[Suggestions] Few things that need to change in Incursion

Battleborn Battleborn Competitive Multiplayer Discussion
#1

First of all, everything below is obviously my personal opinion. I’m going to be talking about Incursion mode as a competitive game mode and everything that is important to it. I will not touch upon minor details like specific character balance, but rather more universal mechanics.

A bit about myself so that you know where I’m coming from: GE in CS:GO, 4.5 MMR DotA, Plat1 Smite, 47 Command rank in BB, played only Incursion 90% winrate

Now to the Battleborn:

1 . 30 min Limit

I’ll go straight to the point here, we need that to be replaced. At least in ranked that is. We already have other gamemodes for a shorter and more action packed gameplay. Incursion though greatly suffers from that limitation.

It forces loosing team to risk everything they have if they are aproaching that 30 minute mark even if it is completely pointless at the specific moment of the game. It makes late game characters less viable. It forces you to aim for score domination rather than for the actuall goal of destroying the enemy base. I can’t see it doing anything good aside from shgortening the match.

If you still want to shorten the game, do it in a different way. Make shields of sentries weaker on the 30 minute mark or disable them all together. Spawn a stronger jungle minion (aka Roshan, Nashor, Fire Giant) in order to force ONE BIG TEAMFIGHT FOR THE GAME. Do something that is not just - “well, we are out of time, so you lost since you were not fragging/damaging the rower enough”

2 . Collision

I know that many have spoke about this one, but I’ll put in my two cents here.
Collision with enemies needs to stay. It gives the game more depth and allows for some interesting tactics (blocking enemy from chasing healers/escaping or punishing enemies for excessive jumping by jungling them in the air). Also enemy minions are a bigger obstacle that way and diving in the enemy lanes is more risky.

Team collision though, should be gotten rid off - both character collision and projectile collision. There is no way it is good for teamplay, since you can’t keep track of everyone’s lines of fires all the time. Vision obscuration is enough of a penalty for stepping in the line of sight.

3 . Denying Ultimates

I get that you should be using your ultimates carefully and if Rath ults in one of the enemies has a stun it is his fault for wasting it. So in that sense it should stay.

BUT! There are characters that have a really long start-up for their ults and the cooldown timer starts going as soon as they go into the animation. I believe that if the ult itself didn’t have time to launch, the cooldown should be reduced to 25%-30%. That way the enemy is punished for timing their ults badly and won’t be able to re-cast it right away, while still not wasting the ult alltogether because of the long start-up.

Also, character whose ults just change their gun for a limited duration shouldn’t be denied of their ult by stuns at all. It makes no sense when Whisky or Ghalt start their gun switch animation, get stunned and loose their ult for another minute.

4 . Random Gear

Though I don’t personally enjoy the idea of farming items that influence the gameplay, I don’t mind it being here for the sake of PvE and PvP being part of one experience.

But random stats on the Gear needs to go. At least in Ranked, the stats of two same items should be exactly the same. When two players of the same skill reach the late game, every single % of dmg or healing power matters. The idea of blind picking the items (since you don’t know what enemies are building) is already bringing in a random factor into the pick. Random stats just make it MUCH MUCH WORSE.

5 . Ranked

I’ll split this one into two parts

a) Picking.

We need to be able to counter pick and ban characters. Counters are present in the game and right now they are relying on the random factor since you don’t know who you’ll be up against. In competitive mode - that shouldn’t be the case.

Since we only have 25 characters as of now, I would suggest this system.
TeamA 1Ban - TeamB 1Ban1Pick - TeamA 2Picks - TeamB 2Picks - TeamA 1Pick - TeamB 1Ban - TeamA 1Ban1Pick - Team B 2Picks - Team A 1Pick

b) Ranked modes

We need to only have Incursion in Ranked. I’m not saying Meltdown/Control are bad gamemodes, but we shouldn’t split the competitive/e-sport community. Modes are too different for them to all have the same rankings. Also Incursion will already have more then one map I suppose, leave the voting option for that.

If the vote for modes remains, I can see there being 5-men stacks for the sake of playing the mode they like. Solo-players will absolutely have no say in that case, while two such stacks meeting will result in a random chance deciding the fate of the match. Neither fun or balanced.

I guess two seperate ranked modes might work, but that will split the community even further (still better than voting)

P.S. Can’t wait for 3rd of May

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#2

Food for thought, you may run into more of a problem with leavers if you extend or get rid of the 30 minute time limit. As is now, you know at a maximum how long a match will take and can plan around it. If you don’t know, then you could easily find yourself in a position where you have to quit on tour team because the match is taking longer than expected.

Not saying it should or should not happen. Just pointing out potential consequences.

#3

I agree with most except the ranking part. I guess knowing what chars the opposing team will play is useful but in the end this will just make people leave games because they won’t be able to play their favorite char, will probably just make people always choosing the same chars over and over and the game will loose it’s diversity. I agree that it could possibly happen on private matches, you already know who you going to play against to so the points are moot but on public ? Nop, don’t want it.

About ranked matches only able to play Incursion … again nope.

  1. Currently Incursion is the more broken of the two and the easiest mode to snowball, loose the first sentry ? Almost impossible to recover and considering a Marquis can currently destroy it from the other side of the map …

  2. Meltdown not only is more balanced but it’s the mode closer to other MOBA games

  3. In the end players will choose what mode they like more, simply as that, we already only have 3 modes, i don’t think we need to cripple our already slim choices even further

#4

I see it being an issue in casual mode (so I’m fine with there being a time limit in place there), but in ranked leavers will lose ELO/MMR for leaving, while players that are still playing will have a chance to win and gain it.

Also that is why in CS for example there is a warning “match can last up to 90 minutes, leaving will be punished” or something along the lines. + there is a surrender option in place.

#5

People will choose same chars in ranked anyway. They will pick the ones that are the best in current meta. Banning system actually allows for more diversity since players will have to know how to play many characters.

Also, with the current system the issue of “leave games because they won’t be able to play their favorite char” is already present, since the one who loaded faster can easily pick character first. Anyway, ranked should be about picking characters your team needs and not getting 5 melees because you like them.

About Incursion:

  1. Getting the Shepards is not the end of the game and it actually awards teams for agressive early game. Also it is easy to nerf them a bit. Marquis part is an issue and should be fixed - and it is not hard to do.

  2. They are both balanced and both have something of MOBA that other doesn’t. I don’t mind Meltdown being the ranked mode, if devs will decide it is the more complex one, though I personally like jungle and agressive towers from Incursion.

  3. We are just going to give the choice to 5-men stacks, while crippling solo-queue. At the same time we are going to split competitive/e-sport community, since people will always debate which mode is the “true” competitive mode. Smite has Conquest, LoL has summoners rift, DotA has its only map, CS has demolition. We need developers to chose one mode for the competitive community to focus on.

#6

Banning doesn’t necessarily makes players to know more characters, might just mean that people will just quit and search for another game, i’ve seen it before and i’ll probably see it again.
I agree that people should use the best characters to win and i agree that it’s what we should be aiming to but considering that right now the class system is a bit unbalanced and 70% of the chars end up falling in the same category, it’s a bit hard to do.
And the thing is i believe BB will be targeted to the more semi-casual bracket of gamers and having premade games/rooster will detract a lot of players to it, specially when it will have to battle Overwatch for sales ( even if they’re not the same thing ) and that game doesn’t feature the system.

1 & 2 ) I never said that it was the end, just that between the two, currently Incursion is the most likely and easiest to snowball and become extremely hard to recover. It’s not a matter of preference as i think played 50/50 and like both, it’s just that atm i think Meltdown is more balanced and where i’ve seen less of a 100-0 type of games.

3 ) Smite for example has 3 ranked leagues though …

#7

If BattleBorn will aim at semi-casual bracket of gamers in ranked mode - I think it will detract even more players. I’ve played Betas of both Battleborn and Overwatch. The reason why I’ve pre-ordered Battleborn and am not going to buy Overwatch even on sales - gameplay complexity.
Overwatch is fun and action packed, but after a few hours you have seen it all and learnt it all, the only thing left to do is to master the controls, aim and teamplay.
Battleborn has more depth. I need to think about different hex builds, hex builds of my enemies and teammates, economy managment, experience gain, defense and offense, neutral camps, turrets, lane minions, shephards and etc. (I think you already can notice why I prefer Incursion xD). That is what makes me and people I’ve played with want to play Battleborn more, so obviously that is what I’m going to be advocating for. That doesn’t mean, I want everything in Battleborn to cater towards such players as I, so I’m talking about ranked mode specificly since it seems like that mode is created for people like me, who enjoy e-sporty competition and complexity.

  1. I see your point… I like Incursion more, because it has more mechanics used it (such as neutral camps and agressive towers). I also believe that ability to snowball can be nerfed a bit if it becomes an issue - but partly it needs to be there as an award for accomplishing certain objective (like megacreeps in other MOBAs and economy in CS). Meltdown seems to actually have a “skill balancing” mechanic which leads to closer matches and imo is the opposite of what competitive game needs. By moving the “MACHINE GOD” further into the enemy base, it makes it harder to get minions to it for a winning team, while in Incursion loosing your first sentry is equall to loosing a lot of map control to the enemy team. Correct me if I’m wrong here though, since I’ve not played Meltdown as much.

  2. Smite has 3 SEPERATE, rankeds, which as I’ve said I would rather see than the current vote system. It also can allow itself these rankeds for two reasons:

First - large playerbase

Second - each mode is suited for different team sizes. 1vs1, 3vs3 and 5vs5, so that depending on if you are playing solo, with friends or in a complete team, you can go for a different ranked mode. All Battleborn modes are 5vs5, which is the reason why it will split the community much more than modes in Smite.

#8

My biggest issue which was mentioned by the OP with incursion really is just that when the first sentry goes down the team that took it down has a much greater advantage.

I am not just talking about how it is much easier to get behind the enemy. I am talking about how the team that is now ahead suddenly gets rewarded with shield minions.

I’ve been in close matches and just because they got ours down first it was impossible to recover because its so much harder to now take down the minions and the players with all these Over shields. That feature needs to be addressed and removed.

Just removing the sentry an having all that extra space to attack and push without fear is advantage enough in my opinion. Why create a no come back situation.

If anything the team that looses their sentry should get the shield minions so they can do a come back. Not the reverse. However, I do not agree with this either and would rather just see them removed.

#9

I don’t think that team should be awarded for losing a sentry, but I do think that shephards need a nerf. I would say make it so there is a bigger time gap in between shieldings and that they don’t effect players.

#10

Ah yes, i think in the end i just didn’t read your opinion/vision correctly. Yes i do believe the current voting system isn’t the correct method, i would prefer for the 3 modes to be ranked separably or some variation thereof.

Its not that Meltdown has some sort of “skill balancing” but i think it’s a combination of the map “feeling” larger, needing you to control multiple lanes AND the fact that even if you move ahead on the objectives the system won’t directly reward you for such but instead move your next objective further into opposite territory. It gives the opposite team the chance to catch up and keep you on your toes moving forward, one bad move and the opposite team can push ahead or even turn the tide at the last minute and win.

Incursion on the other hand if you’re able to be the first team to gain the upper hand first, the game directly rewards you too much to the point that even if you loose most of your team and you’re all on qeue to respawn, all those minions will still be enough for the opposite team to be held back trying to fight them before they can make a sizeable move at you. I find that in Meltdown if you loose to many elements at the same time, a somewhat competent team can recover a lot of terrain and push you back, it makes you keep in your toes and think a bit more about lane and player control.

In my view Incursion the game “babies” you a bit too much right now, instead of being a game of team vs team, at some point you’ll be playing against the team and the game itself.

#11

I get your point. But every single team-based competitive game I’ve played rewards a team for doing good (CS/Smite/DotA/LoL), so I’m just not sure if absence of snowball mechanics will work with Battleborn, especially if it is replaced with the opposite. Late game picks will dominate the game, if recovering is made too easy for a losing team. I do think though that Shephards should get nerfed in Incursion (maybe even replaced with something else that is more harmful to enemy players, rather than the enemy minions and sentry), since they do indeed provide too much lane control to a winning team, making counter pushing extremely hard.

#12

It should reward you just not so much as to pretty much decide the game for you ( at least i know CS and DotA do not reward you that much to the point you have full control of a lane ) , i think that’s the current problem here. Just make it so that losing a sentry means losing the one and only lane there is in this mode.

#13

Have you meant, “doesn’t mean losing the one and only lane there is”. xD I agree

#14

Correct, it’s late and i screwed up :stuck_out_tongue:

#15

There needs to be a solo queue for fair play. Random solos should never be going up against 5 man premade groups.

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#16

That would be great. That is the case in majority of MOBAs, yet somehow is still not in CS mm. I also would argue against 3 stacks getting matched with 2 solo queuers, but that is asking too much I believe.