What co-operative elements are there?

(10chankc2) #1

Will it be like left 4 dead and army of 2 where u can swaps weapons and health?

(tokamak) #2

Doubt it. From what’s released. It’s as cooperative as Quake wars, except you stay with your team while you move on to new maps and meet new opponents. That would it make it actually more cooperative then any other game.

(DarkangelUK) #3

I like the whole dynamic thing going on, you could steam roll one team, then when you move on you’re up against a team that’s giving you lots of grief. Rather than just the same 2 teams all the time.

(engiebenjy) #4

The whole sticking with the same team is really interesting, but I just cannot get my head around how it will work. So at the end of the map the opponent team would be swapped… so the game would need to look for another team waiting to play the next map in the campaign? The team you just played would search for a team waiting to play the next map in their campaign? Is this how people think it will work?

Crikey :slight_smile:

(Shiv) #5

if it is like that it would need a decent amount of players on at all times eh!
hopefully it will be like qw where ping being under 300 isnt horrific.

(Floris) #6

[QUOTE=engiebenjy;195021]The whole sticking with the same team is really interesting, but I just cannot get my head around how it will work. So at the end of the map the opponent team would be swapped… so the game would need to look for another team waiting to play the next map in the campaign? The team you just played would search for a team waiting to play the next map in their campaign? Is this how people think it will work?

Crikey :)[/QUOTE]

Well they can always use a bot team temporarily, and slowly change bot players with real players who are just joining the game, though I figure it would be strange to join in the middle of a match if you’re following story mode. That would be an easy solution, and not very elegant. The game could do a calculation on the chance that there would be an opponent ready in for example 5 minutes and ask the players if they want to wait and see how that one turns out, maybe even allow them to spectate it. You could of course also join a match under-way if your side in that match is filled with bots (or partially filled).

So there are three options for a winning team with players playing story mode:
a) Start a new match with bots => Start directly
b) Wait for another match to finish, hopefully the opposite sided team playing the map you just finished or any map (for free roaming teams) wins=> Wait for a period of time
c) There is already a team on the opposite side waiting for an opponent on that map or any map (free roaming) => Start directly
d) Join a match already under-way => Start directly

It would be easier for teams which are not following story mode of course, considering they are not limited by by the map to find an opponent team on. Maybe you can also put players into this group who are playing story mode but are not really interested in playing it linear (in one of the video interviews Mr. Ham did say that if players wanted they could play the game like a book, in which you decide yourself which page you will start reading from).

Another issue which would come up is who would choose for the team? In my opinion it should be up to you to do whatever you want, so the game should just list choices (ordered from most desirable to least desirable), and list the players who have opted for that choice. Worst case scenario, your team is split up, own fault. I guess that wouldn’t be desirable for co-operative play with a party though, in that case the system would only list the options where you can move on with at least the amount of players in your party.

I really envy the guys working on figuring out how this will work, there’s a lot of room for innovation.

(tokamak) #7

Rahdo already said that it’s more about playing WITH the ones you know then AGAINST the ones you know. So teams being split and all is unlikely.

(Floris) #8

Yes but there are different kinds of relations you can have with other players, they can for example be buddies, party members or just regular team members (if the game distinguished parties and teams of course), so in some cases splitting up might have a lot of advantages like a shorter wait time and joining a match with more of your buddies.

(tokamak) #9

Yeah that’s true. In WoW you can join with a party of friends in a battleground. That means, you form up a group and the leader gets the entire group invited into the battleground so everyone plays together alongside random solo players or other groups.

(Mustang) #10

Auto-swapping out opponents after each match sounds like fun

(deadlights) #11

I am interested to watch some AI in this game. ETQW bots were not so smart…

(Rahdo) #12

I’d love to hear what you guys felt the problems with ETQW bots were (as well as what they did right :slight_smile: ) I’m sure Jonas would too…

(deadlights) #13

I will go play a game with bots after work tomorrow (to refresh my memory), and I will be happy to make a post about it.

(tokamak) #14

One thing I didn’t like about the bots was that they always appeared to be played by the same player.

In multiplayer, human players stand out, they’re either really good at something or they’re really bad at something (yet keep attempting). You can recognise the players on the field by their behaviour. No player really is the same. There’s always a few stars, a few failures, and a few specialists.

They even have different kinds of approaching combat. Some go for a more direct approach, move allot and try to close in you while firing. Others are more cautious and try to keep a distance while firing trough their gunsights.

The bots all do the same thing, they’re homogeneous. It’s a group of bots that all do varied things, instead of a varied group of bots that all have their own specialities.

Unreal Tournament (classic) for example had the abillity to tweak your own bots. They weren’t as smart as ETQW’s (nor did they have to in a more simple setting), but at least you could all give them their own ‘character’ by tweaking different parameters. You could adjust their mobillity, accuracy, recklessness, tactical insight etc. You could even pick their favourite weapons!

That’s what I’d like to see for brink. I don’t need to be able to make them myself, I just want varied ‘characters’ for bots.

(Exedore) #15

We just might be looking at some of those things, time will tell!

(tokamak) #16

What I really liked was that the team bots don’t ignore you as a player. They give lifts and help you out when you need healing and ammo. The problem with this though, that in co-op, players who do know the bot mechanics, can ‘hog’ all the bot’s attention and make them their personal servants.

Maybe bots should have diminishing returns in how much they help one player so their attention is evenly divided over the whole team. Like ETQW’s energy bar there’s a hidden bot ‘energy’ bar that empties every time a bot executes your command and then slowly refills again. A bot could even give a voice indicator that he’s had enough of being your bitch and is now off to do something for himself or other players.

The ‘slave’ mentality of the bot can even be another ‘character’ parameter. So that bots can be nice-guys and assholes or somewhere in between. It would bring the whole deal even more close to an experience with real players.

(engiebenjy) #17

I thought the etqw bots were great overall, but as tokamak says they all behaved the same way. I think just mixing it up so some bots tend to run at you more but others would take cover and fire from range - this might make them more unique and human like. Certainly removing the vehicles will help because in etqw these were the most noticable bot moments for me.

(tokamak) #18

It would be very interesting to see how bots will utilise the smart movement.

Next to personalities, bots could also use a bit of emotion. This can be very superficial, like them keeping a tally of who killed them the most so in a shoot-out, they’ll pick that player as a priority for ‘revenge’. In TF2 you, as a player, can easily see which players are dominating you (by a huge exclamation mark above their head), which almost automatically makes you want to kill that player first above everyone else. A hidden system for bots would be great (especially because it will make unsuspecting players very paranoid about the sentience of these bots :tongue:)

Bots also aren’t really clever in assesising the situation. Human players leg it when they’re low on health and they see a aggressor with a hyperblaster thundering trough a corridor. Bots will keep on whatever they were doing.This would be the hardest to incorporate in an AI as it would require a chess-like computer constantly calculating new scenarios. So maybe this is too much asked.

(Slade05) #19

You know, bots could also do my laundry from time to time, I`d certainly like to see this feature implemented.

(murka) #20

I think this revenge system is in etqw already, at least i think i spot sth similar(around 4 kills).