I appreciate the effort your team has put into the map changes and optimization. Some people have already reported noticeable performance improvements. I really like this part of the changelog, along with the much needed Alani balance changes.
However, there’s the other part that I can’t ignore: you’re asking for additional money before you delivered content to people who already gave you their money. This is not right in many people’s book, including mine.
You told us you’re working on lots of good stuff and asked us to trust you. I’m afraid it doesn’t work this way - trust is gained by one’s actions, and you cannot just ask for it.
Ignoring.
You had a month to say even a single sentence to people who paid extra before launch day, while 19 days later others got the same thing for nearly half as much. Their $75 has lost value in less than three weeks, with no compensation in sight.
Nineteen days. Not half a year, or even a full month. 40% price drop. We all know this is not charity - but we’re customers, not donors, and it’s not unreasonable to expect to be treated fairly at least in the first month after the release. You’re asking for trust when pulling moves that put us off buying anything from you.
I would be okay with you saying “Digital Deluxe $75 customers will not get more than Digital Deluxe $40 customers”. That would mean there are some shards of communication between you and your customers. But you haven’t said anything. A lesson learned about pre-ordering anything from 2K.
I would gladly be proven wrong on this, if anyone has any source. Same applies to the things below.
Platinum.
You’re selling content that was in the game, just locked behind a boolean variable, before delivering what “season” pass holders already paid for. For some reason someone thought that it’s perfectly okay to ask for additional money even before the very first paid DLC pack goes live. You keep repeating that Season Pass holders will get the stuff they were promised, but the order of actions here is off-putting.
At this point I don’t believe you’ll listen to the cries telling you that non-cosmetic microtransactions are not okay. I expect it to be brushed off as “vocal minority”, followed by addition of paid loadouts or double XP and credits boosters. Maybe not addition, but enabling, since these boosters are already in the game’s code. You’ll probably also say that these are not affecting the gameplay more than skins do, and act surprised when people disagree.
Instead of giving people the incentive to play every day by giving them 5-10 platinum on each match, you’re making the situation worse by keeping the promised content behind a paywall insurmountable without real money.
Plans.
You’re scared of mentioning a date for specific updates - because people will start yelling a day after the deadline - so the 2K marketing team has ordered you not to say anything at all.
You’re not posting any teaser videos of the upcoming content nor generating hype in any other way. Promises like “soon it’s gonna be good” are empty and have not made anyone believe you. It’s the worst time for surprises, but you still keep everything secret unless it leaks.
If there was any misunderstanding by an external party, like a gaming news site wrongly interpreting your microtransaction plans, there wasn’t any effort from your side to correct it, e.g. this article saying “you don’t have to spend any more real money”. Second month is not “long-term”, which was the term you used.
Dev Tracker.
If I mention the lack of communication, you will point me to the Dev Tracker. And what I see in the Dev Tracker is a single developer who posts multiple great responses to users’ questions… for Homeworld Remastered. He even replies “yup, it’s a known bug” and that works wonders - it lets the players know that the issue is acknowledged and will probably be fixed. It’s not a PR team, not a group of community ambassadors. It’s one developer. Give him a high five from me.
For Battleborn Dev Tracker, there are so little posts, each carrying so little information (“soon”, “cool things are coming”, “trust us”, “things are always in flux”), that it should be embarrassing to point anyone there. I don’t know if my reports that I’m getting randomly stuck in the black void, or that the helix mutation keybinding does not reflect the key bound to ultimate skill, have been seen by any developer. I don’t care if my lengthy detailed list of interface improvements gets 1 or 100 likes, if it doesn’t reach anyone in the team.
I tried reporting some of the issues, such as stun not preventing Shepherd’s overshield wave, on the official Zendesk support. What I got was a reply that “we are unable to accept your suggestion; our policy is not to accept unsolicited game ideas from the public”. This is ridiculous, since you have a dedicated “Suggestion” option, and in effect I had to rephrase my ticket to be a bug report. It was closed and marked as solved without me getting an answer if that stun+overshield is intentional or not.
Trust.
I might have believed in Gearbox. But sadly, you’re in it together with 2K, and while the matches themselves are fun, the rest of the experience is terrible. Looking at the Steam players charts gives me the same amount of entertainment as sitting in a [1/10] queue for an hour, and there are no signs of positive changes in the future.
So, yeah… Trust.
You’re not getting it from me.
