Battleborn about to be six months old - looking back

Battleborn Battleborn General Discussion
#1

Strangely it feels like an old methuselah at this point

On steam it had a max average of online players at about 4k

Dropped to 1k within a month. 75% drop.

Dropped 15%-20% per month since then and is currently running a bit under 300 poor little peeps average for last 30 days.

Even more strange is that it hit the humble bundle where it arguably cost under $10 for its slice of the bundle ($15) yet that made little to no difference in the decline in average # of players. Mind you this is an always online game.

Game wasn’t really well received and had trouble, even from a AAA publisher and studio, breaking the top 50 in # of players. Again this is an online only game.

Metascore is 69. A nice D+ rating. Most likely extinguishing bonuses based on reviews/metacritic.

Game costs $6 now if you look for the sale but that isn’t making any difference.

For reference, Aliens: Colonial Marines - a dud from Gbox is now $8 on sale. Got a 45 metascore. About the same # of peak players and slightly less average players after the first month. An admitted disaster of a game that Gearbox was SUED for. Battleborn is only doing marginally better in players.

Battleborn is only slightly more popular than Aliens: Colonial Marines. But Aliens could be played offline. So really Battleborn appears to be a disaster on the level of Aliens overall. And Gbox COMPLETELY ABANDONED Aliens. I hold no hope for Bborn.

I guess the question is: can gearbox do a good game anymore that isn’t a remaster of someone else’s awesome game or borderlands?

I do look forward to borderlands 3 and the 50 DLC’s that will inevitably come with it. Its clear they will have random loot and loot boxes of some type that you can buy.

2 Likes
#2

Almost a WHOLE baby!

#3

Of course they can. Battleborn is a good game.

9 Likes
#4

http://steamcharts.com/app/394230

There’s something interesting you can see about daily peak concurrent players number.

May: drop from 12k to 2.3k. This is actually something normal for any game after the launch.
June: stable 2.3k.
July: a slight drop from 2.3k to 1.9k.
August: massive drop from 1.9k to 500.
September: a medium drop from 500 to 400. Despite being a “dead season” - no new content, no patches.
October: so far doesn’t seem like a drop.

#5

…It is a great game but some things will always plague it, for example…
Toke and I just had a great run on Archive advanced, but towards the end the server kicked both of us.
The meta data server and two live connections spells death for this game, unfortunately.

1 Like
#6

[quote=“maskerader, post:4, topic:1549475, full:true”]
May: drop from 12k to 2.3k. This is actually something normal for any game after the launch.[/quote]
No, a really good online fpp can gain players after the launch.

[quote=“maskerader, post:4, topic:1549475, full:true”]July: a slight drop from 2.3k to 1.9k.
August: massive drop from 1.9k to 500.[/quote]
It dropped to 500 in July, but the first big sale at the very end of it managed to get it back to 1900.

1 Like
#7

OK - for most games.

#8

It’s really amazing how much this game has changed in six months.

Remember the days when we would buy a game and that was it? Idk pretty crazy to me.

3 Likes
#9

Pepperidge Farm remembers…

5 Likes
#10

The July and August statistics were probably the worst for Battleborn.

Late July was where the Humble Bundle took place until early August.

In reality, 2.3K could’ve easily dropped to 500, but the Humble Bundle cushioned it somewhat. This was the chance for a significant enough number of people to fall in love of the game and spread the word. However, due to the lingering issues that still plague the game today, people left in droves and refused to come back.

So the verdict of the story is that Battleborn could not sustain itself after launch and fell into harder disrepair despite a Humble Bundle. I could not even fathom how many potential players were lost due to this.

There was a chance, but it blew it -hard.

As for September and October not having much of a drop… yea… at 300 concurrent players what’s the difference of dropping another 100? I don’t, because at 300 I cannot even play it in the way I desire.

The game changed a lot in 6 months, but hardly anything for the better from my perspective.

1 Like
#11

(Seemingly) Poorly thought out character tweaks, constant reshuffling and uncertainty of game modes, constant server issues for people in certain regions, uneven matchmaking, 10+ mins to find a game, next to no marketing efforts…still I play for a couple of hours a week. Used to be much more. But looking back, it almost seems doomed from the get go.

Such a good game. Used to play it much more than Overwatch only a couple of months ago. As someone who works in marketing, I see a STACK of potential with this game and it eats me that they seem to piss it all away. I really hope that they can pull something out and save the game.

1 Like
#12

Pissing away potential… reminds me a lot of Gundam Seed Destiny.

Ever watched that? You should have a proper therapist ready before you watch a gold mine turning into splatter of feces.

#13

Im sure gearbox knows this…but drawing in new players has not been this game’s biggest issue…not even close.

RETAINING those new players has been the biggest issue. Terrible grade-school matchmaking formulas and an overall poor job of acclimating new players into the competitive landscape of the game damage the new player experience and causes those new players to leave.

This game itself is amazing. it’s incredible.

Match making kills player retention. Killing player retention kills any type of established meta growth.

it’s such a shame because this game could easily in it’s sleep have been massive. It’s like building this elaborate beautiful skyrise building…but putting it on a shoddy foundation which violates safety codes. And people are initially attracted to the building and want to move in. But then they see that the building is 10 inches slanted and all the beauty of the skyrise goes to poop because…who the heck wants to live in a building that’s slowly tilting right more and more?

I remember hearing about this game and watching twitches of it…and falling in love with it. But it’s hilarious. Because hidden inside my love for the game while I was watching it…was me watching the twitch creator… team up with 4 of his buddies and just pwn the living daylights out of every single team they faced for hours on end. Being naive and not really understanding the issue, it didn’t dawn on me how big of a deal this was until I actually went into the game and dealt with it myself. FPSs have been around for so long…i’ve played big ones…i’ve played small ones. 20 years or so.

And this type of issue - while always an issue in FPSs - is so much more glaring of an issue in battleborn. And one would think that in 2016, video game developers would have enough “trial and error” mistakes to go on from prior companies to know what to - and what not to do when it comes to match making.

I love this game though and plan on keep playing. Hopefully the matchmaking can sort itself out. It has such a unique amazing niche/corner of the market to me. I feel like they designed the “perfect” game for me with this…team strategy first person moba with an awesome progressive single player non sandbox version of borderlands

3 Likes
#14

But don’t the deck chairs look lovely now?

#15

I see the drawing and retaining players very much related.

You can draw, at first, and then fail to retain. The failing to retain part will then discourage new players to join, since they will know that they may drop the game in less than a week after forking up their money. It’s a vicious cycle where eventually you will get 300 concurrent players on Steam at any part of the day -sometimes less than 100.

This is why the Late July and Early August Humble Bundle did a tremendous amount of damage to the game in my eyes.

This is also why Battleborn never attempted to do any free weekend or Humble Bundle-like ideas ever since, despite that most other games would greatly benefit from it.