Want my $30 back...

(jordanlund) #1

I admit to being a little late to the game, I held off buying due to the bad reviews but when I saw Best Buy dropped the price to $40 and I had a $10 gift card in my pocket I figured “Hey, how bad can it be?” Wow… was I wrong… But instead of writing it off and turning it over to my 14 year old (who I should say, loves the game and more or less finished it in 3 hours), I felt an obligation to tell the developers where they went wrong. If we, as players, don’t demand better games then we will never get them.

Games are supposed to be fun. I think we can agree on that. I’m ok with a game giving me an objective, heck, I EXPECT games to give me an objective. I’m even OK with timed missions, though I’m not a fan, It can be exciting barely getting something done just as the clock runs out.

Where the developers went wrong was in letting the clock determine who wins and who loses instead of the players. Take the very first mission… I played as a revolutionary and had to guard a door for a set period of time… that’s easy enough. Done. OK, next mission… kill an operative that the Security team is trying to escort… Done. Wait… he’s not dead? Because the other team respawned and revived him. Ok. I can deal with that. Dead. No, wait, he’s back again. Dead. God-damn it! I killed him within the time restraint, why…

Oh.

See as long as the clock is running the mission isn’t over. In some weird sense of “fairness” the other team keeps getting chances to continue the escort mission even though I’ve already killed them all lots and lots of times. My actions don’t decide who wins, nor do my opponents, it’s all on the clock. It would be like having a fighting game with a three minute clock, but it doesn’t matter how many times you KO the other character in 3 minutes, all that matters is who has the most health or is still standing when the clock runs out.

Here’s a tip - forcing your players into doing the same god-damned task over and over again IS NOT FUN. Games are supposed to be fun, you break that rule and you break the game, it’s pretty much that simple. When the very first mission makes the player want to rage quit because of a broken play mechanic you have a broken game.

What took me a long time to realize is why I thought the game would be better. I attended PAX, I saw the demo, heck, I even got to interview the Splash Damage crew for a gaming blog. How could it have gone wrong from what I was shown? Easy. When they showed us missions in the demo, they only finished the missions once. When they accomplished something, they were done, they moved on to show us someting else. They didn’t tell us that you’d have to sit there playing it over and over until the clock ran out.

That’s not only the flaw in the game, it’s disingenuous.

The heartbreaking part for me is that I WANTED to like the game so bad. I like the art and design. I like the story, which could work very well as a science fiction novel or Mad Max style movie. When I’m playing a game though, I want to feel like I’ve accomplished something and having everything I’ve done be reversed 5 or 10 seconds after I’ve done it and having to re-do it again and again and again isnt’t fun. It’s frustrating and it blows and I’m done with the game now.

People are talking about the DLC and how the game can be fixed… the problem as I see it though is that the game was purposely built this way. You can’t remove the clock without being fair to both sides of an objective. I guess you could do it the old fashioned way… instead of a timer for those doing the escort, you give them three respawns to get to the exit, meaning that the opposing team only has to kill their target three times instead of a more or less infinite number. Maybe have a difficulty option which allows you to set the number of re-spawns before mission failure or something.

In any case, I hope Brink II doesn’t suffer from the same issues. There is huge potential here, it’s just poorly executed.

(suho) #2

Hmmm it sounds like you were looking for a single player experience. If that is the case you can rightfully be dissappointed with Brink because it was advertised as a great single player experience which it is not.

(Crytiqal) #3

The objective is not to kill the NPC, but to stop them from escorting it to the exit within set time period. Durp

(jordanlund) #4

Yes, which I did. About 30 times. Give me a timer and tell me to do something within that time limit and I’ll get it done (Assassin’s Creed being a good example, plenty of timed missions there). Undoing the actions of the player and going “Nope, sorry, now you have to do it again because there’s still time on the clock!” isn’t a durp. It’s bad design.

(suho) #5

It’s not bad design if think about this game as a multiplayer-game which does not feature ‘last man standing’ (like Counterstrike) but respawn.

(Crytiqal) #6

You do realize that in MP the escort mission would be impossible for the escorting team if the enemy would only have to kill the bot once?

You could give everyone 1 life, but then the mission would be over in 5 seconds.

(Breo) #7

You can’t kill the hostage :s the main goal is to prevent him to reach the next location.
But I know what he mean (personally I never liked the escort missions aswell, maintaince bot, vip, etqw mcp).

(jordanlund) #8

How about this then… the level has three checkpoints. You have to escort the target to the end of the level, and if you die you restart at the last checkpoint but you only get three chances to complete the level.

It’s not hard to come up with a solution that doesn’t involve the opposition killing everyone over and over again. It’s 4 in the morning here and I figured that out in about 30 seconds.

In fairness though, most games with escort missions fail you if you or the target die even one time. They seem to be able to get by OK.

(jordanlund) #9

OK, killing is a poor descriptor. “Shooting him with hundreds of rounds of ammo until he repeatedly stops moving.”

Same difference.

(Nexolate) #10

Tbh, I don’t hear anyone complaining about similar modes in other games. Team Fortress 2’s Payload anyone? The defending team never complains cos they can’t blow up the bomb, they just get on with defending.

Regards,
Nexo

Pardon the TF2 reference, again.

(Abdul) #11

“Same difference” - lol

I think you’re missing the point, its going to remain time-based so the rounds dont end quickly, this isn’t realism where you only get one life, can you imagine how much “fun” it would be to have the hostage killed in the first 30 seconds and then game over? The OP killed then game over. Your objective, is to stop him reaching his destination or w/e until the time runs out. It’s simple, and it’s fun. It only becomes boring when you’re against a team thats being slaughtered whilst they attempt to do the objective over and over, so switch sides.

(suho) #12

There is a huge difference between the objective-based gameplay in W:ET, ET:QW, Brink and say for example Counterstrike. In CS you also have an objective like rescue hostages/arm a bomb … However most matches end in one Team killing the other because it is ‘Last man standing’, there is no respawn. This wouldnt work in a game where you have a sequence of multiple objectives. You need to stop thinking of this game as a single player game.

Also if you want to play this game in a competitive fashion (clan war) you use the Stopwatch mode where the attacking Team tries to complete the whole map, eg. rescue the hostage, in the shortest time possible. Then sides are swapped and the previosly defending team now has to beat the time which was set by the other team.

(jordanlund) #13

Single player or multiplayer shouldn’t matter. Forcing any player to do the same thing over and over again is the gaming equivalent of an autistic kid in a helmet repeatedly rocking his head against a wall. It’s not fun. Games are supposed to be fun. Brink fails in this regard.

(tokamak) #14

Where the developers went wrong was in letting the clock determine who wins and who loses instead of the players.

Wow, that´s a new one. And it´s hilarious haha.

(suho) #15

In that sense I can simply argue any shooter featuring Deathmatch is repetitive. All I do is shoot people over and over agian.

(wolfnemesis75) #16

Deja vu. Read a similar thread before. Most of the stuff you dislike, or frustrated you, I think is fun and a challenge. Perhaps its not the game for you. Brink is a fresh breath of air.

(jordanlund) #17

I agree… and since I’ve been playing FPS since Wolfenstein 3D was a new shareware title on floppy disc, and gave up on online multiplayer after Quake, I pretty much agree.

I was promised that Brink would be different… and it was, just not in any kind of good way.

I really do hope that the IP continues in some form or another though because it’s an interesting world to play around in. A MMORPG on the Ark could be interesting.

(kilL_888) #18

i only read the first few paragraphs of your text and must say you clearly expected a totally different game.

dont you read reviews or watch any videos before spending money on something? you have the internets and plenty of sources where you can get informations from.

sry, but i cant understand what you want here?

(suho) #19

[QUOTE=jordanlund;345895]I agree… and since I’ve been playing FPS since Wolfenstein 3D was a new shareware title on floppy disc, and gave up on online multiplayer after Quake, I pretty much agree.

I was promised that Brink would be different… and it was, just not in any kind of good way.

I really do hope that the IP continues in some form or another though because it’s an interesting world to play around in. A MMORPG on the Ark could be interesting.[/QUOTE]

A great single player story-driven game set around the Ark would be really cool to be honest. It has huge potential because it is not the usual good vs. evil, black vs. white kinda setting. I would defenitely buy a Mass Effect kinda game in the Ark universe.

As for me I can say that Brink is fun but also frustrating. I was dissappointed by the relatively slow pace, lower learning curve and smaller skill range compared to SDs previous titles.

(jazevec) #20

Re: OP

I think you are not entirely correct. That is to say I don’t accuse you of lying :-). I think the complaints you have actually highlight more serious issues. I can see two:

  1. “The clock, not players determining who wins”
    Speaking of the hostage, the same person being shot over and over and staying alive is seriously immersion-breaking. They wanted to have an escort mission, fine. There was the tank in Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory and MCP, a huge vehicle, in ET:QW. They both required an engineer. In fact, engineer had the lion’s share of objectives to perform in ET:QW and especially W:ET.

Splash Damage wanted to change that. They wanted every class to participate in objectives, so they made one escort mission require a medic. Up to that point, no Splash Damage game required medic for objective. They were so desperate they sacrificed all remains of realism and made it look silly. It’s a bit similar to the crude buff mechanic - all classes except Operative increase other players’ stats.

  1. “Trying the same thing over and over”.
    Trying to breach the same defense in W:ET and ET:QW was often hard, yet fun. It rarely felt like “the same thing over and over”. The thing is, W:ET and ET:QW offered you multiple interesting options. You could change class to become a sniper, disguise yourself to let teammates through an alternate entrance*, call devastating airstrikes and artillery barrages, bring in a heavy machinegun or grenade launcher. Lots of strong and varied tools. Brink just doesn’t have that much variety of options. Until recently, assault rifles and heavy weapons were a pile of crap. Even now their usefulness is debatable.

Players should be excited about possibilities. In Brink, many of the choices are irrelevant. Weapons are largely interchangeable. W:ET and ET:QW had much smaller number of weapons, but they were distinct.

  • In previous Splash Damage games there were doors which would only open for the defending team. However, Covert Ops class could disguise as a member of defending team and open the door for teammates. Such subtlety is gone from Brink.