This topic is simply about my observations regarding the PAX East build of BRINK, and my opinions on how to improve it before the release.

So, without further ado:

-One of my bigger issues is with the health meter. I think players would know that the top-left bar was the health bar, and it kinda bugs me to see the bar go opaque every three seconds to constantly remind the player that it was a monitor of their health. In addition, I found the narrower segments of the health bar a pretty neat feature, and the icons under each one informing you how you received that segment was cool too, but do they really have to be under the segments and not an integral part of them?
However, this is just me being really nitpicky. I honestly care more about balancing than minor issues such as this.

-Which brings me to a more major problem: reloading speed. You'd think that a drum magazine would be really hefty, but it never actually seemed to impact the running speed of the characters, and the draw speeds of guns equipped with drum magazines were still too fast. To make things worse, the reloading speed of a gun with a drum magazine does not change whatsoever. I found it frustrating when I saw a video of a Tampa equipped with a drum magazine, and it was reloaded just as fast as a Tampa with a stock magazine. It puts players without an enhanced magazine at a disadvantage because they will have to reload more often, and if there's no benefit to having a gun with a stock magazine, then everyone might as well equip the biggest magazines possible because there's no performance degradation.

-I wonder how the Weapon Select is supposed to work. Do you just activate it in the Command Post and it will list you all of the weapons you can switch to? Or will it give you some recommended weapons and correspond a button to them so that you don't have to scroll through a massive list?

-They fixed the "glove doesn't change unless a class-specific item is used" glitch. I remember with the PAX 10 Walkthrough of Container City, Jolly changed to a Soldier, but his Engineer gloves still stayed until he planted the HE Charge.

-I've already said this in a previous thread, but the crosshair circle rotating while you reload is a nice addition. It'd be cooler IMO, though, if the crosshair turned somewhat opaque, and it filled from the bottom up with white as the reloading sequence neared completion.

-Another thing I've recently noticed: In a vid from PAX East, after you finished disguising, the player you disguised as would flail about randomly and disappear in perhaps the weirdest way possible. Personally, it would be cool if the corpse was replaced with your character as you disguised, so that no one gets suspicious. If that's not possible, however, ET:QW's way of handling disguises wasn't that bad (the character would just disappear with pixels eating away at them, or something liked that).

That's all I can think of right now. I'll edit this post later when I have more observations. Any comments?

Will they listen? Let's all find out boys and girls.

mag changing will not differ on mag size, what would differ should be speed reloading (bigger mags should be a little slower) running with a ton of attachments should weight quite a bit, raising and switching weapons should be changed, but all in all the game looks very good.

Yeah, that's what I meant by reloading speed. It doesn't bug me too much (sort of like the health bar thing), but it's kind of a balancing issue.

i see, i agree havok

Thanks for the information.

Slightly disappointed regarding the drum magazine, tactical reloading has always been part and parcel with the FPS experience, especially with Splash's previous games. How many extra rounds does the drum give? (appologies if its common knowledge). Thought I read somewhere that the drum reduced ROF, which makes more sense as not having to worry about tactical reloading would be a huge advantage without some significant drawbacks.

The others are more aesthetics, which while nice don't bother me too much.

Depends on the gun. As a general rule of thumb, most guns get double the mag size (the Gerund has a 60-round clip as opposed to 30), but that's not always the case (the Kross gets 70 as opposed to 40? [maybe it's 35 now?]).

The drum clip does not reduce ROF.

I'm pretty sure (80-90%ish) that it does substantially increase your reload time, though.

Double! That's a huge advantage, unless you reload super fast or something.

Fixed that for you!

Case in point: the Tampa SMG has 30 shots with a regular clip. The drum magazine gives it about 60. However, the Tampa can be reloaded with either magazine in slightly less than a second. The Tampa may not be very powerful, but it has an extremely high ROF. It's not very capable of holding its own against a Mossington or Gerund, but sixty shots for a gun that has an insane rate of fire and a really fast reload speed is kind of overkill.

Then again, I think the Tampa is pretty balanced because it takes too many shots (unless they're all to the head) to be worthwhile. On the other hand, a Gerund with a 60-round drum magazine would be more lethal and problematic.


I think you're mistaking the drum magazine for duct-taped magazines.

Sorry, should have read unless you reload super fast without the drum.

If you can kill half the enemy team in one clip (or all with headshots!), the having a very low reload speed on the drum kinda makes no difference....

The Tampa's a very weak gun, even more so than the Kross. I'd wager it'd take more than half of a clip (maybe even two-thirds) to incapacitate a player. This is offset by its firing speed, so it's sort of a distraction weapon: as the enemy's trying to take care of you, your teammates are unloading heavier fire on the guy.

No I'm not. Duct-taped magazines are supposed to increase your reload speed since you already have another mag waiting to go after pulling out your first, instead of having to reach into your magic butt-pocket.

Also, if you have the time to line up enough head-shots to incapacitate 3 or 4 different guys before they kill you then there is no way that they would have won anyways, amirite?

I thought you were talking about drum magazines when you made your post.

I like the cross-hair reload idea, with it getting filled up to show that you are loaded, it kind of reminds me of GR:AW somehow... (trails off thinking)

Ah, good news that, tactical reloading has a place at least.

Still, as you mentioned in the OP, balance is going to be very hard to get right given how powerful double ammo could be with certain weapons.

I WAS talking about drum magazines - with them being so massive shouldn't it take you a little longer to rip that thing out of your magic butt pocket and fit it under your gun?

I see where you are getting at. I don't really know why but I like the idea of the spinning circle by your crosshair when you reload telling when it is finished. I don't know why but I really do like it.

@Beermachine: The devs said something about more attachments making your gun heavier, which I imagine = longer delay between gun switching and ability animations and being able to fire again.

Ah, I misread your post. I thought I read that drum magazines would substantially decrease reloading speeds. My humble apologies.


You are correct. Adding attachments will increase weapon switching times. I'm not so sure about retrieving your weapon after you complete an action, though.

I totally agree with the op on the drum mags. I mean its going to be really silly if everyone is running around with drum mags just because they have more ammo in them but no negatives to having them such as longer reload times. That for me would kill the customization variety you would see that make everyone unique.

Drum magazines increase equip speed. So even if the reload speed is the same (which it may not be now) equipping the gun in general is slower.

You're supposedly supposed to pick your loadouts in the menus before the match starts, kind of like CoD's custom class feature but with guns only.
Then you select whichever weapon loadout you want for that specific moment by highlighting that part of the circle and hitting the activation key.

In regards to the gloves issue: Will other players be able to see these gloves, or does everybody run around bare-handed?

Thanks. Could possibly affect movement speed also, or sprint speed.

I can image with what is it 24 guns, all customisable with different attachments and all the different combinations and effects they have the number of permutations will make balancing a complete nightmare!