Overwatch, Battleborn, and Paladins

[Wingflier]

If you think movement speed in half is bad, look what Epic pulled in Paragon this week
http://www.pcinvasion.com/epic-paragons-draft-penaly

Yes, if any one of your team does not pick a hero, you get a 3 stage increasing TIME penalty where you can not queue up. So 1 dude not picking hero = entire team can't play for 5, 20, 60 +++ minutes

Collective punishment! That's fun.

Reminds me of my time in the military

[Mánagarmr]

Collective punishment! That's fun.

Reminds me of my time in the military

Ugh...thanks for reminding me.

[KingIsaacLinksr]

But for those that don't know, they're currently testing with all of the character's speed essentially cut in half and its miserable.

with all of the character's speed essentially cut in half and its miserable.

speed essentially cut in half

CUT IN HALF

  Wut?

Yea, I tweeted the Head Designer and he said they were testing things with how the speed would change map dynamics and combat. I let him know that it was like running through mud. And such. They haven't reverted the change yet. I think.

[Misery]

Okay, really, what kind of idiot thinks that is a GOOD way to test things?

I mean, how many times is EVERYONE'S speed going to be chopped in half during normal play?  All they'll get is a bunch of totally worthless info from that "test".

[KingIsaacLinksr]

Okay, really, what kind of idiot thinks that is a GOOD way to test things?

I mean, how many times is EVERYONE'S speed going to be chopped in half during normal play?  All they'll get is a bunch of totally worthless info from that "test".

No, it's all characters in the game right now had their MOVEMENT speed cut in half. Apologies if that wasn't made clear. This is a permanent "nerf" to all of the characters as it stands.

[Wingflier]

I guess I see now why the massive spawn distances in Overwatch. The mounts were something I prima facie liked more in Paladins, but now I'm beginning to see that being able to stay in the battle so consistently was causing gameplay problems...somehow?

I didn't think it was a problem, but maybe in competitive play the developers felt that the players weren't being punished enough for dying or something.

[KingIsaacLinksr]

I guess I see now why the massive spawn distances in Overwatch. The mounts were something I prima facie liked more in Paladins, but now I'm beginning to see that being able to stay in the battle so consistently was causing gameplay problems...somehow?

I didn't think it was a problem, but maybe in competitive play the developers felt that the players weren't being punished enough for dying or something.

Except that the last several changes to maps (among other things) was to make the running distance to spawn points shorter. So if that really is the case, they could just unchange them back to the way they were before. This change really doesn't make a ton of sense to me outside of "we want to see what happens when characters can't move fast".

[TheVampire100]

I know this thread is pretty old but Battleborn is currently in a bundle on Humble Bundle for 15$ together with a lot of other 2k games and a coupon for XCOM2.
The game costs originally 50$ on Steam so if you want it, buy it now. However I have heard the game is only mediocore and this huge price drop so soon after release tells a lot about it. I got it anyway because I'm curious and I don't want to ride the "Overwatch Hype Train".

[Wingflier]

The current Humble Bundle seems good in general. Lots of great stuff in it.

Civ 5, Battleborn, Borderlands Pre-sequel, and a few other pretty big name titles for $15. Even if you never played Battleborn it would still most likely be worth the asking price.

[TheVampire100]

The current Humble Bundle seems good in general. Lots of great stuff in it.

Civ 5, Battleborn, Borderlands Pre-sequel, and a few other pretty big name titles for $15. Even if you never played Battleborn it would still most likely be worth the asking price.

That's true but to be honest, I really only bought it because of Battleborn. I own already the most interesting games of the bundle (Civilization, Darkness 2) and I know that Borderlands 1/2 might be an interesting game but I probably won't play it. I will giv civilization my girlfriend I guess even if this might not be her type of game.

[Misery]

Wait, what?  Battleborn in a $15 bundle?

Has it really fallen that far, that fast?

Steam says it's still $60 as it's base price...

[TheVampire100]

Yeah, I'm as surprised as you are. But this tells me that th game isn't selling very well and the playerbase probably isn't very big.
This should actually be obvious with Overwatch taking all the space in this genre now after TF2 is running old and other similiar shooter aren't as interesting as Overwatch.
It's also a problem of marketing. Blizzard oversaturates the world with ads and news about their game and pretend it is the best thing ever exist. Because Blizzard made no secret about the development literally everyone knew it was coming and therefor the sales were pretty good.
Battleborn came out of nowhere, I knew only about it when it came out but not before. This is the same problem that Arcen Games had: If you don't know that there is a new game coming out you won't think about purchasing it. You probably won't even notce it when it is out.
I'm pretty sure this was the problem Battleborn has and that they now try to give the game more publicity.

[TheVampire100]

I played Battleborn for  a little time. It is an okay game. It is neither great nor a desaster it is somewhere in the middle.

I like the slight influence of Moba elements. The basic versus game mode is to guard robots to a specific point (similiar to SMITES arena mode).
Unliek Smite hwoever the Moba elements aren't that big or complicated and easier to unerstand. Every character starts with two abilities and a secondary attack that avries from character to character depending on the role they fit.
Marquis for example features the role of a sniper and support unit, his secondary attack is a scoped attack that deals more damage (sniper revolver, lol), his abilities allow him to summon an owl in a specifgic direction that attacks targets in range, the other creates a time bubble that slows enemies, making it easier to scope at them.

Your characters level up (I think for kills and assists, maybe for other stuff too) and for each level you can select one of two perks. Mellka for example can choose at the first level that one of her two abilities get a slowing effect and yo cna choose which one. Later she gets poison debuffs on her attacks.

The game uses animated cutscenes similiar to science-fiction cartoons from the 90's. The (unskippable) intro sequence features a long battle scene with musical interpretation. While I don't like the music choice I like the art style of the sequences. Keep in mind, these sequences are used in the story mode of the game.

What I HATE about the game is the premium shop. The game costs 60$ (or 50€) and they still want players to pay for extra stuff? I can understand when this stuff is locked at the start, like playable characters. You have to unlock them with challenges or with an in-game currency you obtain from battles. But why are stuff liek skins only obtainable if you spend more money on the game than you already have? This is not okay for a 60$ game. battleborn will very likely end as F2P game, just look at the shop and you wil see they have taken the steps in these direction when the game came already out. This was probably their backup plan when the game would fail.

Maybe you can unlock these skins in the game like in Overwatch but I'm not sure I have only played about 1-2 hours.  also the premium currency you get from the bundle is literally nothing. You can buy one skin and that's it.

[crazyroosterman]

speaking of free to play have any of you played evolve recently? thing is it went free to play like a week or so ago as a well as a bunch of other changes.
also if you'd like some more detail https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6wtVQEMH9s

[Wingflier]

speaking of free to play have any of you played evolve recently? thing is it went free to play like a week or so ago as a well as a bunch of other changes.
also if you'd like some more detail https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6wtVQEMH9s

Evolve really deserves its own thread. It's such an amazing game and I liked it from the very start.

However, I love asymmetrical games in general just because of how unique and awesome they are in today's gaming world. Unfortunately, the nature of asymmetrical design is that the games rarely do well.

Another great one I can think of is Natural Selection 2, which by all means should be a fairly popular game. It is an amazing title with close battles, commanders, soldiers, hand-crafted maps, and all sorts of other incredible features and goodies a player could hope for. But I think the asymmetrical thing just kills it for people.

Even Skyward Collapse, the only other asymmetrical game I can think of (there aren't many) did pretty badly from everything I've heard.

So there was that, and there was also the fact that Evolve had so much freaking DLC it was ridiculous. Here's an actual quote from the developer:
"When Evolve launched, the reception wasn’t what we expected. Sure, there were some good reviews. There were also bad reviews. Yes, there was excitement. There was also disappointment – for players and for us. The DLC shitstorm hit full force and washed away people’s enthusiasm, dragging us further and further from that first magical pick-up-and-play experience.

"We want that magic back and we aim to make it happen. We’ve made a lot of changes, improvements and additions to Evolve over the past year and we’ve got a lot more coming. In short, we’re giving this game a vigorous overhaul!"

--------

Anyway, I hope these new changes, and the addition of F2P makes the game popular enough again. The problem before was that you had to wait for what seemed like hours just to find a game and it wasn't worth it.

It *does* kind of suck that all the people who bought the game are kind of getting shortchanged, but that's the nature of these kinds of model-changes. I like Evolve so much I'm just happy that it has a chance to survive.