I don’t call myself a purist, but I got a feeling I’m one of them in this context.
I embrace all aspects of the game myself, so having PvE or PvP specific challenges have never been a problem on its own to me. So in that sense, I’m arguably naive about the struggles some might face with this.
However, doing the challenges in Bots battles does take away a large portion of the challenge part in my eyes.
While I can understand the desire to have an alternative mode mode as opposed to regular PvP, I’m not too favourable of it myself. After all, strictly looking at the “PvX” aspects, PvP has an alternative mode for those who doesn’t play it. But then, PvE doesn’t have an alternative mode for those who doesn’t play that. That on its own bothers me and I’d be happier with Bots battles if there was an alternative mode for someone like El Dragón to kill ISIC in the Algorithm or for Thorn to complete The Archive on Advanced without anyone dying.
If there’s going to be a system which serves to make challenges more accessible to players who would otherwise not come in contact with them, make it go both ways rather than just one way.
So that’s one thing. Another thing is that Bots battles isn’t PvP since it’s technically still PvE as you’re not going up against players. Therefore it’s somewhat strange having PvP challenges and stats being affected by Bots battles. The only time I’ve played bots with the exception of when it came out to try it out was when I found a group who wanted to farm Loot packages in there when all of us had loot boosters. I gladly helped them, but I wish afterwards I could remove all stats I got from those games as they’re not PvP. Having PvE and PvP stats mixed is certainly not the way to go and just skews the stats. This however is not only due to bots battles as deaths in overall PvE activities are factored in as well in what is for the most part a PvP stat screen.
Another thing (which I realise is slightly off-topic) is something which I’m certainly not proud of, but something I think nevertheless, is the depravity of accomplishment since the lore challenge requirement reductions.
Completing all the lore challenges used to be a huge accomplishment. Primarily because of a specific few challenges, but also because quite a few of them took a while to grind out.
But now? Not so much.
The prime example is Toby’s challenge which required him to get 10 double kills with his ultimate. That used to be the most difficult lore challenge of them all, and while it’s still difficult, it’s still a lot easier as well.
It’s like if they now would’ve been to reduce the requirement of Angel of Death to be 1000 kills rather than the 10 000 it is now.
Another challenge being El Dragón’s minion kills with Dragon Splash. It was never a difficult challenge per se, it was just grindy. And, as mentioned above, a lot of the challenges were simply grindy and wasn’t much of a challenge.
I’m happy Gearbox listened to the community and did reduce the requirements in the end, but I can’t help but feel depraved of the accomplishment of completing all original lore challenges.
And I know people have been cheesing lore challenges and titles since the game came out. I think it was the 2nd time Chaos Rumble came out when a couple of friends of mine chose Toby only to go on the in-game mic and asked if they could get the double kills. In return, my friends would just let the opposing team kill them over and over again.
So if we take the Toby double kill challenge for instance. Here’s eight ways you could’ve completed the challenge;
- Earn 10 double kills “naturally”
- Earn 10 double kills with the help of friends
- Earn 10 double kills with the help of the opponents
- Earn 1 double kill “naturally”
- Earn 1 double kill with the help of friends
- Earn 1 double kill “naturally” in Bots Battles
- Earn 1 double kill in Bots Battles with the help of friends
- Earn 1 double kill with the help of the opponents
And this is, in some sense, my problem with how it’s treated. There’s a huge difference between 10 “natural” double kills (with the damage also being considerably lower) as opposed to having 1 double kill with the help of the opponents, yet they’re treated as the same thing.
Went of on a tangent here, sorry about that!
Regardless, this is also a PvE issue in some sense as far as I can tell as there are few, if any PvE titles which showcases a larger commitment to the PvE portion of the game.
Personally, (to go off on another tangent here
) I’d like to see more “hardcore” titles for both PvE and PvP as well as Dynamic titles. Example title requirements could be;
- Mastered all characters
- All characters to 20
- Completed all character challenges found in the “challenges” tab (i.e not lore challenges)
- All Ops skins for a specific Op
- All Ops skins for all Ops
- Complete 1000 story missions
- Get all diamond ranks
Dynamic titles could showcase raw stats from your overall profile or specific characters and would simply showcase accomplishments overall. If I’d like to show my assists as Reyna for instance, it’d have the emblem of her with the title reading something along the lines of “Assists: XXXX” or so.
So, to sum up my rant;
- PvP players don’t have an alternative way of completing PvE challenges like PvE players have now in Bots Battles. (The inconsistency is what’s bothersome.)
- Bots Battles is in my eyes PvE as you’re not going against players.
- As far as I’m concerned, it further depraves certain accomplishments.
I do also realise that I arguably come off as quite hostile with this, but I have no quarrel with those who plays bots battles or enjoy it so much as the system itself.