[QUOTE=H0RSE;273650]No he isn’t.
The turret may be stronger, the player is the same.[/QUOTE]
OK, you just lost all debate privileges. Are you so blinded by fanboyism that you can’t acknowledge a basic truth (a player with less powerful weapons/abilities is weaker)? Or do you just like to argue? Either way you’re no longer worth talking to.
[QUOTE=JeP;273672]
You never meet someone on even ground, with same class/bodytype/abilities, etc… there is no perfect balance, stop looking for it. You’re right, but that doesn’t mean the game is wrong.[/quote]
I never said you meet people on even ground. My point is that we are tasked with picking a playstyle/spec and loadout for situations that are unknown to us. The only optimal thing to do in this situation is to pick a versatile spec, which shuts out a large chunk of the game.
Seriously. I’m anticipating dumping 70% of my points in universal abilities and the rest into bread&butter perks that improve medic revive or engi weapon buff.
I agree with you, I don’t think the abilities are going to be so powerful that someone with perfectly specced abilities are able to always win over vanilla players. There’s a lot more going on here.
What I am trying to establish is: If the abilities do provide an advantage (small or large, doesn’t matter). We seem to have centered around “yes.”
OK, so if they do provide an advantage, can we also agree that certain advantages will have their effect multiplied in specific situations (maps/teams)?
If we can agree on THAT, then we are all in agreement that picking a specific spec loadout is a roll of the dice random element that may help you out a lot, or may hinder you yes? Maybe only a little, but it does sway the outcome somewhat?
If we can agree on THAT, is that ok? Is it OK to just randomly be handed an advantage/disadvantage with no input from you? This brings us back to “if the server rolled a die and gave one team 10% more health” argument. If you think that is “not ok” and bad game design, then, logically, you must also agree that being locked into choices you make blindly is also “not ok.”
If not, please explain the difference, or at least the advantage inherent in the topic at hand which outweighs the otherwise poor game design.
When do you EVER know the exact situation in a multiplayer FPS? Adapting to challenges and out-playing your opponents are what these games are all about, not seeing that they chose scissor so you know to pick rock.
But lucky us, we can choose how we want to play. We can specialize: high risk/ high reward, or we can can play it safe and be a jack-of-all-trades: lower risk/ lower reward. Either way, individual player skill is going to be by far the most important factor when it comes to winning or losing a confrontation, or the match itself.
That’s is optimal TO YOU. People will want to boost their favorite class, or try to give some advantages on one they haven’t mastered yet.
YES, you will have made your choices, and you won’t know what you’re gonna face but fair, balanced game is boring. As I said, you never meet the same load-out as you, you need to adapt to what you have, and this is GOOD cause you can’t rely only on game perks, you have to make the better of what you have with your own SKILLS.
Why does there need to be a way to change your character mid match? Just because Black Ops did something does mean every game needs to do it. If you could change your character mid match, you would lose a lot of the depth and gravity of the game.
Let’s look at another game. A game where it exists and we can actually look at facts.
I like this example cause it’s easily the coolest video ever.
In Street Fighter 3: 3rd Strike, there are (like all fighting games) tier lists. As of 2007, the top tier character is Chun-Li (+33… basically, 33 “points” of advantage above average). Then comes Yun, then Ken Masters (+22, so he’s 1/3 lower than Chun-Li).
Enter Daigo Umehara. Easily one of the most famous SF players, he was in an incredibly entertaining match against Justin Wong. Daigo was playing Ken, where Justin Wong was playing Chun Li.
In the 2nd round, Daigo is getting stomped. At 2:30, Ken has roughly 1% health, while Chun-Li has 30%. Then, to make things worse, Chun Li busts out her super.
Daigo parries (sorta like a “perfect block”) every. single. hit. and then wins the round.
That’s the difference in skill even in professional players, on the highest level of a game series based entirely on tiers.
You can’t tell me that there’s going to be a gap that’s not able to be easily overcome with skill.
Edit: I should add, I’ve done some of my research here (I know this story by osmosis more than research) and Justin Wong is also an incredibly gifted player. So we’re not talking about Daigo vs… like… me. We’re talking about the place where tier lists matter—two of the most gifted players on the planet face off. If an advantage from having a slight character advantage mattered as much as y’all seem to be saying, then there’s no way Daigo could’ve pulled that off.
yea in black ops they changed weapons and perks but you played a soldier not a “character” who would have talents learned and perfected over years thats why when you use a perk its semiperminent, also you don’t spec into a certain class, points are equally destributed over all the classes and universal is seperate
“I like this example cause it’s easily the coolest video ever.”
Amazing video is amazing. It’s always kind of awe-inspiring watching true masters go head to head. It’s like watching two Greek gods do battle.
It is trivial to know what map you are playing on. It is trivial to look at your own team and figure out what you might be lacking. It is trivial to keep getting killed by that sniper/minigun/etc. Adapting to these observations rapidly is part of most team based FPS games. The challenge comes in choosing the right response to the (trivial) observation. So I guess you may not notice these things, but everyone else does in fact, know what map they are on.
But lucky us, we can choose how we want to play. We can specialize: high risk/ high reward, or we can can play it safe and be a jack-of-all-trades: lower risk/ lower reward. Either way, individual player skill is going to be by far the most important factor when it comes to winning or losing a confrontation, or the match itself.
Of course individual player skill is going to be a more important factor, that’s no excuse for lazy game design people! Lets make every decision matter and not be a roll of the dice eh?
False dichotomy.
EDIT: I’m sure someone’s going to accuse me of saying random stuff. So I’ll expound on that idea.
You’re suggesting, either tacitly or explicitly, that either A) you can choose characters, or B) the game is imbalanced.
The choice of character is a metagame choice. If you need to hear metagame discussed at length, then read David Sirlin’s blog, as he discusses the subject frequently. He even invented a card game based on the idea of trying to “read” your opponent.
It’s not imbalance to have a metagame that means anything.
[QUOTE=Linsolv;273702]False dichotomy.
EDIT: I’m sure someone’s going to accuse me of saying random stuff. So I’ll expound on that idea.
You’re suggesting, either tacitly or explicitly, that either A) you can choose characters, or B) the game is imbalanced.
The choice of character is a metagame choice. If you need to hear metagame discussed at length, then read David Sirlin’s blog, as he discusses the subject frequently. He even invented a card game based on the idea of trying to “read” your opponent.
It’s not imbalance to have a metagame that means anything.[/QUOTE]
I’m a big fan of David Sirlin, and I’ve played a TON of Yomi. I’m not positing a false dichotomy either.
If Abilities affect the game in a significant way
and
We must choose them ahead of time to fit conditions unknown
then
Sometimes you are going to choose wrong (and thus be weaker) OR you will always choose a versatile
setup which limits your access to the game. Neither of these options is acceptable.
Players should not need to disconnect and reconnect in order to taylor their abilities to the map/team/opponents. This is horrible UI design at best, and broken game design at worst.
So… if I pick Ken and you pick Yun, I should be able to say “WAIT WAIT! I need to switch to Chun!” because darn it, it’s not fair that you got to have a higher tier character than me!
EDIT: That’s not fair.
A more accurate description would be “I used to play Guilty Gear for fun. I played Venom, because he was the character I knew how to play. Little did I know when I was learning my primary character, Jam is high tier, and Venom is low tier! IMBA! Guilty Gear is broken and the devs need to listen to me!”
Again, YOU adapt. Not by changing to “rock” to counter every “scissors” you come across, but by being the best damn paper you can be! (not angry, trying to be slightly humorous)
Everyone has to take some chances. The very same chances you yourself will have to take. But it’s not luck of the draw. That would imply that you have no control whatsoever over the outcome. That it’s just all random chance. That is not the case. Like I said in my previous post, you CAN be as specialized as you want. You’ll be quite powerful as a [whatever], but at the same time you risk not being prepared for certain situations. On the other hand you CAN play it safe and be able to deal with virtually anything, and trade a little bit of power to compensate.
It’s a risk/reward system, not Russian roulette. You decide how you want to balance power and versatility. Everybody does. It makes things interesting.
I don’t understand why you’re having such a hard time grasping the fact that all the weapons and abilities in the game if you don’t know how to execute them properly. Sure you may be able to say one character is stronger on paper, but player skill is almost always the trump card in any situation. Why you would call him a troll or fanboi for making that very obvious and sensible argument is beyond me.
SD is trying to set itself apart from every other FPS out there. All I’m hearing on these boards (other then a select few) are people demanding that SD do as every other FPS does and keep the status quo. Sure main stream FPSs have have a formula that works…so fracking what? If SD wants to take a risk and totally put the FPS world of there ear, let them do it…if it isn’t good, the money making venture fails and they won’t get funds for another game. This is their game. I’m sorry you are afraid of change, but they are the ones taking the risk. Stop trying to make Brink into CoD or any other FPS. This is there game…they spent quite a lot of time developing and tuning it to their desires.
OMG thread explosion. I can’t believe so many die hard FPS fans are getting so sucked in to the RPG aspects. Especially all of you who have a smug aura of “I’m king of FPS pewpewing” about you.
Q: Can you aim?
Q: Can you shoot?
Q: Can you press “use” on an abjective?
If you answered yes to all of these questions, STFU 
It’s going to make fug all difference.
I heard people relate it to going into COD without perks. I bought BLOPS the other day and in my first game I came first against a couple of lvl 50s. I’m the first to admit that I’m not a pro shooter! I’m average, but if you aim and shoot you will kill. Doesn’t matter how many perks to shoot nades in the air, reload whilst sprinting, looking behind you etc etc, if you shoot them in the head their perks are useless.
Abilities are meant purely to allow the player some customisation to play to their own style, not to make them stronger than the next player. Why can’t people grasp this concept?
You honestly think SD has delayed the game by half a year for polish/balance and overlooked this?
Honestly playing a 0 skill point class, and running into a 5 point class-counter seems much less imbalanced than choosing a sniper rifle and getting flanked/intercepted by a shot-gun. While you can switch gun choice mid game, what’s really better about that? You swap your sniper rifle for a mid-range rifle to counter the shot-gun, and then what happens? They switch to a sniper rifle to counter you. If people are allowed to play RPS, they will, it happens in pub TF2 all the time.
However, you can always just keep your sniper rifle, remember the path/timing the shotgunner used, and line up a shot on that path while still assisting in the main battle. This is what most people do instead of opting into an RPS game, and honestly most of the people that play class/weapon-counter games end up like a watered down “generalized” version of a player, they’re not good at anything because when adversity hits, they try to use a hard-counter instead of getting better.
If tactics, your ability to shoot, and your understanding of the enemy aren’t enough to overcome a 0-5 point class counter, then yes, SD messed up in balancing, but I really doubt any class counters you would encounter in this game would be as deep as the weapon counters that already exist, and those are overcome by the same qualities you would need to beat someone with a specced out class playing a class you have no points in.
Even if another player’s character is stronger than yours, getting kills and completing objectives is going to be determined by player-skill and teamwork respectively. If not, and being a generalized spec has an intrinsic advantage, then sure, SD messed up, but the only way to know that is to play the game for a couple months.
I’m not going to argue the same thing on two different threads. Bridger, stop claiming it is bad game design because you are incapable of playing with the limitations.