Brink DLC Coming Next Week, Console Title Update Out Today!

We’ve got several great pieces of Brink news for you today, including a release date for the “Agents of Change” DLC and a new title update for the console versions of Brink.

Agents of Change

First of all, we’re delighted to be able to announce that both the Brink “Agents of Change” DLC has passed certification for the consoles and will be released on Xbox Live, PSN, and Steam on 3 August! Once it’s out, you’ll be able to download it for free for two whole weeks (and if you do so, you’ll be able to re-download the content at no charge later on, too).

Agents of Change brings two new maps to Brink, Founders’ Tower and Labs, as well as five new player abilities, two new outfits, and two weapon attachments- for more information on all the new content you’ll find in the pack, check out this previous blog update. Naturally, Agents of Change also contains several new Xbox/Steam achievements and PSN trophies for you to go after.

To celebrate the impending release of Agents of Change, we’ve got a bunch of new screenshots showing off both Founders’ Tower and Labs. You can find those sprinkled throughout this update, like so:

Xbox 360/PS3 Title Update

But that’s not all! 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. Better yet, this update is available on Xbox Live right now, with PlayStation 3 set to receive it later today. Keep on reading for some of the highlights – we’ve also got the full, unedited changelog at the very end of this blog.

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 – check out the full, unedited changelog below for the whole list:

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 debug map names appearing in the campaign menu
• 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

PlayStation 3

• Optimized snapshot sizes to reduce 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/moved respawn and time limit values into Netvars for future tweaking
• Added body-type health to the netvars for future tweaking
• 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 bullets’ point of impact varying from client to client
• 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 issue with diminishing returns on wall jumps not being applied
• 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 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 default save data icon not being displayed
• 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