Allow Private matches to count towards Challenges: Under certain conditions

[xarteros]

Dunno about the rest of you, but here in Australia PvP on PC is basically dead. I mean, you can make any argument you want against allowing progress on challenges from private matches, but that’s all a bit moot when private matches are the only option.

Note: By challenges, I mostly mean Lore Challenges, but I’d consider normal challenges to be fair game too.

What I suggest is a way to gain challenge progress from Private PvP matches without being too cheesable. Below are some limiting factors that would help prevent this from being exploitable.

Factor 1: Challenge progress requires even teams. Removing some of the enemies immediately blocks any potential progress. Similarly, entering with a smaller team would block progress (so you can’t reduce competition for kills etc)

Factor 2: Challenge progress requires the match to be fully completed, and (possibly) only on a victory. This prevents people from skimming into a match, focusing their one challenge and bailing. Requiring a victory ensures that a player doesn’t just throw the match in order to focus their challenge, and they have to play legitimately.

Factor 3: Players cannot get progress against enemy players in private matches, to prevent people feeding free kills. I’d personally say only matches versus a full team of 5 bots would count.

I feel that with some safeguards in place, players anywhere at any time can at least ATTEMPT to work towards some of the challenges. The fact that so many challenges are entirely dependent on the choices of your enemies and allies makes the game feel unsatisfying, and you feel pressured to pick characters to get lore progress in PvP just so you can unlock their legendary gear. The game is ultimately here for the players enjoyment, and a great deal of people prefer the option of grinding out things alone, or in PvE (which bot matches effectively are).

The bots in this game are actually kinda challenging, and I feel that it would be a fair way to eliminate the issue people have with most of the challenges.

If you have any ideas for more safeguard factors, or any constructive ideas, let me know =)

[reliikki (30% more flak)]

I could dig challenge completion in private pvp if the bots were improved. I’d rather it be only for Lore Challenges though, as a compromise of sorts.

And about the bots and their difficulty, I’m planning on doing a post about them (Probably today when I get back
home) and how they could be improved, but they certainly aren’t good enough now.
The three safeguard factors however are good, I agree.

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And a slightly off topic talk about challenges;
I will say that it’s a little silly that developers want titles from challenges to be badges of honor. Personally I am not impressed by them even if they are hard to get. I mean, this is just me, but I feel the point of challenges shouldn’t be to brag that you did it. I doubt many people out there care. It’s a reward for you. If it’s rewarding for someone to complete their Lore Challenges solo, then more power to them. If completing them is a slog and you don’t feel like you accomplished anything by completing them, I don’t think there is any point.

There is a big difference between playing solo and in public matches with other people and I fully support anyone who isn’t comfortable with that. They should still get to enjoy the game. For PVPers like me it’s not that hard to play a few solo story missions to complete challenges, but jumping into public games is a much bigger leap. No one will insult you if you do badly playing solo. On the other hand, when I’ve performed badly in a public match I’ve been told to kill myself. I don’t let it phase me but I’d like if people who object to completing challenges in private would try to think about the difference between PvE and PvP. Between multiplayer and solo. It’s a huge difference.

I’d comment more on this and the topic but I’m in a hurry, just wanted to talk about this since it was on my mind.

[xarteros]

The bots could definitely be improved, but I mean in the long run they’re not too bad. I mean, my opinion probably isn’t worth much since I haven’t played a lot of Private PvP (since there’s no point other than warmups/map familiarisation). I’ve definitely seen players worse than the bots, and that’s a good start in terms of bot skill. You know bots are bad when even the worst players beat them.

They felt kinda challenging in the few matches i’ve tried out, since they don’t just stand about aimlessly, they retreat and heal instead of just letting themselves die, and they move about and flank a bit.

Feel free to link your post on difficulty in here if you end up writing it, I’d love to give it a read. I want them to feel challenging, but without having cheesy AI hacks (like perfect accuracy).

[reliikki (30% more flak)]

About Private PvP Bots and How To Improve Them

This came up in another topic, so I thought I could go a little more in depth with what I think about the situation of the Battleborn Bots right now. Because of the current problems with matchmaking in some regions and some Lore Challenges I think this is a relevant thing. There are also people who just happen to enjoy playing multiplayer modes against bots. It's a good option to have. There is a limit to what we can make the Battleborn Bots do because AI calculations can become very taxing, but…

Here is my novel on the topic of Battleborn Bots

[xarteros]

Nice post, good read. See, my limited experience with bots showed a bit different, but that might have just been the luck of the draw regarding character picking. I can’t remember specifically what the bots were, but I felt like my Miko bot was always healing fairly well, the Oscar Mike bot was always pushing and harassing, and diving into the enemy team got me minced pretty quickly, as it should.

From your post, I definitely see where they could be improved specifically. 100% agree on the Ping wheel thing, we need that in basically every game mode if we can.

[jbmoore8]

This would greatly help with Toby’s lore, I wish that lore challenges were able to be done on Versus Private.

[xBetaa]

Allowing Exp & Lore Challenge Progress in Private Matches would be hugely beneficial, lets face it Online (PvP) isnt great (MHO) but I digress this needs to be Implicated, I mean killing Ambra 25 Times as Galilea Then Follows Alani which requires you to kill Ambra another 25 times, its just too much - Considering I rarely see Ambra being played. It should have the same principles as GOW3, having Onyx Medal Progress count while playing Private Matches. Is this such a big thing to ask? Anyone Share The Same Thoughts ?