New lore I demand too, like one for listing pendles assassinations and such, and his black book
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Bit of a boost then a drop. BB is still tracking well below BL, TPS and BL2 on PC even at the best of the winter update. BB is the blue line.
heres a theory, is battleborn harder to pirate? could that be why it tracks below other games for PC.
Online only is a powerful DRM.
2 Likes
I also have seen a lot of new players give up on Algorithm before weāve even broken the laser barriers. āDropped 4 out of your 5 lives before youāve got past the first stage? Not looking good - Iām out of here.ā Itās not so bad if youāve only got 2 or 3 players, but at 5-player difficulty with those Ronin? Itās a slaughter-fest. It definitely feels like it needs some rebalancing, especially since there are so many bosses to get through before the final fight.
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I agree that Algorithm as 1st mission could be to roughā¦ I remember that back in the CTT I needed 10 runs just to beat the shortcut version.
Reducing the number of Ronins or nerfing them would be the easiest way imo.
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I took a few months off in anticipation of the Winter Update and came back primarily for four reasons:
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To try out Beatrix
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To try out Oscar Mike vs The Battle School
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To try out Bots Battle (didnāt get to it the first time)
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To see the new UI
I played solidly for about a week or so but now Iām back to playing other games because ole BB just isnāt capturing my heart anymore. Here are a few reasons:
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Beatrix is a nice addition and Iāve enjoyed playing her, so hooray! here.
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I found OMvTBS boring and repetitive. I was hoping for an actual progressive story mission but I feel the story ops have gone downhill since Attikus and the Thrall Rebellion. I know others have enjoyed it, and Iām glad to hear it, but itās not my cup of tea. The dialogue was amusing, but after I got through all 10 instances, I felt no reason to play it again. In my opinion, the skin rewards are not worth it as I find them the most disappointing out of all the ops skin rewards. In addition, some of the side ops objectives are just plain frustrating ā¦ doable, but frustrating.
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I truly enjoyed Bots Battle, but part of my enjoyment was hampered by two things: the bots were too unintelligent and too easy to defeat (imo) and some of the lore challenges are currently bugged and donāt work correctly in the mode. Now, there were some bots (those darn Alaniās) that served up some decent competition, but most of the bots didnāt create much of a challenge and it became just a tad too easy. Also, I know the devs are working on fixing the bugged lore challenges, which is great! However, Iāll be waiting until those are fixed and Bots Battle (hopefully) becomes a permanent addition (maaaaaaybe weāll see something in todayās Battleplan?)
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Iām personally not over-the-moon about the new UI and other QoL features. Donāt get me wrong, the 60FPS on my X1 is great! (Thanks, devs!) But Iām not fond of the new character select screen layout. Things are a bit too small (and I have a huge TV), characters get covered up by the team selection bars, taunting isnāt as easy to do during character select (it lets you know who your bros are!), and, more importantly (to me anyway), weāre now forced to sit through the entirety of both the character select and the āprepā phases. You canāt speed them up to jump into a match any quicker. You canāt say, āLetās go alreadyyy!ā With matchmaking times already being hit-or-miss, I just find it frustrating to sit there twirling my character for an additional one-and-a-half minutes (which gets compounded by the fact some matches are now super short and Incursion can still run super long). It also stinks you have to wait out the timers even when youāre playing an op/story mission solo.
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Side note: I now also feel credits are largely unimportant because all we can spend them on are core loots packs. So far, I havenāt seen compelling reasons as to why theyāre worth it. Theyāre just not very exciting. I get the idea behind it, but I donāt want to bother wasting my time purchasing, opening, throwing away everything, over and over again.
So, there were definitely some good things to the Winter Update and Iām glad to see some of the new things that have come to the game. If we get permanent Bots Battle with smarter AI and fixed lore bugs and options to speed up character select/get into games faster, Iām sure Iāll pop in from time-to-time. Ultimately though, the dream for this BB player would be to see more engaging, narrative-driven, and fun story missions/ops with more interesting skin rewards. (And of course Iāll be checking out Montana and the Demon Bear when it comes out todayish ;))
Just my two cents. Glad to know others are still going strong though. 
6 Likes
This. 100X this.
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I know folks who got frustrated with the boss and the mobs that accompany him in the Prologue, so yeah some of the early PvE stuff can be tough for newbies.
And in PvP, I still see new players who act like they are allergic to minions to the point that they avoid them entirely to focus on team deathmatch. I donāt care how many useful tutorials you put out there, some people just will never āgetā this type of game. Especially when the game seems to reward/focus more on killing enemy players during the game and in stats more than it should, but thatās an entirely different topic.
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I started typing out a reply, but @rebelpenguins summed up my main points too!
I will add that I was already burnt out on all the PVE missions, so nothing there made me stay.
Iāve had too many negative experiences from PVP to really care for trying to get back into that again (stomps, abuse, the infamous Australian lag/rubberbanding AND also the fact that is seems impossible to find a match during weeknights - tried last week on a whim and couldnāt find a match on any queue)
I love the world and characters, and getting 100% completion based on the Xbox Achievements is good enough for me. As much as Iām a fan, I feel my time is now better spent on other games rather than grinding daily quests or titles. When the remaining OPs DLCās come out, Iāll play them for sure - but as I donāt rate the previous ones highly, Iāll most likely only stay to play them until I pop their achievements on XB1.
So to answer you question OP, Iād say nothing they could have done to keep my interest: Iāve spend more hours playing Battleborn than any other game. There were highs. There were lows. Iāve most certainly got my moneys worth pre-ordering the Digital Deluxe, but others things are grabbing my interest nowā¦
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(Note to self, donāt reason with kids)
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They still have not fixed Incursion after breaking it. This was probably the biggest disperser of people who actually played the game. They shouldāve immediately made a 2 or more lane Incursion map because thatās where the majority of the game types problems spawned from.
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Why they changed anything with Meltdown I have no clue.
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They left mechanically game breaking BB OP for to long. Itās not even just that they were OP, its the fact that their OP parts are mechanically game breaking for the game.
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With the latest BB changes I have no real faith anymore. It feels really like they are just stabbing in the dark now. A lot of Moba games think they should end in a 15-20m time period when they should actually stick to the 30-40m mark to get real enjoyment from the game.
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Waited to long to have draft mode and ranked.
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That first bridge in The Algorithm is sick. I remember trying 2 or 3 different BB and over a dozen tries before I even got to see the first boss battle. I did it last night in Advanced, and it still took me longer to clear that bridge than any other part of the mission, including the fight against ISIC.
Iām still going strong, but things that would guarantee me sticking around:
- more story: both in terms of lore and in terms of campaign missions. The coverage of the campaign is pretty hit or miss; thereās plenty to build on.
- better queue systems/more info about player count: short/average/long doesnāt tell me much about how likely I am to be able to get a game. For instance, Iāve still never had a teammate for The Heliophage; no matter what the wait time says I always wait through the entire counter and then play solo.
- PVP rankings: not necessarily a leaderboard, but at least some sort of ELO rating, and a matching system that considers ELO (for instance, create groups with similar total ELO)
4 Likes
I honestly wish theyād just fold Heliophage into the Normal and Advanced queues so that we could eliminate a queue.
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That would be nice, but Iām sure they want to keep The Heliophage locked for new players until theyāve completed the rest of the story missions. Iām not sure if theyād be able to have Heliophage only appear as a choice for a team where everyone has unlocked itā¦but itād help.
Breaking Characterā¦
I personally love the winter update, although I agree the Meltdown changes were unnecessary. I have yet to make it past level 5 in a Meltdown match before the finale.
The main reasons Iām not in the game more areā¦ work, my internet connection goes to crap at times, and I have other things going on outside of work and this game to occupy my attention.
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Super true. Work and life simply keep me away too. I usually only get to play games on the weekends and, even then, Iām often doing other things that keep me away. So when I have the opportunity to game, Iāve got to pick which game I want to dedicate my limited time to (and Stardew Valley currently has my heart 
).
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So am I one of the few who found the Algorithm not difficult on normal, just long? Because it really wasnāt that hard for me. I did it as Oscar Mike first.
If you do a 5-man public group first with no communication, yeah itās probably gonna be rough. And if you do it as advanced first, sorry, but thatās just not smart at all.
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No, youāre not. I donāt find any of the story missions difficult (except for some of the shenanigans that happen in Heliophage, and thatās more frustrating than anything). I often solo queue too. Now, Iāve played enough that I can do most story missions with one eye closed, but I do see lower CR players often leaving story matches (when I can actually find people to play with).
However, itās not always easy to determine why those players are leaving. Is it the difficulty? Are they overwhelmed by the chaos on the screen? Did they discover they donāt like the character theyāre playing? Is the mission too long for them? Is it connection issues? Did ālifeā just happen?
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I have, since launch, seen a stream of low level players wiping out in Advanced and Advanced Hardcore games. The attitude seems to be āImma gonna ace this cuz I haz leet skilzā. Nope.