This will be controversial.

(V1cK_dB) #1

This thread will be controversial. Before I begin let me just preface this with some facts about me.

I played RTCW for over 2000 hrs (I know lol). That game is still the best FPS IMO ever for many reasons. I’m a HUGE Splash Damage fan. I respect what they do and how skilled they are are making MP FPS games. I love about 95% of what I’ve heard them say about BRINK. I’m still completely excited to play it and I’m sure it will end up being the most competitive FPS this generation followed by Shadowrun.

So what’s so controversial you ask? A couple of things. I know some of these things have been discussed before but I thought I would present an articulate argument FOR some of these things from a business standpoint and a gameplay standpoint.

K/D Ratios

Business

I get it. SD wants to promote teamwork and I completely agree with that. I want for BRINK to be totally successful but this is making it difficult for me to convert others. As soon as I say no K/D ratios people shut down. As I’ve thought about this long and hard I think the pros outweigh the cons in favor of showing k/d ratios. At least postgame and the ability for you to at least see your own.

Gameplay

BRINK is a shooter. The whole point is to kill others. The teams with the better shooters/killers will always beat the teams with lesser skilled shooters. Its just fact. I don’t care how great the teamwork is. You can’t get to specific points in the map if you can’t kill anyone. Why downplay that? I get SD wants to distinguish their game from COD and stand on principle but my fear is that this is going to limit interest in this game. I also fear that I’m going to have randoms following me around giving me ammo/health for XP while they fail to kill anyone and I’ll get killed over and over while people try to XP whore. I could be overreacting here but I doubt it.

No Elimination Mode?

Business

Again…I get it. SD wants to be the anti-COD and I totally respect that but if we want this game to sell we have to appeal to a wider audience. SD is already adding a bunch of things to appeal to a wider audience. SMART…basically making it easier to do tricky maneuvers for newer players but still rewarding skilled players by being able to do things manually. The “aura” calling out enemies making it easier for newer players to see the enemy, etc. So its not like the game is totally built on principle. Why not be open about another gametype or 2 in at the very least private matches.

Gameplay

What would be the drawback from including the ability to play this game in at least an Elimination mode (1 life per person but still able to use the classes and revives) in custom/private matches? RTCW had elimination and that mode was a lot of fun. It still involved teamwork (health, revives and ammo) and added suspense and drama with just 1 life. Many a epic 1 v 1 battles to win a match went down. This won’t be the case for BRINK.

Matchmaking

Business

No lobby system on console? Fine. Matchmaking through a leveling system? Fine. One question. Can you level down? Matchmaking only works if you are matched with people who are as good as you otherwise the experience can be a bad one. Just ask all of the high level COD players who are terrible and consistently get outplayed by people with lower levels who are better than them. Those players never get to see how good or bad they really are due to COD’s leveling system rewarding time played vs. actual skill.

Gameplay

On console Halo had a pretty good system. You usually played with people at your level. This ensured that everyone’s experience (not including hackers which most everygame has) is a good one playing against players at their level.

I hope I don’t get totally flamed for this thread. These are sincere thoughts and I know they have been discussed before but I wanted to present my case. If you provide a rebuttal please try to address my specific points instead of just flaming and remember…I understand that none of these things will probably change and I’m ok with that. I still love Splash Damage and I will still buy BRINK but that doesn’t mean that I can’t voice my opinion.

One more thing. I haven’t read any specifics on how customizable private matches will be on console. I hope the customizations will be as detailed as the rest of the game for consistency. I can change the panties on my character but I can’t change basic settings of the game between me and my friends?

I love you all.

EDIT - BTW…this is all assuming that the shooting, movement, etc is top notch.

(ac3man) #2

Why would this be controversial? I don’t understand some of their decisions either.

(CVIChEK) #3

[QUOTE=V1cK_dB;271005]

K/D Ratios

They could be in the game, but they should not be visible on the TAB screen, but just at the end of the match when statistics pop up (if they have that), like in W:ET
And not the ratio, but only K/D

No Elimination Mode?

No for that. Brink is not made for that kind of mode. I think everyone would just be Heavy Medics and Soldiers. But I don’t doubt there will be a mod for that, so don’t worry.

Matchmaking

It has channels, like
Channel 1: 0-4
Channel 2 :5-10
Channel 3: 11-20
(Note these are completely wrong numbers, except the first one)
You can enter a higher level channel, but you can’t enter a lower level channel.
So if you suck or just need some practice, make a new character and use that one.

(BMXer) #4

Someone will just come out with a server side mod that tells everyone via chat K/Ds if its not on the scoreboard already. Just like ETQW… problem sovled…you can pat yourself on the back when you get most frags but your team still looses ;).
Honestly, would the scoreboards lack of a basically useless stat actually keep you from playing a game you would otherwise enjoy? Come on…

Are you are saying the game needs a S&D mode just to appeal to the COD crowd? From a pub standpoint, S&D is definatly not the most popular mode in COD i dont think. I would have to say TDM is. There are always tons of populated TDM and DOM servers and only a few S&D.

And yea, shooting is very important but by no means does having the best aim mean you always win in objective based games. Teamwork and smart play is almost always better than pure aim in games like ETQW and W:ET… and even Quake for that matter. I can’t tell you how many matches my team won against teams with aimbotters in ETQW, but it was more than we lost I bet.

(Weapuh) #5

^^What BMXer said. Really don’t see elimination working even if they cut the maps down to 1 obj.

Pure aim and kills definitely doesn’t rule objective based games, I think SD is emphasizing this with the buffs system, smarter play should really win over shots. Yeah someone will probably make a server-side for k/d :slight_smile:

Hope nobody suggests counting, that’s annoying :stuck_out_tongue:

(Seyu) #6

I don’t envy the developers, having people ask them to make Brink more CoD-like and folks like me asking why it isn’t ET-like enough. Hopefully, none of the staff gets a breakdown before the game goes gold.

(EnderWiggin.DA.) #7

No, he’s saying he wants the “one life to live” game mode that was in RTCW, but it effectively means the same thing as it was easier to win by eliminating the other team. As I recall, the maps were NOT cut down to one objective. I remember still trying to blow both radar towers in mp_base with only 1 life as an engineer. If I recall correctly, elimination was a niche game mode in RTCW, but it’s been almost 10 years.
/just clarifying

(crazyfoolish) #8

I do agree with you in regard to the matchmaking system. Higher levels just show long you have played the game. Not how good you are. I think what SD was going for with this was an equality of unlocks rather than skill though.

(Bullveyr) #9

[QUOTE=EnderWiggin.DA.;271021]No, he’s saying he wants the “one life to live” game mode that was in RTCW, but it effectively means the same thing as it was easier to win by eliminating the other team. As I recall, the maps were NOT cut down to one objective. I remember still trying to blow both radar towers in mp_base with only 1 life as an engineer. If I recall correctly, elimination was a niche game mode in RTCW, but it’s been almost 10 years.
/just clarifying[/QUOTE]
Iirc it was “limited lifes” and not “1 life” allthought you probably could tune it that way with server settings, the rest was the same.

Imho some one life mode just doesn’t fit the game, so I don’t see the need for that.

(DarkangelUK) #10

You got both, there were about the same amount of OLTL servers as there were limited lives. I preferred OLTL myself.

(X-Frame) #11

I personally hope that K/D Ratio’s are nowhere to be found in Brink, anywhere - but that’s just me.

From my point of view, if not showing the KDR means less KDR-whores buy/play the game - that’s a good thing.

(JeP) #12

K/D Ratios : SD aren’t minimizing the killing, caus 1) it’s satisfying by itself, 2) you need to do it to get to the objectives, as you said.

They just doing their best to limit lone wolf ratio-whores.

(Humate) #13

Sites like rystats show, there wasn’t a single game we won in etqw where we didnt dominate the kill count.
Thats not to say if your team collectively owns the other team in kills that you will win. But it gives you a far better chance to win than trying to do a ninja plant everyone knows about.

(Apples) #14

[QUOTE=Humate;271052]Sites like rystats show, there wasn’t a single game we won in etqw where we didnt dominate the kill count.
Thats not to say if your team collectively owns the other team in kills that you will win. But it gives you a far better chance to win than trying to do a ninja plant everyone knows about.[/QUOTE]

Thats because you need better ninjas ^^

apples goes back in teh shadows…woooosh

(master[mind]) #15

[QUOTE=BMXer;271017]Someone will just come out with a server side mod that tells everyone via chat K/Ds if its not on the scoreboard already. Just like ETQW… problem sovled…you can pat yourself on the back when you get most frags but your team still looses ;).
Honestly, would the scoreboards lack of a basically useless stat actually keep you from playing a game you would otherwise enjoy? Come on…

Are you are saying the game needs a S&D mode just to appeal to the COD crowd? From a pub standpoint, S&D is definatly not the most popular mode in COD i dont think. I would have to say TDM is. There are always tons of populated TDM and DOM servers and only a few S&D.

And yea, shooting is very important but by no means does having the best aim mean you always win in objective based games. Teamwork and smart play is almost always better than pure aim in games like ETQW and W:ET… and even Quake for that matter. I can’t tell you how many matches my team won against teams with aimbotters in ETQW, but it was more than we lost I bet.[/QUOTE]

It’s interesting to watch some player finish the game with this massive K/D ratio and complain about his team losing. The irony is he did nothing for the team. The reason TDM is so stinkin’ popular is that no one plays objective. Since it’s all about the k/d on the scoreboard, why not play a mode based on that? Thus TDM was born.
I personally only delegate that type of gameplay to truly fast-paced games such as Quake Live, Xonotic, or Warsow. Call of Duty is pitifully slow compared to those games.
I do fear people will become frustrated at the lack of a K/D, but that will just have to play out when the game is released. As someone said, a mod can easily be implemented.

(Apoc) #16

Cant help but think that the no KD ratio may be to do with other motives than kill whoring.

Firstly, people dont like other people to think they are rubbish at a game. If the top player has been doing all the objectives and helping out alot, then it is likely they will have a kd ratio of like 0.5 or less, and that doesnt feel rewarding for them.

They have said many times, “you will die alot in this game” and i think one of the reasons they have took it out is because thats how the game is played, you get stuck in, you kill you die, its an integral part of the game. If everyone hung back to protect their kd then nothing would get done. By eliminating the kd ratio on the scoreboard you eliminate the peer pressure not to die and not to play how you want to.

(Jess Alon) #17

There’s no K/D because it causes a lot of gamers to hide like bitches and only come out for the easy kills. Like when someone runs past a doorway they are hiding behind. This is a death sentence for team work. Anyone who’s played bfbc2 and had their teammates camping with shotguns at chokepoints but not capping objectives knows. In an objective based game your rating should be how many games your team wins and overall team performance. Then people would actually chip in.

(1234567) #18

Controversial? Hardly.

If you want controversial, you should see these photos of me on certain websites.

Just kidding.

(Apples) #19

[QUOTE=1234567;271067]Controversial? Hardly.

If you want controversial, you should see these photos of me on certain websites.

Just kidding.[/QUOTE]

Links or it didnt happen…

(Mustkunstn1k) #20

The whole point about K/D is quite pointless obviously. Pretty sure you can see your own and you can definetly see about it in the end.

Elimination would not be good because of balance. You create characters based on their abilities to move forward. Some abilities like Soldiers bomb and so one would be pointless in elimination. That means that medics for example become more powerful. The balance is ruined.

I’m totally meh about the console lobby system.