For those of us who left solus, a serious question

Battleborn Battleborn General Discussion
#1

First let me preface this by saying this is not a place for talking down on others, I will flag any posts that attempt to do so for the @moderators to deal with. This is to get information for the devs to use in the future from those who stepped away from battleborn but not from the forums

But why did you step away?(I’ll ask you to be as frank as you are comfortable with) I’ll start with myself, and I’ll even list some things that kept me around after I address the issues I saw

I put down battleborn for a few reasons that all bothered me.

First is the connection issues(Australian crew please forgive me, your example helped a lot with it but when I noticed battleborn was the only game with issues it was too much) for those who say it’s based on location/connection I agree but I live in Southern California and was red barring on private story runs so that told me something was very wrong.

Second was of much more personal significance, I’d realized that too many people were becoming toxic without realizing what was happening to the point of wishing for a “noob” team to go against so they could have an easy match…when I heard one of the nicest folks I’ve had the pleasure of running with have that come out of his mouth it made me think hard about it(to those who wish to argue games are one thing and reality another I’d like to counter with only in single player. A multiplayer game means that there is still human interaction in a limited form)

Third is one that raised quite a ruckus already, but it did bother me in a way people may not realize matters

mellka, you’re reworking her entire character(which is fine by me, and in no way troubles me) but before said rework you nerfed her across the board.(before anyone tries to crucify me hear me out!) when doing a simple numbers adjustment(health and/or damage) it is probably better to take it in increments so you don’t overcorrect and I understand that, but when a character is going to be entirely reworked it may(note I’m saying may because I can only speak from my perspective and I’ll admit I know little) be better to do so in one big lump and then adjust accordingly.

Now that I mentioned the bad I’ll mention the good,

THE PEOPLE: you guys are really an awesome bunch overall, I’ve learned tactics for other games by seeing how some people approach characters(@EdenSophia’s always sliding as mellka made me slide habitually and realize the slide is faster in horizon zero dawn as well)

THE LORE: I sunk many hours into getting the lore completed. Learning about the characters was interesting, but my personal hope is that if there’s another battleborn that they don’t lock lore away behind challenge walls

And of course the Easter egg hunt kept me around for quite a while.

Now please if you know someone who stepped away tag them so they can offer perspective as well

EDIT: I am one to admit good things as well and there was a good quote in the 03/30 battleplan thread that offsets some of my negative statements in this post, quote is:

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Battleplan 54: 8/3/17
#2

@epicender584 if I recall correctly you stepped away, can you lend your perspective as well?

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#3

…From the beginning I cursed these live connections and I honestly feel for you.
If BL3 has the same Live connections needed, well, fill in the blanks.

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#5

The biggest reason for me is stil that PvE is tied to the servers combined with me thinking that the game’s lifespan is much shorter than the devs wanted it to be. And I dont have the heart to return to the game unless PvE can be played offline. I really miss some of the characters though.

Either way, those thoughts lead me to feel that I cant justify the money I spend on this game.

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#6

I stepped away to play Breath of the Wild, but legends tell of my return…

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#7

Your answer sums up the good in a way I couldn’t find proper words for

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#8

Hmm. I haven’t fully stepped out, but I’m certainly not playing anywhere near as much as I used to. Largely because finding the motivation to sit through the slow matchmaking is difficult - I’ll sit down one evening, thinking “I feel like a few rounds of Meltdown or something”, wait for a good 45 minutes in the queue before thinking “Eh, I don’t actually want to play Battleborn now.”

I still pop back in for a casual match when friends are on, or a few runs through an Op together, but my attention has been drawn to other things now - having recently bought TESO, that’s definitely one of them.

Plus, bad connections and a fair bit of lag (potato computer, not bad optimization) kinda leeched a bit of the fun out of PvP where fast response times are pretty much a requirement.

I’ve put 540-ish hours into it, and I’d definitely say I got my money’s worth. Still a great game, just taking a little step back for now.

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#9

I haven’t stopped playing but I don’t play pvp any more. There’s no point. Gearbox have finally come out and said they won’t be doing anything at all to fix the Australian server issues so I’m not going to put myself in the situation where I cannot effectively use a character to contribute to my teams cause. I’m sick of the messages from team-mates saying I let the team down. Pretty much every single person I used to play this game with has left and I’m sure the connection issues played a major role in that. So it’s solo pve for me with the occasional bots battle for lore and as soon as I have that done I’m gone. It’s a shame too because I love pvp the most and want to support the game more but I can’t justify the loyalty on my part when Gearbox neglect this region so badly.

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#10

You guys had it the worst and your loyalty is still amazing to me

#11

I still play pretty regularly, but I admit I’ve dialed it back. Partially because I’m slightly burned out on grinding out the ops skins and while I’d rather get that over with sooner rather than later, I just gotta take breaks. A bit of PvP/PvE helps break that up, but I tend to play at weird hours and [insert ‘standard queueing at weird hours gripe’ here].

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#12

This is going to sound harsh, but oh well.

I had three major issues that drove me away:

  1. The lack of region locking, ensuring that almost all public matches are played on US servers
  2. The game’s notorious history of short-sighted, unexplained, and massively heavy-handed balance hotfixes
  3. A lack of forward vision and future promise

As far as the region locking (and matchmaking) goes, we all know the story there. The game could have sold squillions in Australia and it still would have been infested with red bar games; preventing a game from bleeding out players due to regional connection differences is why region locking is a thing. It can’t be overstated: this game shipped without a standard competitive multiplayer feature. It was an absolutely fatal oversight, especially as Overwatch and now Paladins had region locking from day one.

And then, balance.

Over the last decade, online game devs have mostly figured out a formula: change incrementally, run public test servers, communicate with your community, and solicit playerbase feedback. The BB team applies massive hotfixes in weekly patches, then fails to justify or defend these changes (and worse, never engages with the community when they critique what little justifications arise - players are simply dismissed with a blanket “trust us” or “try it and see!”) At the same time, the team enacts massive changes to the game modes (Meltdown Finale) or mechanics (Slow), doubling down on the mess they’re making for themselves.

The failure of this method is evident in the amount of fussing around they subsequently then keep doing: increase Benedict’s damage, lower Benedict’s damage, increase his damage, lower his damage… nerf El Dragon, tweak, tweak, buff, nerf again, tweak… nerf ALL of Mellka’s damage, give her a token melee buff that doesn’t even clear the nerf, explain this (bizarrely) as an encouragement to melee, then buff her ranged primary, leave her wave clear ruined, and abandon her… Sublimate starts at two seconds, then goes to one second, then goes to two seconds…

I have watched, mortified, as the game has completely fallen apart on the balancing front since launch. It’s been like watching a clown car blundering and honking its way toward a cliff.

As for a lack of vision, I appreciate that Jythri posts what he can, and when he can. But increasingly, Jythri’s posts read like explanation of things that Gearbox can’t do. They want to rehaul matchmaking, but they can’t. They want to do more balance changes, but they have to wait. They’ve discussed region locking, but it’s not on the agenda. And so on.

Now, all of this is commendable honesty from a dev, but it also makes this present condition sound terminal. There’s no point playing out of hope: you have to love Battleborn in its present condition. And I do not. When an Australian with a PS4 puts this game disc in on a Friday evening, it is almost guaranteed to be a wretched, lonely, buggy, laggy, frustrating experience, and one that can easily be remedied by playing anything else.

Finally, on a personal note: I spent 200 hours mastering and writing guides for a character whose core play-style mechanic was removed in an overnight hotfix and who hasn’t been mentioned by the devs, despite promises to the contrary, for months now. I don’t know how I can seriously commit to any game, especially a competitive one, where this sort of thing happens.

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#13

Me and basically the rest of the competitive PC community lost the drive to play over the past couple weeks because Gearbox has consistently failed to address our greatest concerns on balance (character, gear, and mode, although there is less room for fixing the later in weekly “hotfixes”) since the winter update. Indeed, they’ve gone as far as changing things that weren’t even points of discussion.

HUGE probably characters like Boldur (who is actually bugged to do too much damage with L8) and Galilea have gone untouched. Beatrix got standard post-release nerfs, but they haven’t even verbally addressed her core problems. Nobody was asking for Mellka nerfs. Bola’s and Firmware Update, and max health gear are still busted.

They have hardly commented on how the current CC tank meta is simultaneously stale and not fun (both to play as and against). Their minimally conveyed solution is bloating other kits with cleanse, when it still fails to address the core issue that over half the cast has access to hard CC (literally every character but one has access to a slow: kits are BLOATED with CC).

We’re tired of absolutely nothing happening with the game, and we’re tired of when stuff does happen, it doesn’t address issues that everyone is complaining about (and sometimes it makes things worse). I would be content with a bi-weekly hotfix that had number tweaks for 5-6 characters, and a 4-week patch cycle that altered characters in ways that couldn’t be accomplished via a hotfix.

In the meantime, I’ll be playing BL2, Pokemon Y/AS, and potentially Paragon.

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#14

What gets really depressing is when you realise that they didn’t think they were nerfing her. They actually thought it was a buff, or at the very least breaking even, because they don’t play their own game at a level where they understand the meta or even individual characters… and they aren’t talking to us.

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#15

To be completely fair, they aren’t completely ignoring us. We constructed a document detailing quite thoroughly our concerns about all 30 characters to send to Grant, and got some feedback on it. However, my fear is that all of it will fall by the wayside. The balance team clearly has goals for characters (“fantasies”, as they have called them), and they have demonstrated in the past that they are willing to sacrifice or ignore character balance to pursue these goals (notably, Thorn and Mellka).

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#16

“Us” in the open, transparent community sense. I’ve never gotten a response from Grant before, and I’ve tried a few times. The only time I ever got a reply from him was during an AMA, and he told me that the team wanted to push Mellka as a venom-centric harasser…

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#17

I stoped playing a couple of days ago, got a bit tired of the toxic players in pve… Can you belive it?! There are more toxic players in pve!

I’ll be back, i always do, bb is my #1, right now im testing paladins but is boring… And characters are obnoxious, im still playing because i like to experiment everything before saying no i don’t like it.

#20

Sorry! It was just the M-word set me off :stuck_out_tongue:

#23

I used to play the game more frequently but now I just play a few matches if I feel like taking a break from other games. The balancing has always been an issue for me. At first, nerfs to characters like Ambra and Galilea were needed, badly. They then tweaked them further, a few reworks to abilities here and there, great. But then nerfs and buffs started coming that no one asked for. El dragon? Who’s that? Mellka? Never heard of her. Sure, El dragon was annoying, but he did his job when someone used him correctly. Mellka? Again, she performed her role very well. She was annoying to deal with but she was manageable.

I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it again. The way Gearbox are throwing buffs and nerfs around reminds me of TRS and Evolve. Kraken went from needing knowledge and awareness to play him effectively, to just brain dead tossing lightning bolts and mines and causing havoc with little effort. Keeping in mind medics like Caira and Slim were hardly ever used, while Lazarus dominated. Maggie being the superior trapper because of reliable tracking, trapping and good damage (wasteland Maggie).

The game is great, especially after the update, but the balancing is all over the place and it has been for a while. Regardless, in my situation, it can still be enjoyed. In other people’s situations though? Not so much.

Also, Paladins recently came to consoles. I was sceptical at first but it is a very fun game. Feels like a mix of Battleborn, Overwatch, Gotham city imposters?..personally anyway. It reeks of F2P, but what do you expect. I recommend giving it a bash. Otherwise, I’ll still be playing BB every now and then.

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#24

image

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#25

In case anyone was wondering, it was all actually completely friendly, just off-topic. :stuck_out_tongue:

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