Thinking of ways to quickly improve things on multiplayer until GBX sorts out the underlying issues

Battleborn Battleborn Competitive Multiplayer Discussion
#1

Hi all,

First post here, and it’s only ideas that have been rattling around in my head since I started playing this great game.

A little about me - bought Battleborn digital delux, pre order on the Xbox one, after playing the beta and loving the premise. I have played MOBAs previously including Smite and DOTA2. Currently have around 300 hours in game, and CR100 with 5 masters. I actively play this game almost everyday, and have built up a large set of new friends as a result of this game, and enjoy coming back each time to game with them. It’s still throwing up surprises and is fun.

So, what has been rattling around in my head is related to the competitive scene. Its seems to me that this game is in a catch 22 situation. Leavers and Quitters are causing complications and premises of CR100 are stomping lower levels and around the circle goes.

So how about this for an idea?

Why not make introduce a quick and simple system, where CR bands can game together? For example:

0-20 CR players are matched together
20-50 CR players are matched together
50-100 CR players are matched together
100 CR only players are matched together

The idea here is that it creates a space where hopefully people of similar time spent in the game can coexist. It also allows hopefully for less of a situation where lower levels are destroyed by prmades. This allows for lower CR players to graduate (if that’s the right word). I am sure it needs a few rough edges take off it, but that’s why I am posting in the hope that this good community, can assist in shaping this.

In addition, they could shape the CR 100 further. For example, they could make so that there is a requirement. If the CR 100 field required a player to have 5 masterpiece minimum. This is to allow for a potential of the 5 players in the team not being shut out by having another player take your only mastery if you had one. This would mean that when matched in a team, you would be going up against similar strength players. In my eyes, this might encourage a much closer playing field, and bring some kudos to a win / loss.

Right now, a loss or a win has little impact really. It’s only an ego thing, and fleeting at best.

Whilst GBX have a wealth of established MOBAs to use as examples. Like Smite. They have a clan system in place and a strong requirement to get to ranked play. You must have hit a certain number of masteries, and you must be a certain level. This is your entry ticket to ranked play. Clans in game bring about team kudos. There is a sense of belonging, and also team kudos.

I truly enjoy Batleborn. I think it has a great future, and worry that if the trend of recent continues, that this game will suffer in the long run. Small changes now, could allow for this to flourish and develop. It does have future, in my eyes if they make some subtle changes to lessen the impact of being owned as a low level CR by permanent CR 100s. I am one of those premade CR 100s, and the best games to me, are the ones where I find myself and the team I am in thinking about team composition, tactics, and having a tooth and nail fight, which could go either way.

I hope I have conveyed my simple ideas, and I very much welcome my fellow Battleborn to comment and shape these ideas if they see that there is merit to it.

KISS - Keep It Simple Stupid. Small changes that hopefully if introduced could allow for the lower CRs to develop and for the larger clan, and competitive scene to develop by GBX.

Show me your guts fella - Orendi :grinning:

Much respect,
Chaos Supream (Xbox One Gamertag)

2 Likes
#2

Separating people into 4 groups would only make matchmaking harder. Interesting thought though. There is tons of stuff gearbox can do to improve the game experience overall. People enjoy the freedom to choose more than just about anything else. By punishing leavers and allowing surrender I feel like they are severely limiting this game. Here are some things they could do (in my opinion) to make pvp better. They don’t have to do everything I suggest but I hope they do some.

  • Be able to drop in and out of pvp at will. Not only can people leave when they want but you can join on a game in session. They could either make the new person the level of the guy/gal who left or make him/her the level of the lowest in his/her group. You may ask, “Whatever shall we do until another person joins?” That answer rests in the next suggestion.

  • drop a bot in when someone leaves

  • People can rent servers. You may think this won’t make a difference but if you can join directly on a server you won’t have to wait for matchmaking. Don’t get me wrong, I’d still keep matchmaking, but just having that extra option would save time for a lot of people. Browse the servers and once you find one you want you just join.

  • Release map making tools. One of the best ways to revitalize the game (pc players especially) would be to allow custom maps. Some people may just not be happy with current maps, this would offer tons of new options and gearbox could make the most popular ones official.

  • New gametypes. I feel like king of the hill would be especially well suited for this game. I’d also like to see a tug of war control point option instead of having them all in the middle.

  • Character legendaries unlock at level 15 instead of by lore challenges. Some people don’t want to play pvp, some don’t want to play pve. I’m fine with keeping lore challenges for titles, make them harder or whatever, but it takes long enough to get someone to rank 15. Plus you wouldn’t have us pve players ruining the pvp experience. :wink:

  • Sort characters by roll and notify people when that role has been chosen. “Your team already has a healer, are you sure you want to play as Miko?”

  • Have a different rank for pve and pvp. Command rank for pvp and Battleborn rank for pve or whatever. This way you can tell how much time someone has in either.

  • on the topic of the last one also show pve mission completion or pvp match win percentages or at the very least be able to view someones information.

In closing, I just want to say that I’m a PvE’er. While I don’t play pvp, because I personally don’t like it in this game, these thing would get me to play it more. Right now there are just so many better options for pvp in other games and this one just doesn’t stand out enough.

#3

Thanks for the reply. You have raised a lot of points and I believe a lot of them may have merit. I think I was looking to reduce the negative cycle that a lot of lower level players are experiencing whilst trying to get a hold of the game mechanics and also build a roster of friends.

I think there is lot to progress the game that can be made, noticeably some of your points, but these would take considerable code rewrites, and patches which would need to be checked prior to release. In short take time.

I think breaking the CR levels down is a simple check, and quite easy to employ. If you are the right CR this band option is available to you. It could be that they allow lower CR to participate in higher bands, but in doing so they are acknowledging that they are in amongst higher levels…choice they would make. Ideally I think this would allow lower CR levels time to grow, in a common band (CR levels).

CR to me is simply time in. It’s a record which caps out at 100, and simply indicates your time on the game really, it’s not an indication of skill.

As I said, I’m thinking of quick wins here to allow GBX space to flesh out a more robust system, maybe including some of the points you have raised, but ultimately to allow new players a chance to “earn their stripes” so to speak.

Cheers,
Chaos :+1:

#4

The biggest takeaway from this for me is that new players aren’t having a pleasant experience overall. While splitting the player base into 4 groups may seem like a quick fix and improve the experience for new players, I feel like it would create more problems.

First, this would most likely cause there to be increased matchmaking times, further ruining the experience for new people. Secondly, there is always going to be people who are more skilled players, even with close command ranking so I fear that this is another reason why your idea would not work in practice.

My whole point is that I don’t think that there is a quick fix for this game. I know you put effort into thinking this up, and in no way is this meant to belittle you or your idea. This is solely based on my opinion and not in fact, especially since it hasn’t been implemented into the game so there no way for me to say with 100% certainty that I’m right and you’re wrong.

#5

Honestly, I have no idea how they thought grouping players into a team and finding another group was the best way to go. Keeping it simple would have made things better. Get 10 players in a lobby and then create two teams from those 10 players, averaging out the CR or whatever metric they use to determine skill, making two similar skilled teams.

5 man premades obviously messes with the equation, but dropping 10 players into a lobbying and parsing out teams from there seems like it would work faster.

2 Likes
#6

I just posted most of this in the ‘General’ Discussion, but figured that it would work here as well.
NOTE: Other than the 3rd option, the first 2 should be very easy for Gearbox to implement. (3rd Option might also be easy as they already do something like this for private PvP matches)

The only real way to improve player population is to improve player retention. And I think the only way to improve player retention is to improve match-making. The bind is that in order to improve match-making in a real way, it requires enough players to be sustainable with low queue times…and we don’t have enough players to do that at the moment.
With that being said, this is what I’d like to see.

1.) Solo only queue
Frankly this game just isn’t as fun when solo-queueing and going against pre-mades. I typically run my mic and make new friends when I solo-queue…to add to my BB friends list…in order to avoid having to solo-queue. But many gamers won’t do this.
Most new games are probably going to be solo-queuing…and if that is your first experience to be matched up against a pre-made team time and time again…it’s not going to be a whole lot of fun…and people won’t stay long enough to get invested into this game.
I have mentioned before that the best way to make solo-queue work while having a minimal impact on MM times is to make the Solo-Queue a spotlight mode/map which changes frequently. You might not have your choice of mode/map, but at least you know you’re going against other solo-queuers. If they did this…this is all I would play while solo-queueing regardless of the mode/map which was being spotlighted.

2.) New Player only MM
Gearbox needs to pick a number of PvP games (let’s say 20) and say: if you have under 20 games under your belt you will only be matched up against other players who have under 20 games under their belt.
This game has a very high learning curve, and it hurts our game to have players on their 5th match go up against players on their 100th match.

3.) Fun Mode
Finally, I haven’t seen this mentioned yet, so I’m going to put this hear. BB is a fun game, it’s got creative, fun, and sometimes silly characters. So I think it would be good for this game to have a ‘Fun’ Mode. Probably a spotlight mode/map which would change frequently.
This would be open-ELO and the whole point would be to have fun playing and not worry about wins or K/D. It would be a place to play crazy team comps, try out new characters, try out new gear, ect.
I would love for it to not count as wins/losses or kills/deaths to your profie, and perhaps even remove the ‘unique’-BB requirement for the team…so you could run with 5 mikos in your party.

Anyway, this is a great game, but Gearbox is in a tight spot. They need to improve their player-retention in a game that has a high learning curve. The best way to do that is to improve their match-making options. The problem is that the only way to really improve match-making options will result in longer queue times due to a lower playerbase…which could end up hurting them more than helping them.

But the first two options I think would help the game while not hurting MM much. The 3rd option I think would be a lot of fun, not hurt MM too much, but could take longer to implement.

#7

Nothing is going to fix it for me until we fix mankind :wink:

#8

Temporarily, eliminate premades of 4 and 5 (maybe 3).

Have matchmaking group 10 people instead of 5 and shuffle them as need to make balanced-ish teams.