A sincere plea to devs from a competitive player

Battleborn Battleborn Competitive Multiplayer Discussion
#41

As a player that doesn’t run with as a 5 man squad that has been constantly invited to those matches I can tell you why they might not want to.

Two reasons for me: banning characters and banning legendary gear. Banning a character I want to play is a huge turn off. It would make me not want to play the match at all.

Next is banning legendar gear. I farmed hard for hours to get the gear I like and I’m not allowed to use it? Besides, unless you’re a terrible player, you don’t rush to unlock your gear early on in the game anyway and it should seldom be used, but it’s there for the final late game defense/push. At least, that’s how most of my victories come.

If those restrictions change it might be more appealing to others.

#42

Thanks for the message. I’ll try and talk about a few things, but as other posters mention, we don’t like to mention any blue-sky plans until we’re pretty certain about the features and timeframe. Even with messages full of disclaimers and warnings, communities tend to run with talk from devs as the word of law, and I don’t want to breed any disappointment, if possible.

One of the more interesting points of this discussion is the word “competitive”. What do you mean by “competitive game mode”? A new mode? An existing mode with tweaks? A playlist (queue button) that filters players to a specific experience? Other special features that give players goals and measure their progress (rankings and leaderboards)?

There are a lot of things that could be called “competitive”. I will confirm that we are working on a few features, but I cannot commit to specifics of when they will be released.

Draft mode will happen. We’re working on a couple of variants of draft, some played only through private matches, but taking in the most popular features from other draft implementations and adapting it to our game. Bans, picks, reserves, captains - yep. It’ll be here eventually. Probably this calendar year. That’s as specific as I’ll get. :slight_smile:

On Legendary gear - this is a much harder request. It’s something that I’d really like to see, but it probably won’t come online with draft play. Considering how most tournaments are run through private matches, our first goal is to facilitate people who run tournaments there, and let them stipulate any additional tournament rules they would like (“no legendaries”, for example).

What I would rather we do instead of simply “no legendaries” is create tournament or seasonal sets of gear that you are restricted to on certain playlists. That would allow us to create a time-based tournament playlist and have a fixed set of fixed gear that you could only use by playing in that tournament. This feature is a considerable amount of work, and won’t come online before some of the other features.

And I’ll say this one more time here: “…that is so easily fixed” is incorrect. There is very little that we haven’t already done that is “easily fixed”. Again, doesn’t mean we won’t do those things, but they aren’t quick and simple changes. We aren’t just being stubborn; we’re trying to prioritize our work to be sure all of the top issues are getting some kind of attention.

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Competitive play? When will we get it right
#43

Fine. I’ll give you both set ups and the reason I use them…oh, and I DO use one piece of legendary gear, as I’ll explain below.

For me, Oscar Mike is my standard flanker. His assault rifle gives reliable damage at medium range, but it peeters out at long, and his grenades get a bit wobbily that far out as well. I don’t have leveling issues with him, as most engagements I can either stealth into for a kill, or out of for an escape. But I prefer to delay the latter option for a bit. So I use the following

  • Blue: Rifleman’s Shot-Lock Stock(-15.01% recoil + -12.01 Recoil for 5 sec after reload.)
  • Purple: Bolstering Duelist Glove(+8.86% Attack Damage, +95 Maximum Shield Strength)
  • Purple: Phasing BunkerMax Booster(+140 Maximum Shield Strength, +10.50 Shield Penetration)
    Total Cost: 2,893 shards.

Since OM’s damage and DPS are all solid, he’s got no real weakspots, save for an issue against some heavily shielded opponents. With the Rifleman’s stock and Phasing BunkerMax, I can still hurt people who are low health, but hiding behind a shield. With the extra +235 shield, I have one ult-safe protection if I get ganked in a fight, giving me time enough to stealth out. And even at long range, I can disable turrets and accelerators fairly quickly to help the team push.

=====

My Whiskey Foxtrot Build, revolves around an entirely different issue. Whiskey’s damage will generally outdo Oscar Mike in a straight up gun fight. And from levels 1-2, that’s what you really face. Levels 3-6 however, are a serious lull for Whiskeys. He relies on a lot of things combining together to amplify his damage, and during those levels, those things aren’t fully online yet. It’s why most Whiskey players start strong, but fade after the first eight minutes. They get stuck in that lull, and fall a level behind that takes them out of the match as a serious competitor. So my build with Whiskey, is to get him THROUGH that lull as quickly as possible, without requiring him to be a killing machine, and then bring his gameplay back with a vengeance To that end I use:

  • Blue: Rifleman’s Shot-Lock Stock(-15.01% recoil + -12.01 Recoil for 5 sec after reload.)
  • White: QuickCash Miner(+2.10 shards per second)
  • Orange: RDC Ground-Pounders(+5.60 movement speed, +14.00 Recoil, +2.80 Damage Reduction for five seconds after taking damage from the sides or rear)
    Total Cost: 3,012 shards

Unlike Oscar, Whiskey shines mid to late game, as a longer range version of Oscar Mike. His ability to kick up his damage by getting a minion or thrall kill, lets him hang back and save some very nasty surprises for people who dive deep. Chief among them, is his Overdrive. At a staggering 41.03% recoil reduction, it is a laser at anything save long range, able to deliver punishing fire for at least five seconds. Shield penetration isn’t an issue, as too few things will survive long between a damage boosting minion kill, plus a damage boosting Scrapshot that halves most shields, and then seventy five rounds of pain at full auto. Even if it DOES become an issue way late game, I can pick up What Shields at 10th, and negate the problems of Kleeses and Toby’s alike. :slight_smile:

The key difference between both builds though, is the early game. I don’t shoot for the Legendary, or the stock with Whiskey. I shoot for the Shard Generator, which lets me build turrets, heal stations, and bots which all add XP to me, getting me through 3rd to 6th in a faster time than normal if I was just relying on kills and wave-clear. Instead of being behind the leveling curve at 5th level, I’m often one good move away from hitting 6th, and bringing out my multishotting slowing BURNING napalm grenades.

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#44

Actually Jythri, I’ll take up your question:

When I think of competitive, I think that is where you go to PLAY. Not to test, or try or see. That’s what private matches, bot matches, and even the current market of game modes, allows: people can take a newly unlocked character, and try their hand with them, with no fear of being labeled a bad player. A competition mode is where people should be encouraged to bring their best game. Not their most unusual or unexpected game. Not the game they saw online or read on a reddit post and think they can repeat.

To that end, I would welcome a mode where people who DON’T do that, are punished. Be it by leaving, or doing goof plays that sandbag a team, their ranking should be dropped based on how little their performance helped the team, not what their personal scores say. Anyone can go out and be a Kobe or a Lebron for a game. It’s the Jordans, the Larry Birds, that make a TEAM win instead of just one player.

I’d suggest a three pronged approach: Of course, the stat tracking should be a factor, but so should player involvement. I’d assign a one minute interval between matches for every player. During that time, they rank the nine other players they played with in terms of teamwork: their four allies, and their five opponents. The allies get bonuses to their ranking, based on their skill, and the opponents get half as much of a bonus for THEIR performance in the other team’s eyes. Of course, there can be abuses of the system, but at least it will give people who help others, who try to be team players, a chance at SOME recognition. Because I think right now, that’s the biggest thing being missed.

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#45

Edited my post to say reasonable

#46

thank you sincerely for responding. im super glad that you asked this. i guess more than even getting changes right in my eyes, i have always just wanted you guys to discuss these kinds of things with the actual competitive community BEFORE you make changes. If im not mistaken, Joe has briefly spoken to a good friend of mine @asiahmillertime in regards to possibly getting some information from the competitive community in regards to what we are looking for in a competitive game mode.

but i will give my personal two cents specifically here. im looking for a button on incursion that allows me to play incursion with no legendary gear whatsoever, or no legendary gear with passives. 100 pct without exception, every single person i have spoken to from the competitive community that actually plays in tournaments and private matches, streams, etc., has said that they simply do not want any character specific, or passives on gear in competitive. we are all ok with their being strong, cost commensurate buffs to basic stats that already exist in the game. we just dont want any character specific gear, and we dont want and passives. we also really want a draft and bans, but we recognize how hard bans would be to implement in matchmaking.

i think the most important takeaway i think i have for you guys is that i cannot stress enough that we want a draft and major changes to gear in a matchmade mode. ranked and all that would be great, but we ultimately will only take anything you do and put “ranked” on it seriously if you make it as close to like the tournaments are as possible. the closest you could somewhat reasonably implement would just be a draft with the 1-2-2-1-1-2-2-1-1-2 pick system, no lore gear, and no passives whatsoever. the way you do the draft is obviously something that everyone could grow to accept, but the gear thing im telling you will turn the entire competitive community away from the mode. if you leave lore gear and passives in, you will alienate the very people you are trying to attract to the game

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#47

Also Incursion in a Competitive queue needs to have no time limit. Thirty minutes is pretty short for a MOBA and having the time limit encourages players to play overtly defensive then to dive the opposing team’s sentry when there isn’t enough time left for the other team to counter push, when they would have easily been able to get more sentry damage than theirs had just taken. A team should be dominating for 27 minutes then lose by a few sentry damage when the game time expires.

#48

quoted for truth, except not new gear, the existing gear is fine, just make it a standard pool with all the same rolls.

#49

That would come with the pre sets Randy was referring too. Standard sets for the most common builds I assume.

#50

as long as none of it is character specific, and none of it has passives

#51

I know how you (and others who ascribe to be the true competitive scene) feel about legendaries. I completely understand where you’re coming from and in truth agree without proper implementation, the passives would be unfair to those who refuse to play PvE. Wouldn’t predesignated sets fix that? It would put everyone on even grounds and allow people to experiment while not putting anyone at any inherit disadvantage. The regular balance patches are there for a reason and its to take away any direct abuse of imbalance, fixing unfair gear for pvp for the most part. It could work and I would hate to see a big part of a core mechanic of this game be ignored.

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#52

I don’t think it’s the exclusivity of the gear, solely, that causes the players in the competitive scene to feel the way they do. It’s the types of passives that can be given as well. Personally, I don’t believe that invulnerability has any place in Competitive play, nor should it in a Competitive queue. If a player is going to die, they should die.

The other generally disliked type of gear are pieces with added CC effects: Mini-Singularity Launcher and Boots of the Brute. The idea is that CC shouldn’t be added to a kit that doesn’t already have it, or more to a kit that already does. On top of that, the benefit that these pieces give is substantially better than almost every other Legendary piece of gear.

If Legendaries are to be implemented into Competitive play, then Gearbox is going to need to take a step away from the set 1800 shard price from Legendary pieces if they insist on having passive effects, and instead have the costs vary based on impact they have on the game.

Some pieces have very little use, and are hardly better than Epic pieces, worth less than 1800, while others should cost considerably more than 1800 for the effects that they give. The CC and Invulnerability pieces are two types as an example. But there are still more that are worth more than the 1800 shards, based on the character they may be used with.

Another example would be The Borrowed Timer on a Kelvin. He already has a very large health pool, so for the effect to trigger at 10%, he may still have 500 health, at which point he can use Sublimate to escape death every time the internal cooldown is up. 1800 shards for the ability to (almost) always be able to escape is pretty cheap.

That is why competitive players are in favor of having pieces that simply add another, third stat bonus, rather than a potentially over powered tertiary effect. If all the pieces did this than they would be balanced for the cost of 1800.

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#53

Again I know why and how some of the people representing the competitive scene feel about this topic. The exclusivity was the easiest to address with Randy’s comment on there potentially being “fixed sets”.
Your first example represents the 2 pieces I absolutely agree should be taken out of pvp entirely:
Alamo-7 & Burning Sunset.
The added CC effects one I feel is debatable now that the severely nerfed slows usefulness. If it still reduced movement speed & crippled your ability to defend yourself I would be more inclined to agree.
I also agree that legendaries should have variable cost.
Another great example with Borrowed timer. I can already think of a billion ways to abuse that but I can easily think of a way to fix it as well.
Instead of a percentage of health to activate it could be a flat rate like 100-150 health, that way an opponent could plan accordingly with a burst skill when realizing someone has that gear. A fix they would see needs to be made if it were ever heavily abused. Again balance patches happen for a reason.
While nothing will ever be perfectly balanced I think it can get close with enough time but automatically saying NO without any sort of attempt seems stubborn.

can someone teach me how to pick out specific quotes This post would probably look somewhat less retarded if I could separate each point I was addressing.

#54

Select the text you want to quote, hit the ‘quote reply’ button. You might need to long hold on mobile.

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#55

Why, thank you kind sir.

Ugh this is gonna be a pain on my phone.

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#56

Is it safe to say after three and a half months that both the matchmaking rework and the amd hardware issues are low priority for gbx then?

#57

Draft i don’t see a problem but legendary gear i do. Why do people feel legendary gear is the game changer beyond broken repair? I have yet to see legendary gear just change the tide of battle and honestly the players who use said legendary gear would win without it.

I do agree this scene needs a competitive portion cause it’s getting boring just steam rolling teams.

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#58

then take it off your loadouts if you’ll win without it.

#59

I do actually but depending on the character they are more fun or push my character even further. Attack speed legendary makes you attack faster. Attack damage legendary makes you hit harder.

Some legendary passives make excellent combos for characters, like deande and legendary that does 140 damage when shields depleted. But even if they didn’t have it i could run attack speed deande and get the same effect.

#60

Lol…that is exactly why they shouldn’t be allowed in a competitive mode. It pushes a character past a point that they can achieve without an additional passive. I see it almost as if it allowed me to pick an 11th helix option with the passives that myself and others are upset about.