Still little is known about the factions and all of the features that are present in Battleborn. With this blog, I would like to speculate on what could be a thing just like the blog I wrote about what loot mechanic Battleborn could embrace. Although it currently still looks like ‘Shards’ will remain the main currency, Gearbox & 2K haven’t done a lot of promotion on the game and sending out details about the game. So I would want to continue speculating about what potential this game has to offer. I could completely be wrong but looking back at the turret defense blog, creative director Randy Varnell stated that I was on track with the turrets.
@mentalmars Really great recap, my friend! Not too far off here, either! We’ve re-balanced and re-tuned these suckers several times, and right now, they’re pretty important to all of our multiplayer modes.
Randy Varnell – Creative Director on Battleborn
Not Just Cosmetic
As much as Randy likes to talk about his game, Battleborn, he is held back by PR managers. So I would like to think that he is extra careful about what he posts on the Gearbox forums, but might give a tiny hint on what could be.
Randy did say that character customization is a part of the game. Changing the look of your character is a thing. The creative Director said that it will be more down the line of Borderlands than Destiny. This means that it will be more like a predetermined look than mixes and matching different assets to shape the look of your characters.
Randy also mentioned on the Gearbox forums that he likes crafting, with this point, I would like to come back to the Battleborn’s loot mechanic blog. I wrote that it might be possible to craft powerups, so I started combining these two elements together. Adding the crafting mechanic to the gear, imagine you can customize your armor’s loadout. The look of the armor is prefixed, but what if each character outfit would have certain stats, giving the player a specific boost (maybe some could have a negative effect on some stats). This is somewhat like adding the Borderlands Relic / Oz Kit into the skin.
Assemble Your Gear
Depending on the rarity of the gear some can feature a certain amount of slots for special boosts (runes). These can further affect the play style of the character. The power-ups could have been randomly assigned, in this case, I’ll go with the option that the player can purchase these. It all depends on the game’s Filosofia. With Borderlands everything was random, even the grinder where you could suggest what item would be returned was still random. So with Battleborn, I imagine Gearbox is taking a different route, the one where the Creative director likes crafting. This and some personal desires lead to more crafting-centered speculations.
By giving the player the ability to craft items, everyone can specialize in what they want and what fits their playstyle. I still think it would be cool to have more varied types of currency, and different types of minerals you need to gather in order to craft specific types of upgrades. A “limitation” on what power-ups a piece of gear could harness is by changing the type of slots (runes) that it features. Different slots for different types of power-ups, something like:
Power-ups
- Character Slot – Boosting the stats of your character even further (Power, Defense, Speed, Health, Shield, etc).
- Ability Slot – Enhancing the character’s special abilities (Cooldown rate, Boost its effect, etc).
- Map Slot – Affecting the battlefield (Enemies drop more loot, give more XP, etc)
This gear mechanic is something different from Borderlands where skins are just there to cosmetically change the player’s appearance. Unlike with Borderlands, Battleborn playable characters will not all have a shield. Therefore shield mods won’t be a thing, and this gear implementation could replace that function. By adding the outfits with different buffs they will offer more player choice, control, grinding & leveling.
But what do you want to see? Outfits that really change the character’s appearance or just like Borderlands changing up the colors. Would you want Battleborn’s gear to affect your character’s stats? Let me know in the comments or on social media. Thx
