This is an idea that I floated around during the open beta. The only problem that I had with the beta was the matchmaking, I got quite frustrated when I was playing solo and ended out being matched with other solo players against full parties and coordinated teams. On the contrary, I felt really bad when I played with my team and we destroyed some casuals or a group or random solo players who individually were good but had no coordination and ultimately lost quite badly through no fault of their own
I love the fact that this is such a team-oriented game, that playing the objective is more important than kills and that individual efforts can be for nothing if the team is not in unison. Even when I was partied with just one other player and we played specialised roles, our coordination alone was usually enough to turn the tide of the game in our favour. To stop this from happening when the game is released, I have two suggestions:
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Separate playlists for parties and solo players - With these in force, parties could only play against other parties and solo players who don’t have teams or players whose teams aren’t online could enjoy the game without being obliterated by coordinated teams, which would ultimately lessen the experience and deter some casual players from playing Battleborn.
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Now we may need more than just two playlists, if you’re in a team of two then you’d have to be matched up with a team of three and that could take some time in matchmaking, so there’d have to be some balance with the matchmaking.
A playlist for parties of two to three, of course I’m no expert at coding but the playlist would have to be able to identify parties of two and three and match them together so as to not match two groups of two together, is that even possible?
A playlist for parties of five for those competitive teams to have real competitions instead of just blowing away casual solos.
Parties of four become an apparent problem in matchmaking, so perhaps there could be an open playlist for solos and parties of four only, so each solo gets matched with a team to even the odds?
An open playlist, for anyone who wants to challenge themselves against full teams or teams who just want to hone their skills.
The problem is that now there are too many playlists - solo +4, full party, 2-3, and open. Perhaps there is some alternative that I haven’t thought of but playing solo against full competitive teams is not always an enjoyable experience for the best of players and especially not for the casuals.
Another idea is a deathmatch playlist. Midway through the open beta on PS4 Meltdown turned from an objective mode to a full deathmatch with players deliberately ignoring the objective in favour of kills, a deathmatch mode would draw those players away from the objective modes, perhaps have only a time limit instead of a kill cap like on most deathmatch modes in other games, 15-20 minutes of non-stop slaughter?
