Drafting would be nice for a true competitive queue, essentially ranked, but not so much for people that just want to play the game and not tryhard too much. Blind picking is a part of the beast called casual MOBA queue. Only Dota shows hovers and selects in casual, but that game as a whole is as far away removed from casual as you can possibly get.
There isn’t enough ‘hard countering’ in BB to warrant character swapping. This isn’t rock-paper-scissors like Overwatch. Yes, there are characters you have distinct disadvantages against, but that requires you to adjust your plan and play smart.
Not to mention that it would completely undermine some of the major components of the game like leveling and loadouts.
Maybe have a nuclear option, for instance, in Incursion. Your first sentry getting stomped into the ground, about to go down? Have the option to pump 800 shards into it to self-destruct, hopefully taking out the enemy players harassing it (obviously not worth doing if it’s getting ripped up by minions, of course), leaving you an opportunity to gain some ground while they respawn. Say, a control panel in the team spawn area or at the supply station.
Not really sure. To be honest, I can’t see the point of surrendering unless you’re on the bad end of a BIG TIME ROFLstomp and just want to get it over with. Not sure why people bother with surrendering otherwise. Even THEN, I’d personally prefer the opportunity to squeeze every last drop out of that ShamWow that I can, especially if I’m already 30-40 minutes or more into it. I didn’t come all this way to just throw in the towel and walk away, and as long as I’m here, I may as well do the best I can; maybe I can’t swing a win, but I can at least still pull some XP and other stuff from it, for what that’s worth.
Of course, we must remember that Battleborn is NOT every other MOBA. It is its own unique experience. NOT trying to be a jerk to the OP or anyone else at all, but I think we really ought to try to get comfortable with what Battleborn IS, instead of trying to make it more like things that it ISN’T. Just my $.02.
Definitely agree. There’s no need at all for draft picking. Just pick a well-rounded team and you won’t have a problem. We’ve already had one change to the way that matchmaking works and everybody hated it. People bought the game because it is the way it is. There’s really no reason to try and mess with things anymore.
And people stopped playing it because of the way it is. I love this game, but it needs at least a mode with draft picking.
Sm0kerCrew
(<Deep Space Planet Future Gun Action>)
#25
Implementing a draft pick mode would primarily serve to make the game more appealing to competitive players, which I can understand. From their perspective a draft is a bare minimum (some even want a more complex draft/ban system) to allow a tournament metagame. (Also, this could be a major PR point for Battleborn.)
The real problem is, that the (now reverted) Casual/Competitive Queues are the better base structure to implement a draft system. You could have introduced a mandatory draft in Competitive, while keeping the normal team selection in Casual. At least that’s where I think GBX were going with these queues, eventually.
The main downside of these queues - as demonstrated by several outraged community members - has been the inability to select a preferred game mode.
So, from an Ideal standpoint, Game Modes should have separate queues. That would leave us with:
Casual Incursion
Competitive Incursion
Casual Meltdown
Competitive Meltdown
Casual Capture
Competitive Capture
That’s 6 parallel queues, with no ability to multi-queue. While it might work on the Consoles (never thought, I’d make a ‘playerbase argument’), I don’t think it would work on PC.
There has also been a statement by Jythri on this matchmaking topic, that even 4 queues might split the playerbase too thin.
Also, his Idea has some merit in regard to a draft system: Dropping Capture would allow to (re)implement a ‘Casual’ queue with all game modes and the normal character selection, while introducing draft pick to Incursion and Meltdown (which would be ‘competitive’, meaning stricter ELO brackets to match players according to skill).
[quote=“Sm0kerCrew, post:25, topic:1540529, full:true”]There has also been a statement by Jythri on this matchmaking topic, that even 4 queues might split the playerbase too thin.
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This, so very, very much. Right now, BB doesn’t have the population to sustain a highly robust matchmaking system that puts you together with people of similar skill while allowing you to choose your game mode.
In addition to the “can’t choose a game mode” issue with the old matchmaking system, the population of people doing the Competitive queue was much lower (which makes sense); so low, in fact, that a lot of players/groups that would have preferred Competitive queued up in Casual just so that they could get any game.
Draft systems don’t work for casual/pick up games because teams aren’t organized enough to actually do a draft properly (since they’re pick up groups). For competitive/pre-made games, they’re basically a necessity, though. As it stands however, we don’t have the population necessary to sustain an at-will competitive queue system (which is why the real “competitive” games are organized outside of the game, using ad hoc draft systems, on reddit/elsewhere).
Sm0kerCrew
(<Deep Space Planet Future Gun Action>)
#27
I have to say, I don’t have much experience with other MOBAs, or online games with draft mechanics in general, so I’ll just take your word for it.
If the whole ‘dividing the playerbase’ wasn’t such an issue, I’d vote for a ‘Tournament’ queue, accessible only with a 5 player party and with a draft system.
But considering all the above and the fact that it would be sort of a niche queue, I think it’s just not the time for something like that.
[quote=“Sm0kerCrew, post:27, topic:1540529, full:true”]I have to say, I don’t have much experience with other MOBAs, or online games with draft mechanics in general, so I’ll just take your word for it.
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Well, the draft systems I know of involve a team leader who takes part in the first phase of the draft where the two teams alternate banning characters. The second half then involves each team picking characters as they progress down the line (team lead, then second chair, then third chair, and so on), with players able to trade characters within their group after selection.
The entire draft is a team effort. Can you imagine doing that in a pug group? The team leader is liable to be randomly chosen, so they could very easily make a lot of really stupid decisions that might actively impair their own team (especially if they ban a character that someone else really wants to play); selecting a character for someone else and then trading is liable to not work either as most people would just choose whoever they want to play immediately (and the last player would definitely be at a choice disadvantage because they have to wait for everyone; in a well done draft system, that’s actually an advantage as they’re able to make the final choice, with full knowledge of who everyone else is playing).
If anything, a draft system in public play would just penalize pugs and make it easier for premades to curb-stomp them (especially since a premade is liable to make targeted choices to optimize performance against the other group).
Public play needs a very different group selection paradigm than competitive/premade play.
What I’m about to say will probably sound like a rebuke but it’s more of a rant and not specifically directed at you.
So here is the thing, BATTLEBORN IS NOT A MOBA! It’s MOBA-esque. It’s not an RPG! It’s RPG-esque. It’s not technically even a true FPS. It’s FP w/ sometimes the S depending on the character chosen. It even has 3rd person moments (think Attikus and Phoebe ults). It’s even an action/adventure game (e.g., The Sentinel story mission is Legend of Zelda meets Tomb Raider from a first person perspective, w/ a dash of Transformers, because the Old Sentinel kind of looks like MegaTron if you squint).
The real problem is not Battleborn, it’s us and our human desire to fit things into neat unambiguous categories. We even have a word for this human impulse, taxonomy. So here is how we solve the taxonomy problem. Let’s create a new category called Battleborn and in that category we allow Battelborn to be Battlbeborn w/o the constant calls to add/remove this/that behavior. Because what you and many others are asking for will destroy the unique experience that is Battleborn and turn it into just another, MOBA, or FPS, or RPG, or action/adventure, or any of the other genres of games that Battleborn shamelessly and effectively borrows from.
I also want to take this opportunity to address the calls for drafts and bans for this game. Those are HORRIBLE ideas. We haven’t given Battleborn enough time to be itself to start projecting rules and restrictions from other games onto Batttleborn. Let’s give it at least a year and play it as designed and compete w/o restrictions.
There at least needs to be some way to see what the other team is picking… You can lose equally skilled matches at character select. Best solution is a draft. If they ever bring back a competitive/ranked queue a draft at minimum is a must. Or else every team will run Miko/Gali/Thorn/Orendi,etc. in fear of the other team running it lol.
If character balance was absolutely perfect this wouldn’t be an issue, but there are clear cut favorites when it comes to character roles. Some characters just flat outperform their counterparts. 100% balance is probably impossible to achieve, thus a draft is necessary.
Edit: Bringing in spectator mode is kind of silly when so many things like pre-match character select, rng on gear rolls, etc is so far from competitive. Yet, spectator mode is introduced for competitive play. i don’t get it.
It’s not just for competition. It’s for content creation. For example, if you stream on Twitch, it can be used to get new views of the battlefield rather than focusing on just the first-person view of the streamer. It can make for cooler and more dynamic broadcasts. It’s something that will make for a better community. Adding this and fixing pre-match stuff are not binary; they can do them both.
I agree, but there are 30 people watching Battleborn on Twitch most times I check. The people with the top views are usually running some kind of competitive play. Spectator mode will definitely help, but just seems like they’re putting the cart before the horse. This game is just not that competitive without a draft, standardized gear, etc.
Agreed, that it may not have the biggest Twitch following. My point was mainly that this may have been easier to implement than changing pre-match things therefore, it came first. I’m sure they’re looking into the best solution and testing them out in-house before making any announcements.
That’s not a compromise solution though. That’s dumping on Capture fans to add unnecessary features that have never been in the game and were never advertised as something that would be.
I just don’t see the point in it. The only thing it really accomplishes if that if somebody picks a certain character you can pick a specific character to dump on them, which just ruins the experience. Otherwise, you can already see what your teammates have chosen and pick accordingly to create a balanced team, which makes a draft system unnecessary.
While elements of this game incorporate aspects of RPGs, the multiplayer modes of Incursion and Meltdown, when looked at individually, are predominately in the MOBA genre, with a side of FPS.
Gear is a part of any MOBA, regardless of having RNG involved in stat values, and having the viewpoint be first person truly doesn’t detract from any essential MOBA elements either. It’s simply another intrepretation of the genre.
While I would agree that draft queues could be disasterous in public queues, drafting should be implemented if ever a competitive/ranked queue was ever reintroduced, for that queue and as a toggled option for private matches.
Drafting is arguably more essential to competitive play than the spectator mode that they are implementing in the next patch. It adds far more depth to the gameplay, promoting a much more strategic environment as well as promoting a meta to evolve.
Currently, since each team can play whoever they want, there is nothing stopping players from having identical teams composed of the strongest five characters in the game. That promotes a stagnant meta, and overall, a more boring and monotonous experience.
I believe it’s important to let casual players play whoever, and however, they want, but that doesn’t mean that players in a competitive environment shouldn’t be able to get the experience they desire.
), I don’t think it would work on PC.