Yep, that’s 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, it’s not going to work; it’s going to blow up in their faces. PvP content have to be free (Characters and PvP maps)
You can’t ask peoples to pay twice.
…
Except if you are EA.
I’m finding it a bit hard to understand that people are willing to pay for skins but not for a new hero. personally i don’t 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 “free stuff” coming our way. But i don’t have those numbers so i can’t 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 ‘event’. 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 don’t.
If they really try to start a competitive scene, and lock content that is needed for decent competitive play behind paywalls, that’s a pretty sh… - 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 can’t 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, it’s totally justified to charge for skins or story dlc.
Skins don’t impact pvp.
Heroes do.
edit: Funfighter bopped the nail right on it’s head cage.
Also it’s 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 it’s 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 it’s Pay-2-Win.
-The Hero is average, nothing too different from any other hero.
Peoples will say it’s a rip-off and Gearbox/2k is greedy and don’t care.
-Bonus stage: The Hero is just bad.
He will be “balanced” and end up in one of the two previous point.
It’s a no win scenario. You just can’t do that. Whatever you do, it will be a paid character and judged on it. If it’s worth the money, then it’s pay-2-Win, if not? it’s a greed move. Nobody win in this argument.
If it was a free character, peoples will be purely judging on it’s actual power and skill set. Not how “Worth” he is.
Now, about how making a character require more time than making skins:
And?
It doesn’t 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 “Hero shooter”?) 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 “case”. It’s 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 can’t win anything with paid extra characters. And the selling company has to choose between “low income from a bad hero” and “selling a good hero, but driving away a big part of the playerbase”. Especially when the game isn’t 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 it’s 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 crucial…
So yeah in singleplayer games dlc heroes are ok, but if you want pvp game it just doesn’t 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 it’s a trick to make you still buy it for cash instead of viable alternative.
Warframe does that too, sort of. It’s a good in-between i think.
They just need to find the balance the “grind” to unlock the hero without paying. Too short and peoples won’t 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 thread…does anyone know if the ps4 version could include exclusive DLC?
If there is any exclusivity, they are likely to only be timed exclusives, meaning PS4 would be able to experience the DLC exclusively for a set amount of time, prior to its release on other platforms. PS4 seems to have had a lot of timed exclusives across a number of titles this console generation. Off the top of my head, I am aware of timed exclusives for Destiny and Call of Duty DLC. If you’re interested, you can read more about timed exclusives here. For whatever reason, Sony has been absolutely killing it when it comes to snagging exclusivity over Microsoft. This may even be evident in the fact that PS4 gets access to the Battleborn Beta on the 8th befor XBox and PC on the 13th.
No exclusive dlc. They get to play Toby in the beta exclusively, but otherwise they will get the first dlc pack for free (if you play the beta on the ps4)
I never played the beta 
Yeah, I posted this because as you have said, ps4 always have timed exclusives, so I figured out if Battleborn may have a DLC
Beta starts April 8 for ps4 and April 13 for PC and Xbox so you have time 
thanks
not always, i sorely miss killer instinct.