Brink

Sgt Frag

L14: Epic Member
May 20, 2008
1,443
710
I'm a bit disappointed. They really hyped it up as being awesome gameplay. And the images and vids showed made it look really nice. And it does look nice.

But gameplay is fairly Meh.
1-the classes aren't much different at all. Sure you need a medic to throw syringes, and a soly to throw ammo... and you always have to have a class to plant a bomb, or hack.
But it's a pretty shallow seperatation. And with 8 players you almost have at least one of every class.

TF2 comparison: TF2 classes are DIFFERENT. You pick a scout or a heavy and there are serious changes in gameplay. Brink, nope.

2-maps are fairly boring. guarding the safe isn't as fun as guarding a CP. You basically just block the two doors into the room and wait. Easy to push to a spawn and hold the team there. The entire team.

TF2 comparison: maps have a lot more variety, are laid out better to the gameplay. It's harder to spawn camp. You have doors for protection, spawns are behind objectives, not off to the side. You can uber out, lob stickies, bullets, take another route.

3-smoothness of movement. Running feels like running in mud. Your arm/gun moves fast, you hear fast footsteps. But visually it's like a fast walk. boring.

TF2 comparison: each class has different speed (lots of difference between scout and heavy), but they all feel 'right'. Heavy is slow but his arm isn't fast... footsteps match speed. When you're a heavy it just feels right to move that slow. When you're a scout jumping all over hell it feels correct.

4-explosions. We all like these right? Throw a grenade it bounces once and barely goes anywhere. The explosion is a really fast weak firecracker that knocks people down, nothing more. No fire, no loud bang, just blah.

TF2 comparison:
Shit explodes, there is fire, noise, it's like a real explosion. It matches the weapon and does damage.
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As much as people complain about TF2, playing a game like Brink really makes you realize just how dialed in and perfect TF2 is in EVERY way.

Then playing Brink feels boring, stale, etc...
 

Terr

Cranky Coder
aa
Jul 31, 2009
1,590
410
Running feels like running in mud. Your arm/gun moves fast, you hear fast footsteps. But visually it's like a fast walk. boring.

I find this is heavily influenced by field-of-view settings in games. What FOV does Brink use?
 

Seba

DR. BIG FUCKER, PHD
aa
Jun 9, 2009
2,364
2,728
I think it's around 65 by default.
 

Ravidge

Grand Vizier
aa
May 14, 2008
1,544
2,818
I'm a bit disappointed. They really hyped it up as being awesome gameplay. And the images and vids showed made it look really nice. And it does look nice.

But gameplay is fairly Meh.
1-the classes aren't much different at all. Sure you need a medic to throw syringes, and a soly to throw ammo... and you always have to have a class to plant a bomb, or hack.
But it's a pretty shallow seperatation. And with 8 players you almost have at least one of every class.

TF2 comparison: TF2 classes are DIFFERENT. You pick a scout or a heavy and there are serious changes in gameplay. Brink, nope.

2-maps are fairly boring. guarding the safe isn't as fun as guarding a CP. You basically just block the two doors into the room and wait. Easy to push to a spawn and hold the team there. The entire team.

TF2 comparison: maps have a lot more variety, are laid out better to the gameplay. It's harder to spawn camp. You have doors for protection, spawns are behind objectives, not off to the side. You can uber out, lob stickies, bullets, take another route.

3-smoothness of movement. Running feels like running in mud. Your arm/gun moves fast, you hear fast footsteps. But visually it's like a fast walk. boring.

TF2 comparison: each class has different speed (lots of difference between scout and heavy), but they all feel 'right'. Heavy is slow but his arm isn't fast... footsteps match speed. When you're a heavy it just feels right to move that slow. When you're a scout jumping all over hell it feels correct.

4-explosions. We all like these right? Throw a grenade it bounces once and barely goes anywhere. The explosion is a really fast weak firecracker that knocks people down, nothing more. No fire, no loud bang, just blah.

TF2 comparison:
Shit explodes, there is fire, noise, it's like a real explosion. It matches the weapon and does damage.
-----------
As much as people complain about TF2, playing a game like Brink really makes you realize just how dialed in and perfect TF2 is in EVERY way.

Then playing Brink feels boring, stale, etc...

I think you're making good points but you are also completely missing the big one: Splash Damage is not trying to remake or reinvent TF2/CSS/UT/Quake/CoD/BF/Whatever, they are building on their past games in the Enemy Territories series (Wolfenstein:ET and Quake Wars:ET).
Now if you compare Brink with W:ET it's almost a pure upgrade in all aspects. And to compare the class system in Brink with TF2 is a little unfair since Brink never aspired to have the drastic varieties you mentioned. The word "Class" has a completely different meaning in TF2 terms than it does in ET.

Remember back when TF2 was a couple of days into beta and people just started to play the game, and how barely anyone used the tools they were given, such as rocket jumping and sticky jumping? Sentries were all over the place and absolutely destroyed everyone because people charged at them blindly.
You think tactics for guarding CP's in TF2 evolved over night, especially in pubs? No, it took a longass time for the general public to build up some sort of hivemind "best way to attack/defend X" tactic.
Your argument that maps are bad in Brink is basically: "My team was better".

The running/movement complaint is entirely engine based, and I hear it both ways. The source engines controls are not universally praised. Neither are the Tech 4 controls, or any other engine.
Just increase your fov, remove headbob and weaponbob and it will probably feel better (as a source player).

Basically what I'm saying is: you are comparing TF2 with Brink, a game that never wanted to be, or indeed isn't like TF2 at all. You are forcing expectations that you made up yourself on a game that doesn't want them.

(I'm also pretty sure I've read almost the same discussion before but with TFC vs W:ET)
 

Numerous

L4: Comfortable Member
Oct 14, 2009
150
72
Here's what I think:
It's broken. Everything needs patching, like the game balance, and especially that openGL glitch that means that it flat out will not run, despite meeting the requirements with my maybe-2-years-old-or-so laptop.
 
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Sgt Frag

L14: Epic Member
May 20, 2008
1,443
710
I think you're making good points but you are also completely missing the big one: Splash Damage is not trying to remake or reinvent TF2/CSS/UT/Quake/CoD/BF/Whatever,
Basically what I'm saying is: you are comparing TF2 with Brink, a game that never wanted to be, or indeed isn't like TF2 at all. You are forcing expectations that you made up yourself on a game that doesn't want them.

(I'm also pretty sure I've read almost the same discussion before but with TFC vs W:ET)

My comparisions with TF2 were not about Brink trying to emulate it in anyway.

They were merely to point out how smooth and polished TF2 is. Which is the exact opposite of Brink.
TF2 is really fun has a huge player base and after all these years is still going pretty strong. Maybe the whole Mann Co promotion thing is helping keep it strong but I still think if it was only some new maps it would still be quite strong.

I've played more since then and it only reinforces what I said. The game is just not smooth, the performance is pretty bad for the visuals, the new patch did nothing.

It's not because my team was better when pushing the other team back into spawn, it happens a lot. And when the other team ends up all bots it's gauranteed.

I was really looking forward to Brink BECAUSE it wasn't a TF2 clone. There are just too many issues with it for it to be anywhere near as enjoyable. Good team or bad.

I'm part of 'The Dark Mod' team. It's a Doom3 'thief-like' total conversion.
http://www.mindplaces.com/darkmod/downloads.php
Using the same engine. Doom3 was clunky to but our player is smooth, can mantle as good as Brink, can climb better...
So it's not an engine thing it's a tweaking thing and if we could do it they could do it too.

My point about maps is not that TF2 players evolved, but that Valve did the layouts RIGHT and players learned how to play them. The Brink team kind of botched it imo. They SHOULD have played TF2 more, they could learn a lot about it.
The maps are beautiful, imo all the art in the game is top notch, in that aspect I think the game is very on par with TF2/other Valve games. It's all the other aspects that need work. But art can only carry a game so far.

I realize the classes weren't supposed to be as drastic as TF2, the problem is they are so close they are almost boring. When playing the medic I'm basically just a soly, but I have to buff health (same as ammo buff) or throw syringes. As soly instead of syringes I loot bodies.
(I haven't played operative or engi much yet, but as op I couldn't really even tell I was disquised, in TF2 it's easy to tell. The enemy seemed to know right away and yet I had no indication they'd know. And I blow up a lot of sentries, or at least damage them but never see an engie on them fixing them.)

I guess what I'm saying is if Brink is a total upgrade on Wolf:Et/whatever then I don't see how people ever played those games, because so far Brink is pretty dull and very rough around the edges. So if those games were worse they must've been pretty bad.
 

ardysqrrl

L4: Comfortable Member
Oct 26, 2009
173
159
one of my favorite things about brink are that it doesn't have explosive spam, people taking brink not being as explosive just blows my mind (kaboom)

also since the game isn't as much about spamming chokepoints with explosives there isn't a need for something like ubercharges which is refreshing

one thing I'll give is that guarding a thing in brink isn't as fun, I think the escort type missions have more potential and I hope they explore those options more in future maps

also performance is balls right now but supposedly they're still working on that