This is a brilliant idea! I hope they are able to implement queue changes without destroying the servers and unreleasing new characters.
3 Likes
Nice ideas here. Solo duo is not my preferred mode of choice, but if good rewards are given, it would definitely give people an incentive to play. Instead of giving out 500 platinum as a reward (does seem like a a lot, especially since we already get free plat each day), maybe double/triple the daily challenge rewards for the week of solo/duo que.
4 Likes
No, no, no, no, no. Weāve gone through all of these queue cycles before. Can we PLEASE not alter it any further? They are fine as they are. You know how bad this would be for the population? How many people would jump ship, regardless of how well Gearbox communicates (and, god bless their soul, communication to the whole community is not a strong suit as of late.)
5 Likes
hahaha I wanna make this and throw it on the characters
2 Likes
Have we, actually? Let me provide a time line:
- Quick Match Added: September 2016
- Bots Battle Added: Early January 2017
- Versus Draft Added: Mid January 2017
- Queues Restructured to QM/Bots/Draft: Late January 2017
- Solo Added, Draft Cycled Out, Dedicated Incursion on Console: Early February 2017
- Weekly 24-hour Queue Rotation System: Late February 2017
As far as I know, none of the three queue layouts I suggested have been tried before.
The Throwback queue is the closest, but by the time Face-Off was released, Quick Match was already a queue option. So Throwback is basically throwing back to October 2016, with Quick Match removed. Weāve never had Solo/Duo and Bots alone, as far as I know, on any platform. Weāve certainly never had Quick Match completely by itself. These two layouts have been asked for by PC players, the former by those who tend to solo queue, and the latter by competitive teams that want to see everyone in a single Versus environment.
It seemed to me that the Week 1 queue layout would be popular on console, and that the removal of Quick Match would get even more players in the beloved Incursion queue. If the next two weeks didnāt work, console players would be able to say in the postmortem survey, without a doubt, that Week 1 was the best, and Week 2 and 3 were a nightmare. Then, the only debate on console would be whether or not to see Quick Match return at all. Youād have even more proof that the console ecosystem (or at least the one on Xbox) needs differential treatment.
Look, I get it, especially with all the hyperbole and the thousand-times of no. Console players are gonna revolt if the Incursion queue goes away. However, in time, do you really think youāll be spared the same fate as PC?
The way I see it, PC is the canary in the coal mine. When our player population dipped below 300, having all these queues spread the players too thin. Since veteran players already had their lore and preferred Gear, they started forming Private matches, just to practice the modes they wanted.
Now, youāre probably thinking, āEXACTLY, they wanted dedicated Incursion, Gearbox took it away, so they did that in Private Match,ā but thatās not what I saw happening, and Iāve been watching for months. Most die-hard PC players actually seemed to want dedicated Meltdown play, at least before Finale made everything weird.
Sure, now everyone shoots for Incursion in Public or Private, but thatās not because they necessarily like Incursion. Itās because after waiting 30 freakinā minutes for a match, or for 9 friends to join a lobby, they want something substantial with some modicum of challenge. They know that unless the five players they are up against are all skilled, they can win any Meltdown: Finale match with early Elite build spam and a little lane control.
Sadly, I rarely fire up Battleborn anymore, and itās not because thereās isnāt a dedicated Incursion queue. Itās for a lot of reasons, but the big one is that no one is playing. Now, if you want to say, ātough, thatās not a console playerās problem,ā then fine. I think itās a little mean-spirited, but I can take it.
But Iād like to think weāre all part of the Battleborn community at-large. If the communityās arm is rotting off, I believe itās in the best interests of the rest of the body to try and treat the disease, especially if that disease might spread. It could be sooner than you think.
If console were suffering, and PC were thriving, I would have no problem with drastic changes for a few weeks, if it meant breathing life back into the console player base, especially if they gave us prior warning and nice bonuses for trying something different, even if it looked like whatās been tried before.
Just listen to this song, and think of your PC brothers and sisters:
7 Likes
One thing, the reward should be locked behind the survey. And it should be easy acces.
3 Likes
Nice ideas. But I honestly believe the only way to up the player base (for PC) at this point is: match making fix, game update & free weekend at this point. Not enough players on pc to support these suggestions and dont think 1k + players will jump back on for these rewards and go through the same things that drove them away to begin with.
Still praying for PS4 crossplay
4 Likes
and why would we? What would possibly be the benefit of that? All that does is chase away everyone who wants to play the quick match modes and everyone who wants to play with friends. Thereās absolutely no reason to remove Quick Match from that proposal on console.
People wouldnāt come back. Youāre severely underestimating how destructive that would be. Thatās far too extreme and brings nothing to the table.
So why the hell are you trying to push us there quicker? Let us enjoy the game while we still can, your proposal offers nothing of value on console.
[quote=āQmzn, post:26, topic:1559580ā]
Sadly, I rarely fire up Battleborn anymore, and itās not because thereās isnāt a dedicated Incursion queue. Itās for a lot of reasons, but the big one is that no one is playing. Now, if you want to say, ātough, thatās not a console playerās problem,ā then fine. I think itās a little mean-spirited, but I can take it.
But Iād like to think weāre all part of the Battleborn community at-large. If the communityās arm is rotting off, I believe itās in the best interests of the rest of the body to try and treat the disease, especially if that disease might spread. It could be sooner than you think.[/quote]
I think itās mean-spirited that youāre trying to drag down the more successful platforms in an effort to help yours. The queues donāt need to be kept in alignment. If you want to say this proposal is exclusively for PC, thatās fine. Thereās absolutely no upside to dropping down to one PvP queue on console.
2 Likes
Weāll just have to fundamentally disagree, then. No sense in going in circles over and over.
3 Likes
gets dizzy and falls down
Wheeeeeeeā¦!
1 Like
I just want to ask a really basic question, because Iām kind of at a loss (or maybe Iām just not thinking straight).
How exactly is this program going to attract new players?
The goal, as I understand it is too atract old players that quit due too queues that took too long or not fun modes. Then, we can start bringing new blood back into the game.
@Destronoma I like this idea. It will be a good way for GBX to gather data from the customer, and unlike character balence, where percieved balence and actual balence are dependant on a ā ā ā ā -load of factors that swing it, queues are a lot easier, and should put BB back on track after the fiasco known as weeks without any comunication of whats happening in GBX: BB headquarters.
2 Likes
Just as a thought exercise, what if, instead of messing with any of the queues at all, they put all the characters back to the state they were in immediately upon release?
1 Like
Well, @FlamesForAll, I like what @dantesolar said earlier. As a community, we should have some input on character balence, and I personally would like during Throwback week (1) that we can use all charatcers in original glory.
Heck, allow us to choose between different forms of them (On Release and Now) In private. See what good balencing ideas could be found there.
But as for this topic in general, I think its a great start to a wonderful community-Gbx Communication and balence.
Pinging @Jythri, You gotta see the Op, and @nbrownlie237 about reward skins
5 Likes
I feel bad for Gearbox.
From the responses Iāve read here (and Iāve read every post here thus far), it seems like the current Battleborn players are mostly divided into two major camps; those who are willing to put up with inconvenience for the betterment of the group as a whole (even if their platform of choice is not the one suffering), and those who feel that this game already has enough problems / inconveniences and that any FURTHER inconvenience (especially if their platform is not the one suffering) will put them off the game entirely.
Sadly, there are just not enough players between these two groups for Gearbox to be able to potentially aggravate one by appeasing the other.
So, while I of course hold out hope, I sadly doubt that anything will come of these lofty, ambitious, wonderful ideas.
7 Likes
The platforms donāt need to be kept in alignment. You can make changes for PC without screwing up consoles, thereās no reason to drag consoles along for a proposal that doesnāt benefit them when you can still implement the changes separately on PC. Go ahead and implement this idea on PC, Iāve yet to see a single reason this would make sense on console.
1 Like
Well is an amazing source of information for the devs.
This will improve their choice of not/remove some queues, when new modes/events are on.
Even tho console are doing āgoodā extra information is always usefull. God maybe on console they will get tones of negative feed backs about solo/duo only mode and it will get removed for ever or maybe we will get a golden emblem* over incursion
*The queue with this emblem has priority over anything else because reasons.
5 Likes
As far as consoles go, how does this proposal possibly accomplish that? Queue times arenāt regarded as a problem on console so if the idea is bringing back people who left because they werenāt happen with the game mode selection, how does further limiting player choice accomplish bringing back players who left for that very reason? When I talk to people who left the game, I hear the same things over and over. They left because of lingering balance issues, they left because the game was forcing modes on them they didnāt want to play (previous queue merges - we were more or less running three Incursion queues after the Winter Update), they left because they want to play Versus Draft and itās only available once a week (this ties into the balance issues to a large extent), or they left because they were tired of getting stomped by more coordinated teams. Let me know if you believe thereās another issue that led people to leave the game, but if those are the core issues as I believe they are then how do we appease all of those without creating a queue time issue?
Due to the population, or lack thereof, on PC itās simply too late to accommodate all of those needs. I donāt have the answer there. On console? We know for a fact we can run two queues without queue time issues. Weāve been doing it for quite a while now. Thereās absolutely no reason to even consider a proposal which drops us to one queue and makes it even harder to fill the needs of the playerbase. In an ideal circumstance if the population would allow for it, we could have three queues - Quick Match, Versus Draft, and Solo/Duo and that would satisfy every core need I identified above. The understandable concern is that an additional queue would lead to queue time issues.Thereās plenty of room for debate on how to manage those queues if we can only sustain two queues, but thereās simply no rationale to suggesting limiting choice ever further again by dropping down to one.
Thereās plenty of things that can be tested that might provide actual solutions, but they simply arenāt outlined in this topic. You can test having all three active and seeing how it impacts queue times. You can test having solo/duo active for a week alongside Quick Match. You can test having Versus Draft active for a week alongside QM. You can test putting a party limit on QM. You can test all kinds of things but thereās absolutely no reason to test āletās jam all the PvP players into a single queue.ā That doesnāt solve any problems but manages to create quite a few. While that may make sense for PC, the developers have maintained for quite a while that the queues donāt need to remain in alignment so thereās no reason to force either platform into a strategy that doesnāt make sense for them when you can keep it separate and attend to the individualized needs of the playerbase.
1 Like
I play on pc and ps4. There are some small differences between the two, but overall the problem remains the same. consoles have some problems worse than pc (not being able to change their region to make it easier to find games during off hours, notably).
So, having experienced the life of pc from launch until now, i can say ps4 feels like its heading the same direction, albeit much, much, more slowly.
i think the changes that took too long on pc, were ahead of the curve enough on console to draw out its life. but since theres nowhere for pc to lead anymore, i cant say consoles will experience their timely changes on time anymore in the future.
For those on consoles thereās something you need to know about pc pvp queues. Itās dead. There is only QM, and itās been that way for some time.
There is an inherant problem in the way bb match makes. You can have 10 people go to queue solo, and the game will try to make 3+ parties. And letās say instead it actually makes two parties of 5- thereās still a chance they wonāt ever get matched. Ever.
This isnāt a pc problem, itās a bb problem. People still report on consoles never finding other players. You may be lucky enough to not have this problem, but it exists and i think is one of the reasons bb cant grow, because certain players just assume from mm that the game is dead (on console), when many others have no issues.
11 Likes