[Request] Private Story Mode - Invite Friends To / Rejoin In Progress Games

Battleborn Open Beta Single Player/Story Mode Discussion
#1

This is a request for Private Story Mode. Not Public Story Mode. Not PvP.

Please allow Private Story Mode games to be joined by Friends of the Lobby Leader / Host / Whatever Role you call the Player with the Star on their name.

Please allow any Player already in the game to invite any of their Friends to an in progress game.

Please allow Players who have DC’d to rejoin a Private Story Mode game in progress.

This is a social game. It would be way more social, and better, and awesome, if a friend who came online 15 minutes after you started your match could jump in, rather than either having to quit and restart, losing 15 minutes of progress, or making them wait another 10 - 30 minutes to finish the match and get another started. It would be a far better experience if when you DC’d due to network issues, power issues, PC issues, etc… if you could just jump back in, instead of waiting for your Friends to finish, or having them quit and restart, losing everyone’s progress.

These things are especially true for Players who really want to enjoy this game, but have maybe only 30 to 45 minutes in a session to play with their Friends in the first place! 15 of those 45 minutes is a third of the time you were hoping to enjoy Battleborn with your Friends, instead of losing your progress or having to wait.

As it is right now, managing time with Friends on this game can be very challenging. Over the 2 days of this weekend alone, we’ve encountered at least 10 times where a Friend either came online, was disconnected, or was already playing a game when we came online, and either one or more people had to quit and restart and lose all of their progress or had to wait, costing everyone precious time. And everyone one of these times involved a Private Story Mode game. This could have been a better experience every time, and all that’s necessary is a join / rejoin an in progress Private Story Mode game feature.

Some may ask “Why have a Private Mode at all then?” The purpose of the Private Mode would be to limit who can join a game to the Friends of the Lobby Leader, or to those who are invited by Players already in the game, rather than letting just anyone online join. This prevents PuG experiences, and keep Players who would rather not risk being “Trolled” from having to face that risk. And you may not believe it, but there are players out there who just don’t like playing with people they don’t know.

To close (TL;DR), PLEASE let Players join Private Story Mode games if they are Friends of the Lobby Leader, are invited by any Player, or were in the game and were DC’d.

2 Likes
Campaign Match Making
#2

Seconded.

My friends and I were playing in Private Story Mode and one of our number had a brief comms problem. We couldn’t get him back in the game. Also, four of us usually play together and it would be nice if we could invite a fifth friend if they appear online while we’re playing.

Perhaps GBX don’t think of the game as having “drop-in” co-op but, if it’s not a game breaker, this would be a good option to include.

#3

Definitely agree. When my friend comes online while I’m in the middle of a solo mission, I hate having to pick between “I’ll be done in 30 minutes” or abandoning the mission in the middle.

#4

I completely agree with being able to jump back into a game you’ve been DC’d from, but I do feel like there should be a point in each story mission when players can no longer drop-in (when the first boss is dead?). Otherwise, it gets really easy for one player to enter their friend’s match when the final boss is at 5% health, and essentially get all the unlocks and rewards from the mission for doing nothing. Drop-in is nice, but it has to be managed well in a game where a lot of rewards/unlocks come from completing missions, to prevent people from cheating the system.

#5

I agree with this sentiment. I think ideally this would apply to each Boss Fight. When it starts it should advertise that it’s some kind of Danger Zone (Lana.) and not let new players join until the event is over. Players who are rejoining should be fine to get back in though.

However, I’d caveat this… While any exploit will be exploited, the usefulness of this kind of an exploit would be low. One person would still have to play all the way through, and the other would only benefit if they weren’t waiting for the solo player to finish. This would be of a further benefit if solo plays went faster than group plays. However, the only benefit to this exploit would be easier gear. It wouldn’t provide a good source of Credits, Exp, or achievement progress, unless there’s an achievement for defeating that boss.

The reason I bring up this caveat is that if it were possible to introduce a Join In Progress feature without this extra step of Danger Zones (Lana!), but not possible with this extra step of Danger Zones (LANA! Danger Zone Lana! Dan-ger Zone!), then I’d prefer to err on the side of getting this feature, even with this exploit potential, rather than not getting it at all.

#6

related thread:Campaign Match Making

And I agree

#7

I think you might have slightly misunderstood me. I’m more against people skipping over parts of a level by joining late in a mission, because I don’t feel that such an occurrence would really feel beneficial to those being joined after a certain point (instead feeling like leeching), and the scaling adjustments that would have to be able to take place at any time could be difficult to program in. And there’s also the problem of the fact that if a player joins late in a mission, they won’t be able to contribute much because they’ll be level 1 going up against the end of mission enemies, which are generally tougher, and deal enough damage that they could end up making the late joiner into a respawn eater. (Imagine dropping a level 1 character into that end of mission area in the Algorithm, with the huge numbers of Ronin, Deadeyes, and Guardians) And if they aren’t spawning at level 1, that raises questions of what level they should be spawning at and how that’s determined. You’re also forgetting that some missions award characters for completing them. And I feel that people should have to earn something as important and complex as a character, even if their requirements aren’t that bad.

#8

All good points.

Regarding “leeching”, keep in mind I’m only asking for this feature for Private games. That excludes random passers by in almost all cases. I don’t generally consider my Friends leeches, but there may those that do.

The scaling adjustments are actually already programmed in. When people drop from a game today the game automatically adjusts the number and difficulty of spawns and the number of pads to account for the new player count. There’s little or no change here.

The level issue would probably be the stickiest. Although an easy solution I see here is to pin a minimum level to each checkpoint. When a player joins (not rejoins), they join at that checkpoint and at the minimum level pinned to that checkpoint.

As for allowing Character unlocks or things like that, a solution could be to only award it to players that started the level, but again I don’t feel this is a compelling enough reason to drop the feature if this is too difficult to implement. We’re talking a small number of occurrences weighed against the quality of life for users over the life of the game. My preference is not to penalize the whole user base because an acceptable solution couldn’t be found for a case that only a small number would abuse. If a good solution could be implemented and we’d still get this feature on the other hand, well then huzzah! =)

#9

You make some good points as well. However, there’s a few things I’d like to bring up for consideration.

  1. Restricting this feature to private games could cause some anger among the parts of the community who don’t have lots of friends playing, but still want to be able to drop in (for whatever reason. I won’t pretend I understand people). I understand that private only is what you’re proposing, but this could cause some contempt on the part of public players. I agree that if it’s implemented it should definitely be private only, but some people might not.

II. I agree about leeching. Most of my friends are not what I would call leeches either, but there’s a few…and I get really sick of them leeching off of me.

C. While the scaling adjustments are already present, it’s much simpler to scale down, dealing with players leaving, than to scale up to deal with players joining. The fact that a player joining would spawn at a checkpoint, so not immediately be able to contribute to the fight, and more enemies would start spawning immediately could result in an even battle suddenly heading south if the new joiner picked a slower character and the battle takes place a little further away from the respawn. In most cases, this wouldn’t be a problem, since the respawns are all pretty nearby. What comes to mind is during the Geoff fight, having more bots suddenly join in during the upgrade phase could take it from managable to insane, since dodging shoots really isn’t an option there.

  1. Part of me likes this solution to the level issue, but it would be a little difficult to determine what level each checkpoint should be associated with. For example, for me it was always rare to reach level 9 in The Algorithm, so I wouldn’t want players who joined just before ISIC fight (which I’m still not sure I think should be an option) to spawn in at level 10. At the same time, I don’t want to have to deal with an under-leveling problem. Although, if I had to choose, I would choose under-leveling so as to not reward late joining. A more support-oriented Miko or Reyna sometimes doesn’t get past level 6 and can still provide support for their team, but an attacker can suffer more from being under-leveled, and a defensive character can be useless if under-leveled.

V. Personally, I would lower a late joiner’s credit reward some percentage depending on how late they joined, prevent end-of level unlocks, and not reward them with any of the loot that was collected before their arrival, but that’s just me. I just have a dislike of working hard to earn something, then someone joining in when I’m 95% done and getting the same rewards as I do. I hope that’s understandable.

(I intentionally made my numbering nonsensical.)

#10

It’s easy to tell that you posses excellent analytical and critical thinking, both good problem solving qualities!

It seems to me that we’ve reached the point known in the software industry as Analysis Paralysis. We’re beyond the general consideration of this feature and into the minutia and implementation details. Everything discussed at this level is black box to us, we’re not the implementers, and anything we’d propose would be in a vacuum of data.

It’s general practice in software development these days to implement in iterations. Introduce small changes, analyze the response and behavior of Users, and then react in the next iteration. This is why I asked for drop in style play as a feature for Private games only at first. The impact would be smaller than to unleash it on Public games, which have more variables to consider. Only once we have this feature would the developers be able to gather the data on how it’s affecting encounter difficulty, Character and Player progression, and how much abuse is actually occurring. And with this data they can far better course correct and design solutions than anyone could now.

For anyone who’s just absolutely willing to die on this hill, as the saying goes, against drop in play, there’s a pretty easy compromise. (I don’t think @ThesaurusRex is, they’re just practicing good analysis and critical thinking on this idea, but there may be those out there who are willing to die on this hill.) Add an option under game settings to turn off drop in play, basically disabling this new feature once introduced, and use the setting from the Lobby Leader (again, easier to implement with Private Games than with Public games). Default drop in play to on, so players are likely to be using it, facilitating gathering of data, and also measure how many turn it off, to see how well the Users are receiving the feature.

Everything discussed here is very valuable for the implementation of this feature, which is awesome. And I hope it means we’re more likely to be able to look forward to it’s introduction as a result. =)