First Brink DLC will be free
Bethesda plans to give away the first Brink DLC as a token of appreciation. Meanwhile, a 360 config change and PC patch help with problems right away.
It's been a tough launch week for Brink. A number of issues have plagued the newest team-based shooter across all platforms--PC, 360, and PS3. As a token of appreciation to fans for sticking with the game, publisher Bethesda announced it plans to give the first Brink DLC pack away for free. Set to be available in June, it will include new maps and content for players. No pricing had been previously announced for the pack.
In the meantime, work continues in earnest to improve the game. A configuration change for 360 players has been put in place that sets Campaign and Freeplay modes to eight total human players in matchmaking. This should lessen the load on hosts and result in more reliable, consistent matches. The change is already in place and will take effect the next time you login to play. Those with ample bandwidth will still be able to play full 8v8 maps with a new "Big Teams" option in Freeplay or through setting up Private matches.
An incremental update has also been released for PC players via Steam. It addresses AI, GPU, and server issues. The full release notes on Steam list all the details. According to the post, many of these fixes will also come to the 360 and PS3 versions in the upcoming full update.
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replyGarnett Lee posted a new article, First Brink DLC will be free.
Bethesda plans to give away the first Brink DLC as a token of appreciation. Meanwhile, a 360 config change and PC patch help with problems right away.-
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I agree, but people pay for Call of Duty maps, so they have no incentive to make maps free for this game.
Personally, I think charging for maps is stupid, especially in a team game. Variety makes people more excited about the game, so they recommend it to friends. But there is no way to tell the number of sales they get through that recommendation compared to the map sales, so...-
Their incentive is to give people reasons to keep playing Brink otherwise its player base is going to start shrinking real fast and it'll go the way of Crysis 2 and Homefront. They can't charge for DLC like CoD can because Brink is not a must have title and people simply can drop Brink and go back to CoD or Halo. There are 4 CoD games in the top 20 most played Xbox Live games for April (Crysis 2 and Homefront are no longer on the list).
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They passed cert on the first try. Someone at Splash Damage said that; I forget who (Wedgwood?).
As has been demonstrated before, particularly with Fallout New Vegas, certification processes don't catch every performance and code quality problem.-
It is kinda surprising they didn't catch the "sound stops working for everyone" problem on that one level though.
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That one is amazing because it seems like it literally happens to everyone regardless of spec.
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I'm wondering if the "sound drops out" is a bug with the "stunned" mute effect getting triggered and staying on, keeping most of the sound muted. In that state, you can still hear the EKG sound of the command post, but that's all you can hear. I've only encountered it in the Refuel map, and I'm playing on PC; does it happen in other maps and/or platforms?
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I'm playing on the 360 and I didn't run into that. The sound for me is broken in other ways... many times, while I am shooting and a voice clip plays, there will be this horrible distortion/clipping/echo thing that's just so painful and distracting it makes me want to quit playing until it's patched...
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Some discussion of the cert process in general on it in the platform biased podcast: http://platformbiased.com/2011/01/17/show-050-favorite-games-of-2010/ skip to about 31 minutes in.
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I don't think there's any sort of governing body that certifies stuff for PC, which has both good and bad points (that podcast in particular was talking about delays in the cert process specifically because Uber Entertainment's update to Monday Night Combat got 'lost' in certification for a month before it was released :/ ). I think there's a certain set of criteria a game has to meet to be put on steam (there was a post a while ago about some indie game getting rejected I think), but nothing like what console stuff goes through AFAIK.
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Until they fix the technical issues, ASAP! there will be no players left for any possible pay dlc.
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The value proposition does seem steep when looking at the vital statistics: 8 maps for $50. I was definitely getting Brink day one because I never had enough of a chance to play Wolf:ET back in 2003 (had too many college distractions and not enough bandwidth), and I got a $10 gift card from Best Buy when I bought Portal 2 for PC.
Wolf:ET was free, but it was only six maps. It was originally supposed to be a game with a single-player campaign, but Activision cancelled it, and then later decided to release the multiplayer component for free. That was essentially a gift to the community back then, but with Brink's value proposition now, one would hope that Splash Damage will support the title with more playable content. In this context, I'm glad that they decided to make the first DLC pack free.
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I wanted to love this game. It's the first I've preordered in years. But damnit if Splash Damage didn't let me down. ATI texture gridding problem out of the box (fortunately fixed now), choppy framerates on ATI, clunky movement feel, and netcode that makes all the characters skip around (making aiming very frustrating). Not to mention the ridiclously hyped "character editor" is a giant waste since you can't distinguish any players from each other in actual gameplay. And don't get me started on the "story"...they just bookended some cutscenese into the missions. Whoop-dee-doo.
Compared to Bad Company 2, TF2, and CoD, the experience just pales in comparison. When are developers going to learn that all of their "innovative gameplay ideas" aren't worth a shit if it's wrapped in a turd of technology.
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The "skip around" part is I think the model animation for being hit.
I never really saw any technical problems with the netcode and such, but the hit twitch was really annoying.
I did play on PC with dedicated servers. XBox could easily have netcode problems with the lack of dedicated servers though...
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Really couldn't find this game to be fun. It felt like counter-strike with a mix of CoD. I tried the campaign, if you can even call it that, and the only thing I found interesting was modifying the guns.
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What worked for us was to make the server public and no password. Otherwise you get the server not responding
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Dont know if it is of any help. but can run the dedicated server from the same machine as the client and connect that way. you can have the challenges or co-op and passworded with out to much fuss. can also give out Rcon to your mates so that they can then change the map if they want. Works for me and my mates.
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This is a good gesture, I hope it all goes well and stiill can't wait for my exams to be ovver so I can try Brink myself.
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