I don't know how to describe this

Battleborn Battleborn General Discussion
#1

I want to get a bit of general consensus over this experience I just had.

I was playing Battleborn under a thunderstorm that brewed midway during the session -it would be important later on. For whatever reason, I went with Public Normal Story just to see if I could get a group. To my surprise, there were 3 others, making a group of 4. Playing with a group of 4 is a big deal on PC, by the way.

I went with Thorn, since I’ve been grinding OP3 with her for the past 10 or more sessions, and wanted a solid DPS to beat the mission ASAP. 2 others went with Beatrix (terrible idea) and the last person was Deande.

I picked Void’s Edge, since I didn’t get a diamond on it yet, since I barely played story since last year. The other two selections were Algorithm and Archive, and maybe I should’ve picked The Algorithm instead.

As expected, I was cruising through Void’s Edge, destroying things with ease since I’ve been practicing a lot with hitting with Thorn. I was easily tripling the damage of the other 3 players. We beat Warlord Nix with ease, got every challenge coming our way, and we defended Wolf with no issues at all, even after the section when he had to melt open a new passageway.

Once the scripted event for him to “freak out” started, sure, fine, not an issue, we got the 20 pickup challenge, which we completed easily, and right before Wolf jumps into the fray of Thralls, my power shut off for a second, forcing my PC to restart and internet requiring a bit of time to reconnect.

The restart process took about 3 to 4 minutes at max, which even the fastest players would not be able to finish the Void’s Edge mission when they haven’t even reached the final boss. So I queued back in, just to find that the game no longer exists. I checked the match history and found the mission has failed, Wolf Sentry has been destroyed and the mission abandoned.

The Normal Mission queue went back to near empty, no one was queuing to play.

I grew angry.

I was having a lot of fun earlier, I enjoyed what I was doing, thinking that I finally got into a large enough group to do a Story Mission, and then blam I get DC’ed and the other 3 guys were not skilled enough to keep the sentry alive for 4 minutes. I suddenly grew really annoyed at the always online component, or the lack of checkpoints, and simply how discouraging it is when the stars suddenly all align to royally f*ck things over and people no longer want to play again because it all felt like a huge waste of time.

I started wondering if this could be why the PvE is failing to thrive, that the system in place creates more apprehension than encourage people to play when if a gear in the system suddenly malfunctions then your progress is immediately destroyed. Everything feels restrictive, nothing is robust, everything in place feels fragile and brittle.

What was supposed to be a good session left me disappointed and angry.

Was I correct to feel this way?

Or does Battleborn also play a role into this as well?

Let me hear your thoughts.

6 Likes
#2

My advice? Don’t enter in the lottery…

Also, I’d be angry too.

2 Likes
#3

When I played some story with new players on the day the trial went live, a surprising amount of them asked if there were no checkpoints in the story missions. I personally hadn’t thought about that ever because I haven’t had any issues completing missions in one go but it seems like that’s an important feature to have. It would’ve definitely come in handy in your case as well.

2 Likes
#4

Breaking Character…

It’s fine to feel angry, but I don’t really think it’s the game’s fault the power disconnected.
Although I would love an offline component, in this instance, even if you had been playing offline, it still would’ve killed your progress.

2 Likes
#5

If the game doesn’t have a checkpoint system, then it complicates Escort or Defend Nodes missions, which is… 6/8 of them.

Is it any wonder why the operations were all Exploration types that eliminates the problem of disconnects with the AI destroying whatever it is you’re trying to defend if anything were to happen?

Void’s Edge, Renegade, Archive, Experiment, Saboteur, and lesser degree Heliophage screws you once someone disconnects.

1 Like
#6

Over the past year the disconnects in this game have been the must frustrating experiences.
Several of the peeps here have been on advanced missions with me when BOOM happens.

2 Likes
#7

This time it’s the crap weather breaking my power.

But more often, it’s something to due with Steam or servers or the Internet in general. I don’t know why, but this game’s disconnects get me in rage quicker than any other online game I’ve played. And I’ve played a lot of PvP WoW, and used to be a hardcore PvE and PvP player in an older server. I surely raged quite hard in a ICC 10-man raid when I DC’ed during a roll, and it didn’t count even when I rolled a 98, since the system didn’t register, but I didn’t feel like the raid was a waste of time, since there were more bosses to go down the line despite my hiccup.

You disconnect in this game and everything is gone. You can potentially get no gear, no XP, no credits, nothing. Oh, you get a notification in your career page that you ATTEMPTED the mission but f*cked up as a permanent reminder.

There are a lot of cylinders running to keep your game active, and the more disconnects I face the more I believe it’s relying on too many of them as it pray to God constantly in hopes one of them doesn’t break.

Steam, GBX servers, your personal Internet connection, your ISP… that’s quite a long list in order for you to keep playing… And I didn’t even add the more random things yet.

Maybe an autosave system would help.

1 Like
#8

Breaking Character…

As I’ve said. I would love an offline component.
As a PC player I have experienced my share of infuriating disconnects, some of them on my end, some of them inexplicable in the story missions.
I really have nothing more to add. Yes. I would love an offline component. In this particular case though, it was the weather.

#9

Well, rage is sometimes very irrational, like nearly all my emotions.

I can even go as far as blaming the other 3 guys incapable of pulling their weight, yet that argument seems weak, it makes me look like a lesser person.

#10

Breaking Character…

Good call.
It’s super bad mojo and not worth it to get temp banned for talking about other players.

#11

Not being able to play Bb offline is one of the biggest reasons I havent touched the game since I mastered Beatrix (read: 2 weeks after her release). It’s really not fun getting DC’d, while playing solo, right at the end of a 40 minute long mission/session.

And this. Although being frustrated is not unfounded.

1 Like
#12

Early on, I had a tendency to forget about the scheduled Steam maintenance period on Tuesdays, and would frequently start a Story mission, only to get booted out of it. I’m not sure if Battleborn has a grace period if you lose connection to PSN or XBL, but it certainly doesn’t have one for Steam. The slightest hiccup boots me to title.

Regarding escort missions, I can’t think of one in any game that doesn’t suck, and Battleborn is no exception. I queued with a newer player the other day, into The Archive on Advanced. I was tearing through enemies like tissue paper with my usual cheeseball Beatrix build, but my teammate was struggling a bit. I wasn’t paying attention when the door back into the starting area opened, and arrived too late to pull aggro off the Sentry. Its life drained like water through a sieve. Fission Mailed.

PvP changes reduced the effectiveness of so many Battleborn in PvE, when it was already be a pain in the ass in certain parts. Slap all those always-online systems on top, and there’s a lot of ways a run can catastrophically go wrong.

Maybe someday, many, many years from now, when there isn’t a cent left to be made on Battleborn, maybe it’ll be opened up to modification, and maybe we’ll get access to the server software, and maybe we’ll be able to roll our own happiness, without so many restrictions.

#13

Remember the days when after the mission your score would be -45613? Yeah, that was the last time I played the missions, because our group of ~4-5 people got that error 4 times in a row on Renegade. First 2 times we laughed at it, 3rd time we started to get pissed, fourth time we all ragequit and sent many words with stars (*******) to the Battleborn servers. Server bugs and unreliable servers - it’s a death sentence.

#14

That happened to a full team of us from these forums on Renegade.
We were all Kleese, seeing how high we could get the score.
Worked very hard as a team, did a great job, and nothing to show for it. :smiling_imp:

#15

Doesn’t help that even when everything is in line (power and internet are stable, steam isn’t having any issues, and the players are flawless) you can still get screwed by BB’s servers being unreliable.

I just finished a solo advanced Helio that was mere seconds off from being lost to the game losing connection to me. I know it wasn’t my internet. Luckily this time it didn’t just chuck a diamond clear and legendary out the window, but I’ve had several other occasions where the game just drops connection out of nowhere and I lose progress or even entire missions for no reason.