engagement ranges at ~30m or less. This is why it feels so easy to shoot people for fps veterans new to this game. The level of detail and speed of action rivals other team shooters, but the targets are just bigger due to the game design (in your face).[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=shirosae;345875]You sound sincere, so I’m going to give you some proper answers.
[/QUOTE]
Thank you for the reply.
It seems so, until you play a game where the movement is also good, and you realise that the trick is no longer sitting behind cover leaning out and burst firing to control your spread, but is in trying to track a moving opponent’s head whilst moving in a way to fake him into missing yours.
The result is that gunfights:
Are much, much faster.
Have a much higher skill ceiling.
Are much more engaging.
If you’ve gotten used to that kind of gameplay, this artificial cone-of-fire nonsense feels like you’re acting as a chauffeur for a random number generator.
What I like is burst fire from the hip while strafing… I also dislike peeking out from cover (and I only like to iron sight for long distance). I think that the assault rifles in Brink do this pretty well. Using the Rhett or Gerund, I strafe while burst firing whenever I can get a head shot. I’d like for this to be the most effective playstyle in Brink.
I appreciate the rest of your response, but unfortunately, I don’t have time to respond to the rest. I will watch the Ultraviolet video…thanks for the recommendation.
I agree…its one of the reasons I love the game. And thats why I am sort of against the idea of making the guns more accurate…because if they do, then there wouldn’t be any need for burst fire. (I’m not saying that shooting full-auto is less skillfull… Learning to burst fire certainly isn’t hard to do…and I understand the skill behind keeping the fire on the head while moving. Its more about aesthetics I guess… I guess the gameplay becomes a little more like a pistol match? )
Alright, I really gotta go, now. And the rest of shirosae’s still deserves a proper response from me. This forum is distracting.
[QUOTE=tangoliber;345888]I agree…its one of the reasons I love the game. And thats why I am sort of against the idea of making the guns more accurate…because if they do, then there wouldn’t be any need for burst fire. (I’m not saying that shooting full-auto is less skillfull… Learning to burst fire certainly isn’t hard to do…and I understand the skill behind keeping the fire on the head while moving. Its more about aesthetics I guess… I guess the gameplay becomes a little more like a pistol match? )
Alright, I really gotta go, now. And the rest of shirosae’s still deserves a proper response from me. This forum is distracting. :)[/QUOTE]
The point is that ‘spraying’ rewards you more than burst-fireing your SMG. Also if I loose fights it should be ME who is to blame and not the game for giving me some bad luck. They could make the guns more accurate and increase the damage falloff for SMGs such they become very inefficent mid/long range.
