As Gearbox Software tried to make the best game possible, there are some things that didn’t turn out as well as they hoped. But games are becoming more of a service these days than a 1-time product at launch. This leaves room for improvements and as the team over at Gearbox Software is working hard on these things it isn’t always visible for everyone. So questions get asked and answers are given when possible, but those answers also don’t reach everyone. In order to help out with the messaging, here is a recent comment from Battleborn’s Creative Director on how they will be addressing certain issues of the game.
Message From The Creative Director
Hi
I do apologize if I seem overly quiet, especially on this topic. Sometimes, I feel that I’ve answered many of these questions several times. I forget that not everyone gets to see everything.
Also, to be very honest, I’m usually far more prone to answer questions that don’t seem to be loaded with frustration. I’ve found that doing so doesn’t often result in happiness for anyone, especially the person asking the question and myself.
That said, I’ll give you a brief answer here, for what I can talk about.
There are a number of issues that we’re working on, and will include improvements to address in future patches. As seen, our current matchmaking solution is not especially good at dealing with low player counts. Not many games are, and we’re not exception. There are a number of community posts I’ve read that suggest solutions. I’ve commented on some of those. We’re working on some long-term and short-term solutions for the technical aspects of the matchmaking system. Short-term, we will likely be changing the queues again, hopefully ways which will accomodate players finding matches faster, and recognizing content that’s played more frequently. Longer-term, I hope to get some other solutions in place that will give us more flexibility with population swings and better ability to increase the quality of matches (closer to your skill level), but that’s not going to show up as soon as we’d like.
The bigger question, in my opinion, is how to attract and retain more players. We have to work on both. If we attract players, but do not retain them, we don’t solve any problems. So, we’re working on both. Some things I can mention here. Some things I’m not allowed to talk about yet.
Things I can talk about: New content. The Operations Missions ARE on their way. I think they’re pretty cool, and will give a new way to experience cooperative play and earn rewards. People who like our characters and story will get a pretty big dose of that. Players who like challenges, titles and loot will get that too. So, those are coming reasonably soon. I’m not allowed to be more specific than that, but that’s coming.
We released Ernest (our 3rd DLC character) and have Kid Ultra and another characters we’ve announced. Each time we’ve released characters, we see some players return and some new players join. I expect the same bumps when we begin releasing the Operations.
More skins and taunts are on the way, too. I know there are some mixed feelings about those, but if you’re the type of player that appreciates them, I think there are some pretty cool ones on the way.
Two more PvP modes are nearing readiness and will show up this year. Draft mode character select will also land this year, and hopefully give our competitive community. We’re also working on some tweaking for Incursion and Meltdown, based on feedback from the community and what we’ve observed. I think those changes will be pretty exciting, but it’s a bit early to go into detail there yet.
We also have a new multiplayer tutorial in the works. Again, we’re trying to listen to the things that players had the most trouble with and create a new player introductory experience that does a better job of teaching new players basics of the game in a safer environment (versus bots). When we unleash that, we’ll almost certainly segregate newer players into their own matchmaking for a few levels to help them get their bearings before taking on the roving death squads.
And, of course, we’re still working on weekly patches and balance and smaller events (like the upcoming “Chaos Rumble” that goes live on Monday) which will hopefully underscore all of this to remind you guys that we’re watching, we’re monitoring and we’re caring about the current state of the game.
There are other things. A few bigger things and a number of smaller things, that will also show up. Again, hate to be a broken record here – but there not things I’m allowed to talk about at the moment. But I do think those changes and features will help address your concerns. It’s very frustrating to have to hold back on some of that information for me, and I’m sure just as frustrating for you to not get great answers to your questions. Some of that is also why I don’t answer every question asked to me. 🙂
I hope this helps you a bit. I know that some people are looking for us to do very specific things. Some of those things I’ve heard are planned. Some are not. But, I think what we have in the works right now is very exciting for this fall and winter for Battleborn, and we’re working as fast as we can now to get those things in your hands.
Thanks for the question, and your patience.
Randy Varnell – Creative Director Battleborn
