Brink

[Mrbloodworth]

Sadly, by the time it hits my price point threshold, there will be all of 5 people playing, total. 

It passed that point long ago.   If you're in the US you can often log in and there won't be a single US server with people on it.   There's usually a couple somewhere in europe with people but this game is DEAD DEAD DEAD.   It's a multiplayer FPS with one game mode.   My steam says I've played it for 87 hours so it's not like I'm saying that one game mode was horrible but still it obviously had no staying power.

Does the demo have the new map pack?

[Malakili]

Sadly, by the time it hits my price point threshold, there will be all of 5 people playing, total. 

It passed that point long ago.   If you're in the US you can often log in and there won't be a single US server with people on it.   There's usually a couple somewhere in europe with people but this game is DEAD DEAD DEAD.   It's a multiplayer FPS with one game mode.   My steam says I've played it for 87 hours so it's not like I'm saying that one game mode was horrible but still it obviously had no staying power.

Does the demo have the new map pack?

I think so, its not really a demo so much as just the full game available for the weekend.  I actually didn't see the two new maps when I played briefly last night though.  It was good to see some populated servers, but I don't think it will last past the free weekend. 

[Mrbloodworth]

How can it be dead if its the 9th most played game on steam ( I guess thats partly the free weekend ), and also have some rather large stats on the stats site. Of all the platforms, it seems to be the most popular on the PS3 ( With over 600k matches played ).

[Malakili]

Thats ENTIRELY the free weekend talking.  Until this promotion brink had 400 concurrent users at most on Steam most of the time.  It literally fell off that 100 most played games list at one point.  This is compared to 7k as I'm typing this.  If it were to stay near this level of activity, I'd be happy to play it regularly.  I stopped playing literally because I couldn't find a server with decent ping during east coast US prime time regularly. 

[Mrbloodworth]

Well, it looks like on the PS3 it has quite the base playing it. Seems it lacks on the PC and Xbox, thats a bit odd. ( also, steam only reports steam versions, so we have to take that into account too )

[Malakili]

Well, it looks like on the PS3 it has quite the base playing it. Seems it lacks on the PC and Xbox, thats a bit odd.

I wonder if it has to do with the online outage. Brink came out while PSN was down. My guess is maybe PS3 players picked it up AFTER the launch bugs were patched.  I have no evidence to back this up, pure speculation, but it sounds good on paper.

[Mrbloodworth]

Yeah we will never know.

[Morfiend]

I reinstalled it. Got the DLC tagged to my account. Started it up, started a match. Logged off, uninstalled.

So much wasted potential and incorrect marketing.

[Malakili]

Most of the servers I've been joining don't seem to have the new maps running, which is a darn shame because I read a few places that they are significantly improved over some of the original maps.  Oh well.

Edit: Founders Tower is pretty good.  I played labs but only got in at the last 2 minutes before the map ended so didn't see much of it.

[Kail]

Yeah, Founder's Tower is very vertical and has a ton of handy ledges and things to jump over and slide under.  I still don't have a real good feel for it, though, especially the post-elevator stuff, but it seems fun.

Labs is more generic, but it seems very compact compared to a lot of levels.  My first match there I had a score of something like 15k on defense, because you just hold the lobby and rebels keep pouring in constantly. 

The cutscenes seemed better done this time around, too.  The new weapon attachments seem kind of pointless (I can't even tell wtf the blast shield does), and the costumes are kind of mediocre (especially the Sad Punk, when they said "steampunk" I was picturing something more top-hat-and-bronze-gyroscopes, not so much clown makeup, tight pants and electrical tape).

[Malakili]

Yeah, Founder's Tower is very vertical and has a ton of handy ledges and things to jump over and slide under.  I still don't have a real good feel for it, though, especially the post-elevator stuff, but it seems fun.

Labs is more generic, but it seems very compact compared to a lot of levels.  My first match there I had a score of something like 15k on defense, because you just hold the lobby and rebels keep pouring in constantly. 

The cutscenes seemed better done this time around, too.  The new weapon attachments seem kind of pointless (I can't even tell wtf the blast shield does), and the costumes are kind of mediocre (especially the Sad Punk, when they said "steampunk" I was picturing something more top-hat-and-bronze-gyroscopes, not so much clown makeup, tight pants and electrical tape).

I'm looking forward to unlocking the aid station for medic.  Almost level 21 now after just a few games.  It seems like the most useful of the new things from what I can tell.  The operative one sounds handy too, but its still the red headed stepchild of the classes.

[Kail]

I'm not sure how I feel about the aid station.

On the plus side, it heals lost pips for free, which can mean a lot of health in some situations.

On the minus side, the rate of heal is slow, and the radius is quite small, which makes it less a "build this behind a defensive emplacement" passive structure and more a "come over here to get healed" type of thing where players have to actively decide to use it, and most players I've seen so far haven't been using it much (last game I had one guy empty two magazines into my station, standing at half health outside it's radius, I guess maybe he didn't know what it was or something).

Also, the station, along with all the other class abilities in this DLC, is an extra useable ability, and the medic already had too many of those.  So now you're going to have to respec again to get rid of one of your unneeded abilities.

[Azazel]

Its also having a free weekend starting now, so if there is anyone that wanted to try the game, nows the time.

Too little, too late, I fear.

[Malakili]

Also, the game feels a ton better if you hit ctrl + alt + ~ to bring up to console and change your FOV by using the ui_fov 90 command.  Replace 90 with whatever you want, I find 90 is sufficient.

[Strazos]

Gave it an honest try...but for whatever reason, it just feels too spammy for my tastes. I'm one of those nerds that habitually uses the sights...you know, so it should only take a few shots to kill someone.

Having to empty clips into people is just not my style.

[Malakili]

Gave it an honest try...but for whatever reason, it just feels too spammy for my tastes. I'm one of those nerds that habitually uses the sights...you know, so it should only take a few shots to kill someone.

Having to empty clips into people is just not my style.

You can play that way if you use pistols.  The Richie takes people down fast.

[Nightblade]

This game performs poorly on my Core i5 2500k, ati 4890 (overclocked) and 8 gigs of ram machine.

Wut.

[Malakili]

Not sure about the performance issues you are having.

Spent some time playing medic this morning.  The aid station or field regen unit or whatever is actually really good for giving your team extra staying power at a choke point.  I've had to be proactive about telling my team to stand in the blue particle effect though, once they realize how it works though, they use it all the time.

[Mrbloodworth]

There definitely is still a problem with team play. Though I have found a few matches where people get it and been having a great deal of fun.

The med-station is great. Still love the art style of this game, and the maps are really fun with all the different approaches. About the worst game I had was where the entire team was medics, but they never would heal the escort target, I had to spam it over and over that medics heal him. 

[Malakili]

There definitely is still a problem with team play. Though I have found a few matches where people get it and been having a great deal of fun.

The med-station is great. Still love the art style of this game, and the maps are really fun with all the different approaches. About the worst game I had was where the entire team was medics, but they never would heal the escort target, I had to spam it over and over that medics heal him. 

I've had some luck being assertive with organizing the team, but yes, if your team tries to rambo it up, its fairly awful.

[Azazel]

Still love the art style of this game,

I thought the art style was a positive, along with the customisability and the persistant nature of the characters. Hopefully someone else can take these ideas and run with them better than these guys worked out. Similar to RTW and their game.

[Malakili]

customisability and the persistant nature of the characters

I was talking with my friend last night (he is playing the free weekend), and he really liked this as well, and he isn't usually the type of gamer who does.  We thought the game could get out of its rut if it followed TF2's example and went free to play and started selling outfits.

[Strazos]

Played the game a bit more...it's decent fun. I seem to have more luck being methodical (hugging corners and such), though emptying clips into people is still kind of a chore at times. Heavy weapons seem to be somewhat pointless.

Also, the price point needed to be way lower to start - if it had been $30 or so, it would have been an easy sale to me.

[Malakili]

Played the game a bit more...it's decent fun. I seem to have more luck being methodical (hugging corners and such), though emptying clips into people is still kind of a chore at times. Heavy weapons seem to be somewhat pointless.

Also, the price point needed to be way lower to start - if it had been $30 or so, it would have been an easy sale to me.

Heavy weapons can be pretty solid, the issue is that there are so many buffs.  A buffed sub machine gunner will beat an unbuffed light machine gunner almost every time.  Unfortunately, there is a huge variation based on how much your team understands the game in terms of how well buffed the team will be.  Damage increase + kevlar + double pip health upgrade is enormous for your team, but if everyone just self buffs and saves their supply for grenades, then your team is fucked. 

Holding the command posts and upgrading them (an engineer witht he ability to upgrade needed) is also a huge thing.  I think the game has really good firefights, but often times it seems to me that the newer people are happier to just fight some semi open room with cover and have a shoot out for 5 minutes instead of actually doing things that help the team like buffing or completing objectives, and then things get ugly fast.  I just had a team that I was literally begging to help with the objectives, but no one would even talk back to me (text or voice), let along try to help.

[Nightblade]

If it wasnt for the performance issues and mouse acceleration I just might have enjoyed this a little bit. Maybe they should have ironed these issues out before throwing out a free weekend.

[Mrbloodworth]

If it wasnt for the performance issues and mouse acceleration I just might have enjoyed this a little bit. Maybe they should have ironed these issues out before throwing out a free weekend.

Try this:


Shadows seem to be the ATI issue for many.

[caladein]

If you did pick it up during the weekend, make sure to restart Steam and go to the Agents of Change DLC page and hit Install Game.  You won't have to downloading anything since you have it from before, you're just adding it back to your account.

[Azazel]

customisability and the persistant nature of the characters

I was talking with my friend last night (he is playing the free weekend), and he really liked this as well, and he isn't usually the type of gamer who does.  We thought the game could get out of its rut if it followed TF2's example and went free to play and started selling outfits.

Apparently BF3 (or was it MW3? Or both?) is going down this route to a degree. Not sure if they're planning on opening a cash shop to sell you a MARPAT shirt but with the perks/unlocks systems and some persistant character customisability, it'll be good to see. Of course Brink allowed/allows for a lot more with all of the tattoos etc (as with APB - finally remembered the name) and the gang-style/ragtag group of freedom fighters contexts.

It's a small thing to an extent, but Borderlands for example would also have been that touch better in MP if you could customise your guy besides a few palette swaps.

[Mrbloodworth]

So, Apparently ATI will no longer allow you to turn off the catalyst in the new drivers. It also highly affects openGL games. So, its not just brink, and its not brink thats the issue. In fact, we are not sure what to do about this in wurm.

[Sheepherder]

Learn to deal with the only other major hardware vendor?

[Morfiend]

It's a small thing to an extent, but Borderlands for example would also have been that touch better in MP if you could customise your guy besides a few palette swaps.

Just wanted to say that I 100% agree with the above statement.

[Furiously]

Totally agree.

[Mazakiel]

From what was said in one of the video interviews about Borderlands 2 that was put up a week or so ago, they're adding more customization options.