There needs to be a way to change things mid-match.

(Herandar) #61

Because every military battle in history went according to plan, right? Adaptation is what separates the victors from the defeated.

I get the impression that you shouldn’t play pub, Bridger. Just stick to your pre-defined role in clan matches.

(Whydmer) #62

There is no reason that any character in Brink will be limited to excelling in 1 class At the very least it appears that you can choose, for example, all of the Soldier and all of the Engineer abilities for your primary character. So if you enter a pub match with 7 strangers, at the very least there will be 16 classes at maxed ability (assumming everyone is 20th level), The chance that 8 players will randomly show up all as maxed soldier/engineers is 1 in 1.68 million (give or take based on the perceived strength of this combination).

(Mad Hatter) #63

The threads these days just make me shake my head wearily and sigh.

You make a character and you give him a role via abilities and bodytype. It can be a specific role or a more general role. Then you go into a match and you play that role as well as you possibly can. You’ll have an advantage over some enemies and be at a disadvantage against some others. Your team may or may not be well balanced. But that’s ok. If there’s a shortage of Medics, the game will ask some players to switch to Medic. Make it a mission, give them a little XP for it. Blammo, now you’ve got the class your team needs!

And they’re not useless, what? They can still heal, revive, and escort the wounded NPC guy even without specializing in that class? Blasphemy!

ahem Point is, unless you’re with 7 (or 15) of your friends, it’s not likely that you’re going to have the perfect team setup for countering the other team. Conversely, the enemy team is highly unlikely to be the perfect counter to your team. You simply make the best out of what you’ve got, which is, much more often than not, going to be neither perfectly amazing nor absolutely terrible.

EDIT: http://fc08.deviantart.net/fs13/f/2007/069/3/b/Ninjad_Id_by_invisiblej.jpg

(Ragoo) #64

[QUOTE=Herandar;273499]Because every military battle in history went according to plan, right? Adaptation is what separates the victors from the defeated.
[/QUOTE]

I don’t want to contribute anything to the topic but just point out what a random comment that is.

(tokamak) #65

[QUOTE=H0RSE;273498]YOu can do that in Brink as well - meet up with friends and coordinate. I do it all the time in FPS games. Just like Brink, if you play an MMO with randoms, you don’t always wind up with the party you wanted.

[/QUOTE]

It’s pretty convenient (of Bridger) to compare wow to a pvp setting. At least have the decency to compare it to WoW’s own pvp system which is exactly the same as Brinks regarding choices, and you know what, it has no such problems.

(Herandar) #66

You liked my really big stretch? :slight_smile:

I do think it is valid though, and stand behind it. Civil war is not represented best by a garden simulator. FPS gameplay is armed combat.

(tokamak) #67

I have to agree, there’s no challenge in always being fit and geared up for the job, true prowess is shown when the odds are stacked against you.

(Mustkunstn1k) #68

You would always be fit if you would have the ability to change every ability in the middle of the game. And you have to work for each character, people should get rewarded for that…

Like you said - a deck. Right now you can make a deck, but you can still only choose one card before each match. I can’t I take more cards with me and decide mid-match.

It’s not like I am prepared for anything… because like I said - abilities.

(H0RSE) #69

Like you said - a deck. Right now you can make a deck, but you can still only choose one card before each match. I can’t I take more cards with me and decide mid-match.

This is all semantics. Choosing which abilities and body type to enter a match, could easily be viewed as selecting a deck to play. Being able to change abilities and bodytype in-game could easily be seen as picking cards from multiple decks or having multiple decks on and at once.

(JeP) #70

It’s called “taking the most pleasure out of a game that won’t change for you”.

(Bridger) #71

So my understanding now is that Brink has the equivalent of 5 talent trees (one for each class + a universal tree). You can spread your points out over the trees however you want, but you can only put a max of 5 points into each tree. When you put points into these abilities, you “unlock” them for use.

So I think the above is what we know, here’s the two ways to interpret the rest of this info:

  1. You choose 5 abilities from everything that you can use. If those abilities are class based you will only get them when you play that class.

  2. You choose 5 abilities per class. You would only choose medic and universal abilities for your medic choices. When you change class, you change out to the set of abilities you have previously chosen.

#2 is completely acceptable, it’s a way to customize your classes. #1 is stupid because it limits your motivation to change class mid-game, and puts you situations where you are weaker than everyone around you because you had to play medic but are on a soldier character.

You just seem to want to be able to use 100% of what the game offers, 100% of time - Sorry, that’s not the case in Brink.

You seem to take some smug pride trying to tell other people what Brink is and isn’t. Are you secretly on the dev team or are you working with the same lack of information as the rest of us? Please stop embarrassing yourself.

(Mustkunstn1k) #72

Not abilities mid-game. Just characters (and probably body types since they aren’t connected anymore). Or if nothing else you can atleast make 10 characters with different bodytypes ready for play.

(Herandar) #73

I’m chalking up the communication breakdown in this thread to concepts lost in translation.

H0RSE did not say you could change characters or abilities in the middle of the game. The point is that you should choose your character and abilities wisely before the game starts.

Personally, I don’t think I’ll have more than two characters for a long long time.

(Maawdawg) #74

It is the former, not the latter. You pick a set amount of skills and spread them how you choose, not that amount of abilities for each class for each character. This is how it works.

You get points at level up.
You choose from a buffet of skills in 5 pages (not really trees) with the points you have.
The skills fall in class specific or general areas and you will have hard choices to make.
You take those skills in the game, either choosing to spread them around or focus specifically on one class.
Whatever “active” skills pertain to specific classes are available to you when you play those classes through the d-pad (default) and the UI.
Whatever classes you didn’t assign skills to have no added perks/skills besides core abilities and show an empty d-pad in that UI area if you play them.
Passive skills don’t need to be activated, active skills need to be turned on, and have cooldowns (I believe).
General skills apply to all classes.

You can’t create a character that is good at all the classes and has full skills in all the classes. If you decide to put all 5 of the skill points you earned into Soldier skills your other classes will be basic versions. You don’t get another 5 points to give each of them too.

Weighted choice is fine with me, it makes character modification and skill selection actually meaningful instead of just letting everyone change to the “perfect fit” for every situation whenever they want. Yes, sometimes you will have to make the hard choice of sacrificing some utility to play another class for the team. Switching class with no perks isn’t useless by any means, you just have the core class without the bells and whistles for a while as you fill that role temporarily. You don’t need all the extras to play a class well or do well.

I feel like a broken record today with two or three thread with the same complaints going concurrently. :frowning:

(tokamak) #75

I feel like a broken record today with two or three thread with the same complaints going concurrently

Reading back on it, the very first topic we had on this all the way back is so much better. People of both sides actually knew what they were on about and there’s really isn’t anything that people can add to it months later
http://www.splashdamage.com/forums/showthread.php?t=18597

(Bridger) #76

[QUOTE=Herandar;273499]Because every military battle in history went according to plan, right? Adaptation is what separates the victors from the defeated.

I get the impression that you shouldn’t play pub, Bridger. Just stick to your pre-defined role in clan matches.[/QUOTE]

You make my point for me. I can’t adapt if I’m not allowed to change class/bodytype/abilities. I’m stuck to a pre-defined role, which is NOT what I want. Granted it is a pre-defined role that I got to customise, but there are some important things in a match that could change what I want to do, not limited to: The map being played, the enemy composition, and my team’s composition.

I’m on board with the custom class system described, as long as I can change characters mid-game and it doesn’t take weeks and weeks to level up a character.

Weighted choice is fine with me, it makes character modification and skill selection actually meaningful instead of just letting everyone change to the “perfect fit” for every situation whenever they want.

So you want the choice to be meaningful, insofar as you must make the choice before you play without knowing the map, the team, or the enemy team. Then if you chose wrong, oh well. Too bad! If you had chosen right, you wouldn’t be in this situation!

(DarkangelUK) #77

You keep mentioning locked class, since when were classes locked?

(Bridger) #78

Who me? I don’t think I mentioned locked classes? I’m not even sure what that term means in this context. Who are you talking to?

(DarkangelUK) #79

Up there yo.

(Bridger) #80

I’m aware you are allowed to change class, but changing to a gimped class is not acceptable. Someone is going to respond and say “that’s just what you think!”

If you were told you had to pick 2 classes that would play normally and the other 2 would have 50% health for your character and that this decision would be set in stone, would that be ok with you? If it’s not, then why not? I assume the reason would be “because then I’d never play those classes!” So that means you are NOT ok with playing a gimped class. We agree on that premise, and the only difference is scale.