Reminder: Brink DLC Free for Two Weeks
News | July 29, 2011 11:52 pm
By Aldemar
For those of you still playing Splash Damage's and Bethesda Softworks' BRINK, there's a gem coming up. A DLC pack titled 'Agents of Change' will be released on August 3rd, with a Title Update live early today. The hook for the DLC? It's free for two weeks. After two weeks you will pay 800 MSP for the pack (so be prompt downloading!). The DLC includes achievements. Read on for the full explanation.
Achievements
My recommendation? Download if you ever plan on picking up the game. Free DLC packs are few and far between, regardless of the quality of game.
We’re excited to announce the final release date for Brink: Agents of Change. The content will be available this coming Wednesday, August 3rd, on Xbox LIVE, PlayStation Network, and Steam. As long as you download Agents of Change during the first two weeks it becomes available, you’ll always be able to play it for FREE. If you don’t download in the first two weeks, it’ll cost $9.99 (or 800 Microsoft Points)… so be sure to get it early.
Achievements
In addition to Agents of Change, we’ve also been hard at work on a comprehensive new title update for both the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 versions of Brink. The update is already live on Xbox LIVE and PSN. Below are some of the highlights – if you’re looking for the full changelog, you can find that at the very end of this post.
Most importantly, this update brings a host of additional networking improvements and optimisations to Brink multiplayer. These will make your online experience smoother and more consistent on both Xbox LIVE and the PlayStation Network, so you’ll be able to have better quality multiplayer matches on both services.
Next up is Brink’s AI, which is also receiving a whole bunch of tweaks. For starters, your AI teammates are getting new objective priorities across the board, so they’ll be more likely to go after Core Objectives and will find Command Posts a little bit less appealing. AI characters on the attacking team in Campaign mode will now also prove more useful all around, while all bot inhibitors for Freeplay matches have been disabled entirely – this will make AI characters more challenging and fun to play with and against in Brink multiplayer.
For those of you that enjoy playing Stopwatch, there’s now a new post-match summary screen detailing the performance of both teams. Not only will you be able to see who’s won overall, but the new summary will also break down the time taken for each of the objectives – great for bragging rights!
Additionally, this update includes a massive bundle of weapon balancing tweaks. Among other things, heavy weapons and grenade launchers are getting a boost, while SMGs are dialled back a bit. Very nearly everything else gets tickled with the balancing stick, as well, so there’s literally something for everyone. If you’re after the full breakdown of what’s changing, you can find that in this post.
Speaking of balancing, this update also moves a few more things over to our netvars, which allows us to adjust these on the fly in the future without requiring you to download a full game update. These include respawn timers and timelimits for all of the maps in the game, as well as body type health, so we’ll have even greater flexibility when it comes to balancing. As always, keep sharing your balancing feedback with us – it’s been invaluable so far.
Finally, this update also includes numerous bug fixes. For example, light body types are now no longer being able to wield heavy weapons and we’ve also been able to tackle a bunch of issues with some items being misreported on the Brink statistics site. By the way, if you haven’t registered an account on there yet, now’s the time! Not only will you be able to see a detailed breakdown of your player and weapons statistics, but you’ll also be able to check out summaries of your most recent matches and compare your stats to those of other players.
There’s a big list of other fixes and improvements included in the title update – the full, unedited changelog is below.
Xbox 360
Optimized snapshot sizes to reduce bandwidth usage
Added new snapshot compression code to reduce bandwidth usage
Implemented new system for gathering QoS data and scaling bandwidth usage
Improved network syncing when placing HE charges and hack devices
Fixed issue with Bot AI continually dropping
Gave Freeplay game mode bots a fixed difficulty (rather than time-based scaling)
Extensive weapon balance changes
Changed default matchmaking from “My Rank” to “My Rank or Higher”
Removed the Advanced config from the list to reduce number of matchmaking buckets
Added Stopwatch review screen
Changed stopwatch rules to keep track of number of objectives during calculation of winning team
Removed the delay when team switching in match warm-up
Added respawn and time limit values to netvars for future tweaking
Added body-type health to netvars for future tweaking
Optimized small command buffers (slight performance improvement)
Updated Terminal & Reactor to work with changes to atmosphere code
Fixed Light body types being able to wield Heavy weapons
Fixed Combat Intuition ability revealing disguised Operatives
Fixed several stat reporting issues
Fixed overtime not kicking in on Shipyard 1st objective
Fixed overtime not ending on Reactor when the hackbox is removed
Fixed bots not performing objectives on Security Tower after map migration
Fixed an unable to recover from auto save error
Fixed server/client aim inconsistencies
Fixed issue with diminishing returns on wall jumps not being applied
Fixed game audio being incorrectly ducked when radio is used
Fixed incorrect command post screens being shown after cutscenes
Added support for dummy sound files to improve loading times in FIGS
Fixed being able to place mines on certain walls
Fixed 3rd person hacking animation not playing
Fixed various issues with decls being cleaned up incorrectly which could cause crashes
Fixed being able to see through walls when peeking
Fixed an issue with FIGS voiceovers not always being played
Fixed some logic bugs in stopwatch winner calculations
Fixed objective completion count on Aquarium
Fixed player nametags disappearing after flash bang even when they are not affected
Fixed thin white bar found to the extreme right of round edged UI boxes
Fixed conflicts in the French code.lang causing some default strings to appear
Fixed dark shadow-band appearing on narrow fields-of-view
Fixed debug text appearing at the end of the credits
My recommendation? Download if you ever plan on picking up the game. Free DLC packs are few and far between, regardless of the quality of game.
(Source: http://bethblog.com/index.php/2011/07/29/brink-title-update-today-dlc-next-week/#more-15367)
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