Will BRINK be strategic?

(therapiist-_-) #21

I think it come down how people play the game… their a lot of players that just care about their K/D the most. When you party up with ur friends that plays to win games, its really fun!

(DefyzGravityXx) #22

Thats true but as long as theres an actual initiative to play for objectives then thatll push people more into playing the right way. I have good hopes for Brink though class based games usually lead to heightened strategy play.

(deems) #23

[QUOTE=Auzner;247322]Choices:

  1. Body type - HP, speed, agility, weapon selection
  2. Parkour frequency - Play style, map knowledge, body type
  3. Weapon types - Personal, preference, pros and cons to weigh, unlocks
  4. Weapon mods - pros and cons, unlocks
  5. Limited skill selection - Can’t take everything so focus on general or a class
  6. Character level differences - Not everyone will be a copy of your character
  7. Teammates - Different experience levels to deal with. Some people will need more help than others
  8. Class load out - Not everyone chooses the same classes for the same reasons
  9. Missions - Primary, secondary, tertiary objectives with some optional

So there’s more to this game than clicking “play” and then just shooting whatever moves. Smart players will figure out what is effective sooner. Experienced players can optimize their actions and organize the team. Adept gamers will find the strengths of each weapon. Combining all 3 will make it very strategic and give a lot of possibilities to think about. Not everyone can be smart or adept very easily, but in a game like Brink experience will mean a lot. I’m talking about the study of the game, not what level your characters are. Just logging hours of play time is studying it. Witnessing differences in how everything balances and changes.[/QUOTE]

These aren’t what I mean by strategy. I’ll try to give an example.

Once, a long time ago in a tapir far far away…:stroggtapir: In a pub match in the first objective of Valley in ETQW, (build the bridge), the better organised strogg team had 3-4 snipers that were killing any engineers working on the bridge before they could do any good. The rest of their team was making it hard for GDF to do anything about the snipers, and the large quantity of them meant that even if you took one or two of them out, there would still be the third or fourth to take out your engineers. This went on for a few minutes before we got wise (it was just a pub match after all) and a covert ops popped smoke on the build area vastly decreasing the effectiveness of the snipers. We then could complete the objective relatively rapidly.

The strogg had the strategy of several snipers that was counterable by the smoke. A different approach taken by strogg would have required a different response by gdf etc. This particular example does not use the vehicles and deployables, but it did use the large scale of the maps / snipers. I think it’s good that Brink will be more close quarters combat – should be great fun, I just am also hoping that there are sufficient ways to accomplish (and prevent the accomplishment of) objectives that you have to switch up your tactics to adapt to the enemy…and that the game is dynamic in this way that ETQW was (moreso than ET:W).

Cheers,
Deems

(tokamak) #24

Then you missed Auzner’s point because the whole list he named are areas which offers scope for strategy.

(deems) #25

Yes, I suppose there is opportunity for the game to be strategic in all of those areas, but there won’t necessarily be strategy in any of them. I’m hoping that there will be.

(LyndonL) #26

WTF? That’s like saying I hope this Egg has a yolk in it, but there won’t necessarily be one.

(deems) #27

No, it isn’t. The fact that there are choices (e.g. gun type) does not mean that there are strategic decisions to be made with those choices.

(LyndonL) #28

Really? So a few of the team hanging in the back with a high damage but slow fire rate weapon, and the people on the front line with a mid-low damage weapon with a high fire rate isn’t strategy?

That pretty much fits in with your story you told a few posts back re snipers etc.

(tokamak) #29

Of course there is, the moment you add choice is the moment you add strategy.

(Loffy) #30

Agree (altough nick is terrible).

It’s not all about the number of variables or the size of maps, rather it’s about the play. Chess has few pieces and limited space yet it can be both tactical and strategic on a high level.

(deems) #31

I see a difference between strategy and tactics. I think that some games have more strategy (a larger-scale form of tactics e.g., what the whole team is doing) than others. I don’t think that just because you can choose those things listed by Auzner it automatically leads to a strategic game. I think whether or not a game has a good amount of strategy is more subtle than simply how many choices you have…having to do with how all the game dynamics work together, what the maps are like, how many different ways there are that the tactics can be successfully combined, how well balanced those strategies are, etc. Perhaps it’s more about how many different ways the whole team can operate rather than how many different ways each individual can operate?

If you disagree…fair enough. I can’t be bothered to argue about it anymore.

I think the people at SD have done a good job at pushing the envelope in terms of strategy in the ET series…and I hope they manage keep it up with Brink, keeping it a nice combination of tactics and strategy, but as I said in the OP there are some changes that give me a tiny bit of concern that the game won’t be as strategic as ETQW.

Over and out!

Deems

(tokamak) #32

Good as this got to be one of the least interesting threads after female skins.

(LyndonL) #33

… and the one about the medic class :tongue:

(tokamak) #34

At least with the medic class we were discussing an actual point instead of mere semantics

(Apples) #35

He’s just talking about “meta”-strategies while you guyz are discussing individual choice, but yup its just about semantic here.

I guess we can change “strategic” in the thread’s name by “teamplay oriented” and it’ll fit better IMO, so yes, its SD, there will have teamplay!

Peace, oh and be nice with teh new guyz ppl, we are not a sect AFAIR…

(davethejackal) #36

I can only assume that many of the commenters above have never played ETQW, which offered everything Brink will, but in spades (including the equivalent of the mission wheel, squads, side objectives, reviving team mates etc).

Ok so it didn’t have body types or a persistent experience system, but it had more than enough variety in play and a game in which each player started with 0XP and accumulated XP and perks over a 3 game ‘campaign’ was no bad think IMO.

It was perhaps a conscious decision by splash damage to dumb down ETQW because they thought it had too steep a learning curve. Indeed, I almost discarded the game before ‘getting in to it’ but if you ask me, the fault lay more in their presentation and tutorials which didn’t set out the overall structure of the game, which TF2 did (hence TF2 won). Also possibly the reason they are emulating TF2’s visual style this time.

They produced these excellent tutorials for the beta of the game, which for some mindnumbingly inconceivable reason were left out of the production version:


So that the came seemed incoherent and confusing the newcomers.

We will see how brink plays out, if it comes with 1/3 the depth of gameplay of ETQW it will not be a bad game, it’s just a shame that ETQW never got the attention it deserved!

PS Brink also loses the Artillery/Launcher classes of ETQW… hence 4 rather than 5 basic class choices. :frowning:

(dazman76) #37

Welcome to the forums Dave, but… Erm… WUT? :slight_smile:

(Slade05) #38

Because Dave never saw anything else lol.

(Schwarzeis) #39

I think he means that there is no map, only cutscenes

Or well… That the maps are one-pathed into a killzone, and there is more cutscenes than play

Something like that… That’s what I got out of it

(BrigandSk(A)) #40

Heavies are the vehicles of Brink who can get over obstacles but not climb high walls as mediums can, not even think to climb over very high walls as only the lights can.

Being able to climb (Z axis), is the most strategic feature in Brink.
Until Brink, all other fps games have the movement clunky, all previous fps games… 90% are based on horizontal paths and tunnel like maps with few secondary paths to choose (the 10% are the buildings with a 1st or 2nd floor)

Brink makes the revolution by giving us the chance to explore a new world! Maps where you can now go anywhere as long as you have the physical condition (light, medium).
So instead of having 3 main roads and 6 secondary paths… we can now have almost an unlimited supply of paths at any time… any where!

what a pathetic thread…