Hello all,

GStaff posted this on the support thread. Just noticed it and passing it on to you all kind people:

By the Power of Netvars – Brink Gets Balance Tweaks
In addition to our on-going game updates for Brink, we’ve also been working on a bundle of balance tweaks based on the feedback we’ve had now that the game is out in the wild.

These tweaks are coming to all three versions of Brink and are being rolled out via our netvars. If netvars sound entirely foreign for you, they’re part of a system we developed for Brink to allow us to tweak various aspects of the game without requiring you to download a full game update.

Let’s have a look at what we’ve got in store, shall we?

Objectives

Hackboxes are getting a significant tweak across the board to help out attacking teams. We have drastically increased the time it takes Engineers to “de-hack”, making it easier for the attackers to actually get the hack done.

In addition to the Hackbox change, we’ve got several other objective tweaks coming, as well. For starters, we’re doubling the XP received for completing Primary Objectives in the game, so if you tackle one of them, your reward will be much greater from now on.

In addition, we’ve made the following map-specific adjustments:


Aquarium: Elevator generator construction time decreased

Container City: Robot health increased

Reactor: Terminal hack time slightly increased to balance new hacking mechanic

Resort: Gate hack time slightly increased to balance new hacking mechanic

Security Tower: Passcode return time increased

Security Tower: Passcode transmit time decreased

Abilities

Somewhat unsurprisingly, we’ve also been unable to keep our hands off Brink’s player abilities. There’s a single tweak coming your way here, with the Medic’s Adrenaline ability now having a shorter duration, which’ll make timing the ability right even more important.

When Will I Get These?

These changes are already live in the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions of Brink. If you’re on the PC, you’ll be getting the entire batch of balance changes alongside the next game update.

This is great news! Thanks for posting man! Looking forward to it.

Sup job, however there are people who can read stickies and you should try that too.

http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1188620-an-update-on-brink/

What's to look forward if these changes are already live?

I'm on PC. Not live yet.

I read it and added it here, as I thought i'd pas the info along to those who don't realise there are info stickys at the top.

Just being helpful and community minded, that's all.

Not even mentioning the sticky is locked.

We can post our thoughts, mine being:

AWESOME! They pretty much addressed every legitimate complaint with that. Great news!

I say we use this thread as a suggestion thread to add to the tweaks, undoubtedly Gstaff or someone on the SD staff will make SD aware of our suggestions/complaints.

1) Friendly AI: please upgrade the friendly AI to that similar to the enemy AI

2) Heavy body type: please give them either a speed boost or a health boost. Not much mind you, just a slight increase.

3) Lobby: This one is really just to shut everyone up, I don't really care if its implemented.

Hack removal is still way too quick considering what it takes to actually set yourself up for a successful short term hack... against a semi-competent team anyways.

As my default class is Operative, the tweaks to hacking is a godsend for me personally. You do all that work to set up a hack, and wait upwards of a whole 20 seconds (which in Brink can be an eternity) to complete a hack, then the other side get the advantage, clear out the room, and the Engi's take a mere 6-7 seconds to clear the box. Adding time to kill the hackbox for Engi's means there's a fighting chance for the attackers to actually get back to the objective and re-stabilize the hack after lighting up the Engi.

I still cant agree with this one...

And I've been playing more as a heavy than anything else the past few days.

Heavy is my favorite, I just think that things are slightly skewed toward the lighter bodies.

Improvement is always good and the attention they're clearly paying is very reassuring...........but,

Lobbies?
AI balance?
Modes and Maps (2 in DLC notwithstanding)?
Graphics issues?

Netvars are nibblings, where's the BIG stuff? Is there going to be BIG changes and additions?

ONE poxy dev-post...............a single 1 line dev-post addressing the bigger issues and what's planned for them would reassure the masses, but I doubt we'll see one... :sadvaultboy: If they're not quick they'll finally set up lobbies,,,,,,and I'll be the only [censored] there. :whistling:

decreasing the duration of adrenaline .. I'm confused :ahhh:

I play Light more than Heavy, but with a short time playing Heavy, I found them fairly balanced. Having recently played more as a Heavy, I've found them more powerful than I first thought. Haven't really experimented with the Gottlung yet (will be doing so with my Terminator now that he's reached level 5 and can be a Heavy), but I've used all the other Heavy guns, and they all have their niche where they're pretty much unbeatable at what they do. So far, I'm pretty happy with how Heavies compare with Lights and Mediums - When I'm a Light, I can easily gun down 2 - 3 other Lights, or Mediums - but a single Heavy in the group will ruin my day. A Heavy showing up in the middle of a tough fight is more likely to be a turning point in my experience than a Light rushing into the fray. If your side's losing ground, another Light can't make it back, but a Heavy can.

First of all, bravo to the developers for listening to the community's feedback and making the necessary adjustments to give the hacking team a chance to actually succeed. Watching all of your team's hacking progress wiped out so quickly time and time again can be really frustrating, especially on those maps where your Operatives have to travel much farther to reach the objective than the other team's Engineers (Terminal, Refuel, Resort, & Shipyard).

Does anyone know what this "new hacking mechanic" is? Are they referring to the Engineer's slower de-hacking speed? I'm on PS3 and haven't noticed anything different about the actual hacking process itself when playing as an Operative. I did notice when playing as an Engineer that de-hacking does indeed take much longer.

I would imagine that the new mechanic does indeed refer to the longer hackbox removal as I haven't noticed anything else different. Still think a remote interaction with the hackbox would be a nifty ability.

You realise selecting Versus (rather than Solo or Co-Op), in both Public and Private, evenly balances the AI on both sides right? Most of the time my team-mates out-score the enemy since I started playing Versus.

anyone else find adrenalin useless? ive given it to people and seen them shot dead whilst still glowing yellow.... i never bother any more. maybe if someone is hacking but ive still seen them killed whilst glowing.

Good to hear the new hacking fix; definitely my major bugbear with the game.

This...#1 is very important to me,i'm surprised this wasn't already tweaked after all the complaints about it.

ObjectivesHackboxes are getting a significant tweak across the board to help out attacking teams. We have drastically increased the time it takes Engineers to “de-hack”, making it easier for the attackers to actually get the hack done.

When I read this, I thought: Oh great! That will help a lot!

Reactor: Terminal hack time slightly increased to balance new hacking mechanicResort: Gate hack time slightly increased to balance new hacking mechanic

But reading this made me go: Wait, wait, wait, what!?
Why would you increase the hack time even more when you tried to balance it by reducing the de-hack speed?
Or does this counter the supposed ninja-change hacking seemed to have received?

Container City: Robot health increased

This doesn't solve a big problem in Container City, I think: The spawn

Once you got out of it, the map is fairly easy. At least until the bot is right in front of the Resistance spawn. But more bot-health won't get it anywhere when you can't actually reach it ...

Security Tower: Passcode return time increasedSecurity Tower: Passcode transmit time decreased

So, what does this actually mean?

More time for the objective and using the Passcode works even faster?


I think a health-boost should work fine. The Heavy's mobility should not be touched, because right now it actually feels heavy.



EDIT: What's with the odd orange colouring when you use the [code]-command/boxes? :blink:

This was my first reaction as well. But after thinking about it overnight, I realized the problem before for the attacking team was that all their hacking progress was so easily erased. Nerfing the Engineer’s ability to undo all the hacking team’s work reduces the frustration factor exponentially. Perhaps during SD’s in-house testing of this remedy they found that the attackers were succeeding with the hack much too quickly (on these particular maps) and that increasing the hack time was necessary to prevent overbalancing the game in favor of the hackers.





"Return time increased" means that the Resistance will have more time to complete the next objective (deliver the passcode to the Infirmary) once they’ve opened the warden’s safe. If you’re playing against a smart Security team, they’ll have the grounds right in front of the Infirmary stacked with a gauntlet of turrets and mines and position themselves with good cover, letting the passcode courier come to them. Being given additional time to bust through a coordinated defense like that helps.

"Transmit time decreased" means that the courier will be able to deliver the passcode almost instantaneously once he reaches the infirmary. The transmission time already seemed fast before, but this tweak could mean the difference if the courier’s health is almost down to zero and his entire escort was slaughtered helping him make it to that point. Delivering the passcode against a strongly dug-in Security is just short of impossible (especially when Security spawns such a short distance away) and anyone who actually makes it all the way to the Infirmary deserves not to get killed just as he’s in the process of transmitting it.

In campaign mode? I play free play.

Well Public Freeplay is always set to Versus, and if you start a Private Freeplay you can still change it between Solo, Co-Op or Versus.