Balancing Brink : Othor Games

» Tue May 17, 2011 12:02 am

http://www.next-gen.biz/features/balancing-on-the-brink

» Mon May 16, 2011 11:59 pm

I really hope they put as much work into it as they appear to be. Play testing is a lost art. Usually it's based on the Ready, Fire, Aim Business Model. Using us, the consumer, to playtest a game that obviously wasn't ready to begin with and report back with our errors....then timidly begin the nine month patching process to fix 23% of the problems.

» Tue May 17, 2011 12:08 pm

Interesting read.

Glad to see that they are still able to tweak gameplay aspects instanteously after the game's release, to ensure everything is perfectly balanced.

I'm really glad you can't invest in class-specific abilities until the second rank. This gives people some time to switch classes a bunch in the first five levels, and find which one suits them. They'll have some time to see what the classes can do before they lock into one of them and specialize.

» Tue May 17, 2011 6:49 am

OK wraith gets a turtle and a ninja for that one http://www.reelcomix.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/tmnt1.jpg

» Tue May 17, 2011 12:39 pm

OK wraith gets a turtle and a ninja for that one http://www.reelcomix.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/tmnt1.jpg

Nice.

» Mon May 16, 2011 11:58 pm

Good find! Although I don't like the sound of "the guy with the greatest bandwidth is king"
I really hope this doesn't turn into another Gears of Wtf!!. :pinch:

» Tue May 17, 2011 2:05 pm

Liking that article.

Also, I'm with Ominuse.

» Tue May 17, 2011 8:37 am

Good find! Although I don't like the sound of "the guy with the greatest bandwidth is king"
I really hope this doesn't turn into another Gears of Wtf!!. :pinch:

Agreed in a sense. Having the best bandwidth makes the round better for everyone but hopefully not too good for the http://images.businessweek.com/ss/06/09/ceo_socnet/image/burger-king.jpg

» Tue May 17, 2011 12:15 pm

"Do not expect Brink to be a closed system where you buy the game and that's it. We want to engage people in a
dialogue, problems they run into, bugs they've discovered. That way we can be responsive to what players feel they
need from the game, and it's very exciting for us."

:thumbsup:

"There are some abilities in the game that are better than others. We knew that, and there's a number of ways to
address that. 1) It's hard to argue against an ability that makes your life meter 15 to 20 per cent longer. That's good in
any circumstances. We made that the first ability that you could get. It's available to everyone. Anything that we identify
as generally more powerful we make as widely available as fast as possible."

Meh, that just sounds like "Alright, there is a bunch of "must-have-abilities; either you get them, or you are at a disadvantage. Period."

"The bases are covered, and in the first few levels you have access to just these abilities"

With the above you could simply switch "access" and "to" and get a completely new path of progression!

"We don't even call them sniper rifles, we call them long rifles, so we don't send that message."

So they're long rifles now? I wonder if they will look as stupid in the hands of a player as the snipers in CoD then ...

» Tue May 17, 2011 11:56 am

The interviewer sure does make a lot of comparisons to Battlefied.

But anyway, it's pretty cool that they can balance things with literally just a few keystrokes.

» Tue May 17, 2011 3:00 am

Nice to know i can change ~~character~~ class in the middle of a mission because someone else is not holding their own..

» Tue May 17, 2011 5:45 am

Long Rifles?
MUST.....
RESIST....
sixUAL INNUENDO.....
But I think he refers to BF a lot because in BC2 its guaranteed that half your team will be sniper or medics, which when there is a large team it can be very irritating.

» Tue May 17, 2011 3:30 pm

Nice to know i can change character in the middle of a mission because someone else is not holding their own..

You can change class not character.

» Tue May 17, 2011 2:33 am

The most important thing in matchmaking is the quality of your internet connection. We don't use dedicated servers for consoles, it's peer to peer. The person with the most upload bandwidth is king. -Neil Alphonso

Uh oh...

» Tue May 17, 2011 12:14 pm

Uh oh...

Ummmm... maybe he means that player will be wearing a crown, ya know, because he's the king?!?

» Tue May 17, 2011 2:51 pm

I'm not worried about that. The host is always king with the peer to peer system. There's just no way around it. What really matters is how high his high-horse is, or in other words how much of an advantage he or she has over everyone else. With good netcode, the host can be almost just another average schmo.

» Tue May 17, 2011 5:44 am

Maybe it means they're going to be host, which makes their system handle all contact between everyone else - thus balancing the lag issues?

» Tue May 17, 2011 5:09 am

the only part of that read that raised an eyebrow to me, and i hope he was just being universal in his terms was "The only people who are going to have trouble levelling up are people who are holding the controller upside down." i hope the testers are using keyboards as well :facepalm:

» Tue May 17, 2011 8:27 am

You can change class not character.

I meant class..

» Tue May 17, 2011 2:37 am

Nice find. I'll give it a re-read in a bit.

» Tue May 17, 2011 4:16 pm

the only part of that read that raised an eyebrow to me, and i hope he was just being universal in his terms was "The only people who are going to have trouble levelling up are people who are holding the controller upside down." i hope the testers are using keyboards as well :facepalm:

I bet they are.

» Tue May 17, 2011 3:04 am

im so pist over the long riffles you cant kill one shot in qucke 3 you can use rail gun to kill in one shot and it is really hard, evrey one are moveing so fast in brink you have long rifle to shot to wound not to kill
humm.. player with good machine gun will always win

» Tue May 17, 2011 8:19 am

I have no idea what your saying.

Read http://www.fragworld.org/frag/community-blogs/brink-info-pt-1-story-gameplay-smart-classes-and-objectives.html It's has all the information on Brink and why there should not be OHK's and how it is balanced.

» Tue May 17, 2011 2:21 am

im so pist over the long riffles you cant kill one shot in qucke 3 you can use rail gun to kill in one shot and it is really hard, evrey one are moveing so fast in brink you have long rifle to shot to wound not to kill
humm.. player with good machine gun will always win

You might want to quit while you're only a little behind, instead of digging yourself into a MUCH deeper hole than even Wraith or I could climb out of... (and trust me, that's a pretty deep hole)

» Tue May 17, 2011 1:47 pm

I guess it's kind of understandable. The 2/3/4 shot kills with the SVU in B:BC2 aren't all that bad. It takes a lot of skill to use the SVU, but it's so much more rewarding and versatile than the stupid bolt actions. Besides, wounding an enemy will actually mean something since they can't recover all the way without the help of a Medic. As for the leveling, it's supposed to be easy to start, and then you get thrown into a whole different dimension when you reach the next rank up.