Battleborn character customisation

MentalMars · May 16, 2015, 3:44pm

As still little is know what character customisation Battleborn will feature i want to know what you would like to see. Here is some speculation from my part. I could be completely wrong but we will never know until the game is released or some tells us. So here goes:

Randy did say that character customisation is a part of the game. Changing the look of your character is a thing. It will be more down the line of Borderlands than as Destiny. As Randy also stated on the forums is that he likes crafting, so i would like to come back to Battleborn’s loot mechanic. I wrote a blog that speculated on the possible to craft powerups, so i started combining these two elements together. Imagine you can customize your armor’s loadout, it’s like adding Borderlands Relic / Oz Kit into the skin. Depending on the rarity of the gear some can feature a limited amount of slots for special boosts (runes) that could further affect the playstyle of the character. That way every player can specialize in what they want and what fits their play style. Maybe add different slots for different types of power ups.

Character Slot – Boosting the stats of your character even further (Power, Defense, Speed, Health, Shield, etc).
Ability Slot – Enhancing the characters special abilities (Cooldown rate, Boost its effect, etc).
Map Slot – Affecting the battlefield (Enemies drop more loot, give more XP, etc)

Resource:
My Blog - Character customization
My Blog - Will Battleborn feature Crafting

But what your take will be on the different skins ?

Great_Gumby · May 19, 2015, 4:01am

For this, let’s just say I am playing Generico, the Generic Character. I want to switch out the pants he is wearing. Are we going with a Borderlands/Diablo approach, where I can have multiple pairs of pants that are essentially the same but slight tweaks to their stat changes? I can understand that would be annoying to mull over in game, so maybe you can only change the loadout during the loading time before a match/level begins?

Or are the stat changes set in stone? In this case, having multiple pairs of of the same pants are just that: the same pants with the same stats. Will there then be an exchange system like the Borderlands vending machines, or a crafting system like TF2’s breaking down same items to a base material to rebuild into something else? Also these changes, do they affect the character’s playstyle, like establishing conditionals that improve stats on when those conditions are met? Say Generico wears Pants 1 and he can be your basic shooter, but wearing Pants 2 gives him a bonus to shooting from a closer distance? Would that mean I can also tell what other players will act like if they play Generico and his wide array of pants?

Also these slots you talk about. Are they just slots for accessories to make that pair of pants your wearing unique? Are they attachments that visually hang off that pair of pants? Or are they some kind of catch all rune/glyph/patch that can be applied to any ‘skin’ not just Generico’s pants? Or some mix of the above?

You’d think knowing more would give me a clearer picture but I’m more mystified than before.

MentalMars · May 19, 2015, 4:59pm

Battleborn will be cut up in stages, so don’t expect a Borderlands open world. So you will be doing the crafting in a menu between sessions. (maybe they could add a little hub town that would function as a portal between the different playmodes/sessions). Although i would like some depth into the crafting mechanic, i think it will be something you can quickly achieve and not to complex.

I don’t think you will be changing up a lot of gear, maybe you could swap out some different things during respawn but this is not Borderlands with a Bajillion items.

These slots are spots to put in a ‘rune’ (something that helps/affects your gameplay). We can go with the the approach that some gear has slots and some don’t. We can also go with the the approach that you will unlock/buy these slots as you level. 1 slot type or 3 different slot types depends on how difficult you would want to make the game. Maybe some gear can only feature slot type 1 others may do 1+2, 1+2+3, 2+3,2+2+3, 1+3+3, etc. But focus testing would probably dumb down such a complex feature. For now we only know of one mineral, shard, that act like currency. My speculation blog features multiple minerals in order to craft items.

During a match you level one character and then it’s over. On next match you have to start over again. Leveling goes quick during these sessions but there is some overall leveling mechanic. This maybe something like Borderlands’s Baddass Rank. All we currently know that there is some kind of loot and a character customisation feature in the game. I’m no game designer so ill probably overlooking some things that don’t work or aren’t as much fun to actually play as they sound in my head. So you could fill in the empty spots for me how you could see this work, but then again you might have some other vision for Battleborn.

So how do you want to customize your character ?
Do you want crafting and will it be like TF2 or do you want shops (in the hub town) ?

Great_Gumby · May 19, 2015, 9:43pm

I would like the typical loadouts with maybe a vanity slot or two to help make my specific loadout look more unique. From that gameplay vid a while back, I’m guess we may see achievements for killing world bosses. Maybe that can appear as some form of trophy that can be put into said vanity slots.

As for crafting, maybe a hybrid of the two. I figure there will be might sort of respawn timer between lives(in PvP) or possibly waiting for a checkpoint in PvE(I’m thinking of Killing floor where respawns only happen if a full wave is defeated and the team advances to next ‘checkpoint’ or wave). During this time, players who are dead/disabled/whatever can tinker with some basic crafting while they wait. Just something simple to keep them occupied during long wait times. Maybe just breaking down old gear to free up inventory space and getting materials/currencies, however that will work. Maybe with a hub world, or menu outside game sessions being the place where players can craft items instead of just breaking them down.

LuckyLou · June 20, 2019, 10:54am

If you look at the top right of the first picture, I think that’s Benedict.
This may be what customisation looks like.
For one thing his colours are different (, more orangey) and secondly his wings look like they have a completely different design.

MidnightNova · August 8, 2015, 1:18pm

I hope that it just changes aesthetics, and not stats aswell. It wouldn’t really gell with me.

Psychichazard · August 8, 2015, 1:25pm

totally with metalhead here. No stat changes plox.

Mr_Sandman · August 8, 2015, 1:49pm

How old is the first image?

It doesnt look like gameplay, it looks like a pre-rendered “action shot”, if its old it could just be a design change that happened with time. But if its new from the last few days then yeah, its probably a different skin, since those have been confirmed.

Yeah I definetly agree, I like playing dress ups without worrying about whether im maximising my playstyles effectiveness, especially in multiplayer games.

I guess one solution would be to have 2 skin slots, a primary one that affects stats based on the skin, with an optional second slot to override it allowing you to have the physical apperence of whatever you wanted.

I’d still probably rather no stat altering skins though, it looks like we’re going to have dedicated gear for that anyway.

LuckyLou · August 8, 2015, 1:58pm

If it isn’t, i’m gonna be really bummed out, because that skin looks badass

shoogli · August 9, 2015, 9:21am

If there are Battleborn skins in BL2 I hope Gaige gets Orendi’s hat, and if there are BL2 skins in Battleborn I hope Orendi gets Gaige’s goggles !

That is all !

Smash the system !!!

MidnightNova · August 9, 2015, 2:28pm

Wayfarer Wizard comes close. But I agree on the Gaige part.