I rather think the PC crowd is the crowd more inclined to embrace ADS than the console crowd, as opposed to the other way around.

One last note. It's true that W:ET didn't have ADS. But guess what, ET:QW did. :V

To the comment about advanced weaponry being present even today, advanced weaponry was present thirty years ago. Militaries just don't use them, typically, believing instead that they often already have something that "works fine". For instance, the FN FAL was developed alongside (and before) the M14. And remains in use to this day. (1953/53 - Present)

The XM8 is another great example. An excellent gun which has been around for a few years (and the development of which is still ongoing) already greatly outperforms the M4 carbine in general, particularly in terms of reliability, as well as having modular capacities (the gun can be disassembled and reassembled with different components to fulfill roles ranging from LMG, marksman rifle, carbine, and SMG variants). Yet the gun has not replaced the M4. The army's official reason for declining it is "soldiers are generally pleased with the M4 as is" despite there being an obvious better option.

Some of this can be disregarded, because the security forces in Brink are more of a PMC (that's "Private Military Company" for those that don't know) and thus is more likely to have better equipment. Perhaps the resistance has taken all of their guns from security weapons caches. That's plausible enough.

As for ADS being a concession, it's frankly a necessary feature these days when a game is using real-world weaponry or is trying to have any sense of realism (which Brink is). I rather think the PC crowd is the crowd more inclined to embrace ADS than the console crowd, as opposed to the other way around. I've played my share of shooters on consoles, and unless I've got aim-bot like aim-assist, the last thing I want to do is tighten my bullet spread. The more spamtastic the fire, the easier it is to hit (conversely, the harder it is to keep hitting) in most situations. When I talk about recoil, again, I think I've been misunderstood. I'm not talking purely about animations either. The guns should jump. Guns have kick, that's just physics. Any gun that DOESN'T have kick in a game just doesn't feel like a gun. Unless it's firing lasers or some such (ironically, most laser weapons in games seem to have kick as well, figure that one out..). I am NOT saying that every gun should have to be fired in bursts all the time because "NOBODY AKIMBOS WEAPONS IN WAR, SOLDIERS BURST FIRE, YOU CAN'T KEEP A GUN STEADY FULL AUTO," blah blah blah, this isn't Arma 2. This is Brink, it should stay playable for the casual types. But it still needs to feel like the rounds I'm firing are imparting some sort of effect on me, aside from my gun just bouncing around and my crosshairs getting larger, while my screen stays completely still. It's a matter of immersion.

Breaking immersion left and right is fine for games like TF2. But it's not something you want to do constantly (every time you shoot, which is presumably often given the name of the genre) in a game that does actually approach realism.

One last note. It's true that W:ET didn't have ADS. But guess what, ET:QW did. :V

Well if you really want the feel of the gun that much, I suggest you turn on the vibration of your controller.

ADS in ET:QW on PC was pretty useless at any range except long range. I think someone mentioned this as well.
I still prefer gameplay over "how guns feel". Meaning that I rather have less realistic guns, but better GAMEplay.

Or even better, get a http://home.novint.com/products/pistol_grips.php =D

you can even change how much recoil the controller gives you.

Well if you really want the feel of the gun that much, I suggest you turn on the vibration of your controller.

ADS in ET:QW on PC was pretty useless at any range except long range. I think someone mentioned this as well.
I still prefer gameplay over "how guns feel". Meaning that I rather have less realistic guns, but better GAMEplay.

Oh and ADS more loved by the PC crowd? You should've see the discussions on the Wolfenstein forums. I think it was 60+ pages of people saying how much they dislike ADS.

Hipfire is a holdover from the days of Quake and HL, DooM and so on.

Sights weren't put on guns to give you some interesting architecture in the corner of your eye, after all. They were put there to help you, the wielder, make things dead more efficiently.

I still play UT3 from time to time. It has zero ADS on all but one of the weapons and everything except for the flak fires in a straight line, every time. But those aren't meant to be real guns.

And it works phenomenally in shooters. You say it like, just because those games are dated, the mechanic must be flawed.


But in games, this simply isn't true, since a dev can make a game behave however they wish. ADS can be used to make shots more accurate, but at the same time, a dev can just make guns that accurate all the time and remove ADS altogether.

Again, in games this doesn't matter. Even if they were supposed to be real guns, they can still behave however they wish. Real life physics do not need to apply to video games - that's why they are games. Essentially, all a gun is in a game, is a model and a texture. In Brink, everything is exaggerated, and I would expect to be the same for the guns.

No one can relate to machine guns that stay perfectly still and spew damage in a cone in front of them because nobody has used anything like that (because nothing like it exists)

I honestly can't believe more people haven't stepped up and said "yeah, it should feel like I'm pulling the trigger on something that can actually hurt someone."

I haven't played the game yet, so I cant know how it feels. Since they are working with an actual storyline, i have to imagine immersion is a goal of theirs, having the guns feel like airsoft would destroy immersion, so I trust they will do something about it. But, as you say, they are trying to balance realism with what they want the game to play like. No one knows where that perfect midpoint is, not even the devs since they are still balancing and polishing.

It simply doesn't make sense to use real world things and then completely change their properties.

Brink makes use of real guns. These guns carry specific, unique, properties.

No one can relate to machine guns that stay perfectly still and spew damage in a cone in front of them because nobody has used anything like that (because nothing like it exists).

And while other games use this as a gameplay model (and it works for them) it is not relatable. Fun, maybe, but not particularly immersive.

As an aside, do the devs ever actually interact on the forums here? Do they read but not respond, or is this just for players to speculate wildly? It would be great if we could get an actual dev in here to lay down some basic examples of how it will work, given that we don't really have updated trailers to go off of. Even if it's only a basic summary of how it currently works in the in-house version, and is subject to change in any given direction, it would be nice to know what the goal is on the gun front beyond "easy to use".

W:ET and RTCW take place during WWII, and they uses real world weapons - yet they play like a twitch shooters, with no ADS or recoil.

Brink does not use real guns. It may use real world weapons as inspiration, but the guns in Brink are fictional. Part of the reason in doing this, is so they can give the weapons the attributes that work best, which isn't necessarily the stats of their real world counterparts.

The Heavy's minigun in TF2 does just that, as does the Venom in RTCW. Saying no one can relate to weapons that behave different from real life, because they don't have access to them in real life, is a bit of a stretch.

As long as the weapons feel and sound powerful, players will feel immersed, regardless of their stats or handling mechanics.

Interestingly, the reason miniguns are so easy to aim is mostly due to their massive rate of fire, once you get above 2000 rounds per minute, it no longer feels like thump-thump-thump with each shot fired, at around the 3000-4000 RPM that most miniguns have the recoil just feels like a constant pushing. (some models can get as high as 10000 RPM). This property would be the same no matter the weight of the gun nor the caliber of the bullet.

They are also very accurate, and don't have the cone of spray they are normally given in video games. Their outrageous rate of fire makes them completely impractical for infantry though, it takes around 55 pounds of ammo to fire a microgun (5.56mm rounds) for 20 seconds, double that weight for a minigun with 7.62mm rounds

Precisely. Now obviously, making the minigun available to players and giving it the highest DPS as well as the greatest accuracy is probably a bad idea. So lowering fire-rate severely hampering movement, and slightly reducing fire-rate (thereby solving ammo constraints to a degree) are all fair balancing factors to make. But nobody would complain about that because a minigun is a rare case of a real life death spewing weapon. But that's due to it's unique properties (and unique drawbacks). It's the exception.

I'd point to the Death Machine in COD:BlOps as a decent implementation. Sans the fact that the Death Machine can deal 100 damage per bullet up close. Drop the damage to the same as the average SMG in Brink and doubling the firerate of one (~2000RPM) should make the minigun not only fun but relatively true to life.

Precisely. Now obviously, making the minigun available to players and giving it the highest DPS as well as the greatest accuracy is probably a bad idea. So lowering fire-rate severely hampering movement, and slightly reducing fire-rate (thereby solving ammo constraints to a degree) are all fair balancing factors to make. But nobody would complain about that because a minigun is a rare case of a real life death spewing weapon. But that's due to it's unique properties (and unique drawbacks). It's the exception.

I'd point to the Death Machine in COD:BlOps as a decent implementation. Sans the fact that the Death Machine can deal 100 damage per bullet up close. Drop the damage to the same as the average SMG in Brink and doubling the firerate of one (~2000RPM) should make the minigun not only fun but relatively true to life.

Edit: The average LMG weighs around 15 pounds or so. While a minigun typically weighs around 15kg, or about 33 pounds. They could be firing the same ammunition, but the minigun has multiple barrels adding to the weight, as well as the spin mechanism, and so on. So there is definitely a notable increase in heft.

I agree on this matter, but I would give the minigun fewer damage over range than the SMG/AR to keep it balanced.
I think the venom in RTCW and some ET servers was pretty balanced. You had to warm the gun up (Slightly delaying fireing) to balance it out with other guns.

As long as you learn to pay attention to where the bullets hit, spraying isn't that hard with a stationary crosshair.

Wait, what? Either you know where the bullets go, or you spray, eh?

Edit: Also the mini gun is used in helicopters for long range engagements for consistent fire on target. It can put as many bullets on target as an AR type and has a MUCH longer barrel then a SMG. If you think the Mini needs it's distance nerfed to shorter range then the SMG you're [censored]. Not when IRL the mini can be fired out of an armored helicopter from high up and shred targets with ease. Mounted or not. Mount an SMG in an apache and tell me if you can hit a jeep that's fish tailing and shooting RPGs at you from below. And let me know how many bullet you get in with a rifle. The mini gun should be a death machine. The heavy that's using it is really easy to hit from further away because he's BIGGER. He's SLOWER. Don't nerf his weapon too.

You don't need a loud WHIRRING noise for the minigun. (edit: Because unless the gun has major damage and rattles it's not going to make much noise. And those spinning mechanisms IRL don't sound any louder then an electric car idling.) As for the gun shooting... It sounds like God is literally ripping the sky in half when the trigger is held down. Also in brink I think there's an alternative fire button for the mini that allows you to engage the spin. So you can be stealthy and not have the barrel spinning everywhere you go alerting everyone to your presence. If you were a heavy agent with a mini I'd bet spinning the barrel would take away your disguise.

Edit: Also the mini gun is used in helicopters for long range engagements for consistent fire on target. It can put as many bullets on target as an AR type and has a MUCH longer barrel then a SMG. If you think the Mini needs it's distance nerfed to shorter range then the SMG you're [censored]. Not when IRL the mini can be fired out of an armored helicopter from high up and shred targets with ease. Mounted or not. Mount an SMG in an apache and tell me if you can hit a jeep that's fish tailing and shooting RPGs at you from below. And let me know how many bullet you get in with a rifle. The mini gun should be a death machine. The heavy that's using it is really easy to hit from further away because he's BIGGER. He's SLOWER. Don't nerf his weapon too.

In short don't worry about it. The guys at splash damage are GENIUS. The game will be fun and balanced. But let the slow heavy with the large hit box have his devastating weapon. Because if you svck at brink and you run right at a heavy you deserve to get mowed down immediately. /endrant