Discussion of PAX East Video

Post » Wed Apr 06, 2011 12:15 am

Hello everyone, saw this over on SD forums, and I thought I'd bring it over here. All credit from this post goes to Otto, over at SD Forums. Here we go!
I realize this may be rehashing what has been talked about on other threads, and I apologize if that is on welcome.
Goal
At this time I thought it would be prudent to start fresh in-light of we now have more real game play videos and testers that can help anolyze this to a more accurate state. To take what we have talked about and observed, and brake it down to a purer form then we have seen before.
Speculation
Talking to my friend tonight, the more and more he sees more about brink the more he is becoming indifferent to it, where once before he was just as excited as I am.
Him and I are both big long term TF2 players, for all it's faults, it still manages to encourage team work. The window of current content he and I have observed is giving the impression that this isn't what Brink is going to offer per-say. I would like to state now NETHER of us are looking for a TF2 clone by any means. Him and I both agree that its the essence of TF2 style encourage teamwork coordination would be highly welcomed in Brink not the entire game.
Observation
What we are lead to believe by what we have seen thus far is this; a team has to all work toward goals unique to the roll in which we are playing, and tho we fight together on the same map to while attempting accomplish said goals, it presents itself as if a bunch people are running around from place to place on a map, randomly bumping into each other while trying to push switches unique to each player.
Comparison
A similar effect can happen in TF2 play but not always as drastic.
Examples:
Pro-teamwork
A medic working with the players in tf2 works best when communicating with the person they are helping in order to push a head, or ready the team they are about to uber and offer a greater offense. A spy may run a head to disable sentries and be in communication with the team to come in range and open fire upon the engineer's equipment when he starts this process to insure a greater chance of success to overtake the area. Three players go into the enemy base to capture the flag, defending each other on the way to win the flag with much higher success rate then a lone player.
Anti-teamwork
The opposite of this game play can of course also occur; players will run around and single out specific targets to conquer; A spy will go out by himself and destroy the engineer and his sentry, tho helpful to the team, if no one knows its safe to move in, a precious opportunity is wasted. Similar result comes from a lone medic+1 uber when it comes to overtaking an objective.
A single player runs in to the enemy base to capture the flag, if poorly defended he may get away with it, if not he may fail many times trying to over power a team by himself, it ends up being a constant gamble he may get lucky and hit things perfectly and his skill will do the rest, he may not. If he were to coordinating with a couple team mates his odds improve greatly.
Summary
Brink seems to show that it favors a version of the Anti-teamwork game style. The difference is that brink game play seems to be based around this style and even encourage this with greater EXP. Your team has a great chance of succeeding if the players keep to there own specific goals rather then coordinating to accomplish more common ones. More about working independently, rather then directly assisting each other.
Conclusion
I am not suggesting there is anything wrong with this type of game play by any means, it may even have more depth to it then my simplified inexperienced views of it. People like my friend, our gaming community and I would like to see this form of coordinated team work come from brink and would like to have more understanding about what we might expect from the style of game play.
Goal of this thread
At this time I would like to hear more from the rest of the community that has been keenly watching and even playing to give more insight from what we can speculate and know to try and come and reach the most accurate description of Brink's game play.

Thank you for your time, I look forward to your comments.

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sas
 
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Post » Tue Apr 05, 2011 5:09 pm

I see the very opposite of what he sees: BRINK does encourage teamwork a lot more than TF2 does, simply through the mission-wheel.
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Blessed DIVA
 
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Post » Wed Apr 06, 2011 3:18 am

Yeah, I kinda see where he's coming from... but if everybody's doing something beneficial to the team it's bound to eventually lead to progress, thus in a sense it's teamwork anyway.

That was also VERY hard to read, some paragraphs would be nice.
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Bryanna Vacchiano
 
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Post » Tue Apr 05, 2011 11:00 pm

If you think about it (about medics and such) Medics can stay behind a heavy soldier and shield them while the medics heals the soldier. Thats not teamwork? And in TF2 you RARELY see anyone use teamwork. Except the occasional Heavy, Medic or Soldier Medic combos.
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jaideep singh
 
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Post » Wed Apr 06, 2011 6:45 am

It's very simple.
With Brink SD has tried to create a system that encourages players who have no idea about teamwork to work as a team. This is achieved with the mission system and the xp balance.
After people get familiar with the type of heavily objective-based gameplay, they will start to feel comfortable with teamwork and find more in-depth uses for it. The types of things described by that guy, which according to him appear in TF2.
This is only because the people who play TF2 are naturally a bit more team-based players. Brink's system is trying to teach more players to be like them.

All in all what the guy is saying completely disregards that the point of Brink is to teach new players, and I would have hoped that post wouldn't leak out of SD forums.
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Dan Endacott
 
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Post » Tue Apr 05, 2011 6:51 pm

BRINK!

TEAMWORK!!

YEA!!!!!

(if you've seen the video you know what i'm talking about)
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HARDHEAD
 
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Post » Wed Apr 06, 2011 6:29 am

The objective wheel will cut out the middleman a bit. Instead of needing to tell everyone the sentry's down or the door's blown up, the wheel will update it for you for everyone. It's designed to be pick-up-and-play-able.
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Daniel Lozano
 
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Post » Tue Apr 05, 2011 5:14 pm

There's still a huge difference between comp play and pub play. In W:ET I generally played pub to increase my shooting skills, while trying to do as best as possible as my class. Much like the anti-teamwork thing you described. I often found myself isolated behind their lines, but they knew and had to pull 2-3 people of to search for 1 person, weakening their frontlines.
Comp play is more focused around real teamwork, staying together with only a single person doing side objectives.
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Ana
 
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Post » Tue Apr 05, 2011 10:16 pm

I see the very opposite of what he sees: BRINK does encourage teamwork a lot more than TF2 does, simply through the mission-wheel.


Yeah, I see the mission-wheel as a more.... straightfoward way to encourage/"force" people to do objectives that are for the good of the team.

Yeah, I kinda see where he's coming from... but if everybody's doing something beneficial to the team it's bound to eventually lead to progress, thus in a sense it's teamwork anyway.

That was also VERY hard to read, some paragraphs would be nice.


I agree. As long as everyone is doing their jobs, it's teamwork since their jobs support the team.
I also think the Medic/Soldier/whatever combo in Brink is similar to TF2's Medic/Heavy/Soldier combo. That is teamwork, no?
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Princess Johnson
 
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Post » Wed Apr 06, 2011 6:33 am

The "anti-teamwork" you mentioned has been retrofitted by Splash Damage to become a form of teamwork -- four people can pull four different switches instead of all trying to pull the same switch.

When people go off and pursue a goal unique to their class via the Objective Wheel, they are still benefiting their team. If I as an Operative go hack a command post, I give a health pip to all my teammates, despite the fact that only I can hack the command post.
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Roanne Bardsley
 
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Post » Tue Apr 05, 2011 6:36 pm

I agree that everyone doing individual objectives for the good of the team isn't the same as everyone working together as a team, but I don't see anything wrong with that.
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Lexy Dick
 
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