Iād totally agree with a model that requires you to grind a large amount of ingame cash for new characters, OR to buy them for real money. Skins and story dlc shall be pay-only, for all I care. Totally justified.
But if they really opt for competitive play, the competitive content should be accessable without needing to pump in extra $.
When people are required to use cash to stay competitive, the competitive scene is decimated by default.
Iām worried that paid at all dlc characters will get spun into a p2w publicity for the game, which is already asking a lot of players. No quicker way to sink a game than vaguely true statements. See: battlefront only has 4 maps. Ugh. Was considering getting a ps4 for it anyways to avoid the hacks on pcā¦ now itās a very distant maybe. Online games are no fun when they go the way of evolve.
My hope is that they allow those characters to be purchased by grinding in-game currency. Otherwise I can see some potential issues cropping up that might dissuade new players from entering the game given its $60 starting price point.
Again, I like the game and plan to get it-- but Iām more concerned with players who wonāt check Twitter or the forums. Just looking at the Battleborn websiteās announcement or the news updates on gaming sites gives a totally different impression.
Dear Personal Computer,
Please arrange with Gearbox software to give us a character for Battleborn for free.
Thanks PC, youāre the best.
While I think itās cool to be getting a free character (Iām on PS4), itās kind of odd and a bit unfair that weāre getting access first. One can assume or even hope that the 26th character will at least be free on the other two platforms. Same goes for Toby the Destroyer only being on the PS4 beta
I remember playing the beta test, it took me time to understand the gameplay mechanics! lol cuz i never played borderlands before.
see you on february boys! 
**Š”Š²ŠµŃŠ»Š°Š½Š° **
If it isnāt, they just kicked the chair.
Yep, thatās my point of view too.
Blizzard understood that and decided their Characters and Maps will be free for Overwatch.
If Gearbox or 2k decide the other way, i and many others already said it, itās not going to work; itās going to blow up in their faces. PvP content have to be free (Characters and PvP maps)
You canāt ask peoples to pay twice.
ā¦
Except if you are EA.
Iām finding it a bit hard to understand that people are willing to pay for skins but not for a new hero. personally i donāt really care for skins. But the Build time for a new skin is a few hours? The Build time for a new hero is over a 100 men hours (stated on a GBX Panel)
I do understand that dividing your community by adding new maps will kill your install base. Not really seeing this with heroes yet, unless they are made pay2win. If selling skins & taunts generate enough income i can see āfree stuffā coming our way. But i donāt have those numbers so i canāt really judge, I do think Blizzard has a bigger appeal on their advantage. However i have a different theory that might work?
With the launch of every new hero there is an ingame āeventā. During this time frame this new hero is free 2 play. This gives everyone a good preview of the character and gives GBX a good amount of data to balance the hero. After this event the hero will be paid DLC, but if you buy the hero during the event you will get an discount on your purchase. A bit of fair give and take?
So GBX more heroes, so we can have a weekly rotating event with free 2 play heroes.
The problem is, that heroes might or might not give a competitive advantage, while skins and story missions donāt.
If they really try to start a competitive scene, and lock content that is needed for decent competitive play behind paywalls, thatās a pretty shā¦ - bad move.
If I like a game, I will support it and might buy a skin or two. Story missions would be quite interesting for me. But if I feel like I canāt enter a ranked match without buying the newest character first, that leaves a bad taste.
About your launch-event theory: Also interpretable as the drug-sample tactic, if one wants to. And still a paywall. A smaller one, but nontheless a wall.
Before you come up with other arguments, I want to remind that the main focus in my argumentation is on the connection between competitive play <-> competitively relevant content ! As mentioned before, itās totally justified to charge for skins or story dlc.
Skins donāt impact pvp.
Heroes do.
edit: Funfighter bopped the nail right on itās head cage.
Also itās Gearbox doing the Gearbox thing and announcing dlc before the game is even out. Like pls.
my assumption was that there is no real advantage then a different skill set. each hero has itās own counter.
just looking for some feedback on my theory.
Have you ever played a hero based pvp game with a meta? If yes, you should know what it can mean to have or not have access to a few characters. No game will ever be balanced. And considering the purpose of sales, the heroes will rather be stronger than the average, instead of weaker.
True balance is a promise that noone can keep.
Without talking about what FunFighter and Caballo already said:
I already said it, but with a paid character you only end up in two (Sort of three) ways:
-The Hero is a counter or hard-counter to one or more other(s), and is seen as good at it, nearly indispensable.
Peoples say itās Pay-2-Win.
-The Hero is average, nothing too different from any other hero.
Peoples will say itās a rip-off and Gearbox/2k is greedy and donāt care.
-Bonus stage: The Hero is just bad.
He will be ābalancedā and end up in one of the two previous point.
Itās a no win scenario. You just canāt do that. Whatever you do, it will be a paid character and judged on it. If itās worth the money, then itās pay-2-Win, if not? itās a greed move. Nobody win in this argument.
If it was a free character, peoples will be purely judging on itās actual power and skill set. Not how āWorthā he is.
Now, about how making a character require more time than making skins:
And?
It doesnāt matter how much time you need to make something free if you got the income from something else.
Skins, Taunt, Voice packs, Extras, OST, Concept arts, even profile avatars and background are stuff you can sell.
And overall: Battleborn is a paid game, not a free-to-play. Peoples playing, paid for it.
If you announce that some of what is supposed to be the big part of the game (In this case, The Battleborns. Remember āHero shooterā?) are partially cut and sold separately, then clearly expect peoples to be mad. Because you are literally cutting main content from the game.
See the Total War: Warhammer Chaos ācaseā. Itās exactly what happened, more DLCs non-sense.
This have to end. DLCs should be extras, not main content.
Was about to make the exact same case-distinction as Corrsk.
The players canāt win anything with paid extra characters. And the selling company has to choose between ālow income from a bad heroā and āselling a good hero, but driving away a big part of the playerbaseā. Especially when the game isnāt even established yet.
Gerbox can try what Capcom is doing for Street Fighter 5. You can buy the DLC characters or play the game alot to unlock them for free. I am hoping that works for Capcom.
Yep. Paid heroes in competitive games are almost always a bad sign in the eyes of communities. And those games live and die because of their communities. Even if developer manages to achieve impossible and release a hero which is fun to play and balanced enough that people might want to buy it, but at the same time itās not really that needed for competitive play. Then passes 3-6 months and some random hero comes into meta that everyone picks in each match. It just happens that this paid hero is really good counter to this new meta king. And this completely balanced and not really needed dlc hero becomes crucialā¦
So yeah in singleplayer games dlc heroes are ok, but if you want pvp game it just doesnāt work, because meta there always changes and each and every hero becomes crucial at one point or another. If this hero is behind paywall it splits the community for the duration.
Well unless there is possibility to unlock every added hero in game. But that has to be balanced as well so that the grind is not so long that people just feel itās a trick to make you still buy it for cash instead of viable alternative.
Warframe does that too, sort of. Itās a good in-between i think.
They just need to find the balance the āgrindā to unlock the hero without paying. Too short and peoples wonāt buy him, too long and peoples will be mad (again).
Just what I was going to comment on. Perhaps we should ask Gabe Newell to have a word? They collaborated on old Half Life expansion packs after all. 
This is an old threadā¦does anyone know if the ps4 version could include exclusive DLC?