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Battleborn Matchmaking Update

Battleborn Multiplayer Matchmaking Queues
Battleborn Multiplayer Matchmaking Queues

The matchmaking features for Battleborn are updated frequently in order to adapt to the needs of the community. Therefore, I made a dedicated article so you to keep up with the latest changes.

Update [08/17/2017]

This week in Battleborn Versus Queues:

We’ve got some major queue changes for you this week, scheduled to roll out today at 12pm PT/3pm ET:

  • Consolidating Bots Battle queues – the “Novice Versus Bots” queue will no longer be available and the Command Rank requirements are being removed from Bots Battle.
  • Mini Match (3v3) will no longer be available as a public experience.
  • The Command Rank requirement for Quick Match is being reduced from 20 to 10 so that new players who would like to jump in earlier can do so at their discretion.
  • Capture and Headhunter will be returning to the Quick Match queue.
  • Tank Yankers, Rocket Brawl, Gravity Rumble, and Warfare Rumble are going to be made available as Versus Private experiences.

Update [06/23/2017]

This week in Battleborn Versus Queues:

Gearbox is very excited to introduce Supercharge this week! As Supercharge is a 3v3 mode, they are making some adjustments to the queues in order to accommodate that. Gearbox has gathered a lot of feedback and after careful reviewing  the data, they are going to be making the following changes this week;

  • Introducing Mini Match (3v3) – This is a mix of all modes featuring Supercharge
  • Versus Draft will no longer be part of the normal list.
  • We’re reducing the number of available queues for Novice players, Novice Incursion and Novice Quick Match have been combined.

Mini Match is a queue with voting. Supercharge WILL be one of the options, and the other two choices are split between our other four modes.

Quick Match should be voting on all the time, and is now only Incursion and Meltdown. If you want to play the other modes, then mini-match will be your best bet.

Update [03/17/2017]

This week in Battleborn Versus Queues:

As for queue changes, the normal Wednesday (Solo/Duo queue) and Saturday (Versus Draft) apply this week, as well as a new addition.

Gearbox has told us during a livestream that they have some awesome new PVP experiences in the works, and the time has come to introduce you to another one – Warfare Rumble! Warfare Rumble is a game mode in which players deal greatly increased damage and receive massive lifesteal, but have no shields. If you’ve been looking for a game mode that’s fast-paced and extreme, lower time-to-kill, then make sure to give Warfare Rumble a shot!

You’ll be able to enjoy Warfare Rumble from tomorrow, Friday at 8am PT through Monday at 8am PT.

*update

I received some additional info from the dev team today that I wanted to share as an amendment to the info about Warfare Rumble in the Battleplan. There is currently no lifesteal in the mode due to a bug. Additionally, there are no starting shields but players can still equip max shield gear or get augments that provide shields.

Update [02/16/2017]

This week in Battleborn Versus Queues:

  • Saturday, 2/18 – Versus Draft is back for Battleborn Day! This will be the start of a normal weekly rotation. Grab your team and jump into Battleborn Draft Saturdays for challenging competitive fun!

Looking to the future:

  • Next Wednesday 2/22, Solo Queue returns for the start of a regularly weekly rotation. Every Wednesday, Solo Queue or Solo/Duo queue will be available for mid-week small team queuing.

Update [01/26/2017]

Here are a few new things you can expect to see in the coming weeks:

  • Solo Queue – for all the lone wolves out there
  • Big Head Mode – we’re on fire!
  • Captains Draft – Captains draft for their respective teams
  • Warfare Rumble – versus battles with increased damage and no shields
  • Gravity Rumble – increased jump height and melee power
  • Versus Draft – Short – draft for shorter duration matches
  • More of the modes you already love, like Chaos Rumble, Quick Match, and Bots Battle!

Gearbox will be making some changes to the Versus queue choices this week. They want to keep the ability for new Beatrix players to try her out without getting beat to the punch at character select. They also want new and returning players to get a chance to get acclimated on their own terms, before they jump into the deep end of high competition and have to contend with advanced and organized teams. However, GBX would like to move back away from the insanity of Chaos Rumble to move the “real game” back to into the limelight.

While the  population is up quite a bit with the Winter Update, GBX still want to be judicious as we consider adding new queues. Fewer queues helps keep our matchmaking times down, and also gives them the best chance to offer more matches to you each time you search for a game, which increases the chance you will match with people closer to your skill level. Still, GBX has lots of ideas for fun ways to keep things fresh and continue to add variety to the game (more on that below). To accomplish all of this, here are the queues for this week, which we will be moving to today.

Bots Battle

If you are a new Battleborn player, new to PvP, or just want a lightweight casual experience, Bots Battle is for you! You still match in with random teammates (unless you bring your own!), and you can play Versus maps and modes without the increased pressure of player opponents.

  • Randomly matched with 5 players versus 5 randomly selected bots
  • Incursion, Meltdown: Finale, Capture
  • Voting, three choices at a time

Additionally, through Monday morning (January 30th) at 8am PT (11am ET), character uniqueness will be turned off as it is in Chaos Rumble. This is to ensure that everyone who wants to play as Beatrix can use this queue to do so, since Chaos Rumble will be cycling out.

Quick Match

Quick Match is intended to be the common, casual competitive queue for all players. This is where we expect most players to go for Versus competition once they have gained some comfort with characters and modes and are ready to test their skill against live opponents.

  • All Modes and maps
  • Loose ELO-based matchmaking
  • Character Uniqueness Enforced
  • Voting, three choices at a time

Versus Draft

The intent with Versus Draft is to offer the most competitive experience currently available in Battleborn. Five-member pre-made teams and experienced players should spend most of their time in this queue. With tighter ELO matchmaking, and Ban and Pick select, teams should be more able to find matches of their skill level, and make smart choices with banning and selecting characters to create evenly competitive matches. The maps are limited to our modes most chosen for competition: Incursion and Meltdown.

  • Ban and Pick Draft select
  • Incursion and Meltdown: Finale
  • Tight ELO-based matchmaking
  • Voting, three choices at a time

Final Note: The “Incursion” Factor

For many months, GBX has noted that Incursion is the most popular game mode. So much so that if it is available in a queue, it often is the vote choice for that queue. Sometimes, this has resulted in frustration from players who want to play other modes.

One strategy they have tried is offering the “Incursion” queue, again noting that many of our serious competitive players gravitate towards that mode, and this created our “try hard” queue, at least on the consoles. With the option now of Versus Draft, we believe the best competition will be found through draft select.

To that end, they are going to experiment with removing the Incursion queue for a time. If you are one of those Incursion players, GBX would encourage you to try the Versus Draft queue, as they imagine most of the matches you will play there will still be in Incursion maps. They would also encourage you to give Meltdown: Finale a good try using your competitive skills.

For those Incursion players who simply do not wish to draft select teams, jump back into Quick Match. Incursion is often available there, and we expect it will be played regularly.

Finally, GBX knows many players want to play modes other than Incursion, and have some concerns that when Incursion is available as a choice it is the only one chosen from the queue. They are going to evenly weight the modes in Quick Match, meaning that four modes will be available, but only three choices at a time. You should have plenty of opportunities to vote for modes that aren’t Incursion. If GBX continues seeing a heavy Incursion trend, they can look at removing Incursion completely from Quick Match and/or reinstating it as its own queue, as population allows.

Update [09/07/2016]

On the Gearbox Forums the Creative Director is currently very active and he talked about some of the matchmaking stuff.  He mentioned that  the PC community isn’t using the Capture queue at all. Meltdown is being used but currently it’s fairly infrequent. The love for Incursion is very strong in the community. The success of Chaos Rumble has been noticed and the community has given some suggestions too the development team. Some of them are very similar to what Gearbox were considering. Here is an example of what’s being discussed.

What if the regular queues buttons were:

  • “Have Fun” – Capture and Meltdown, with the occasional change to get an Incursion game in. Get three map choices, vote on the one you want. No ELO matching. Character uniqueness on. Global Chat ON.
  • “Try Hard” – Voting: 2 incursion and 1 Meltdown option. ELO on. Character Uniqueness On. Global Chat Off.
  • ” Rumble” (sometimes on) – Some unusual configuration of mods, maps or options to create a unique temporary experience that we’ll swap out every week or two.

Face Off is current planned to run as a third queue for a couple of weeks. Then, depending on it’s reception, pull it back into the “Have Fun” and/or “Try Hard” queues, in time for a different spotlight experience.

The next PvP mode will be a bit harder to fit in  since it’s currently 3v3. That means it can not group in with other 5v5 experiences. So it will have to be it’s own experience.

With the next major patch Gearbox will introduce some new ability to the system for them to work with. These abilities will result in some very interesting things to try out (for example, enforced solo-queing, double-damage, faster respawn, etc) and keep things fresh for a while.  The team has teased that they are working on PvP training map, as well as an improved “new user” experience with things like beginner queues.  Multi-queues is being looked at but isn’t coming anytime soon.

Update [07/20/2016]

With the latest patch there will be some issues addressed to the matchmaking and online experience  of Battleborn.

  • Fixed an issue where the wrong map experiences appeared on the Map vote screen
  • Made a change to reduce queue times for users with exceptionally high or low Elo ratings
  • Fixed a rare issue that could cause players to lose the ability to exit matchmaking properly
  • Fixed an issue that caused players to face the incorrect direction when respawning
  • Players will no longer appear to vote for a map multiple times
  • Fixed Average Player Score tie-breaker results

Update [07/13/2016]

Quick update here folks:

This afternoon, Gearbox pushed a change live to bypass skill-matching requirements on PC. So, all PC Versus Public queues are no longer using skill-based matchmaking. XBOX ONE and PS4 were NOT changed, and still use skill-based matching.

The reason: Some PC users were seeing significantly long waits for Meltdown and Capture, averaging around 10 minutes but with outlier waits of 30 minutes or more (and a few that never matched). Console players are still matching (on average) under 5 minutes in almost every case.

Since Gearbox  made the change (around 3pm CST), they seen the average queue times drop on PC to between 2 and 4 minutes for Meltdown, 2-3 minutes for Incursion. Capture isn’t getting much play on PC right now.

The current configuration maintains your choice of mode, while creating the shortest match times possible there. When possible, Gearbox will try and better match you with skilled players for close games, but they are monitoring match times and will lower the requirements for skill-matching (or remove the requirements) if that means they can get you into matches more consistently.

Update [07/08/2016]

Yesterday  Randy Varnell gave an update on  the Gearbox Forums. The team decided based of feedback that the matchmaking overhaul  was not the way to go. Matchmaking is kinda back to what it was. So you can queue up for your favorite mode, Incursion, Meltdown, and Capture once again. Some small tweaks have been made to improve the experience. With the upcoming major patch, the team will have some additional dynamic control over balancing quality of match with time-to-match to help handle long, outlier match times.

Original Post [06/30/2016]

The Battleborn matchmaking system is getting some rework this week. Creative Director Randy Varnell goes into this matter and shares some of the reasoning behind their decisions.  The challenge Gearbox faces is how to implement a proper matchmaking system that fits all needs. Everyone wants a “good match” but as Randy says what does this exactly mean. Your definition could be something completely different from mine.

  • Match as quickly as possible
  • Match as closely as possible to your skill
  • Give you some choice in what you play

For me personally it would be all of the above, but with the current player base the team has to set priorities. Quick matches results in lobbies filled with players with different skill levels. Lobbies with players based on your skill level results in longer waiting times. Adding more choices in the match making system results in more different player pools. This would divide the community into smaller groups, and therefore increases the waiting time.

Battleborn Matchmaking Changes

To tackle the problems the team behind Battleborn decided to adjust the flow of the competitive matches and came up with a new approach.

  • The three existing mode-based queues are going away
  • Two new queues will be available: CASUAL PLAY and COMPETITIVE PLAY
  • Intermittently, a third option, SPOTLIGHT BATTLE, will appear featuring a single specific map or mode.

Casual Play

The CASUAL PLAY queue will contain all maps (and modes) available in Battleborn. Each time you match, you will vote on one map from the three that were randomly selected.  CASUAL PLAY will not use any skill-based matchmaking, so you will match with all available players. CASUAL PLAY should cater to those players who care less about what you play specifically and more about wanting to get in and play quickly.

Competitive Play

The COMPETITIVE PLAY queue will contain exactly three maps, one from each of our three modes. Generally, these will be the most popular map for each mode. When you match in, you will vote on the map you want to play from the three selections. COMPETITIVE PLAY will use skill-based matchmaking. It might take a little longer to find a match, but the match should be closer to your skill level. To help make up for the additional time you have to wait, we’re going to give you bonus experience and credits for playing matches in the COMPETITIVE PLAY queue.

Spotlight Battles

SPOTLIGHT BATTLES will feature a single map in its own queue, without any voting. It will use the same skill-based matchmaking ramp as used by the COMPETITIVE PLAY queue, and like the COMPETITIVE PLAY queue, SPOTLIGHT BATTLES will give you bonus experience and credits. We will change out this map on a regular basis for those of you who really love to focus on one particular map.

Battleplan

As time goes by gearbox will continue to improve the matchmaking system with hot fixes and patches. If you have any feedback on Battleborn’s matchmaking you can interact with the team on the Gearbox Forums. There also will be some other changes to motivate the players to keep playing.

  • Penalties for leaving increased, and players will only get rewards when the see a game to the end/surrender.
  • Quitting will result in an info/warning message.
  • Bonuses for seeing game to end +XP and +Credits
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I'm a Content Creator by day and a BattleBread Baker at night. I'll provide you with your recommended slice of entertainment! I'm a Gearbox Community Badass and a proud member of the official Borderlands & Tiny Tina's Wonderlands Creator Team (2K Games / NextMakers).

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