#21

Balancing hasn’t really been an idea I would associate with Borderlands. Doesn’t ruin the game but it does make it lopsided in terms of character usage.

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#22

I actually could. It would probably be similar to Futurama’s gem matcher. Hero’s with special powers that you can use periodically throughout each play. Zero would be able to snipe a tile and perhaps also reposition gems. Maya could converge/singularity a bunch of gems together. Etc…

I’m not saying I’d like the idea though. Gem matching games are WAY too common. And so are those farmville/city builder games. Kind of bastardized those whole genres for me. Imagine the games we could have seen instead of everyone hadn’t been trying to beat farmville or candy crush for years. Or rather, imagine the games we are missing because we can’t pick them out of the haystack with so many clones around.

#23

they are concerned with it and it certainly presents issues. Some raid bosses in BL2 effectively made certain classes a liability to have around. The dragon raid for instance + anyone with an action skill that does elemental damage without your direct aiming. They do try to balance all classes as good solo and co-op. You can tell. But I do also get what you’re saying. It’s certainly not like balancing for a PvP game.

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#24

Battleborn primarily stopped being developed around early 2016, right? They could have been working on BL3 before that, I guess. But 2.9 years for a borderlands title seems a little bit fast. If they do it this year, at least it wouldn’t be a Destiny or Anthem release year. Next year they would have to compete with Anthem at some point.

But I will say this, maybe this time they are going for a sneak release. Imagine if when they announce the game release date that it’s within 30 days of that announcement. That could be a good strategy. Because then it’s serving our “find out about it, buy it now” modern mentality. More and more things are doing it. It’s kind of the Apple strategy.

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#25

Possibly. There’s certainly a lot of despair and controversy surrounding titles that put out too much information about the game prior to release. People get jaded before the game even launches. Perhaps they are avoiding this altogether.

Although I am looking forward to any information they provide. Keeps me leashed to the franchise until the release and then I buy it. I suppose any marketing strategy could have ups and downs.

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#26

Actually I don’t game at all anymore and I don’t think I have played Borderlands in 2 years or more. I don’t see it as a good use of my time at the moment. I do however have a soft spot for the Borderlands series of games and may jump back in if they make something as good as BL1 & BL2, if it looks multiplayer focused or pay to win then I am out. For me though the wait is extra punishing as it is the only game I want to play.

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#27

Actually, I’ve found the BL zero-day releases MUCH better than many franchises. Others, I’ve had full lockup, nothing saved… etc etc. One big franchise who will remain nameless (as they’re my Valdemort…) sold me a $20 DLC that once you put up with about a 13 hr download (their servers, not my speeds), did not work at all and would lock up requiring full reboot. I asked if there was a fix in the works, they said no, it works fine. I redownloaded…reinstalled… yeah, you guessed it, me and about a million other peeps had the same problem. I asked them for my $20 back, NO WAY. They termed it a "successful sale…)LOL.
Gearbox kicks asps.

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#28

At least I can agree that it’s the only game I want to play. I Just went through the ringer with Destiny 2. And to think there are people who think that Destiny “out borderlands-ed” borderlands. Pfft. The two aren’t even comparable.

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#29

That is assuming of course that Anthem doesn’t fall flat on its face thanks to EA’s 100% pure evil business model.

#30

Have you tried Warframe?

Other than Borderlands theres not too many games I bother with but I’ve been really getting on with Warframe.
And its got quite a bit of depth so it will probably keep you going until BL3 pops up.

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#31

I think the assumption that if two equally good triple A titles comes out in the same month or week that sales will dip is a misnomer. Is there documentation of this? I’ve read several posts like this and I’m failing to see any empirical evidence to prove this.

Let’s think this through…

Let’s say two highly anticipated games come out on the same day or within the same week. Consumer A wants to buy both games but doesn’t have the money up front to buy both. Consumer B only wants to buy Title #1 and Consumer C only wants to purchase Title #2.

While it’s true neither Consumer B or C are going to purchase both games and therefore, the developer misses out on a sale that the competitor earns, they were likely never going to purchase the game anyway. If they do, it will most likely be on a highly discounted basis. Meanwhile, Consumer A either swipes a credit card and buys both day one, or saves up to buy the second title a month or so later, thus resulting on a purchase of both games at full or close to full price. Regardless, both games are purchased and neither game developer misses out on the sale.

The only scenario I can picture where this is likely to not occur is in a situation where the consumer is dependent on another person to purchase the game for them, and where the ultimatum is given that only one game will be purchased. This is probably more common amongst children or adolescents who have yet to bring in their own income. At any rate, these kinds of sales are the minority in the gaming industry as demonstrated by the logic above. In the case where the child is overly indulged by an enabling parent, both games would be purchased making the initial argument void.

Until I see data disproving any of my conjecture above, I will continue to believe that the release date of any title is not wholly or even significantly dependent on any other games that may be released around the same time frame.

#32

Looks amazing, very popular, quite extensive, and very complicated. I do prefer the first person aspect of Borderlands and the laidback more adventure driven feel as opposed to primarily combat driven game. The story ads a lot to the atmosphere and I like the clear nature of the skill trees. Warframe has an overwhelming number of options to choose from in the videos I watched. As I said before I don’t play games to fill in time, I have other things in my life. I do keep an eye out on new games coming out but it has to be special for me to start up gaming again. Tx for the suggestion.

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#33

I get your logic, but for Borderlands lovers, the fate of Battleborn in the wake of Overwatch hype is a recent memory they won’t shake, and the conventional wisdom is that Gearbox should be mindful of how that played out.

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#34

Also. Consider Borderlands the PreSequel. Same timeframe as Destiny 1. My point is that similar games coming out near the same time can be bad. Overwatch to Battleborn was definitely an influence. Because on the surface they sound very similar. It doesn’t matter that Battleborn technically had more features essentially. Also, it’s Blizzard. They are a force to be reckoned with. Bungie was too. Now they are just another company to be fond of in memories.

But part of the problem is that Borderlands lost it’s monopoly on the looter shooter. And culture has changed to. Looter shooter might sound today like it’s just going to be an FPS with real cash loot crates. Thanks EA. Gearbox has to present their game the right way or risk looking like EA. If AAA publishers really want more money, then just ask us to give you money via a funding site or something.

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#35

trying to get into warframe. Last time I played it was a weird experience for me. I’ll try it again and try to nail down why. I think it was that I had trouble identifying friend vs foe? Is there a menu option to display it more obviously?

#36

And really, sometimes it’s about, “well I feel like playing a game like X”. Both game Y and Z are coming out and are like X. Game Y is going to release first, but game Z has a beta you can try today. You try Z and decide to wait for Z. Or you decide to buy Y because it will full release earlier and you want something to enjoy sooner. You remember that Z exists and wait for it to be on sale or free with your console subscription. In the mean time, game Y fulfills that niche you were looking for. And really.

Money is limited or should be for most. Personally I am an adult and have a limited budget for further entertainment. I considered buying Destiny 2’s season pass but I kind of soured on it. And at the time you couldn’t buy just the first DLC. I looked. Plus, december sales came along and I snatched up some good deals on other games I had been waiting for a good price on. And there’s a saturation point, where you realize, “oh I have a crap ton of games already, why am I spending more? I should play what I have for a while longer. And maybe buy a boardgame instead.”

edit: and that’s the thing now-a-days. If you aren’t buying it via amazon preorder at a discount you might as well wait until just 2 or 3 months later for the next periodic sale and get the game for $30 or $40 bucks. I think this is the long term effect that used games and game renting has had on videogame pricing. Plus the tendency of companies like Bungie to aggressively be a huge pain the ass on their DLC pricing and content access.

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#37

@Isthiswill

I bought Battleborn (preordered) as an incredibly rare impulse buy. I bought the season pass to go with it. I never bought overwatch but can see that it’s a better in terms of MOBA.

I was SEVERELY disappointed with Battleborn. I bought it because it looks like Borderlands as a MOBA which it very nearly is. My disappointment came from the fact that the missions take you about 5 hours to complete and then what? There are two play types or was at launch with two maps to choose from each. That is an incredibly disappointing amount of content to choose from after a nearly equally disappointing campaign. My experience left me asking where is the content? This can’t really be all that this game has to offer! When I realized that that was the extent of the game I almost quit right then and there.

Perhaps I was mistaken but I thought a game focused on arena battles would have a lot of different playlists to choose from and a lot of different Arenas to play in. Instead the game seemed to focus on the variety of characters to choose from, but refrained from placing those characters in a variety of venues with an array of objectives.

My long-winded point is that battleborn sales suffered because it was a mediocre game with horribly insufficient amounts of content. With OverWatch people knew exactly what they were getting and either wanted it or not. Battleborn was not marketed well sure, but the Post Release date reviews were what killed it.

The tendency for developers to move towards this idea of putting out a 1/2 game at full price so that they can then charge consumers for the rest of the game as a season pass is going to be what kills Developers. Games need to be fully developed and completed on release date or consumers will continue to do what they have done with Destiny Star Wars Battlefront and other pay to play games that have tainted their companies good name by producing a half product and holding the rest of the content ransom for more money. I am glad that the Borderlands franchise has not went this way as all three releases are full and complete Standalone games with plenty of content to enjoy, and a season pass that adds flavor to the vanilla game, instead of completing it.

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#38

I think that the rise of Esports has had a bad side effect. That side effects would be treating games that have multiplayer like sports games where the amount of content in the game is secondary to the interaction of players online being the focus of development. The fun of a sports franchise is getting the roster of teams or players and then playing online against other people with the game. In most cases the arenas and playermodels don’t vary that much and the level of interaction you have with the different modes is limited. it makes for a very quick development cycle of a game a year. The competition between players in a popular game drives sales as much as the overall playing experience.

I can’t blame them for wanting to get a foot in that door. With 2K as a parent company, starting the NBA2K league I can imagine there’s a desire to succeed in that segment of the market across the board. Gearbox was the ideal developer for them to tap.

Ultimately all games compete with each other for money and time because each when spent is gone, regardless of what on.

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#39

True. You make some solid points again.

I just felt like it was even less content than what should be for a MOBA. Every match was nearly identical and only a few of the 8 initial missions were ever voted on. Made for a total of of less than 10 hours of fresh content before rinse and repeat.

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#40

It can get a bit hectic in public games.
Just do what I do , shoot everything and watever doesnt shoot back is a team-mate.probably.

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