Can we expect raiding?

Battleborn Battleborn Campaign Discussion
#41

Depends on how the vote is worked for difficulty. It could skew towards lower. Or override. Perhaps always going to the lowest difficulty voted on or that lower difficulty votes are weighted as more than one vote and then all averaged.

Essentially that unless all players want to be on the hardest difficulty it probably won’t be that way. But I could see that being annoying to players who want higher difficulty and keep being overridden by players who want it easier. But at least it would provide options without splitting up the Q.

#42

Math isn’t hugely applicable to this situation since we don’t know how many people will be playing Battleborn. However, generally speaking, it’d split queues by however many difficulties there are (I’m presuming three). And what logically follows is that queue times would be roughly three times as long (of course this is just logically, the reality may be different).

With games like Battleborn especially, the emphasis is on co-op experiences with your friends and competitive multiplayer. I doubt many people who buy Battleborn will be buying with the intention to play the story mode with random people.

I think the decision to keep the difficulty queues out for now was smart. See how many people play the public story mode first, and if it’s a lot, they can commit development time to difficulty queues.

#43

I don’t know if I’m just a weird exception, but I do intend to play all the story modes on the highest difficulty and will probably do so many times, but I’m probably not good enough to solo and don’t have any friends playing this game, so if I want to play those missions on that difficulty, I’ll just have to hope I meet people in the community willing to do them with me.

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#44

I am not sure how that quote got attributed to me, given @dr_kleese said it!

However, I do agree with you, @mattiwarden. Given the game seems to be as much about the cooperative missions as the competitive multiplayer, which also grant loot usable there, too, and Gearbox is going to be adding more missions over time, I see there being a lot of interest in running them over and over. And yes, a lot of people, for whatever reason, do not have a lot or any friends who will play Battleborn and thus will rely on matchmaking quite heavily for groups. Locking out higher difficulties from that matchmaking is disappointing based on that.

I mean, some people may think it odd for people to play cooperatively with strangers, but that is exactly what you do even in the competitive multiplayer with the people on your team, and is also exactly what you do in so many MMORPGs that have “dungeon/raid finders” that are immensely popular. The interest in being paired with strangers to work together is there and has been proved to be there in many games, and I see no reason it will not be here, too.

1 Like
#45

Please reconsider the ******* idea of preventing matchmaking for higher difficulties.

LITERALLY the only thing it will do is force me (and others) to get out my laptop and burn 20-30 minutes on forums or facebook groups (no way battleborn will be big enough to get a site like destintylfg), or burn 30-40+ minutes dicking about with buggy PSN messages to just PLAY WITH RANDOMS ANYWAY.

Let’s consider the outrageous chain of events that would need to occur for me to get a full group for the highest campaign difficulty:

  1. Acquire friends on PS4 through Battleborn competitive multiplayer (I have no interest in playing the campaign on easy mode and working my way up). This in itself is tedious and painful because I am introverted and really don’t play games to make chums.
  2. Have five of these friends online at the same time playing battleborn
  3. Have all five of these friends interested in playing the campaign (extremely unlikely since by the time this scenario comes about most will have already satisfied themselves with the campaign or were only interested in competitive to begin with - remember how I found these people!)
  4. Have all five of these friends interested in the hardest difficulty for the sake of it (I doubt the campaign will have any particular incentives for competitive players to play it)
  5. Have all five of these friends with sufficient spare time to actually delve into the campaign (any ‘nah sorry man g2g to work in 10mins’) will f*ck up the chain
  6. I will need the requisite motivation to actually bother to try and organise this. PSN messages and parties are cumbersome as all buggery.
  7. All of these events need to trigger in a sequence on MULTIPLE OCCASSIONS for me to actually finish the campaign from start to end on the highest difficulty.

Seriously?

I would take any number of attempts with matchmade strangers over hours of admin duties. In the process of even attempting the challenge with randoms I could much more efficiently assemble a decent team from the best of those players anyway.

2 Likes
#46

They aren’t preventing matchmaking at higher difficulties. Developing takes time, effort, and a lotta money. I’m guessing they weighted how much of each it would take and decided it wasn’t worth it.

Anyhow, the argument I’m making is that Battleborn is not like an MMORPG or such. Gearbox so far has been marketing Battleborn primarily as a competitive multiplayer game and a co-op campaign type of game. All that I’m saying is that the majority of people will probably be buying it for one of those two reasons; not saying that there’s no one who wants to play public story mode.

Well, we’re kind of going in a loop here though. Agree to disagree I suppose.

#47

Can’t help but wonder:
Do you even read, or do you just skim texts for your personal trigger-words and then go on a rampage?

I urge you to carefully read your source of info again.

#48

Let’s all chill, guys.

#49

You state that they are marketing it as a co-op campaign game, and then say the majority of the people will be buying it for that reason or for the competitive multiplayer. I agree. But you also seem to infer that the campaign story missions are separate from the co-op portion of the game, which does not seem to be the case based on what I have read and seen.

So, one of us is incorrect here: I was under the impression the story campaign is the co-op portion of the game, you can either play alone or with up to four other players. You are saying there is a story campaign, which apparently most people won’t care to play with others, in addition to co-op missions which you agree are one of the two major draws.

Care to clarify? I am lost.

#50

To state it more simply, Gearbox is marketing Battleborn as a competitive multiplayer (PVP) game / co-op game. I don’t know where you’re getting the separate story/co-op missions from. Again, clearly we are not going to change eachother’s minds so this is pretty counterproductive.

#51

These quotes, together, form a non sequitur, that is what I am driving that. You state people are not buying the game to play “story mode” with “random people,” but then go on to later state the co-op is one of the draws, which for many people will be done with those dreaded “random people.” Then you state “not saying there’s no one who wants to play public story mode.”

I did not get the “separate story/co-op missions” from anyone but you, since based on what I have read, I could only assume you thought co-op and the story mode were different, since at one point you claimed people would not want to play story mode with the public then touted how people are buying the game for co-op, or simply contradicted yourself because in two breaths you downplay the importance of public co-op and then tout it as a selling point. It is either misinformation or contradiction, and based on the clarification you provided, it is the latter. :slight_smile:

Anyway, I maintain disappointment in Gearbox’s initial decision to force public co-op to be at the normal difficulty. It is not the end of the world, but I am not going to be an apologist for what is a very bizarre decision given how prevalent playing co-op with strangers is in games these days. By forcing one difficulty, you hamstring that portion of the population who does not mind playing harder difficulties with random people. I would not be surprised if this decision is reversed shortly after launch based on feedback.

1 Like
#52
  1. Story mode == campaign. 2. Co-op doesn’t include random people (in my mind). I’ve always used it to refer to multiplayer with friends. 3. I also always said a majority not everyone. Hope that clears it up for you.
#53

Co-op = “Cooperative” = You play with other people and try to achieve the same goal. No specification about who those people are, whether they know you, or what blood-type they have. :wink:

2 Likes
#54

You’re right but it’s always been ‘friends’ for me until I googled the term a while ago, still haven’t adjusted to the “new” :sunglasses: definition.

#55

I do read.

Let’s have a look here: “At the moment, Public story is always normal difficulty. If you want to play on Advanced or Normal-Hardcore or Advanced-Hardcore, you’ll need to start a private match.”

Sounds very much like there is no matchmaking for harder difficulties. This is functionally the same as my assertion that they are “preventing matchmaking” for higher difficulties. I don’t care if it was originally in the game and they decided to remove it, or if they decided not to implement it in the first place. Makes no difference to my ‘rampage’. The point is that it is not there, and that is what matters to the rest of my post.

If I have misinterpreted, and there IS matchmaking for higher difficulties, then I retract and apologies. But it seems pretty clear what they mean, to me.

#56

Complete copy of a post just 10 above your original question:

"At the moment, Public story is always normal difficulty. If you want to play on Advanced or Normal-Hardcore or Advanced-Hardcore, you’ll need to start a private match.

We don’t want to split the matchmaking pools for public more than we have to, so we think this is a good way to start. If we get enough requests, we can make a Public pool for Advanced, or the hardcore variants."
-Jythri (Creative Director for Battleborn)

Note the second paragraph.
Conclusion: You will get your harder difficulty queue sooner or later. And in the scenario that the game flops, you’ll have difficulties filling a lobby anyways. Basically it’s about playercount.

Also from other sources that I won’t search out now:
You don’t need to have 5 people to start a story mission. The difficulty adjusts to your player count.

1 Like
#57

But I’m gonna guess they’re pretty ■■■■■■■ hard to solo on the hardest difficulty though

#58

The difficulty adapts to the playercount. So ideally, it doesn’t matter how many people there are.

#59

Borderlands 2 was the same way, but it was still significantly harder solo, especially because you can’t revive yourself. While the health and everything may scale based on how many people you have, you lose advantages like be able to revive teammates, and the various benefits from a varied team

2 Likes
#60

Very well written my friend. Saved me time.

Also, my xbox one gamertag is MatrixNeo42

FYI to all.

edit: included my gamertag because at least at first it seems we might need to friend up for harder difficulties. Like most games I suspect I’ll play it in normal first anyhow. Once I get the hang of things I’ll try the more challenging options.