An Update on Brink : Othor Games

» Fri May 27, 2011 2:49 pm

Wanted to share an update on Brink from Splash Damage’s Paul Wedgwood – the Game Director on Brink.

Now that Brink has been released in North America, we’ve had hundreds of thousands of people create their character and join the civil war for the Ark. Seeing the game out there being played and enjoyed by so many is very exciting for us, and we’ve been hopping into multiplayer matches ourselves to get in on the action with all of you.

Before we dive into this blog update, we’d like to extend a huge thank you to everyone who’s been sharing their feedback about Brink. We keep a close eye on what all of you have been saying about the game and wanted to give you an update on what’s been happening on our end:

Xbox 360

We’ve now put up our first game update on the Xbox 360, which went live at launch. It addresses several of the issues raised in some of the early US reviews of the game and brings with it some major improvements.

Most importantly, this update significantly reduced texture loading times thanks to improved hard-drive caching. It also improves client prediction when playing online – in other words, you’ll experience much less “rubber banding” in multiplayer. We’ve also fixed several issues that could lead to the game freezing, and resolved an issue where Brink would insist on playing all of the training videos rather than just the introductory one.

If you’ve not yet got the update, simply restart the game while your Xbox is connected to the internet.

We’ve also been getting new reports of lag when playing online, especially in matches with lots of human players. We’re all huge multiplayer fans here at the office and we know how important a lag-free online experience is. We’re urgently investigating this issue and seeing what we can do to improve things in that area. Stay tuned.

Statistics Site

We’ve also seen a few questions about the Brink statistics website and what you should be doing with the VIP code that’s displayed in the game. When the Brink statistics site launches on www.BrinkTheGame.com, you’ll be able to register a profile on there and can then use the VIP code from inside the game to link your Xbox 360 gamertag/PSN ID/Steam ID to it. More details on all of that soon!

Lastly, please do keep your Brink feedback coming. It’s really useful to us and we really do check all of it. We have teams at Splash Damage and Bethesda dedicated full time to resolving any issues you discover.

That’s it for now – thanks for reading and see you online in Brink!

Paul Wedgwood
Game Director

» Fri May 27, 2011 12:49 pm

We have been working on updates for Brink to address the lag issue that some people have reported they were experiencing.

In the meantime, we have made a configuration change for 360 users (which will be available to the PS3, once PSN is up) that alters the number of human players when matchmaking for “Campaign” and most ‘Freeplay’ modes to eight total human players. This new configuration will allow those connecting to and hosting matches (particularly those with lower upstream bandwidth) to more reliably find and connect to quality hosts via the match-making process – resulting in less lag and more fun. This change is being rolled out today and will be available worldwide.

For players who haven’t been experienced lag, we’ll still support 8v8 on all maps via a new ‘Big Teams’ configuration in Freeplay, and through custom settings in Private matches. There is no download required for this update and it will be available automatically the next time you log in to play Brink and launch either campaign or standard Freeplay matches. This should allow players new to the Ark as well as veterans to find quality matches suitable to their preferred play style.

We are also releasing an incremental update for PC players via Steam that addresses AI, GPU, and server issues. See the http://store.steampowered.com/news/5464/. Many of these fixes are being included in the full update for the 360 and PS3 versions.

We would like to thank you for supporting Brink and for your continued feedback. To show our appreciation for your support of Brink, we will be making the first DLC for Brink available for free when it is released. This DLC is planned for June and will offer additional maps. We’ll continue to provide announcements about the next title update, as well as the first DLC release as that information becomes available.

- Splash Damage & Bethesda

» Fri May 27, 2011 1:53 pm

For the configuration change on Xbox 360, make sure to sign out of Xbox LIVE and then sign back in.

» Fri May 27, 2011 8:31 pm

Just wanted to give everyone an update on where we’re currently at with our upcoming game updates for Brink.

Xbox 360

We’ve been hard at work investigating the lag issues some players of the Xbox 360 version of Brink have reported. We’ve now completed modifications to improve network performance and will be rolling these out in a title update for the game.

This update has been submitted to Microsoft, and we expect it to be available next week.

This title update is also going to fix an isolated freezing issue reported by some German players who should no longer experience that problem once the update has been installed.

In the Meantime...

Until these updates roll out, here’s what you can do to improve your multiplayer experience if you encounter problems:

Check your opponent’s network connection / ping:

One player with very low bandwidth connections can have a negative impact on the overall network performance of the game for the team.
You are able to view other player’s connection quality easily by viewing the scoreboard and determining if this is the likely cause of lag.
To view other player’s connection quality, press Start during a match and select the Scoreboard option to display all other players
Other human player bandwidth values are shown on the right hand side of their name as a traffic light value. Anyone that is showing orange or red means they have a bad connection and could potentially be causing the match to become disrupted...

Note: You can also view the opposing team scoreboard since the problem may be with a player on the opposite team. To do this press R1 for PS3 or RB for XBOX 360 while on the scoreboard

Should you see more players showing RED than GREEN on their status, you should exit this game, return to the main menu and join another game on a new connection.
The matchmaking system will place you in a more suitable game

Finally, if you have the German Xbox 360 version of Brink and are experiencing freezing issues, you can use the following workaround until the title update is released:

Turn the Dialogue Volume down completely. You can do this from the main menu or by pressing Start during a match and selecting:

Optionen > Audio > Lautst?rke der Dialoge
Move the dialogue volume slider all the way to the left

The teams at Splash Damage and Bethesda Softworks