I'd hate for this game to die, which, despite its problems, is at core a fun experience. I've had 4 friends purchase the game. One loved it outright, another 2 didn't get it so I spent an evening with them online. I played through the game with them explaining the sublte nuances, how kills are not the focus, that each class has a role & alongside those that each gun & body type changes how you play as well. I answered all their various questions, cleared up their confusion & we had a great time. Now 3 out of those 4 friends enjoy the game. I've yet to get online with the 4th but I hope to soon.

The best way I heard it put was in a recent review. It stated that most FPS games are fairly similar to each other, based on a basic template, if you will. People expect, after playing COD or Halo, to pick up any other FPS & be able to game instantly with a fair degree of skill, knowing what to expect & adjusting to the few small changes of that new game. Brink isn't like that. It requires you to take a step back & rethink how you game; it challenges you to change.

My point is if each of us could do this with just one friend, we'd double the population overnight :celebration: The game is half price now in most places & free DLC is on its way, the lag is vastly improved & further game balancing tweaks are inbound. It's had a rocky start but its not dead yet. Just a thought

I don't think this is the main issue holding back the community from developing. I have seen plenty of people who love the idea behind the game and fully understand how to play, but for a primarily multiplayer game, brink has a considerably flawed multiplayer platform. Problems with lag, bad matchmaking, empty game modes, etc., all accumulate to a poor multiplayer experience. For me that is really the only reason why I'm not playing Brink.
Sure, there are some things about the game I don't much care for, but those are really personal preferences and do not detract from the game itself. Being stuck playing bots does detract from the game, and no amount of rethinking can correct that.

My only real beef with Brink is the lack of a lobby system, or some type of matchmaking. I really believe that if this is fixed in the DLC update than things will improve for everyone. Free DLC will get some players that have left, but kept their game, to try it out again just to see the new stuff. If they also find that now they can actually know where the "real" player are and get into some good online battles, than Brink may get a second life.

MX hit it square on the nail. Even with the overall lack of content the game has, a true to form match making system would be the best thing to happen to Brink. New content is a welcome addition, but at this point #1 on my "things to add to Brink" list as an online lobby.

you consolers need to start only accepting games with dedicated servers. p2p just doesnt work

last FPS i played on ps3 was killzone3 and the match making was terrible compared to dedicated servers.

Lack of a traditional lobby is a pain, but if you make a party in xbox with your friends, one of the highest rankers finds a game then jus hits start, invite party. It was a pain at first to get used to but it kinda makes sense in a weird way.

Totally agreed mate WE NEED TO SAVE BRINK BROTHERS !!!!

These developers talked the talked and failed the walk.
I remember a few months before release how everyone talking possible GOTY and now all of them have disappeared. Amazing how things change so fast. SD had the gaming life by the balls until they dropped them big time what a fricking shame. Why do we no longer hear from them or give some direction where they want to go with the game? Just another FAIL by developer group THQ IW SD Dice is my last 1 standing don't fail me BF3.

Sadly things are on the downhill now. SD and Beth failed badly. How? Well if I have to write it so people understand (Think most of the community gets it already), then I will gladly do it.

From a developer stand point, the game on paper, and what was SHOWN at E3 (and explained) is not the product we got.

-The "Countless" customizations were all but numbered down. The weapons and attachments, well those simply didn't even come to fruit. Very limited compared to what we were shown, and what was told to us for about a year. So fail on customization (Which was a big selling point at ONE time for them)

-"Epic" combat system and combat gameplay........Well this KINDA happened. Sure we got some cool new moves, and abilities. I actually liked the idea of sliding and dodging to avoid being killed. Jumping over obstacles, and using what resources the maps have, to my advantage. Then it ends there. Your team AI does not use the obstacles, nor the moves hardly. When they do, its like a week too late for it to be effective. Other then flashy looks, the conference at E3 explained this would change the gameplay all over. Nope! All it did was make dying look much more pretty. "Cool I slid to avoid getting plastered with a clip of rounds. Whats that you say? A shotgun to the face mid slide?"

-"Improved AI combat mechanics" do I even need to open this Pandoras Box? Anyone saying "Oh the AI is flawless and works like a charm!" Has been smoking some good stuff and should probably share (Joking of course!). Not only did your AI svck to start off with on your own team, the enemy AI was sniping people with SHOTGUNS from across the map. Actually the enemy AI IMPROVED as you leveled, but your team AI took one too many grenades to the head. AI medics would never res you, or if they tried, would run on top of you, just to die, not using the distance of a revive. Enemy team gunners were 100% accurate in their shots and grenade tosses, while your team couldn't hit EARTH itself while standing on it, with the gun pointed at the ground!

-"New Team Match Ups" yeah that didn't happen. I won't even go there. If I need to explain, then your not playing the game clearly, or your playing My Little Pony Island Adventures.

-Lag...................nuff said. It's horrendous. They put the game out, and the forums filled with "LAG" posts. They placed duct tape over some Cat 5 cables, and now there is LESS LAG. About .0000000000000000000001 latency in improvement! Okay so maybe its a LITTLE better, but it still exist, and many are left because your playing a game with a slideshow for 2FPS.

Bring back the community? I never sold my game. I figured I'd wait till the patch day. That was PROMISED in June. Again that did not happen. Now the end of July. The problem is, no patch is going to fix a broken game, without fixing what is broken first. All they are doing is painting a PoS Rusty car with a new paint job and selling it "LIKE NEW" without even putting an engine in it. Whats the use of upgrading the lvl cap, weps, attachments, and skills, if your going to run into the SAME issues? Yeah I know your going to say "It will be fixed in the patch." No it WILL NOT. The problem is in the CORE of the game. The patch is an ADD ON. There is no justifiable reason to keep updates to in game mechanics, and save them for a patch MONTHS later, while losing as many players as they have. Is it my opinion? No, its been pretty standard across the board from reviewers, gamer sites, even posters on their own forum.

Those who sold the game already, probably played Vegas odds, and got their money back (or as much as they could early on) already. Those of us who held on to it are one of a few. Either you like the game, and enjoy it for what it is. You liked the game, but think it needs to be improved, so will hang on to it for a while and hope for the best. You liked the game, then started hating it because it failed at everything it was SUPPOSE to be, but wont sell it back because you never sell back games. Or you liked the game, it failed at everything, and then you sold it back and bought L.A. Noire a week later.

IMO they lost whatever life they could get back in the game. The only life they will get is people who own it and still hope for a better tomorrow. Getting new gamers will not happen unless there is a HUGE change in playability. It has been months now and nothing significant has happened. It is unlikely that things will improve. I mean how often does a Number 1 rated game launch a big content patch with no issues? Rarely! As little attention that has been shown to Brink, most likely the patch will bring more problems then the game already has, just adding to troubles we already have.

I'll wait for the patch, but if the base issues persist, Ill most likely be joining the ranks of people using the case as a bookend filled with lead.

^^ this

i'm primarily a 360 player these days but oh do i miss the days of dedicated servers and an actual list where you can find games that wont lag...

as for the lag... everyone keeps complaining and complaining about it and claiming the previous patch did nothing... to tell you the truth... my modem was slowly dying and i was only getting 1.5down/0.5up and after that patch i didn't have as much of an issue with lag... went from 4 our of 5 games being laggy to 1 out of 5... and before people say "SEE!!! it's still laggy" just so you know YOU DO get laggy games in almost any online game... especially games with "matchmaking"... if i can run 1 out of 5 games with no lag with what i was getting on connection then what type of connection to you people who continually complain about it have...
once again... server lists would definately help for this... even if it is still p2p... choosing a game where you wont lag would be extremely beneficial in the lag department...

FxDelusions made a lot of points that i could see being very valid to someone if they were a glass half empty type of person... customization is still there... however... the majority of it is aesthetic in nature and doesn't really help you out... the combat system is a lot different from the "blockbusters" of today... the AI, while still [censored] at times, actually helps you out and isn't an auto death as soon as you see them... idk about all your points man... the only thing i know is this game is different and a change from the norm... most people fear change ... while the game was "flawed" it still is a game with some good core mechanics... other games that are touted as THE BEST have horrible core mechanics that they've thrown a bunch of icing on to make you think its not a cake made out of sshhiitt... sure the icing outweighs the taste ... but if you actually pay attention you're just eating sshhiitt... brink, using the cake anology, is like a cake that has no icing on it but is still wonderful in its own ways... at least imo...

btw... a lot of the reviewers focused on graphics granted they were playing it on 360... when i play a game on console its less about the graphics and more about the ease of play and not having to worry about things such as aimbots and wallhacks... if you truly want graphics and everything associated with graphics then you should play on PC... this is a point a lot of the reviewers of the day have forgotten or just plain never gotten...

lol Thanks man & ComptonEMT

& FX, I understand your pain & disappointment, Brink is that gorgeous girl at the bar that you see from behind but when she turns around is like Skeletor in a bad wig. But the bodies still there, man. My lag is much much better, rarely a huge problem. I think the customization is alot more than ive seen in most other console FPS's, but yeah, the AI isn't great. Even so, the core game, as mentioned, is still solid. With a lil patch & some DLC this is could still be a great game. & now its realistically priced lol

save brink!

I took several weeks off, then when I got on today I had back to back 8 v 8 (human ) freeplay matches. Was amazing, not sure when people started coming back (or when they allowed 8v8 as the default again) but Im stoked. There was little to no lag as well, im excited to see if this continues.

If anyone wants to run some matches with me this weekend hit me up on XBL, GTs in the sig

Lag. Brought up in every thread. I don't have problems with lag, I just quit and join another game. Simple. If people experience lag, just quit. You won't be there long enough to upset the balance of players and it only takes thirty seconds or so between leaving a match and starting a new one. :banghead:

Yes! There are a couple of things that could help breath some life back into the PC version of this game (sorry consoles):

1. Give us our damned STATS!!!! Part of what makes a competitive game fun is reviewing how well you did. Where is the highlight reel? I know, SD wants to focus on the team not the individual, so give us team focused stats in addition to individual stats. Just let me see how accurate I was, how many head-shots I had, how few times I was killed, ... I have played ET with a group of coworkers since it was released. Part of what made it fun was having an in-house website that displayed the stats for our Friday games. The stats website promoted competition, gave people something to shoot for, and acted as a highlight reel. When I finish a round of Brink, what do I get? JACK SQUAT! Especially once I reach the level cap. Who gives an S how much experience I gained. The point system is imbalanced anyway. Engineers work twice as hard as medics (often harder) but you could never tell that from the big pointless XP number.

Give us the stats at the end of each round. I want something interesting to look at while I wait for the next round to load up. Nobody watches the cut-scenes anymore. Make the UI simple and readable. The ETQW round stats UI was just terrible.

I really thought Brink was going to replace ET for my Friday game with my coworkers. We are playing it now, but it is not nearly as fun because of this massive stats oversight.

2. Open the game up to the mod community (quickly, before your funding gets cut and you have no developers to work on this). ET has lived on as long as it has for this very reason. There are more people playing ET then Brink and how old is ET, 7, 8? In game years that's like 250 years old. Open it up. Let the community start having fun with it. I suspect the ET fans are the only ones left playing the game right now, and a lot of them are anxiously waiting to mod the game.

3. Make it easy for friends to host a game and invite each other. Lucky for me I am in the software industry, so I was able to figure out how to forward ports and make this work. I should not have had to do this.

4. Fix the layout of a few maps. Container City. Everyone knows what I am talking about. It is impossible to get out of the spawn area if the Resistance team has any solid players. I don't care how you do it (get rid of the sniper spot above the barricade, give Security a second or third flanking route, whatever), just do something. Nothing is more aggravating then repeatedly dying in your spawn area for an entire match. Shipyard. Fixing the crane is on the border of too difficult. Hacking the missile is nearly impossible. These stick out as the worst cases. There may be others that need adjustment, but I do not have time to focus on this topic at the moment.

5. We all would love some DLC. But if you only have 500 people playing the game on the PC, how are you going to make enough money to cover the development? Make some important changes that will draw players back in. Then focus on DLC. I'll gladly pay for it if I have people to play with.

I would just like to add, that I was really happy to see SD getting back to their roots with this game. ETQW, while fun, was a disappointment for me. The team dynamic was lost in the sprawling maps and vehicles. My coworkers and I tried to replace ET with ETQW for our Friday game, only to go back to ET (we seem to be drawn to playing as a tight team). As much as I plugged Brink to my coworkers as the next great ET, you would think I worked for SD. I convinced 10 of them to buy the game. I'm doing my part to keep the Friday Brink game from fizzling out. Help me out SD.

Chappy

ps. These suggestions are prioritized with 1 being most important IMO.

While this is true, the poor matchmaking gives you a likely chance of just dropping into the same laggy match, at least in my experience. You can still change game modes but it's not ideal or how it should work.

And I wish there was an easy way to bring more players to Brink's community but I don't think there is after all the hype and the poor release/reviews. I do think the community, particularly on here needs to be more supportive when people come to complain or express their frustrations with the unpolished gem that is Brink. The usual response from the die hard fans is "great, we don't want you here then," which is entirely the wrong way to go about things if we want to get the community growing again. People should be more mature and by addressing one's concerns while highlighting the good things about Brink can more likely sway one's viewpoint into sticking it out for the long run or at least into feeling better that although the game isn't as polished, it still has a fun community that is enjoying it. But I digress since this is the internet and it is not known for it's maturity.

The quicker they're able to resolve Brink's largest issues (primarily lack of a lobby and the poor matchmaking), the better chance they'll have at being able to draw in more people with dlc's and the like but until then I see our numbers dwindling further.

Hey emerald... idk about you but typically the same people who come to complain are the same people that focus on a few things... you give them their side of the story and the bring back the same points... bring up evenmore points and they just come back to the same points...

People whine and complain about there being no party system... but how hard is it to really join with friends?... not to mention most of those people rage in game about being 5 on 2 when you are playing with your friends...
And an actual game list would be so much better that simple matchmaking... idk when match making became the "it" thing in games but I hate it...

And no...I'm not one of those people that say "just leave" but I do rebuke people here and there for things...

Yeah, how Splash Damage overlooked a matchmaking system blows my mind. If it wasn't for friends and the cool group we have on the PS3 I really wouldn't be having any fun. I think about new people picking up Brink and not finding anyone to play with and then deciding Brink "svcks".

No, you're right. It's not something that would work in every situation as some people do just complain to complain and those threads can be annoying after awhile, especially to those that have been on these forums for quite a while. But I think if the community tried to be more supportive it would help more in the long run. I've just been getting rather annoyed by all the "just leave" responses lately.

I think the DLC will breathe some new life into the game, I just hope the changes with the patch we'll be getting in tandem are enough to keep people in with us until some of these issues can fixed.
With enough patching, this game could have a better matchmaking service, so I'm hoping the DLC will fix a lot of that.

Also, Dedicated Servers would have been AWESOME.
I was a Left 4 Dead veteran, playing on Dedicated Servers... It was hard to get used to playing a game with P2P again. haha

I agree, we can use some more people. I try to post interesting videos that would get people who I don't know interested http://www.youtube.com/xSuperCargo.

Highlighting the best of the game instead of all the negatives that people hear is important. Not that negatives aren't a real issue, but that they don't overwhelm the game as much as some say.

I have been slowly talking over a ton of my friends to join the game community and give it a chance once the DLC comes out with those patches... The price-drop made this much easier.
A lot of people are starting to get bored of the CoD franchise (it'll still sell extremely well though), so something new is always welcomed. It's just with how lazy reviewers are these days combined with the terrible matchmaking and unconventional gameplay (and terrible "integration" of multi/singleplayer), the game has a horrid rep. So people are instantly hesitant to trust my word.
Truth be told, I'm the resident Game Reviewer for most of my friends and typically when I suggest a game, it isn't hard to win my friends over... This game hasn't been easy to push. = /

I love Brink though... Or rather the potential. With its current design, it has the potential to be an awesome game... They just need to fix those few glaring issues. Which are certainly fixable.
Hell, look at Team Fortress 2... That game was entirely different when it first came out.