Genre: Shooter, Real Time Strategy (RTS), Role-playing (RPG), Strategy, Hack and slash/Beat 'em up
Battleborn
Battleplan #9
This week, we thought it was about time to dedicate more of the Battleplan to you guys and the cool stuff you do to support Battleborn. From cosplays and fan art, to tournaments and even drink recipes, the things you guys create never cease to amaze us. In this issue of the Battleplan, we’ll be calling out a few things of note, but also pointing you in the direction of some great community hubs that you should know about.
We only have one hot fix coming at you this week and it’s a pretty simple change for Ghalt:
Removed the blurring FX caused by Ghalt's Dual Wield to improve visibility while the skill is active.
As we said above, this week, the Community Spotlight section is the star of the show! We love coming across the awesome things that you guys do and always want to do our best to recognize as much of it as possible. To that end, we’ve created “The Battleplan 9 Community Recognition Thread” on the Gearbox forums. Make sure to drop by and check out just a few of the best creations the Battleborn Community has to offer!
Orendi Shadow Pillar drink created by MyMainIsACook
Thorn fan art created by Flamfelis
Benedict fan art created by Yggdrassal
In addition to the Gearbox forum thread above, there are lots of great places to find other members of the community who are creating great stuff. Not only can you find “creations” of all types, but there are plenty of places our there to just chat about Battleborn and share tips, tactics, and builds. We’ve added a short list of a few of these places below. That way, whether you’re new to the community or you’re just always up for a conversation about Battleborn, you can easily get connected with other members of the community!
The Battleborn Subreddit (r/Battleborn) - r/Battleborn is a great way to keep a finger on the pulse of the community. Head on over for in-depth info and even a solid community created meme or two. Reddit is also a hub for community-run tournaments, for those of you with a competitive streak.
The Official Gearbox Software Forums - We link to them above, but it bears repeating. The Official Gearbox Forums are a great place to see developers pop in and out from time to time chatting and engaging with the community.
DeviantArt - DeviantArt is a great place to the “community creations” we referenced above. Many of the most talented artists in the community showcase their work on DeviantArt, making it easy to find all sorts of awesome stuff with just a simple search!
Hopefully, this will give you a good idea of some of the more popular online community hotspots and where they are. If you’re new to the community or would just like to get more involved, these are all good places to start!
You guys know us – we’re all about the loot. We know you guys are too, so that’s why last week, we made some pretty significant changes that made the loot you want easier to get. As if that wasn‘t enough, next week, we’ll be holding our first loot based event: The Battleborn Lootpocalypse! From 8am PT on Friday, July 15th until 8am PT on Monday, July 18th, we’ll be raising the droprates of legendary gear through the roof! We’ll have more details in next week’s Battleplan, but make sure to clear your calendars and prepare for the Lootpocalypse!
Battleplan #8
Wow – it’s been a big week for Battleborn. Firstly, this past weekend saw our first Play w/ the Devs event and Double Credits weekend! Both of these events were a resounding success and certainly things that you’ll see again in the near future. Thanks to the awesome streamers who took part and helped to make it happen! Not only did we have a full weekend of events, but also we teased some pretty big stuff that’s coming this summer in last week’s Battleplan – from new competitive multiplayer maps and modes, to some significant changes to the matchmaking experience and Broadcaster mode. You can see a detailed breakdown of some of this upcoming content in our DLC Plan Update blog on Battleborn.com.
Above you’ll notice we mentioned changes to the matchmaking experience. As you know, we’re constantly trying to refine Battleborn in ways that we hope will improve the experience for everyone. We thought it would be nice to elaborate on this change and who better to do that than Battleborn Creative Director Randy Varnell? Take it away, Randy:
Hey guys,
We’ve heard a lot of feedback from the community about matchmaking over the last few weeks, and have been working hard to improve our system. Generally, there are two areas we’ve focused on: increasing the quality of skill matches and lowering the time it takes players to find teams and games. We’ve already made a number of minor changes behind the scenes that have improved our system. This week, however, we want to try something a bit more dramatic.
This week, we’re changing the flow of how you match into competitive games. We’re removing the queues for individual game modes and creating two new queues in their place: CASUAL PLAY and COMPETITIVE PLAY.
The CASUAL PLAY queue focuses on getting you into games as quickly as possible and doesn’t use skill-based matchmaking. All versus maps and modes will be available through the CASUAL PLAY queue. After finding teams, you will vote on one of three randomly-selected maps from the entire set of maps and modes. We believe this will be a great way for you to get in and get a quick fix when you don’t want to take as much time to wait for a more accurate skill match.
The COMPETITIVE PLAY queue helps unify the competitive community into a single experience. All matches played through the COMPETITIVE PLAY queue will be matched through our skill-based matchmaking system. One map from each of our competitive modes will be available, based on the most popular community choices, starting with Incursion: Overgrowth, Meltdown: Paradise, and Capture: Outback. While it may take a few additional minutes to find a good match for you, the COMPETITIVE PLAY queue will offer a 25% bonus to credits and experience to help offset the additional time it takes you to find good matches.
We have other changes in progress as well, and we will be posting a forum thread shortly where you can find more information and provide feedback. We will be watching your comments closely, and want to try some other adjustments over the next week to improve your Battleborn experience.
Thanks all!
-Varnell
We have a few hot fixes of note this week, but the big thing you’ll notice is that we’re raising the legendary drop rate of Boss Legendaries. That’s right, it’s about to become easier to get that Boss Legendary you’ve had your eye on for so long! We took a look at the data and decided this was the right way to go, plus, we didn’t think you guys would mind too much. As you know, hot fixes begin rolling out at 12pm PT (3pm ET) every Thursday, so hop into Battleborn this afternoon and get your farm on!
Increased the drop rate of Boss Legendary gear in all Story maps.
Reduced the duration of Thorn's Blight from 6 seconds to 4 seconds.
Reduced the duration increase of Thorn's level 8 left Helix Augment Enduring Blight from 6 seconds to 3 seconds.
Fixed an issue that allowed players to attack enemies’ players in their protected spawn area in Temples.
We also wanted to drop a quick salute to the teams that participated in last weekend’s r/Battleborn tournament hosted by Battlefy. In case you weren’t aware, Battlefy is helping to organize some great community-run Battleborn tournaments through the Battleborn subreddit. Congratulations to the teams and organizers for putting on a great event and especially to the winners:
Europe:
PC: Barely a Team
PS4: 404Farmstatus
North America:
PC: Dingleberries
PS4: Draconic Force/Marumushi’s Fan Club
Xbox One: Plumbers Inc
You can see the full list of participants and a video of the EU PC championship game, as well as find out how you can put together your own team to participate by visiting the r/Battleborn subreddit!
As we said above, we have a new blog post (link above) that goes into a bit more detail about some of the content you can expect to see this summer, and while details on some things will be forthcoming, we’re excited to start pushing back the curtain and sharing more with you all! In next week’s Battleplan, we’ll be looking to elaborate a little bit more on some of the things that we have coming down the pipe.
DLC Plan Update 1 – What’s Next for Battleborn?
DLC Plan Update 1 – What’s Next for Battleborn?
As you’ve read in the weekly Battleplan that releases every Thursday, it should come as no surprise that we’re continually working to improve Battleborn, with six hot fixes and two major content patches already deployed. We’re hard at work developing the Season Pass content. And, yes, we’re constantly listening to our fans, developing many community-requested features such as a Broadcaster Mode and in-game reporting. So, what’s next?
Today, we’re sharing our current work calendars so you can see what content you can expect in the future. This is just the first of hopefully many updates about the on-going DLC development efforts. Our goal is to release or announce new content every other week, starting in July. Please keep in mind that much of this content is still in development. This means we can estimate to the best of our ability to give you a timeline, and we’ll be as transparent about that as we can be, but there’s always a chance that some content may get pushed out a little later than anticipated. What’s important to us is that you know what to expect and can get ready for the next big update.
There’s a lot in the works, from continuing to balance and improve the game through weekly hot fixes and larger content patches, to the release of more free heroes, competitive maps and modes, premium Story Operations, and other DLC throughout the coming months. Your feedback is invaluable to us and we look forward to sharing more Battleborn content with you as development continues.
Here’s a look at what’s coming to everyone who owns the game:
FREE DLC CONTENT
5 more heroes, bringing the total to 30
Alani – released May 31st, 2016
Pendles – coming soon in July
Three more heroes to be revealed in late Summer through the Fall
Three new PVP Maps in the next couple of weeks, one for each mode
Broadcaster Mode coming hopefully next month
Broadcaster mode will allow you to spectate the battlefield using a set of third-person camera controls to follow players on either team, jump to points of interest, or to move freely around the battlefield in Private Versus Matches.
In-game Reporting, our goal is to include it in the next major patch update for July
In the interest of making it easier to report players who are trying to ruin the fun for everyone, we’ve created an in-game reporting function that will be accessible through the scoreboard and allow you to flag players who are suspected of cheating, abandoning games, or ruining the overall experience.
Matchmaking Adjustments: Ongoing
We regularly adjust and tweak matchmaking parameters in order to keep improving the matchmaking process. In fact, we’ll be testing out an overhaul to the matchmaking system starting later this week.
Hero Balancing: Ongoing
As we gather data from matches and mission, we’ll continue to adjust and refine hero balance in the game. You can expect a bigger adjustment to 24 of the 26 characters likely coming in the next couple of weeks.
Lore Challenges: Upcoming major patch
We are working on adjustments to lore requirements as well as how those requirements are tracked.
New PVP mode this Fall
Another new PVP mode in late Fall or Winter
Weekly hot fixes as well as regular updates and patches
PREMIUM DLC CONTENT Premium DLC content includes DLC packs 1 through 5, each with a playable Story Operation and unlockable skins and taunts, as well as early access to heroes 26 through 30 with the use of a hero key.
Premium DLC Timeline:
Alani early access with hero key started May 24, 2016
Pendles early access with hero key in mid-Summer
Each DLC Story Operation release includes new, unlockable skins and taunts
DLC 1 Story Operation “Attikus and the Thrall Rebellion” coming late Summer
Heroes 28 – 30 early access, each with a hero key, coming mid-Summer through the Fall
DLC 2 Story Operation around late Summer
DLC 3 Story Operation coming early Fall
DLC 4 Story Operation coming late Fall
DLC 5 Story Operation coming this Winter
The first DLC Story Operation features Attikus and his twisted recount of the thrall rebellion he led to overthrow his Jennerit oppressors. Each DLC Story Operation is a highly-replayable scenario featuring one of Battleborn’s heroes. Each time you play through an Operation, the story, enemies, and objectives will change, increasing the difficulty but also the rewarded loot.
Along with each Story Operation comes new skins and taunts that can only be unlocked through playing the Operation. Each set will include skins and taunts for various characters and will not be available to purchase individually in the Marketplace.
Additionally, Season Pass holders will also get early access to heroes 26 through 30 with the use of a hero key. Each hero’s early access period will come with a hero key that can be used on the new hero, or any other locked Battleborn. Hero keys bypass challenge or credit requirements for unlocking heroes.
THE BATTLEBORN MARKETPLACE The Battleborn Marketplace offers players the option to use earned or paid in-game currency to enhance their game experience without affecting gameplay. The Marketplace houses a variety of in-game content, from Loot Packs, bank pages, and new heroes that can be purchased with Credits earned in-game, to premium cosmetic skins and taunts that can be purchased with paid Platinum currency.
We recently introduced Platinum to the Marketplace, a premium currency that can be purchased through the PlayStation Store, the Xbox Store, or through Steam Wallet in-game. Platinum can be used to purchase cosmetic skins and taunts that are not available to unlock or earn as dropped loot, or pick extra bank spaces or Loadouts.
We plan on revealing more premium skins over the coming months and we’re exploring convenient ways players can boost their XP and credit earnings with Platinum that do not affect gameplay. However, these features are still in development and we’re looking to your feedback to help guide those decisions.
Purchasable with Earned Credits right now
Loot Packs
New heroes
Additional bank pages
Additional Loadouts
Purchasable with Platinum right now
25 Premium Skins
8 Premium Taunts
Additional bank pages
Additional Loadouts
This is hopefully just the first of many updates like this, so be sure to check back regularly for new info. You can also follow Battleborn on Twitter and Instagram, Like us on Facebook, and check out the latest videos on YouTube.
Battleplan #7
Last week, we teased info about our next community event. This Saturday (June 25th), we’ll be holding our first Play w/ The Devs event! Below you’ll see schedule of streamers who will be hosting Gearbox developers in their streams at certain times throughout the day:
EdeMonster with Brian Thomas (Design Director) and Sean Ahern (Marketing Artist)
Not only can you check out these streams to see the Devs playing, you may also be paired up with one yourself! From between the hours of 2pm and 8pm, Gearbox employees of many different disciplines will be playing Battleborn and interacting with the community. You’ll know you’re in a lobby with a Gearbox Developer if you see the Dev title.
Keep an eye out and if you see a Dev in your lobby, make sure to say hi!
Ok, real talk: playing with the Devs is cool and all, but what’s really in it for you? A couple things: first, we’ll be celebrating the Play w/ The Devs event by enabling Double Credits in all modes from Friday until Monday. That means you’ll get those loot packs faster and can even get started early on saving up for Pendles! Secondly, we’ll be releasing a SHiFT code for TWO skins – Oscar Mike’s “Tango Tango” (Gold) skin and Rath’s “A Dark Night” (Cyber) skin – on Saturday morning through the Battleborn Twitter account (@Battleborn) and the Facebook page. This SHiFT code will only be available for a short time, so make sure to follow Battleborn on Twitter and Facebook to keep up with the latest on the SHiFT code and its release! Learn more about these events in this post.
This week’s hot fixes see us temporarily disabling some gear that we mentioned last week might need adjustment. As we’ve said, it’s very important to us to make sure we’re giving everyone as level a playing field as possible and when a piece of gear is performing in ways that aren’t intended, we feel the responsible and fair thing to is to disable it temporarily until the issue has been resolved. As soon as we have news on when these pieces of gear will be returning, we’ll let everyone know immediately. As always, each week’s hot fixes begin rolling out on Thursdays at Noon PT/3pm ET.
Reduced the Lifesteal percentage granted by Oath of the Sustained.
Adjust Character Select timer to 90 seconds for PvP maps.
Temporarily removed M3.Shepherds from Incursion for bug fixes.
The following pieces of Gear (mentioned provisionally last week) are being disabled temporarily:
Lorrian Purse Cutter
Vigilance Link
One-4-All Shield Array
This week’s Community Spotlight is on veteran and much beloved Gearbox forum Moderator, Psychichazard. Psychichazard has been one of our forum moderators for literally YEARS and we’re proud and lucky to have him helping us lead our community into the future! Learn more about the man that is frequently known as “the Marquis of the Gearbox forums” by heading over to said forums and reading our Community Badass feature.
We’re hard at work developing lots of content for Battleborn. From the five DLC Packs and four more heroes, to new maps, modes, and several community requested features. Needless to say, there will be lots to talk about over the next few months and the time has come to get the conversation started. Here are a few things you can expect to see soon:
New PVP Maps: Yes, they’re on the way! Three more maps are coming to Battleborn in a couple of weeks.
Versus Matchmaking Changes: Next week we will be revealing and releasing a new iteration to the matchmaking system. These changes are being made with the intent of further refining the matchmaking experience for players everywhere. Stay tuned to the Battleborn news blog for more details.
Broadcaster Mode: Broadcaster Mode is something that you guys have been asking for and something we’ve wanted to do for a while. This feature will let you broadcast and stream matches through third-person camera controls. We’re hoping to bring you Broadcaster Mode next month.
In-game Reporting: It’s important to us to give each player the best Battleborn experience possible and players who cheat or disrupt others’ ability to play the game ruin that experience. We’re working on an in-game reporting feature to allow you to flag players who are suspected of cheating, abandoning games, or ruining the overall experience. Our goal is to include the reporting feature in the next major patch update for July.
Battleplan #6
This week’s Battleplan is pretty full – a new character Deep Dive, a Marketplace expansion, and even a tease of an incoming community event! Could it get any better? It can. We’ve also got a new full update for you along with some much asked for Alani adjustments.
As we promised last week, Battleborn Lead Programmer Scott Velasquez has put together some serious info for any would-be master of Kelvin. Kelvin is everybody’s favorite ice golem, but he’s also a dynamic killing machine in the right hands. Scott’s Kelvin Deep Dive in now live on the Battleborn blog and will give you all the tips and tricks you need to send your enemies to a cold and frigid grave.
This week, we also introduced our second update to Battleborn! This update contains lots of great stuff (more on that below) including the updated Battleborn Marketplace and a new premium currency, Platinum. Starting today, you can use Platinum to purchase all sorts of awesome, optional cosmetic items such as skins and taunts! Check out the Vision for Battleborn’s In-Game Marketplace post on Battleborn.com for all the details.
As we mentioned above, this week we released the second update for Battleborn. This update contains fixes for various performance issues, but also includes some great quality of life improvements and features that you all have asked for. PVP maps and modes are getting lots of improvements and performance tweaks. Not only that, we added “Particle Detail Mode” in the Video Options menu. This mode is in direct response to community requests to have more control over the way visual FX are experienced in Battleborn. The full notes for the latest Battleborn update can be found on our Knowledge Base.
As for this week’s hot fixes, the star of the show is Alani. We’ve gotten lots of feedback from the community on Alani and her abilities. It’s important to us to use not only community feedback, but also the behind the scenes data when considering balance decisions. It’s also important that we spend an adequate amount of time monitoring that data to get a sense of where a given character is in relation to where they should be for proper balance. In the case of Alani, our recent adjustment to her health brought her survivability down to what our team felt was an acceptable level, however, her Kill-to-Assist ratio has continued to be an outlier for what we would like to see for a support class. As such, We are reducing some of her primary attack's effectiveness as well as some of the AOE burst damage associated with her Geyser skill in order to bring her closer to expectations. With all that in mind, here are this week’s hot fixes:
Reduced the damage of Alani's Torrent primary attack by 18% (64 to 52 at Level 1).
Reduced the damage of Alani's Riptide by 55% (75 to 42 at Level 1).
Reduced the damage of Alani's level 4 Mutation, Wave Shock by 33% (81 to 54 at Level 1).
Reduced the distance Alani's Torrent projectiles travel by 20%.
Reduced the character selection time in PVP from 120 seconds to 45 seconds.
Reduced the stacking sprint speed bonus of the Go-Go Juice Legendary gear from 5-7% per stack to 2-3% per stack.
Fixed an issue that allowed the Leechsteel Brooch Legendary gear to grant life steal on non-Skill attacks.
Reduced the life steal granted by the Leechsteel Brooch Legendary gear from 10-14% to 4-6%.
Increased the damage required to trigger the cooldown reduction tertiary effect of the Chrono Key Legendary gear from 500 to 2000.
Increased the sprinting time requirement to create a small health pickup due to the Vidanium Root Tea Legendary gear's tertiary effect from 6 seconds to 10 seconds.
Reduced the shards generated per damage taken of the Plasmite Transducer Legendary gear from 25% to 3%.
Replaced the sprint speed bonus while being healed granted by the Mossire's Mukluks with a 4-6% bonus to movement speed while being healed.
This week’s community spotlight shines on Gearbox Forum member jjand302. JJ is an active, friendly, and helpful community member who can always be counted on to add a lot to a discussion. Recently, as a way to help direct the community to some of the answers they were looking for, JJ created the “Dev Feedback and Future Content” thread on the forums. This thread serves as a means to help the community quickly find developer responses to certain questions. Check out our Community Badass feature on JJ that also contains a link to his thread!
Last month, we had our first Double XP Event and it was a huge success! You guys told us you wanted more events like this, so we thought up a few ideas. We’ve got lots of great community events planned for the near future, but next week, we’ll be looking to tell you about a specific event that’s coming up that everyone at Gearbox are extremely excited about! If you’re interested in a chance at obtaining some really neat loot, you won’t want to miss this one!
PATCH NOTES JUNE 14, 2016
Attention, Badasses! We’ve got a patch incoming with a whole ton of updates. We’ve made lots of tweaks to Competitive Multiplayer modes and maps, fixed some issues with game performance, and fixed other bugs and issues along the way. We’re also expanding the Battleborn in-game Marketplace with cosmetic content! Check out this blog post to learn more.
We’re still only getting started. Between the weekly hot fixes and regular game updates, your feedback goes a long way to helping us continue to improve Battleborn!
What can you expect with this patch? Check out the details below for the full patch notes, download availability, and size requirements.
WHEN: Tuesday, June 14th. The update will begin rolling out across all regions at 4:00 pm CT (2pm PT/ 7pm ET).
DOWNLOAD SIZE: PC: 1.6GB
Map & Mode Changes:
Incursion
Increased the cooldown time of the Outcast Thrall Bonecrusher’s minion-destroying ground pound attack from 7 seconds to 14 seconds.
Increased the cooldown time of the Outcast Thrall Brute’s anti-Sentry grenade attack from 8 seconds to 10 seconds.
Fixed an issue preventing the correct notification from appearing when a Thrall kills a Sentry.
Added minion path indicators to the minimap.
Echelon
Various changes were made to improve performance on Echelon.
Reduced the performance impact of the skybox.
Optimized certain rendered materials.
Slightly reduced the size of the pillar between the two stairways on the main approach to the first Sentry.
Moved the MX.Elite Bot spawners.
Increased the total value of shards available in Echelon to bring more consistency to the Incursion map economy.
Moved several small and medium ground shards.
Added four new medium shard clusters.
Modified some collision to prevent players from being able to attack the first Sentry without being targetable by the Sentry.
Cleaned up geometry to remove some toe-traps.
Removed several map escapes that allowed players to get below the map.
Improved bot pathing.
Overgrowth
Various changes were made to improve performance on Overgrowth.
Modified some dynamic lights.
Added some geometry to prevent players from easily attacking the enemy's second Sentry from their Supply Station room.
Fixed an issue that allowed certain characters to teleport through the shielded sniper perch walls.
Reduced the total value of shards available in Overgrowth to bring more consistency to the Incursion map economy.
Removed two medium shard clusters.
Fixed an issue that allowed the Sentries to shoot through the shielded sniper perch walls.
Added some collision to prevent certain characters from getting into unintended locations.
Removed several map escapes that allowed players to get below the map.
Fixed an issue that prevented players from being pulled out of the sniper perches by certain skills.
Cleaned up geometry to remove some toe-traps and stuck spots.
Fixed an issue that prevented players from receiving a speed boost when exiting their bases.
Fixed an issue with the brightness of the tutorial video in Overgrowth.
Meltdown
Added minion path indicators to the minimap.
Cold Snap
Various changes were made to improve performance on Cold Snap.
Reduced the performance impact of the skybox.
Removed some dynamic lights.
Removed some unnecessary meshes.
Moved the two large shard clusters that were near the MX.Elite Bot spawners.
Added some geometry at the top of several stairways to match the collision.
Paradise
Changed the cliffs behind the first grinders in Lane A into pathways.
Added geometry to prevent players from getting on top of the first grinders in Lane A.
Improved the collision on all grinders.
Slightly increased the total value of shards available in Paradise to bring more consistency to the Meltdown map economy.
Changed four medium ground shards into large ground shards.
Capture
Outback
Cleaned up geometry to remove some toe-traps.
Added some collision to prevent players from falling off the map immediately outside of the spawn areas.
Added some collision to prevent players from entering the terrain between Points A and B.
Improved bot pathing.
Temples
Various changes were made to improve performance on Temples.
Removed some dynamic lights.
Optimized certain rendered materials.
Cleaned up geometry to remove some toe-traps.
Supply Stations
The second upgrade tier of Supply Stations now increases the health regeneration granted instead of providing a small damage boost buff.
Campaign Changes:
Fixed a rare visual issue with the wave count down timer in Defense Point maps.
Characters:
Alani
Fixed an issue causing Alani’s crosshair to temporarily disappear after rejoining a game.
Fixed an issue that prevented Alani’s “Water Monk” title from displaying an icon.
Mellka
Adjusted the audio of Mellka’s Custom Machine Pistol.
Shayne and Aurox
Fixed a visual issue with the chain in Shayne and Aurox’s Fetch skill.
Performance:
Added a Particle Detail Mode setting in the Video options, with three available options:
Maximum – All Particle Effects are always visible.
Normal – Optional Particle Effects are automatically disabled when poor performance is encountered.
Minimum – Optional Particle Effects are always disabled.
Removed the PhysX setting from the Video options. This feature has been replaced by the new Particle Detail Mode.
Improved performance for computers using NVIDIA SLI.
Fixed an issue causing poor performance when opening the scoreboard.
Fixed an issue causing the tutorial video to use extra resources in all Versus maps.
Fixed a rare crash when minimizing the game on the Victory/Defeat screen.
Quality of Life:
Fixed an issue causing challenges to appear to give more experience and currency than they were awarding.
Pressing Escape from the Main Menu now exits the game instead of returning players to the title screen.
Fixed an issue that allowed players to see the Characters page in the Marketplace without being able to navigate to it.
Fixed a small visual issue when refunding Hero Keys.
Audio:
Fixed an issue causing certain sound effects to be too quiet during dialog.
Adjusted the volume of hit notification sounds.
Battleplan #5
This week’s Battleborn Battleplan sees the addition of a long-requested feature, a couple hot fixes as well as a peek at what’s to come, and some amazing cosplays!
This week, we’re happy to announce that we’re implementing another feature that has been a direct request from the community – rematching. Rematching will fundamentally change how Battleborn’s matchmaking works in the sense that you will no longer need to manually re-queue after each multiplayer match. Instead, you’ll be kept in queue with your current teammates and the next match will automatically begin – no more having to re-select your preferred game mode and re-queue! The hope here is to get players back into the game as quickly as possible and hopefully smooth out the matchmaking process as well.
What to Expect:
Rematch will be available in all PVP modes with a 20 second timer being added to the top-right of the screen.
If you do not want to play another match, make sure to back out before the enemy team has been found. This will allow the game to find another player for your team so they’re not down a player next round!
If you are a party lead and do decide to exit out of the matchmaking queue, your party will all be removed from matchmaking as they did before this feature was enabled.
We know this has been a very hot topic among the community since launch, so we’re glad that we’re able to bring you all this new and exciting feature. This is among the improvements and tweaks to matchmaking that we will continue to make in order to optimize the experience for everyone! Let us know what you think of rematching on our forums!
This week’s list of hot fixes is quite small, but contains fixes for a couple things that have continued to pop up on our radar. As a reminder, hot fixes are things that can be easily and quickly implemented. While these lists can tend to be short, we want to include these small fixes as a part of our effort to be as transparent as possible when it comes to changes that could affect the gameplay experience. Larger changes and community requests such as in-game reporting features, lore challenge adjustments, and performance improvements take a bit more time and must be included in a full update. Having said that, these issues are among many that will be coming to you all in the near future.
Hot fixes begin rolling out at 12pm PT (3pm ET) on Thursdays. This week’s fixes are:
Rematching feature added.
Increased the Max Health of S1.Chronicle in The Archive by 50%.
Fixed a visual issue with Thorn's level 10 Left Helix Augment, Wild Judgment.
Additionally, our team has made a discovery that we think will answer why some players have not received their lore challenge rewards. In some cases, this issue could be caused by dropping out of a Story mission and entering the Competitive Multiplayer queue before the Story mission has ended. Since this action takes place across multiple servers, this may cause the game to not recognize when the threshold for completing a challenge has been met and thus, the challenge or character will not unlock. When this happens, characters can still be unlocked through Command Rank leveling, but lore challenges may remain broken.
Our team is working on a fix that that would retroactively award lore challenges that were affected by this issue, and we’ll be implementing that fix as soon as possible. To avoid this issue, we encourage everyone to stick with missions and matches to completion, as leaving them early appears to be directly related to this issue.
The Gearbox Community is legendary for its amazing cosplays. It started with Borderlands, continued with Tales from the Borderlands, and is being taken to the next level with Battleborn. We love to recognize our cosplayers every chance we get and thought this week would be a great chance to take stock of a few of the awesome cosplays that we’ve seen so far. Check out the Battleborncosplay thread on the Gearbox Forums to see more!
The weeks are getting busier and busier and soon we will have lots more to share with you all. For next week and among other things, we have another character Deep Dive on the way – this time for Kelvin! Battleborn Lead Programmer Scott Velasquez is known around the studio as the foremost expert on Kelvin and how to build him into an icy, chomping, death machine! Next week, we’ll be sharing a piece written by Scott with some Kelvin tips and tricks, and maybe even some cool ancillary info on everybody’s favorite Eldrid Ice Golem. All that, plus more hot fixes and more in next week’s Battleplan. Until then, we’ll see you all in the Solus system!
Battleplan #4
Our 26th Battleborn, Alani is officially here and playable for everyone! We’re seeing TONS of great reaction to her and her amazing water-based abilities. Maybe you’ve played Alani and you’re excited to dig in and find the best build to use with her. Well, you’re in luck! We managed to track down Battleborn Associate Producer, Anthony Nicholson for a few Alani tips and tricks. It turns out that Anthony had a big hand in creating Alani (along with a team of super talented developers), so he knows what he’s talking about. You’ll be able to read what Anthony has to say about Alani by reading the Alani Deep Dive post on the Battleborn blog!
This week’s hot fixes are mainly focused on community feedback and small tweaks to improve certain FX. It should be noted that, while the Voxis Core Legendary has been temporarily disabled, it will be returning.
Reduced Alani's base health from 1451 to 1035.
The Voxis Core Legendary gear has been temporarily disabled due to unintended balance implications.
Fixed an issue causing players to burn indefinitely in The Archive.
Fixed an issue with snow FX appearing inconsistently in The Algorithm.
Fixed an issue causing enemy spawn doors to visually disappear in the Prologue.
Fixed an issue causing audible impacts to play continuously due to Temporal Traps.
Fixed an issue causing third person FX to appear misaligned on M3.Shepherds.
In this week’s Community Spotlight, we’re featuring a guy who is becoming more and more well-known in the Battleborn community, Kaleidodemon! Kal is a streamer and content creator, but even more than that, he’s known to the community as a go-to source of Battleborn knowledge. Make sure to head over to the Gearbox forums and check out our Community Badass feature on him.
Next week, we’ll be hitting you with more insider info as we discuss how scoring works in Battleborn Story Modes.
That’s it for this week. As always, we greatly value the community’s feedback and we place it in high regard when discussing these changes on a weekly basis. Thank you all for helping us make Battleborn the best it can be! Enjoy the Alani Deep Dive and we’ll see you all next week!
Battleplan #3
This week’s Battleborn Battleplan is overflowing with info. Alani is in early access and she has a friend she wants to introduce us to. Also, SHiFT codes for Battleborn are here as well as this week’s Hot Fixes and more!
It’s been a busy week! We had our first Double XP Event, released our first SHiFT code for Battleborn (more on that below), and we’re in the process of releasing the first of five, free post-launch characters. Even though Alani is still coming out of the gate, we couldn’t wait to share the 27th character with you all. Meet Pendles:
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Don’t fall for his youthful charm -- Pendles is literally a cold-blooded killer. Originally from the ocean world of Akopos, Pendles did as most adolescent Roa do and left home to experience galactic cultures, and enjoyed murdering those cultures so much that he never went back. Upon finding out that people would actually pay him for his hobby, he became a freelance assassin for anyone with even the smallest of grievances. Despite misgivings toward his moral code, Ghalt eventually decided that it would be more dangerous to have him off the team than on.
Pendles will be coming in the next couple months as the 27th Battleborn and will be free for everyone and unlockable with 47,500 credits earned in-game. He can also be unlocked instantly using one hero key, which are included in the season pass, saving you the time it takes to earn the credits to otherwise unlock him. We’ll have more info on Pendles, including his abilities and release date, as we get closer to his launch.
SHiFT Code:
As we mentioned above, in celebration of our first Double XP Event, we released our first SHiFT code for Battleborn! SHiFT codes in Battleborn will unlock Loot Packs of either Epic, Rare, or Uncommon rarity. You can expect to expect to see SHiFT codes regularly for not only Battleborn, but also Battleborn Tap!
In case you missed it the first time, this SHiFT code will unlock one Epic Loot Pack:
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Redeem this SHiFT code before June 5th at 11:59pm EDT.
How to redeem a SHiFT code:
1. Install and boot up the Battleborn game
2. Go into the “Extras” menu from the main menu and select the “SHiFT” section
3. Sign up for a SHiFT account or log in if you already have one, then redeem the code. SHiFT accounts are free.
4. Once you redeem the code, SHiFT will display confirmation when the code is successfully redeemed.
As you all know, each week in our Battleplan, we detail Hot Fixes that will be going into effect that week. These changes typically begin rolling out at 12pm PT (3pm ET) on Thursdays unless otherwise noted.
Here are this week’s Hot Fixes:
Versus
Increased the time until a Surrender vote can be called from 4 minutes to 6 minutes.
Increased the Surrender revote time from 1 minute to 3 minutes.
Ghalt
Increased the damage falloff of Ghalt's level 3 Left Helix Augment, Slug Rounds.
Gear
Fixed an issue with the "Friction Fizz" Legendary gear.
Reduced the bonus damage to Ghalt's Scraptrap granted by the "U.P.R. Synchronograph" Character Legendary gear from 50% to 25%.
Fixed an issue with the description of “Strategist's HoldFast Recharger.”
Fixed an issue with Bonus Shards per Second gear.
Additionally, this week saw the first major update to Battleborn. The full notes can be found HERE.
We’ve recently been showcasing some of our specific community members for the cool things they’re doing. This week, we thought we’d switch it up a little bit and share some of the amazing community art that we’ve gotten recently. There’s a lot of serious talent out there and our team really loves seeing all the amazing stuff that you guys come up with. If you’ve got art you’d like to share with us, we’d love to see it! Share it with us on Twitter @Battleborn!
By this time next week, many of you will already be DIVING into Battleborn as Alani and will no doubt want to know the best ways to use her water-based powers to control the FLOW of combat (see what we did there?). Luckily for you, we tracked down our resident Alani expert and Associate Producer on Battleborn, Anthony Nicholson to divulge all his best tips and tricks to help you stay AFLOAT in the POOL of competition (ok, we’ll stop now). Anthony is putting together some great info on Alani that we’ll be bringing you in next week’s Battleplan!
Until then, we’ll see you in the Solus System!
PATCH NOTES 5/23/2016
New Content:
New Character, Alani
New Skins and Taunts
Hero Keys have been added
Mode & Map Changes:
We made a few changes to Incursion to prevent teams from snowballing to victory after defeating the first sentry. Now both teams get equal opportunities of lane pushing power at select times during the match. In addition, we added some extra power to the Thralls so that they help expedite team pushes.
Incursion
Empowered Minion Waves no longer spawn for a team after killing the enemy's first Sentry. They now spawn for both teams every fourth minion wave.
Incursion Thralls
All Thralls, when captured, no longer target enemy players
All Thralls no longer flinch when hit in the legs by players or minions
All Thralls no longer get knocked off the map
Thrall Crushers
Now only attacks minions directly
No longer charges
New Skill: Has an area attack that destroys minions instantly and knocks up players (Usable once every 7 seconds)
Thrall Guards
Now only attacks minions directly
New Skill: Targets a sentry with a mortar that deals heavy damage to the Sentry (Usable once every 10 seconds)
Overgrowth:
Modified the sniper nests to prevent players from engaging the first sentry from across the map.
M3.Shepherds spawn every fourth wave instead of after the first Sentry is destroyed.
Various level geometry changes to reduce collision issues.
Fixed a rare issue with the central Thrall mercenaries not pushing.
Echelon:
M3.Shepherds spawn every fourth wave instead of after the first Sentry is destroyed.
Various level geometry changes to reduce collision issues.
Characters:
Ambra: Ambra’s Extinction Event provided unnecessary crowd control due to the large area of effect. We removed the slowing effect to allow for better counter-play options around her ultimate.
Ambra’s Extinction Event skill no longer slows enemies.
Fixed an issue that allowed Ambra’s Scorching Strikes to deal extra damage.
Fixed an issue that prevented stealthed targets from being revealed when Ambra’s level 6 Left Helix Augment, Agile Anomaly and level 2 Right Helix Augment, Solar Burst were active.
Boldur
Fixed an issue with the description of Boldur’s Legendary gear.
El Dragón:
Fixed an issue that allowed players to move bosses using El Dragón’s level 8 Mutation, Unbelievable.
Deande:
Added a short cooldown to Deande’s Drop Kick to fix unintended vertical maneuverability.
Galilea: Galilea’s desecrate was never intended to constantly apply crowd control or debuffs on enemies throughout the duration. We changed the augmentations to only apply the effects at the cast of the skill. This change now requires Galilea players to use Desecrate more effectively and allow some counter-play if players find themselves falling into the Desecrate. In addition, we made some fixes to her melee attack so Galilea is now moving like all other melee when attacking.
Galilea’s level 1 Right Helix Augment, Calamity now only wounds players when Desecrate is initially activated.
Galilea’s level 4 Mutation, Bleak Quiet now only silences players when Desecrate is initially activated.
Galilea’s level 8 Right Helix Augment, The Black Wind Howls now only increases her movement speed when Desecrate is initially activated.
Galilea can no longer attack while sprinting.
Fixed an issue that prevented Corruption from damaging enemies affected by Galilea’s Desecrate after selecting her level 1 Right Helix Augment, Calamity.
Kleese:
Fixed an issue that allowed Kleese’s Energy Rifts to replenish Sentry shields in Incursion.
Changed Kleese’s HUD to use a jump meter instead of an ammo counter.
Fixed an issue that allowed Kleese’s Shock Taser to target stealthed enemies.
Fixed an issue with Kleese’s Energy Rift damage when both level 4 Left Helix Augment, Rift Network and level 6 Left Helix Augment, Bulk Savings are active.
Fixed an issue that increased the cast range of Kleese’s Energy Rifts and Black Hole.
Marquis:
Fixed an issue with Marquis’s level 2 Mutation, Eyes Everywhere.
Fixed an issue where Marquis’s ultimate Bindleblast damage was not tracked properly after taking level 10 Right Helix Augment, wallhax.exe.
Miko:
Fixed an issue that prevented Miko’s Fungus Among Us from displaying the mushroom’s trajectory when primed.
Shayne and Aurox:
Fixed a rare issue that allowed Shayne and Aurox to gain permanent health regeneration with their level 7 Left Helix Augment, Alone Time active.
Fixed an issue that allowed Shayne and Aurox to use Tag Team through friendly base barriers.
Fixed an issue that allowed some projectiles to pass through Aurox.
Non-Player Characters:
Fixed an issue where minions could become very difficult to kill after being affected by certain healing sources.
Gear:
Character Legendary gear no longer uses randomized values.
Fixed an issue that prevented players from acquiring the “Medical Nano-Colony” Legendary gear.
Fixed an issue with the “Sentinel Reset Switch” Legendary gear.
Quality of Life:
Added “Faction”, “Character Rank”, “Lore Challenge Completion” and “Unlock” sorting for Battleborn in the Command menu.
Fixed a “Player Initialization Failed” error when users first attempt to sign in.
Fixed a rare issue that prevented players from controlling their characters if they were modifying their key bindings when starting a boss encounter.
Fixed an issue where an incorrect skin would appear for the second split screen user in the post-match screen.
Audio:
Added unique sounds for attacking Immune and Overshielded targets.
Fixed an issue that allowed critical hit sounds to play against shielded players.
Fixed an issue that occasionally prevented music from playing in Incursion.
