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Battleborn Battleborn General Discussion
#1

I’ve been in hospital recently so I haven’t been able to play any Battleborn for a while.

My friends currently depressed over the state Battleborn is in on PC, so I wanted to give my 2 cents on the matter before it’s too late and I’m unable to.

I know a lot of people care about this game and would like to see it flourish while many are content with the time they had with it.

I just want to know one of two things:

A) There is a plan in place to revitalize the PC playerbase.

Or…

B) If I get this game on PS4 in Australia that I’ll be able to play multiplayer.

People have been talking about going FTP since this game conception without any real constructive input.
I genuinely believe you can satisfy both the vets and the newcomers by implementing FTP multiplayer.

It seems so obvious, I don’t believe I could possibly be the first to bring it up.
This doesn’t necessarily alienate your console audience, in fact, having the multiplayer free to download on a store would certaintly bring more players.

People who bought the game outright have access to the story, access to the gear thats available in that story.
This gives them an edge in multiplayer while not making it completely pay to win as the old gear shop system can still provide enough gear to create competitive loadouts.

I don’t know if I’m preaching to the choir or on death ears, I just don’t know where you guys are at, at the moment.

Solo duo que worked SO well, I would say making that the primary multiplayer system would help maintain new players. The game needs an ELO system of sorts and i know that stuffs hard to implement but it doesn’t have to be permenant.

Once we have a steady player base, 5 man quick match will be viable again and they’ll have new meat to slaughter. People who expect a challange, not newbies trying to learn if this game is right for them.

I feel i should summarise as i tend to ramble:

  1. Announce FTP, secure a spot on Steams homepage, PSN store and Xbox live.

  2. Sell Ops and Story missions seperate. (story missions only apply to people who haven’t bought the base game)

  3. Make Solo Duo que the ONLY way to play as it helps build friendships and teach people the ropes.

  4. Fix gear system (the old faction loot packs worked way better than core loot packs, why not have both)

I don’t know, I wish you luck with BL3 but this is where my heart lies and I don’t think I’ll be purchasing a copy myself.

Just please, don’t give up on BB till you’ve exhausted all your options, if you build it, they will come. This won’t be another Evolve, you just have to play your cards right and Battleborn has and always will have potential.
But potential means nothing until it is realised, you have the power to change things for the better and I very much hope you do.

Anyone got any other ideas on the matter?

3 Likes
#2

Good luck my friend!

Things are beginning to (incredibly sadly) look a bit grim even over here in PS4ville.

Sadly, as (somewhat) easier as it would make life for new players, having solo queue become the primary queue would probably cause 2 things to happen (especially on lowest playerbase of all PC):

1 - a lot of core people (very likely myself included, even though I’m on PS4) may just outright stop playing BB if they knew that you couldn’t come on and roll in a Premade anymore.

2 - many would stay, and solo queue would just become a ton of vicious sharks in a small pool, all of whom would probably know each other and be on mic anyway.

Also, if you are in Australia, even if you do invest in a PS4, you will probably suffer red bar connection issues or long matchmaking wait times, from everything I have heard from other Aussie players.

#3

Realistically Speaking :

Things on PS4 are looking fine. The population is healthy. Games this past week I played are just as quick to find as they were in Jan and Dec and Nov

  1. There is major stuff on the way that is not able to publicly be said atm. You’re just going to have to be patient or wait until said things become public and then you can come back along with a lot of other people.

Until then, the population at least for incursion (the one mode i play) on ps4 is fine and i’d say enjoy the game.

  1. Australia stereotypically has red bar issues that you might or might not wind up having as well. Maybe other Australia players can chime in. I in America have had great connection and zero lag since i began in November…but that comment is admintingly meaningless to an AU player :slight_smile:

EDIT - btw, whats your psn?

#4

I don’t really have one at the moment, but for Battleborn I’d be more than happy to pay for a subscription and deal with red ping. Pretty used to delay anyway, I’d miss my Keyboard and mouse is all but there may be a way to get those on PS4, not 100% on that.

Thanks for the replies guys, it’s comforting to know something is in the works. :slight_smile:

1 Like
#5

May have been bad luck and impatience for me, but the few times I tried solo/duo, I left matchmaking after waiting for 20 minutes without finding more than 0-1 teammates. I don’t think this is a success and I don’t think any solution involving prefabricated queues would help in any way to improve the situation, because:

  • Solo/duo will alienate people who want to play with their friends, because they don’t have fun playing with strangers. Reasons for that mindset include not having to deal with griefers, AFKers, etc. and are more than valid.

  • The game is attractive for a wide range of players, ranging from casual people who just want to waste some time doing silly stuff (ever played Bots Battle with 5 El Dragons?) and people who enjoy silly game modifiers like all the Rumble types we had lately up to very competitive people who would have the most fun by having draft (or even a tournament mode with special gearset) available. Quick Match queues can’t please everyone and finding a good compromize is very difficult as can be seen last weekend.

  • I don’t know the implementation of the matchmaking, but seemingly there are some issues with filling teams. Sometimes you know from others that they are waiting in queue with 2 empty spots, you queue up too and it starts a own lobby for you instead of putting you in their team. I don’t know if this is intentional or a bug, but it will influence the times you have to wait for a match.

  • Skill based matchmaking with a tiny playerbase is literally impossible. You will create unfair matches most of the time. There are some people who can stomach a loss and see it as motivation to get better, but these are rare. There is also a problem that “PvP titles” encourage people to use unfair matches as an opportunity to achieve those. This is a problem. It motivates people to anti-objective playstyles and the people on the losing side are degraded to bots to be farmed for stats. I’m coming from a competitive mindset comparable to that in Snooker. Stomps happen there too, but a player won’t torture their opponent with drawn out matches and sometimes very disgusting behaviour like it happens in matches here relatively often. You have a chance to win, then win. Demonstrate the enemy team how the game has to be played to get better. Spawncamping and pentafarming doesn’t - people don’t like being exploited and they leave the game.

In my opinion it would be better to improve on a little thing the game already offers since the beginning (but is ignored by most of the community, due to it being really well hidden): Open lobbies. In the options, there is a toggle for lobby privacy “Invite only”, “friends can join”, “anyone can join”. Right now, it doesn’t really matter which option you choose, because no one will find you. I’ve had it to open for anyone for a while and no one joined (wasn’t surprised by that).

I’d like to see a lobby browser of some sorts, showing every open team with

  • number of open slots,
  • group leader, i.e., the person who opened their lobby,
  • ping.

Add some quick join button that puts you randomly in some lobby with an open slot (nearly full teams get a higher weight), but give the group leader a method to kick unwanted players (there always will be griefers and someone shouldn’t have to close their lobby just to get rid of one bad apple).

Creation of matches shouldn’t be done via queues then, but I’d like to have direct matches considered. If you want to play you don’t select Incursion queue or quick match or something like that, but you open a list of available opponents (with a filter to show teams in your skill range on top and the more you scroll down, the worse it becomes). I want this to be “ranked” of some sorts (maybe two green arrows up if the enemy team is much better than you, one arrow up, if they are a little bit better, orange minus if they are in your range, one or two red arrows down if they are worse). Elo is already implemented, this system could be used for this. Let us avoid stomps before they happen, but maybe give people on a low skilled team better rewards for win and loss if they intentionally fight a high level team.

  • Teams need to be able to decline a match (e.g., if the enemy team is classes above your team and you know they only want to farm you). This will probably make some teams who are just trying to crush noobs not find a game again, but I honestly don’t care at all. They can either open their teams to let people join who will get their rating down (then they have to carry someone with them at least) or they have to find someone on their level. Match quality would increase significantly that way in my opinion.

  • If you didn’t find a full team yet, you could play PvE or Bots Battle - honestly, you don’t need a full team for both of those - or maybe even challenge a lower skilled team for a 3v5 in the meantime. If someone wants to join your team while a match is in progress, maybe they could be put into spectator mode until it is finished?

  • When both teams accept the match, the group leaders are responsible to pick the gamemode, map and modifier for it. Some options I could see working would be:

  • Both group leaders pick a gamemode and a map they like to play and if it should be “captain’s draft, draft, normal, chaos rumble, bird hunt, …” or random. After they finished, the vote screen pops up and both teams can vote for what is played, no preference and if it needs to be four options, maybe a “gamemode of the day” option.

  • The game selects a group leader to choose everything randomly. Might be nice if it were match+rematch and the other team picks for the rematch (penalties for every player who dodges the rematch then).

  • For anyone being concerned about people cheesing titles by only playing against friends: We don’t need the names of opponents. Show them as “team [number]” where number is something that may even change everytime you refresh the list (e.g., rank compared to other available teams at the moment).

A system like that would allow:

  • Competitive players to play draft all day every day if enough people with high rating are available to play. No blind guessing “is draft queue dead today or not?”. I’m sure that most of high level play would be draft only.

  • People who don’t have a huge friends list yet can find people more easily. I wouldn’t even mind a button “noobs welcome :)” that flags your team as “don’t worry about your skill, I don’t mind mistakes, but we probably will lose.” when opening a lobby and I would click it!

  • No preselected gamemodes or queue types means no cut content at any time.

  • Spectator mode could be extended. Lobbies could get a toggle “allow spectators” and maybe players could spectate matches in progress. This could be very interesting should you see an ongoing match between top level teams.

This sounds like a huge overhaul, but with a closer look at the needed ingredients for it, some parts for it are already in the game and could be extended to make something like that happen. In my opinion a lobby system would be much better with respect to giving players more choices, the creation of better quality matches and even robustness to low playercount.

Tl;dr: It’s a teambased game. Give people the chance to form teams more easily.

2 Likes
PC Quick Match Queue Issue
Isn't Solo/Duo Queue suggested for people with little PVP experience?
PC Player-base Update, Please!
Please let newcomers know that Bots Battle is for them
#6

How do you know this?

#7

There you go

1 Like
#8

Ah, I had missed that little gem of info.

Thank you!

@Vicks_Toire

#9

All these ideas are good and I’d love to see a system like this. It would indeed be preferable, I’d be happy to play with anyone provided they are okay with taking losing as a learning experience and are open to advice.

I used to suck ass at this game, it took me a while before it all clicked. Not all people have the patience for that though and given the que times, I guess that is somewhat understandable.

#10

can you remember what was your first or must important mistake before you started to improve? Position, gear, awareness what you had to improve to get better?

1 Like
#11

Definitely position.

Position and team comp, learning where to be and when you should strike.

This can be kinda trial and error and it’s more contingent on your team mates and where your foes are.

It can often be a war of attrition, waiting for your enemies to slip up and leave themselves open, however patience is key.

It can take a bit to get a grasp on but I was absolutely awful with Toby at first. After watching how others were playing him, it became clearer where I should and more importantly shouldn’t be.

Now Tobys my main, I enjoy playing the defense and watching over my teammates. I’ve found Toby is best when the enemy is not expecting him, you always gotta have an escape route though.

Remember, the best offense is awesome defence.

2 Likes