The BETA Was Misleading

Battleborn Battleborn Campaign Discussion
#1

I really enjoyed the game during BETA, and I especially liked the story mode for the first 2 levels. They had tons of bosses, lots of comedy, and so much flavor. Even the types of enemies you fight are different for each. So when I was blown away by the variety and flavor, I was very much looking forward to the rest upon release.

Sounds like a great time, until you start to learn thst they let you play their best 2 levels in BETA, and severely lack in the rest. Every level is basically the same as the last, and let mr explain what I mean by that. Levels 3 and beyond all have basically one of 3 types of enemies (mostly Thrall, and thrn a splash of Verelsi or robots). You literally fight the same god damn enemies every level, with little variation. To make it worse, you learn that there are only 1, sometimes 2 bosses per level and they fill the holes with the samr tedious wave style checkpoints in every level. The basic formula for a lrvel is about 3 separate wave checkpoints, and a boss at the end (sometimes a mini boss in the middle). You do the same ■■■■ every level. And there are really only 3 bosses you ever fight, but are just reskinned, resized, and renamed. The only change between levels is the scenary, which I do really enjoy, but it feels likr every level is a reskinned version of the last. Why couldnt they make unique bosses for each level? Why couldn’t they make unique enemies? They blow you away with 4 bosses in level 1, and 2 bosses and a wave checkpoint for level 2, and everyone was different from the last. But once you play the first 2 levels, you basically experienced everything in storymode until the last boss, and even then, they manage to pull the bosses out for an encore. You can clearly see the decepyion from the BETA and the laziness of the designers. For a game that showcases its story mode, it severely disappointed for me.

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#2

I couldn’t disagree more. I think the first two levels are just as lackluster as the rest. Escort here, wave after wave there, bullet sponge boss here, annoying checkpoint pads there, etc.

Honestly, I loved Borderlands and liked BL2, but enemy variety and bosses that are anything more than shoot it a bunch until it dies are just not Gbx’s strong points, in my opinion.

Where they seem to excel is in their artstyle, humor and characters which this game has in spades.

I fail to see how the beta could’ve been anymore telling. Outside of opening up the entire game to you. Jeez.

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#3

I agree their artwork and personality is very high quality, but I feel they didn’t translate that into their gameplay. When you fight ISIC, it feels very fresh, and unique. Geoff from Algorith was very funny, and was unique in the sense that he upgraded, and you had to gas him out when he would start upgrading. In the 2nd level, you feel like you are actuslly infiltrating this fortress. The last boss was fun, and i loved how he would transport you to this alternate dimension as it pits you up againsg this ominous Verelsi horde. But after that? Defend this, escort that. Fight reskinned thrall, or reskinned Geoff. No where near as many bosses. I just felt like they put a lot of effort in the first 2 levels, and then got burnt out after that. The art and personalityis undeniably great, but again, I feel a majority of the story mode is recycled.

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#4

I just don’t understand that in such a competative industry, you can settle for recycled content in a game that is prized on unique personality.

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#5

You can’t expect varying enemies in each and every episode. They are part of the story. Most games are like this.

Destiny - Fallen, Hive, Vex
Warframe - Corpus, Grineer, Infested
Borderlands - Psychos, Skaggs, Hyperion

I’m sure there are plenty more examples as well.
I do agree the style of missions could have had a little bit more variety instead of escort and defense tho.

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#6

I feel like variety in monstrrs would only add to the unique universe they created. Travel yo a planet, encounter new thrall sent to that region. New robots. New verelsi. I don’t see why we should hold this game to low standards and just accept that they are incappable with creating unique ideas. Also your example of destinh is exactly why k dont play that game

#7

…Offered to buy someone a copy of this game, I’m of course a big fan, but they said “no thanks, have been watching you and it’s nothing like the pre-game video.”

I just snickered and admitted Gbox is good at that.

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#8

I’m wondering what became of all the cut scene content that ended up in a lot of the advertising for the game. All of it is using the in game models, fully animated instead of hand drawn stills.

Stuff like that usually isn’t just scrapped entirely.

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#9

To be fair this game has as many enemy “factions” as most other games.

Levels can only be so “unique”. The reason the first two were unique is because there was nothing else to compare them to. If they were later in the game you could say the the voids edge is just the archive with one extra boss in the beginning.

I think the game is unique enough just not enough levels. But, if they wanted the game to have more content it would’ve had to come out even later and I’m glad it came out sooner rather than later.

If anything isn’t unique I would say it’s the gear system. Pretty standard but that’s typically what gear is in RPGs/MOBAs/etc. that’s what makes it standard.

Like I said before the only thing this game suffers from PvE wise is number of missions.

1 Like
#10

I agree 100% about PVE @flapjackphil

Now. Let me say I LOVE this game. But the Beta was indeed very misleading. Yeah it was only two levels but the first ones are the best hands down. It (the beta) made the story and levels seem much more vast than they really are.

Especially on how everything feels rehashed and reskinned. I wasn’t expecting the regular minion guardians and golems to all look identical… I don’t mind the regular enemies looking identical as much but bosses should be special and awesome and unique!

My biggest complaint of all though is that majority of the levels are defend the “X” objective. Which is super boring and repetitive.

I love The Algorithm because it has three bosses and it’s fun. Voids Edge has an awesome varelsi boss and the sentry is super funny. I would be more happy just fighting a bunch of bosses in each level than defending cores. And when you do get to another level with a bunch of bosses it’s the sentinal which again is a rehash model of the ice golem on the first level. Then when you get to The HelioPhage and fight a bunch of bosses it’s next to impossible if you’re on advanced with a bunch of randoms.

I love Boldur in the Experiment, he’s so funny. The renegade had its funny moments with Caldarius and Hylis. But both of these were defend the cores and had rehashed thrall and varelsi bosses.

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#11

I thought it was pretty obvious from the Beta Missions what we were going to get.

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#12

I have to agree, the later “story” levels are absolute trash literally the only reason I played them again was for specific gear. The writing is the only saving grace of those monotonous levels; Hell even the meeting with Rendain was incredibly anti-climatic and that’s dumb as hell especially after how he was built up.

Maybe the DLC will be better, but damn did they ever drop the ball with the campaign.

Long story short, the majority of PVE missions are like the worst bits of Destiny (a game which eventually got fixed).

We need to see more locales, more enemies and more in-game lore. 90% of lore is presented in text we need to SEE some of the stuff dammit. This is one of the reasons Overwatch is mopping the floor with Battleborn, it needs better presentation and context. Despite OW only being a multiplayer game they had the ingenius idea of inserting references to their animation shorts within the levels that you battle in, that’s cool! It makes the world a hell of a lot more believable and makes it all the more immersive.

The reason I’m ranting about it? THIS IS SUPPOSED TO BE THEIR FUCKlNG STRONG SUIT
STORYTELLING.

Gah I wanna love this game, but it needs to grow up and try to take itself a little bit more seriously. Humor is fine, but use it a bit more sparingly so I actually get the chance to give a crap about the universe ending; that’d make the funny moments even FUNNIER.

THIS ISN’T BORDERLANDS, that’s what they went out of their way to say when making this game, so how about honoring that statement and taking Battleborn a bit more seriously.

Ugh…sorry about the rant…I needed to get this out of my system. I’ve logged nearly 200 hours trying to support the hell out of this game and I’m just disappointed and exhausted. I really hope they can find a way to keep the lights on, 'cause I sure as hell can’t.

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#13

I was a big proponent of this game, and still to this day I would like to see it succeed. However, in this day in age gaming technology is much more advanced than it once was. I really can’t accept the excuse for any game designer that it just isn’t possible to add more creativity and quality to their story mode, be it Gearbox or another company. It’s a blatant lack of creativity, that’s the sad truth. I remember playing the first 2 levels on BETA with my friend on split screen, and we had a blast. The day I bought the game, my friend mentioned to me, “I can’t wait to see what kind of monsters you get to fight in the later levels”. In reality, I don’t think they implimented any new boss/monster/game mechanic that wasn’t already present in the first 2 levels. That’s why I said before, once you play the first 2 levels, you basically played the whole game. This game was supposed to be showcasing its PvE content, which is what separated itself from others in its general genre. So as a game designer who wants to create quality PvE content, how can you be ok with taking the easy road and recycling all your content throughout the entire game. I did not once feel nearly as amazed at the story mode as I did the first time I play the first or second level, and I think that was intentionally done to be quite honest. I honestly feel like they purposely put so much effort in their BETA levels, so that you would assume they would deliver equal quality and effort in their levels to come. That just didn’t happen. Why couldn’t there be more lore in the story missions? Why can’t we see more of each planet’s local wildlife? Why do we have to constantly defend random objectives each mission? Why do I feel like I’m just mindlessly killing hordes of the same Thrall that I’ve been fighting for the last few hours? It’s uncreative, and lazy to be quite frank.

2 Likes
#14

If we had 2-3 unique bosses per level, and everything else was the same I’d be way more satisfied. And when I say unique, I mean unique like ISIC was. A buildup to the fight prior to you getting there. Character development of said boss could easilly act as a medium for their sense of humor which is what I really liked. Unique appearances, and creative mechanics. Instead of a reskinned golem as the boss, why couldn’t it be some rampaging Eldrid beast? Instead of Geoff V2, why not some new type of robotic creation with a unique weapon arsenal to combat players? I can understand technical restrictions, but not creative ones. If you reskin anf recycle all of your content, you either don’t care enough to come up with something new, or you aren’t capable enough to conceptualize new ideas. Either reasoning, they clearly hsd the means technology wise, as we saw with Algorithm, to do it, they just chose not to due to laziness or incompetence.

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#15

Hey. Time for this pic.

image

Remember: you’re on Gearbox’s forum. Please be more polite to your hosts. (And read the forum rules)

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#16

Though I can kinda see the OP point of view, I just can’t quite buy it.

And considering the magnitude of what they are attempting with this game on both the PVE & PVP front, I would never use terms like lazy or incompetent.

In the Beta it was pretty clear that the campaign was going to be episodic, and that the campaign wouldn’t have the traditional story-telling continuity that you get from a ‘RPG’ game such Borderlands. (Not OP’s argument, just mentioning it since it seems to come up a lot)

The only gripe that I really have in terms of the Beta Campaign vs the Release Campaign is that there wasn’t any ‘protect stationary objective’ objectives in the first two episodes, and this is a primary focus of 3 of the episodes (Renegade, Experiment, Sabateur) and represents over 30% of the mission types…and this type of mode has been the one with the most problems.
They should have had Renegade available in the Beta so everyone could see that type of Episode Mode.

My personal favorite episode is The Sentinel, so because I like it more than the first 2 episodes I can’t really be upset by saying that I was misled by Gearbox by the first two episodes.

Also, as was mentioned earlier, of course the enemies were more unique in the first two episodes…as those were the episodes to introduce enemies. Borderlands 1 isn’t much different. There isn’t a whole lot of variety in the vanilla game.

Finally I do want to mention that all of the levels do have a unique boss with differing mechanics.
Some of the bosses can of course be considered reskins, but their mechanics are different, which at the end of the day is what separates one enemy from another.

Algorithm - Obviously the 4 uniques
Void’s Edge - Conservator
Renegade - Hylis (Dual Shielded Thrall companions)
Archive - Gunhulk (Invulnerable till turrets break shield)
Sentinel - Old Sentinel (Swarmer Lance, Health-Regen from Shard Stations)
Experiment - Supervisor Antem (4 different shield phases)
Saboteur - Foreman Grall (Those Varelsi Phantoms which provide invulnerability)
Heliophage - Rendain

Also, it seems as if most of the episodes have their place (from a gamer perspective)

1.) Algorithm - Great Boss Mission. Unique Bosses with Unique Mechanics. Hope to see more like this one.
2.) Voids Edge - Best Mission to start a new character on to learn. Quickest mission to farm for XP.
3.) Renegade - Best (Or Second Best) Legendary Drops (In my opinion). Can be finished in about 25 minuete solo
4.) Archive - By far the best mission to complete damage/skill-related lore challenges. (Don’t save the minion bots)
5.) Sentinel - My favorite mission. Best/Second Best Legendary Drops. Love the traps/hidden shard rooms. Love the dialogue. Love the easy shard farming at the start to get gear all set up before hitting the main level. Boss Mission, but not as good a boss mission as Algorithm…due to not having multiple unique bosses.
6.) Experiment - Not much from a gamer perspective…but Buldur is awesome in this level.
7.) Sabateur - Worst mission and little replay value. Nova dialogue is best part of mission.
8.) Heliophage - Best mission to test your skills. Love the Boss Rush at the end, and also love the randomness of which bosses will appear. Only thing I dislike is the timer to start. Wish there were pick-ups or something to extend the time limit.

Anyway, I find myself basically playing 6 of the 8 missions pretty consistently, depending on what I’m trying to accomplish.
I will admit that once I get the Oath of the Sustained & Leechsteel Brooch, I will probably stop playing Renegade, which will drop my go-to levels 5.

But I can’t really complain if there are 5 missions out of 8 that I think have a lot of replayability. It will be interesting to see what the 5 PVE operations look like.

1 Like
#17

Excuse the term incompetence. When I write, I write in a very dramatic tone. It’s just my writting style. Incompetence might have been a strong word.

#18

The Sentinel was probably my third favorite of them all. There was a good enough story implimrnted that I did actually feel emmersed in the world. I think the setting you are in is very well done, and I like the build up to the last boss. My problem was you fought 3 (or 4 I forget) reskinned versions of the golem from Algorith, and one of them they increased his size. The mechanics, yes, were different, but not epic like I felt from the bosses in the Algorithm. Geoff was unique, funny, and it felt like you were actually doing things to kill him, instead of just unload all your bullets, and wajt for it to die. ISIC was such a satisfying boss in both looks, and style. You feel like you, again, are doing more than just mindlessly unloading bullets. When you have a fight that is basically a stronger Thrall with a large healthpool, that’s not a boss to me, that’s a very annoying monster getting in my way. All in all, I didn’t make this thread to talk smack on Gearbox or their designers. I honestly want to see the success of this game, and I feel these problems should be addressed. Why settle for good whrn you can shoot for great?

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#19

Well i’ll be a ■■■■■■■ ■■■■ ■■■■ ■■■■■■■ ■■■■; how the hell are you, Kleese?!

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#20

That much I can agree with. The 1st 2 levels have the most personality. When I found out that each character had a unique reaction to the Wolf sentry I couldn’t wait to see what other random moments like that they had. Issac’s constant banter and personality made the algorithm fun. Than when he called out my name for the 1st time, I couldn’t stop laughing. The rest of the missions just didn’t have the same level of flamboyance. Which made their flaws all the more obvious IMO.

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