I've been loving the vids from this game and I'm looking forward to it, but I do have a few minor things that have been bugging me and I'm interested in the reservations others may hold.

So far whats been bugging me has been;

No bullet penetration, while not a huge issue if I'm shooting at someone who is protected by a thin piece of scrap metal or a glass window I can't help but feel like I'm being robbed by a minor lack of realism

No love for female avies, I know they have a good reason for not putting in female avatars and may eventually choose to add them in later, I still think until they do the game will feel unfinished to me =/

It seems a bit outdated to use health bars in a shooter. I don't know what other people think about this but I feel like it's an odd choice seeing as in real life you wouldn't know how many bullets you need to put into someone before they die

It seems like the mission variety may get old pretty quickly

also I'm unsure if I like the idea of switching classes on the fly instead of having characters be dedicated to their chosen profession. Personally I'm an RPG fan, I like being able to develop my characters abilities, switching on the fly seems like its not going to be rewarding to stick with a class. I would have liked to see at least some kind of penalties for using classes I'm not trained in and benefiting from classes I use more often.

One last thing which I thought was interesting but don't have a particular view on is the idea of having characters be faction locked. I like the idea of it for the character development it offers, but I also like the idea of not having to make multiple characters to experience both sides of the fight.

I'm interested in any thoughts, comments, or issues others may have concerning the game...

Let's see...

Bullet penetration is a tricky subject, as too much penetration makes cover useless and not enough makes people feel cheated, and with the interactivity of the SMART system I think asking for them to determine penetration levels on each of those objects as well might be more effort than it's actually worth in the long run. In short, I would prefer to be able to use cover properly than not use it at all.

Agreed about females, but nothing we can do now.

Wouldn't mind a feature to turn off the health bars, but Brink is attempting to bring new players in so I consider it an educational tool.

Have concerns about map variety, but not major with all the options between class and weight and general roles. Hopefully we see cheap DLC.

You can dedicate your toon to one class and never switch if the need never arises, and the penalty for being able to switch is the limitations you create with the abilities you select. Some players will be one sided, but great at it, others will be multifaceted but not as strong at any one class. Consider it an additional collection of hybrid classes to be played.

Wouldn't mind a faction lock for each individual toon, or an option to always be one faction when I create my guy so I'm locked in, but see the appeal of being able to do it all with one toon for those that may not take the time to develop more.

I prefer no bullet penetration, without it people cannot spam through objects and kill what they cannot see.


Show me an armed force that has women fighting on the front line.


One.

Whether there is a health bar or not is irrelevant, people will figure out how many bullets to takes to kill someone.


It's a system which aids in getting the job done. You can still focus on a specific class, nothing is forcing you to switch to a class that's needed to complete the mission...except frustration.


Having to have two characters, one for security and one for resistance, doesn't benefit anyone and there is no compelling arguement for it.

Just on these three...

First, have a quote:

"Q: Don’t put red arrows above your opponents’ heads. And don’t you even dare to think of health bars!
A: Yeah, no red arrows. Myself, I am a fan of letting someone see how close to death the enemy is when you mouse over him, but that’s totally something that you can turn off when setting up hardcoe matches."

From http://dutchfightplatoon.com/threads/1559-Gigantic-Brink-Q-amp-A-with-Richard-Ham.

You'll be able to turn them off for custom matches, so if you don't like them, don't have them. Presumably the HUD will be customisable enough to let you remove that on your screen anyway.

Second, you'll be able to specialise as a certain class (or as I plan, 2 classes), but you'll always have the basic kit for each class. If you take awesome Medic abilities, then play as a Soldier, you'll be nowhere near as effective as someone who's kitted out for the class they're playing. Basically, you're encouraged to stick to your chosen profession by having abilities to make you better at it.

Last one I'm addressing... You CAN swap sides with your character, just not mid-match. They've confirmed that, so no worries. Early on there were suggestions otherwise, but it got changed. If you play through the story once for each side, you should reach level 14 - wouldn't make sense to say that if you didn't have the option of switching sides, would it?

[quote name='nixkpln' timestamp='1304566619' post='17607503'

One last thing which I thought was interesting but don't have a particular view on is the idea of having characters be faction locked. I like the idea of it for the character development it offers, but I also like the idea of not having to make multiple characters to experience both sides of the fight.

I'm interested in any thoughts, comments, or issues others may have concerning the game...
[/quote]

i thought i read something about being able to choose ur preferred side when join a game. dont no where thou

I'm hoping for good map quality and variety and I hope the game really feels rewarding for sticking with your classes. I hadn't expected for bullet penetration on everything I'm just disappointed to not see any at all even if it was just used very sparingly or for windows, It's always a bit satisfying when someone chooses to hide behind something flimsy.


In a game with this kind of a back story I would expect military tradition to be less important than pure necessity. In a game with this level of customization having females seems like a no brainer. This war is between survivors and the progeny of those originally living on the ARK, female soldiers would most deffinatly be sharing the front lines for the simple fact that this is a battle for survival on both sides not a battle over misconceived political or spiritual beliefs.

Lol, you used 2 comparisons to real life in your post. The fact is that Brink is a videogame and I much prefer my videogames to make unrealistic choices in the name of fun. Do you think I want to experience "real war" every time I turn on my Xbox (do you believe that CoD players know what "real war" is)?

1. Bullet penetration was a terrible addition to videogames. It completely wrecks the flow of maps with having cover that serves different purposes (LoS block and damage block or just a LoS block). It was extremely annoying as a perk in games like CoD because the maps would never feel right with having to assume that you weren't safe anywhere on the map.
2. Characters with little customization that can be male or female or male-only characters that have great customization? Stylistic choice here, I'm happy with either, I just want to play the game already, lol.
3. The only basis that you had for this was that it was unrealistic and old? Who said old stuff wasn't good? I personally think the "old" melee systems were better, but you don't find many developers agreeing with me. I already explained the realism.

As to that class switching concern, that would never work in pubs because you don't know what your teammates are going to be. I can see it being done in structured, competitive play though (with preset line-ups is the main point here).

About the health bars, you can just think about them as regenerative health. They do regenerate, except the pips. Just imagine the pips as Juggernaut from COD4.

If you go to the 2 minute mark in the general gameplay video of the get smart series it sure as anything looks to me that bullet penetration is in the game due to the fact that the exp counter continues to count up while he is shooting the little wall in front of his enemy. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyU6Wy7SgBU&feature=fvst

I like health bars a lot, I hate not knowing how close I am or my enemy is to dying.

I agree 100% with what relapse said. I guess I'm just not getting the female character complaint. But then again if they took out all character customization I would still love the game, if it turns out as good as I expect. I see it just as an added bonus.

I love the fact that if you are a soldier, you can see who is low on ammo and who isn't. This obviously takes out the randomness of guessing who to give ammo to and people won't have to stalk soldiers when they are empty, given the soldiers are being team players. So the health bar could work in a similar way for medics. Just encourages using teamwork, even without using your mic.

As for bullet penetration I could see this only as a problem if they made the same huge mistake cod makes in all their games. Bullets come out of the tip of your characters head, instead of the barrel of your gun. So people could hide behind cover and just poke out the tip top of their head and be almost 100% covered. It was called "clipping" and it added to ruining the cod series more and more each game.

Here are things that I have concerns with:

- No fatigue meter. My reasoning behind being concerned with this is I can see people abusing an unlimited sprint with the SMART system. With a slide takedown I can see players running around and just knocking down players and then getting another quick melee to finish them off. This is could potentially create an issue plagued in many FPS's where players run straight through a hail of gun fire and melee you. With no OHK players will be able to use the SMART system to slide there way over and knock you on you butt while running directly through your bullets.

- Operatives mine detecting ability. I do not have any issues with them being able to see the mines and spot them for the rest of the team. My concerns lie in the newest video released. In it you can clearly see that Operatives can set missions which directly lead them to an Engineers mines what are deployed. This worries me as it seems as though it will make Eng mines completely useless. This pretty much gives Operatives free points and makes the mines useless.

Mines are already easy to find as an Operative seeing as they have a glow around them and are already huge. There is no need to have them show up on the objective wheel leading Operatives directly to where they are at.

- Being able to switch body types. I would like to see some consequence for choices made. I can understand not making you stick to one faction as being able to play both sides adds variety to maps as well as longevity. Also for competitive reasons it makes things easier. As far as class I can udnerstand there as well as you may play in pub matches where everyone is one class and you loose horribly.

But bodytype should be permanent IMO. This increases the longevity of the game as players will make multiple characters to experiment and play in new ways. Also making people stay with the bodytype chosen makes each character more unique and individualized whereas if you can change to play any way whenever you want there is no reason for the other character slots.

- Control Turret ability for Operatives. The description states "Control Turret allows you to take remote First Person control of friendly turrets". This concerns my because from that statement is sounds as though friendly Operatives will be taking control of there own Engineers turrets. My concerns are this may completely nullify any points that Engineer gets, Could be used to sabotage your team taking control of an Eng turrets and not doing anything so they don't fire at enemies letting them be stolen or blown up, Is no reason they should be taking control of a friendly Eng turrets. I can understand an enemy one they hack but there is no reason to give them an ability that may hurt backfire and cause conflict within there own team.

I personally like freely being security or resistance when leveling my character. Play one match as Security and maybe play Resistance the next time.
Of course there is no switching factions during a fight. That would be silly.

But if there was a faction lock, then your going to see a lot of people become Resistance then Security due to it's popular nature and will have quite a hard time finding "good" Security when every "experienced" player is main'ing on the Resistance side. Having the ability to switch makes it fun and fresh when you go through the 20 ranks. Plus less uses of your 10 character slots when you can freely switch. Especially if your friends either want to be Security one moment and resistance the other moment. Forfeiting your awesome Resistance for the lack of detail of a Security character (compared to your excellent Resistance character) that you're forced to play.

Plus if you want to lock yourself so much, then just don't switch to the other faction. No one is making you. Make another character for the different faction. Very simple :disguise:

I don't think that will happen, even when you knock someone down, he can still fire at you and since the guy will be light body type, you will need only few shots to take him down so it's ok (+ It's your mistake that you were separated from team and got pwned by a light build, otherwise slide+bash is useles, cuz your teammates will just turn around at take that light down and you will get your HP back thanks to medic), but yes I agree that no fatigue meter is a weird thing.

Personally, I'm not much a fan of bullet penetration. Too much and its just annoying, you cant hide behind anything. But if they take away penetration of certain objects, you're never sure if you should try to spray a guy who's standing behind a piece of metal that's thin, but not too thin.

In past games, I've ended up trying to spray a guy who's standing behind something that turned out to have no penetration, only to have him come out while i have a low mag.
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About the turret control ability, I'm pretty sure both the operative and the engineer will get experience for anything the operative does. SD is using experience to try to reinforce teamwork, and that would be the way to do it with this ability.
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Map variety seems fine to me. Even if there's just 1 dozen maps, each has multiple main objectives and two sides to play it from. It honestly doesn't seem like much less than what other games offer for multiplayer, other than the fact that SD put a story into theirs.
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As far as realism complaints go, such as the appearance of health meters, and lack of fatigue; I don't think its much of an issue. Realism isn't much of a concern here, and the fact that Brink comes across as arcadey in some ways isn't necessarily a bad thing. Health bars may change the way gamers play, but I don't think that the addition of more information is bad, it leads to more thoughts in a given situation. And for the infinite sprinting...personally, I love it. It's totally unrealistic, but I hate the slower pace that sprint meters cause.
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Slide tackles may seem like a very strong tool, but I'm pretty sure this is intentional. The game has had a lot of effort put into it for balancing, and slide tackles seem like one of the features put in to reward light players for being skilled. It allows them to take out enemies quickly if they can get close, either through skilled dodging or skilled stealth.

i heard someone say that Engineers still gain XP as normal when an Operative is controlling their turret, but the Operative gets XP as well. As long as that's the case, I don't see a problem, and it would be silly to do otherwise.

And as long as you can't change body type mid-match (confirmed that you can't - only between games), I don't have a problem there either. I can see the point of saying otherwise, but I don't think it's a big deal myself, and this was will make the game more accessible.

And when you're knocked down, you can choose to get up straight away, making the knockdown just a temporary accuracy penalty - they don't have time to incapacitate you with melee instantly once you're knocked down unless you give them the time to do so. Get back up, and if it's a Light that did it, there's a good chance they'll be running with a knife, and won't be able to knock you back down with a melee hit. Or if you have a shotgun, I believe they have knockdown at close range, so you go down, then so does the other guy, and you have enough time to get back up., while continuing to shoot them. Then melee incap the other guy instead if he's not trying to get up as well.

So you're saying that an Engineer's hacked turret still gives you XP for shooting your own team-mates?

i would not take out anything the devs put in until i played it for myself (also SD are good at making multiplayer games so I am not to worried nothing can be worse then mw2)

I noticed in the general gameplay video someone was standing behing a glass window while he waited for his health to regen, I hope that glass at least is destructable in brink.

No, my guess is the operative who hacked it would get the xp