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I'm amazed there's anyone still playing it, the playerbase took a nosedive pretty hard and fast shortly after it came out

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I'm amazed there's anyone still playing it, the playerbase took a nosedive pretty hard and fast shortly after it came out

Ditto, aside from art it was completely mediocre.

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I'm amazed there's anyone still playing it, the playerbase took a nosedive pretty hard and fast shortly after it came out

Well, I didn't have a problem getting a game last night, but earlier in the day it was stuck looking for people for ages. I didn't check to see what kind of experience people had. Maybe the Steam sale has kicked it back into life a little?

Ditto, aside from art it was completely mediocre.

I've barely touched it, fun so far but we'll see. The art style is very cool. Not being snarky (at all) but what multiplayer shooters would you recommend? I haven't played many online. TF2 seems like the easiest to just drop in and play.

For five bucks, if I play Brink on multiplayer for a while and move on after two or three weeks, I'd be fairly happy.

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Unfortunately every time there's a decent sale on Brink it means that, while the player levels are temporarily bolstered, they're bolstered with people who've never played a Splash Damage game before, which means scads of people ignoring objectives to deathmatch. Which means unfun.

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Unfortunately every time there's a decent sale on Brink it means that, while the player levels are temporarily bolstered, they're bolstered with people who've never played a Splash Damage game before, which means scads of people ignoring objectives to deathmatch. Which means unfun.

Oh dear. I could very much be one of those people. Though I try not to be by sticking with a group as much as I can. Medic works that way because the whole point of the class is to support people. I don't know enough about the game yet to be an infiltrator.

I might have been lucky last night... there was a mix of classes (not just all soldiers) and people seemed to be grouped together at least.

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Brink is great in multiplayer, not in solo (I mean, it works, but it's not worth mentionning). I find it the best SplashDamage to date, on par with RtcW:ET: it's a refined version of their team-play recipe, applied in levels architectured to make this gameplay look good (as opposed to 'Quake Wars Enemy Territory', where, I feel, the huge levels were a detriment to the game flow). This games does a lot of smart things in terms of immediate feedback and minute-to-minute loop that encourage and reward teamplay like no other game. I just love those multiplayer scenarios in which each steps put the responsibility on the shoulders of different classes. But it takes players who are willing to follow others for a while to know what to do next... basically, it'd be best for newcome to play medic (I mostly play medic myself); so that they NEED to stay with other players and focus on the situation rather than mowing down the enemy.

I didn't play a huge amount of it though, so I can't talk so much about the evolution/skill system; but it seemed decent enough

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Well, I didn't have a problem getting a game last night, but earlier in the day it was stuck looking for people for ages. I didn't check to see what kind of experience people had. Maybe the Steam sale has kicked it back into life a little?

I've barely touched it, fun so far but we'll see. The art style is very cool. Not being snarky (at all) but what multiplayer shooters would you recommend? I haven't played many online. TF2 seems like the easiest to just drop in and play.

For five bucks, if I play Brink on multiplayer for a while and move on after two or three weeks, I'd be fairly happy.

Honestly don't play many shooters these days, the last ones I had fun with were Tribes and TF2. I believe there was enough discussion on the problems of the game design in the thread but to sum it up:

If you ignore the fact that they tried to sell this as a single player game, because that's a whole other thing, there really isn't much going on to be a sustained, fun multiplayer. Every mission boils down to "Go here, press a button for X amount of time." The classes are barely different, the enemies are indistinguishable from your team mates, and the map designs are not fun.

The controls handle well, the art is great, and it's a competent shooter; but its 2012 and I think for a MP only game, you need to offer more then good graphics and guys shooting at each other.

edit: Just going to add something based on vimes quote:

I just love those multiplayer scenarios in which each steps put the responsibility on the shoulders of different classes. But it takes players who are willing to follow others for a while to know what to do next... basically, it'd be best for newcome to play medic (I mostly play medic myself); so that they NEED to stay with other players and focus on the situation rather than mowing down the enemy.

I totally disagree with much of what I explained above. The classes actions are pretty much exactly the same across the board and that any mission responsibility is arbitrary. Whatever the mission and whichever classes responsibility doesn't matter because it all results in going somewhere and holding down a button for a time period. Pretty uninspiring to me.

*I haven't played it since release, so maybe it's different or I am remembering incorrectly though.

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Whatever the mission and whichever classes responsibility doesn't matter because it all results in going somewhere and holding down a button for a time period. Pretty uninspiring to me.

To me, it doesn't matter that the action is pressing X. What matters is that, by requiring different classes to perform that action in different context (e.g. static or moving target), you ask the team to reorganize itself to catter for it: if the guy is a engineer or a medic, you'll have to play in a very different way to bring the player to the point and support him there. Having a function monopolized at that point, also means that whatever perks/advantages that class/guy was bringing to the battle normally won't have much an impact anymore. Also, most of the time, the steps can be solved in two ways, and deciding which way to prioritize in attack and monitor in defense gets pretty interesting. It also creates pretty awesome narratives. More so than TF2; which is pretty cool already.

As for the class being 'barely' different I don't it's a fair description:

  • operative does overt stuff like infiltration/diversion by hacking and rarely enters direct combat
  • medic does energy/health resupply and his basically always right behind the front line; but will need to dive into it to revive key members.
  • engineers are mostly about securing positions or extending the front so that a defending can't just barricade themselves
  • the soldier shoots people in the face and resupply everybody

Of course, if everybody is playing every class as the soldier; it doesn't work; but I'm not sure you can blame SplashDamage for that: they are doing what they can to entice the players to 'roleplay' their class, but breaking habits taken up on of CoD or TF2 is probably tough. I mean, I'm not giving them any slack, they need to find solutions for that; but I know it's complicated.

As for the map not being fun, I disagree but I can't challenge you on that, it's a matter of taste. And in any case, I know a significant amount of people who share your opinion.

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Fair enough, maybe I never saw a proper game play out. It felt like everyone was playing which every class in the same fashion, the differences between the class seemed very minute to really tell if there asn't more going on than straight up death match with an objective to go to a location and press a button. So by that, telling the player it has to be a certain class to press a button didn't make much difference because the differences between the class weren't apparent to me.

Again, maybe it was too subtle or I had a bad experience, who knows. I'd articulate myself more in terms of level design, but I simply don't remember most of the designs other than they seemed big for the amount of players and uninspired.

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Brink is such a fun game. Shame it got fucked over by an incredibly buggy launch. ):

I hopped on once about half a year ago and there were literally zero people playing. Hopped on again a few months later, and there was ONE server with a bunch of people who were apparently very bad at the game, because I completely dominated them, almost single-handedly.

Although, granted, the game's biggest flaw is that defending is too easy on most maps. Part of that is because people tried to play it like a deathmatch game, and part of it is because the map design isn't the best it could be. I can only imagine how great it'd be, now, if enough people had continued playing it to merit continued support, which would've inevitably led to better-balanced maps.

Re: classes feeling different: They definitely do, but it takes some leveling up to reach that point. That's the game's second biggest flaw. FUCK PERKS.

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Ditto, aside from art it was completely mediocre.

I've got to disagree. There's a lot of innovation in Brink I'd like to see in other team based games:

  • Unique goals in the map and XP per character class driving everyone to help the team
  • In field revival enabled by the medic, but controlled by the downed player
  • A setting and style not based on modern warfare or marines in space
  • Terrain traversal opens up the map instead of locking it behind cover points

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I've got to disagree. There's a lot of innovation in Brink I'd like to see in other team based games:

  • Unique goals in the map and XP per character class driving everyone to help the team
  • In field revival enabled by the medic, but controlled by the downed player
  • A setting and style not based on modern warfare or marines in space
  • Terrain traversal opens up the map instead of locking it behind cover points

Brink was just another good idea that they didn't manage to execute.

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Yea I really liked Brink in a lot of ways, but the buggy launch and some of the maps are just poorly designed. Most of the indoor maps are just giant chokepoint fodder. The first section of the junkyard map is also a little silly. I really enjoyed my time with it but the bugs/lack of people tired me out. I really had some spectacular moments with the parkour.

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I've got to disagree. There's a lot of innovation in Brink I'd like to see in other team based games:

  • Unique goals in the map and XP per character class driving everyone to help the team
  • In field revival enabled by the medic, but controlled by the downed player
  • A setting and style not based on modern warfare or marines in space
  • Terrain traversal opens up the map instead of locking it behind cover points

I might be remembering this completely incorrectly, but what were the unique goals? Just because the objective statement is "go diffuse this" "go repair that" "capture this point" "unlock this door" or what have you, doesn't make them unique. It's a presentation of the object, but the way the character executes these objectives, despite the class, is nearly entirely the same; that's only an illusion of unique goals and not actual unique design.

"Terrain traversal opens up the map instead of locking it behind cover points"

Do you mean hopping over cover and increased movement speed? The "parkour" system was neat, but there have been a million multiplayer shooters that predate cover based gameplay that allow you to get around the map quickly; the difference may be the animation support in those other games wasn't as detailed as Brinks. Once again, this is window dressing on top of something that had already been established in the genre, but points to Brink for articulating it so well and possibly taking that aspect of a shooter to a higher level. Though I'd argue that after seeing some Tribes 1 players back in 2001 that had pin point accuracy at incredible speeds while traversing giant maps that I am less impressed by Brinks actual game implementation but still impressed by the fidelity of the animation system.

Anyway, I'm going to stop pooping on the game, I more wanted to question some of the comments here as I think people might be mistaken presentation over actual design. Though, I am happy to see some people like it because at least it looks pretty and had very deliberate art direction that was well executed, so I appreciate it a lot on that level.

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I might be remembering this completely incorrectly, but what were the unique goals? Just because the objective statement is "go diffuse this" "go repair that" "capture this point" "unlock this door" or what have you, doesn't make them unique. It's a presentation of the object, but the way the character executes these objectives, despite the class, is nearly entirely the same; that's only an illusion of unique goals and not actual unique design.

Well of course the team as a whole was responsible for an objective. It'd be silly to have five classes going after five primary objectives. Showing the player and giving out explicit rewards for support actions instead of "capping the flag" is what I'm talking about. All team based shooters have support actions but Brink was explicit in showing you those actions instead of relying on players to infer it.

Do you mean hopping over cover and increased movement speed? The "parkour" system was neat, but there have been a million multiplayer shooters that predate cover based gameplay that allow you to get around the map quickly; the difference may be the animation support in those other games wasn't as detailed as Brinks. Once again, this is window dressing on top of something that had already been established in the genre, but points to Brink for articulating it so well and possibly taking that aspect of a shooter to a higher level. Though I'd argue that after seeing some Tribes 1 players back in 2001 that had pin point accuracy at incredible speeds while traversing giant maps that I am less impressed by Brinks actual game implementation but still impressed by the fidelity of the animation system.

The fluid movement over obstacles is what I'm talking about. Not getting stuck on waist high crates and the ability to mantle up walls. I'd love to hear about a CQB game that does it throughout the map instead of particular defined points. Tribes has a whole different mechanic, scale, weapons, physics. I can't really compare the two other than it and Brink has unique movement.

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Classes

I might not be explaining this correctly; regardless of the one goal per map/mission, it was essentially the same goal for EVERY map and mission even if it required a different class. So it seemed arbirtary and just window dressing to say "the solider needs to do this" and "engineer needs to do this" when "this" is the exact same action. But yes, they told you things you could do to be helping, thats good feedback/Ui, but the things you were doing weren't interesting and nearly exactly the same for each class, which lead me to believe to a breakdown in class distinction.

Movement

No you're right, Brink does movement well, I never disagreed with that. I still relate it to Tribes though even if the environments are different, there are tight cooridors in tribes with rounded turns and twists that with the right skill can be overcome in a blink of the eye. The obstacles and way you are moving different, but I think the "goal" and feeling is the same. But again, Brink does it well, my disagreement was this idea was nothing new to mp fps (I lump action quake and Team fortress grenade/rocket jumps into this same principle) it's just that it was executed well with modern cover mechanics.

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I don't think you can compare Tribes and Brink. They're trying to do entirely different things, right?

It's almost as weird as comparing sprinting in Military Shooter to rocket jumping in TF2. Not QUITE as weird, but still weird.

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I wasn't comparing the games, I was comparing the motives of quick, kinetic movement and getting over obstacles with ease between the two games. I think Brinks movement system comes from the same desire many fps have had to keep combat fast, mobile and fresh.

So, that's why I'm mentioning it, even if the executions are totally different. Probably just not explaining myself properly, but I have a point in that it all connects to a similar design intention.

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I know you weren't comparing the games. I meant in terms of movement, I don't think they're comparable. Sure, the end goal is the same, but the means are so radically different that I would never compare them beyond "they let you get around faster".

But this is now a silly conversation 'cause we're just going "I would" and "I wouldn't" which is completely pointless!

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Yep, done with this, I think I've talked about Brink more than playing it. I don't understand your argument and you don't understand mine, so lets be done with it.

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Oh, I do understand your argument! I didn't mean to imply that! I totally get where you're coming from... We just have different, uh, what's the word! UH UH.

UH.

SOMETHING. DIFFERENT SOMETHING. UH.

Different SOMETHING for judging whether or not something is worth comparing, and that's all we were talking about, which, yeah, is obviously just a silly thing to talk about..

Now I'm upset because I can't remember the word. It's an easy word, I know it is. C'mon, brain.

EDIT: METRIC.

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Wow Twig, that's pretty insensitive. I mean damn dude, metric? Wow.

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Oh, can we please not enter another rhetorical/meta argument? We got so many of those recently... :frusty:

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I'll metricize your meta-rhetoric.

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Linguistic hate crimes ITT.

(We are joking, vimes.)

I tell you what though, I could perform some linguine hate crimes right now.

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