- As I mentioned before, players get incapacitated before they die – and this will ALWAYS happen. You cannot straight up kill a player without incapacitating him first.
- You can lay incapacitated indefinitely, as long as an enemy doesn't finish you off. Only an ability lets you fire when incapacitated, and at the cost of greatly reduced health while in the incapacitated state.
- There is a Command Post at every spawn location, so people can change class and weapon after they've spawned/respawned. These are special Command Posts, which cannot be captured by the other faction, and they don't show up as objectives on enemy Objective Wheels.
- For all objectives where multiple players can progress it, (like multiple Operatives hacking a terminal, Engineers repairing an objective, etc.) each additional player is half effective, so you don't really get any advantage if you have more than 4 of the class. It's of course so some semblance of class variety is maintained.
- Challenge progression is per character, but the unlocks they grant are per account.
NA touches on some details with incapacitating players: “You can only die while incapacitated. Believe me, you can still end up dying pretty darn quickly. A change we made during Brink's production was that damage will not carry over between alive and incapped states... which I know won't be a popular decision with some, but I really think makes the game more fun all around.”
- Neil Alphonso, Lead Game Designer
(To better clarify what is meant when he says, “damage will not carry over between alive and incapped states…”)
- What that means is that if you kill a player, even if he only has 1% health and even if you threw a grenade at his face, regardless of the amount of damage you do to him, you still will not kill him and instead, he will still be incapacitated with an amount of health that differs from what he had before he died. Whether or not this “incapped health level” varies, I do not know.
NA talks briefly on PC controls: “Yes. Regarding the PC controls, we'll have to do some tweaks for all the various things that have been mentioned here over the past couple of years (including IS). PC doesn't have a rigidly scheduled certification process like consoles do, so one has to get the console stuff sorted first, and there's time for PC love while MS and Sony are off doing their testing.”
- Neil Alphonso
Aubrey touching on aim-assist for console controls: “CoD, and most console FPS games actually do have a short amount of aim acceleration to them:
The first couple of frames are "catching up" to your input speed, so that "flicks" or "taps" in direction result in small angular steps, and not in full speed jumps, which tend to just lurch your aim over things you're trying to finely aim at. In short, it's pretty frustrating to have no acceleration what so ever, but we keep ours to a minimum, like CoD.
We don't, however, do CoD's single-player only style of aim assist (momentarily snapping to a target on the "positive edge" of an ironsight button press).”
- Aubrey Hesselgren, Lead Technical Designer
There are circumstances that will reveal your location on the minimap, in addition to being interrogated by an Operative:
- firing your weapon will reveal your location
- having a member of the opposing team see you, will reveal your location
- Sprinting within a radius close to the enemy will also reveal your location
“Our tagging does work somewhat similarly to BFBC2, we just removed you having to press a button. Basically just targeting somebody will broadcast some 'Enemy(ies) spotted!' dialog from your character, and the enemy will then appear on all of the team's radars.”
- Neil Alphonso
So, recapping how you can end up on radar:
- From being spotted.
- Sprinting close to an enemy
- Firing your weapon
- From an interrogation. (which reveals more than one person)
However, there are counters to these:
- Counters for being spotted – hide or kill the guy(s) that spotted you.
- Counters for sprinting to close to an enemy – this is achieved by an ability, as a dev pointed out on the SD forums – “there is an ability to allow radar invisibility and sprint.” I know there is silent footstep ability, and that could very well be what he was referring to.
- Counters for firing your weapon – Silencers. It appears that this is (at least one instance in the game) where choosing to use a silencer can effect gameplay.
Richard Ham talks a bit about what “Hardcore” players can expect from Brink, from an interview at PS3attitude.com: “Splash Damage’s background is the hardcore player: with Enemy Territory: Quake Wars and Enemy Territory: Wolfenstein those are great hardcore games. You still to this day – if you’re a noob – [need] good luck because those games really throw you into the deep end and make no apologies. Softcore needs not apply. We definitely want to have our cake and eat it too. So all these features which we put into Brink that make it more friendly and inviting and makes sure that everyone gets a place at the table… they can be turned off.
For the hardcore player [who says], “I don’t want you holding my hand. bonk this intel shit, we were winning fair and square and we’re going to stay that way.” We still give those kind of players the control over the kind of experience they want.
For the default campaign – if you want to play it like a story – VOIP is off, friendly fire is off, the intel system (which helps struggling players) is on. If you’re a hardcore player who wants none of that crap, then don’t choose campaign. Instead you choose ‘freeplay’. If you choose freeplay, you go to a whole different section of the menu, which is very much like what you’d expect to see from a more hardcore, old-school shooter, where you can set up your own custom servers.
Amongst other things, you can turn off that intel stuff; if you don’t like the game balancer and you want it to be 100% equal if you win or lose, turn it off. You want VOIP on because you know you’re playing with a mature bunch of people and you want immediate communication, then turn it on. Turn friendly fire on because obviously that adds a huge tactically level to the game because you have to watch your shots. Play it the way you want to play it. So we totally make sure that we’re making a game for the hardcore as well. All the stuff they would consider Care Bear, they don’t have to touch with a 10ft bargepole.”
- Richard Ham, Creative Director
Before diving into a game you have to choose 1 of 2 options after the inrto cutscene plays:
- Survive the Ark. (Security Campaign)
- Escape the Ark. (Resistance Campaign)
Originally, Splash Damage had the idea to “bribe” players to play online, by offering them extra XP to do so, but since then, the team decided to eliminate this feature, because it’s just not fair to those who do not wish to play online. Now, regardless how you choose to play, you will always get the same amount of XP.
"We try to ensure that the game is rewarding and satisfying no matter how you want to play. We don’t give favoritism to either side. This has led us to some important decisions too. For instance, originally we were going to give players more XP for playing online, because we wanted to encourage them to do so. But we ultimately realized that this wasn’t fair to all our players, some of whom are just too uncomfortable with the idea of online play, or some of whom literally don’t have an online connection. So we dropped it to ensure true equality.
So all the unlocks, the customization options, the missions, the challenges, and the leveling up, everything is totally available to you no matter how you want to play.”
- Richard Ham
According to Ed Stern, xp for kills is proportional to damage:
"We look at how to incentivise players. We give you much more XP for buffing your teammates than for kills, and we smother you in XP for actually doing the objective. In addition, the XP that we do award for kills is proportional to damage, so if you cause 90 percent of the damage to an enemy and someone else swoops in and delivers the final shot, you will get 90 percent of the kill XP.”
- There is an option in the main menu titles “Dossier.” This is where videos and tips will be stored for you to view. Among the videos are a list of tutorials that cover everything you need to know about playing Brink.
Spoiler
