As a follow-up on the Gearbox Live Stream that covered the October patch, the stream team also did an AMA on Reddit for everyone that had some specific questions. This event was specifically focused on the upcoming patch that will be released on October 13th.
Gearbox Software Team:
- JoeKGBX = Joe King (Community Manager)
- Jythri = Randy Varnell (Creative Director)
- gkRants = Grant Kao (Balance Designer)
BATTLEBORN AMA [09/30/2016]
IZEDx: Are you working on, or do you plan on working on, a new matchmaking “algorithm” to replace the current 5+5 system?
Jythri: I’ve talked about matchmaking in a lot of places, but just to mention a bit here: Our matchmaking system currently leverages each of the platform matchmaking systems by design. Overhauling the system isn’t something we’re going to see in the near future. I can’t be much more specific than that, other than say we’ve discussed it a LOT at the office. For now, we’re looking for ways we can adjust the queues, the ratings, and the matching to keep things smooth, and to manage whatever population of users we find ourselves with. The recent changes to bring on Quick Match has had a good impact on match times, and a small impact on match quality. More users will actually make a dramatic impact here now.
IZEDx: When you release draft mode, do you plan on releasing a ranked playlist as well, or will be held for a later date when you’ve had some feedback and maybe the player count is in a better place?
Jythri: We’re still a bit out for draft mode, so not a lot of details on what that will look like when it appears. I personally really want both Draft and Ranked, and have some thoughts on that for Battleborn. As we get closer to those, we’ll drop more details for you.
IZEDx: Is there going to be a fix for Boldur’s unarmed attacks not connecting?
Jythri: I’d like more information on Boldur’s unarmed attack not connecting. It’s not something we see with regularity here. Are you sure you’re not just missing? His arms are pretty stubby, after all…
IZEDx: Any fix for player juggling?
Jythri: It’s something we’re looking at. We improved a LOT of that with a big patch earlier. I’d love to get an update from you guys on which ones are the biggest problems, still.
IZEDx: Are you going to reduce the range on Bonecrusher knockups?
Jythri: No plans currently to reduce Bonecrusher ranges. That range is intentional to make the thralls far more effective at being tipping points in the match for the team who secures them.
Chodeinger: Have you thought about doing some type of daily log in bonus (platinum hopefully)?
Jythri: Yes, definitely have thought about this 🙂 Something we hope to get to in the future. I think it would be awesome! Don’t you?
boostsacktap When will Alani receive that MC Hammer taunt? She’s already got the pants for it.
JoeKGBX: Alani’s swag meter is already dangerously high. This feels … scary.
dspaws: will a quick chat interface ever be implemented? the “ping” is not enough, ps4 users rarely use mics. we could use a simple command menu with “Form up here” or “healing needed”.
Jythri: I love the idea of the quick chat interface. It’s not something that’s in the near-term plans, but would be interesting for the future. The most challenging thing is deciding which button on the controller we want to cannibalize for that kind of system. It also requires “chorded input”, which is something we’ve avoided for usability reasons, but I think I might overlook it to get some better chat options.
dspaws: will there be any changes to the map design of echelon? the last sentry is impossible to defend and down the middle hallway it’s a clear shot from the back stairways for long range characters with little recourse. monuments suffers from massive frame rate drops at the first sentry chokepoint and wonder if this can be optimized.
Jythri: Nothing planned for Echelon in the next update.
dspaws: are there any plans for new titles, any prestige past Command Rank 100, or any thing for Command Rank 100 or level 15 character to work for? i have almost all the titles unlocked and all my characters are level 15. don’t know what else to work for any more.
Jythri: All of the Operation missions come with new titles to unlock. I’d love to do another batch title update in a future patch, but we have no concrete plans there yet. I think adding more of the “Worthy of Song” types of challenges/titles would be really cool. We’re also looking into ways to give Command Rank 100 players more recognized growth. Again, no hard details on this yet, but it’s something we’d like to address.
dspaws: any plans to implement a crafting system for gear?
Jythri: Not in the near term. It’s come up a lot, and it’s something we considered early on. At this point, this would require a fairly substantial re-working of our gear system. It’s not out of the possibility realm forever, but definitely no time soon.
Sheepymike: Any word on if there will be an option to reselect helix options a few seconds after picking the wrong one?
Jythri: The way we apply character upgrades makes this technically a bit difficulty, so probably no on this. We are looking at a feature where you can pre-select your Helix choices at the beginning of the match, however.
Rando-namo: Will CC gear be made useful?
Jythri: We’re looking into this as we’re doing a big pass on all the gear. No ETA on changes, though.
PMMeUnwantedGiftcard: Have you guys considered buffing Whiskey Foxtrot’s Quick Melee a bit? It’s supposedly a finisher move, but I feel like it never actually finishes. Maybe add a Wound or small Bleed? He needs something to help him up close.
gkRants: This is good feedback! You’re right in that this feels a bit underwhelming. I’ll make sure to look at it but nothing in the immediate future.
Yellow-Bot: Is Kid Ultra being released along with the Oct.13 update?
JoeKGBX: While Kid Ultra won’t be arriving on the 13th, he’s not far out. We’re planning a Kid Ultra Character Reveal Stream that you’ll see more details about soon. We’re pretty excited about that one.
schrankenstein: The lore is one of my favorite aspects of this game. You guys obviously put a lot of love and care into the characters and the story and interactions between them. Is there ever going to a unified place I get get my lore fix? Maybe a lore bible or “The World of Battleborn” encyclopedia that I can purchase down the road?
Jythri: You are my favorite today. 🙂
I’m a big lore nerd, and spent a lot of time on this. I love world building, and I’m pretty proud of the world we built. There is a LOT of information there, and I’d love to do something like an encyclopedia.
For now, though, we’re trying to do a few paragraphs of additional lore in every Battleplan. I’m pretty sure I have enough to keep that up for several years. 🙂
JonStrike: So is there any plans for more merchandise? (outside of the official store) as in 6 inch figs or even a “vynil” collectible series? I’d love to fill out my work desk with 30+ Battleborn characters 😀
JoeKGBX: We’d love to see this happen. No definitive plans to announce right now of course, but we have our fingers crossed too!
Jevaira: Are Toby and Attikus getting a buff? They are decent characters, but seem to have terrible helix choices. Attikus’s Level 7 Mutation for 20% crit damage does the same amount of damage as the 20% attack speed at Level 7. Toby’s Level 4 Mutation doesn’t work properly. Toby’s Level 2 left helix choice is useless. Toby just needs the left side of his helix tree to be arcmines and the right side to be sniping. Attikus needs knock up on his ultimate back and pounce needs to stun. Are these, similar, or completely different changes going to be made to these characters.
gkRants: Toby is not getting any direct stat changes at this current moment. We feel a lot of his issues revolved around positioning and hope that the collision issues will absolve some of those issues. Always open to more feedback though!
No changes at the moment to Attikus but I’m investigating complaints to Pounce and hope to address it in a hotfix.
TedioreTwo: Does Kelvin’s Chomp damage cap out at 500? Does it only go up to 500 plus the damage it already does? Or can you get above 600 with it?
gkRants: As far as I know, Chomp damage increases to 500 and caps at 500.
schrankenstein: What was the decision behind buffing Galilea’s health? Is there going to be a corresponding nerf to her damage/skills to compensate?
gkRants: Galilea has one of the lower health pools for the tank class. With the changes to shield blocking, many of the blocking tanks lost some effective health so we increased Galilea’s to compensate. Her damage has not been adjusted at all but we will be keeping a close watch on Galilea.
Yellow-Bot: What happened to shield blocking? Galilea is not that fun to play against with all of her cc.
gkRants:Shield Blocking had an issue where rapid fire weapons such as Oscar Mike’s gun would not be accurately accounted for on the shield block meter. So instead of the 1000 damage blocked, shields were blocking around 1500-1600 damage. Now that this has been fixed and shields block the amount they’re supposed to, the characters who relied heavily on shield blocks will feel weaker. We were ok with this on ISIC and Boldur but not Galilea.
scott28574: Is the Command Screen Glitch being fixed with this update?
JoeKGBX: It is indeed! (And the crowd goes wild)
schrankenstein: Can you give us any more specifics about the PvP tutorial? What it will entail and how it will be implemented?
jythri: I can give some very vague details about this, as we’re still working on it.
One of the biggest requests we’ve heard from our community since launch is for a tutorial that helps do more than our Prologue at training new players, and specifically for PvP. While I think the Prologue does decently at teaching you about the Helix, leveling up, and basic character skills, it doesn’t even touch competitive.
Right now, our goal is to touch on some of those global elements, but then to dig into core PvP mechanics a bit…minions, their uses, and minions waves; sentries; shards; buildables; and of course, returning to base to heal up. That’s not all that we’re hitting, but are the main themes. I’ve pinged a couple of threads here on Reddit and our forums asking about things you want trained. I’m very eager to hear thoughts and ideas, especially from our experienced players.
dasmekoad: is there going to be an increase in the loot pack legendary drop rate?
jythri: I mentioned on the Twitch stream yesterday that we are looking into this. It won’t be in the October 13th patch, but I’d like to tweak the drop rates to increase rarer loot drops for more players, for certain.
dasmekoad: possible event game modes? (like chaos rumble) maybe turrets are super powerful? turretborn?
jythri: Yes! No concrete details yet, but with the October 13th patch, we’ll get some new tools for creating more special conditions in events. MentalMars talked about some ideas we’ve shared for a Capture Extreme, and things like faction wars. I’d love to hear more ideas from the community. I think we can do a lot here.
dasmekoad: characters were showcased with skins/taunts in the stream, are the skins/taunts showcased the only ones being added in the upcoming patch? or more that just weren’t shown?
jythri: yes, the ones that were showcased were ones that will become available at or after the upcoming patch.
dasmekoad: do the battleborn all live aboard the nova? if so what is that like? any insight that can be provided?
jythri: No, actually. this is a great question, sinc Nova (the ship AI) is very prevalent in our missions. Nova is capable of transporting a large number of troops, but really only has persistent living space for a dozen or so crew. Ghalt and Kleese live on Nova, and Mellka and Deande spend quite a bit of time there, though they are both more independent operatives.
dasmekoad: actual ages of characters? more specifically the jennerits and kleese?
jythri: Whoo. That’s a big list. I do know MOST of them. And it’s a wide range. Let me think of a good way to give this information to people, maybe in the form of a Battleplan update?
dasmekoad: i feel like ghalt is one of those people that can only function with coffee, can this be confirmed or denied? possible taunt?
jythri: Ghalt, coffee…well….sure. Ghalt is a seasoned, capable leader who isn’t fond of bureaucracy. But he certainly would drink his two cups every morning. The taunt idea is great.
dasmekoad: do all of the dlc story ops, barring attikus and the thrall rebellion, take place before or after the game’s first 8 story missions?
jythri: The first operation you will get your hands on, Attikus and the Thrall Rebellion, takes place during the timeline of the core game, before the encounter at the Heliophage. The other four missions all take place after the Heliophage.
TedioreTwo: Is the only way to get legendary loot packs through shift codes and promotions? Or will that change eventually?
jythri: If drops of legendary packs are added in, they will probably be as a reward for significant in-game accomplishments.What I’m more likely to do is increase the probability of legendaries in ALL loot packs, so we don’t have to depend on the ultra-rare legendary packs as much.
J-Fisty: What inspired you guys to make Battleborn?
JoeKGBX: Battleborn was the product of TONS of different influences across our whole team. Everything from anime and fighting games, to Saturday morning cartoons.
J-Fisty: What did you think the initial reaction was going to be for lovers of the Borderlands series?
JoeKGBX: We knew then and know now that that would all depend on the player. We have a unique community in the sense that it can tend to be compartmentalized to a certain extent. That said, there’s a lot of community overlap between Borderlands and Battleborn and of that overlap, the vast majority of the feedback we’ve gotten has been positive.
J-Fisty: Can we please get Borderlands cameo skins for Battleborn? I’ve been longing for a Mordecai skin for Marquis since I saw Marquis had Hoodini.
JoeKGBX: So a “Marquisdecai” skin then?
Doctor_spaghetti: I play split screen with my wife alot. Will there be any changes to the UI in that mode? I would prefer to have custom options for the map we us and make the sidebar transparent. Whatever you guys think just some tweaking would be nice. Thanks
jythri: We’ve heard these requests. They’re on our list of want-tos, but we’re trying to work on things that impact larger groups of users first. Sorry that it’s annoying!
Doctor_spaghetti: Will you be adjusting our Career stars at all? Example our Story deaths and PvP deaths are pooled together I would like to see them separated and maybe not just a best of stat. Loved to see how maybe people I have fetched or chomped to death,etc overall.
jythri: I’ve heard this request a few times. It’s something we can look into, but there are no current plans to re-factor those stats.
Doctor_spaghetti: Will there be a added Command Rank gate to advanced hardcore spotlight? He doesn’t like playing with people straight out of prologue or mission 2.
jythri: we’re actually working on a change for that right now that will prevent you for matching into this until you’ve completed Heliophage at least once. We’ll see if that is far enough, and the consider other filters for this.
SbreckS: Will there be a FOV adjusted added in the future?
jythri: We’ve considered FOV a few times on consoles. Most of the reason it’s not there is because it does affect performance. It’s still something we could consider, but it’s definitely not in the October patch.
Kaleidodemon: Tokesy really wanted to know about the Varelsi culture. How are they organized? Who rules them (or ruled them before Rendain made the deal)? Who did/does he deal with?
JoeKGBX: This is something we’ll hope to explore more in the Battleplan soon. This seems to be a popular lore question.
Kaleidodemon: Many wanted to know if story and versus deaths will ever be separated on the stats page.
JoeKGBX: Interesting question and something we’ve heard before. No plans at the moment, but it’s something that comes up in discussion from time to time, so it’s not out of the question.
Kaleidodemon: One of my staff on the unofficial Battleborn Discord wanted to know if there would be more involvement from the developers on the server in the future.
JoeKGBX: We love the BB Discord and try to pop in as often as we can. It’s a really great group over there and we’re always up for hanging out more wherever possible!
Kaleidodemon: And one I just thought of myself, will there ever be highlights of the developers that worked on the games in future Battleplans (such as the highlights for several of the community memebers we have seen so far)?
JoeKGBX: Wow, are you reading my mind here, Kal? This is actually something I’m exploring for future BPs. Sometimes it’s hard to get a handle on what “game developers” do and I’d love the chance to pull the curtain back some for the community on what roles different people fill here.
On top of that, we get lots of “How do I do ________ in the games industry?” type questions, as you can imagine, so it would be nice to possibly inspire people to move forward with their dreams of working in the industry.
BlackPaintist: Funniest bug experienced while in development?
jythri: So many. We actually have an internal list for many of these. While I can’t remember a specific now, a category of my favorites are physics bug, where knock up or knock back literally sends you flying super-fast out of the map into the air Those are always hysterical.
BlackPaintist: Any wiggle room available for lowering respawn times? Those minute long timers are rough, especially on new faces.
jythri: sure. With the October update, it’s one of the things we’ll get the ability to fiddle with more. We’ll probably see this first as a rumble or spotlight type of thing, and if successful, we’ll integrate it more permanently.
BlackPaintist: How do you measure movement speed/sprint speed? Working on a video for this, and have been measuring frames scratching my head.
jythri: heh. By…a number? There’s honestly not a specific unit that correlates to anything tangible here. Mostly, it’s a number that scales the base rate up and down as needed.
jimjimjimjaboo: I have a few questions about the situation that revolves around melee vs ranged characters.
Why is recoil so absent from many ranged characters, and where it does exist–recoil equipment does little to nothing to have much of an effect? An example is Ghalt’s recoil doesn’t expand his reticule but merely causes a small jump in vertical climb which is gone by the time he has his next shot available to fire–effectively giving him zero recoil. Another example is Montana, where his reticule doesn’t expand.
gkRants: Recoil as a modifier is a bit hazy to the consumer. The values we use to tweak recoil are quite expansive and require multiple variables. But to the user, it’s just “recoil reduction” and the percentage change doesn’t really mean much immediately. But over the course of a match, recoil benefits do add up.
jimjimjimjaboo: why does Ghalt need a damage buff in the upcoming update?
gkRants: Ghalt received a damage buff because we wanted to promote that shotgun gameplay where getting into the optimal range yields great benefits. However, we didn’t like his ability to trap a target for 2 seconds which guaranteed easy damage on a locked target so we removed the stun off the ScrapTrap.
jimjimjimjaboo: Why are ranged characters usually given a quicker and stronger quick melee–when they’ve usually already had the opportunity of distance as a benefit?
gkRants: Quick melee speeds are often dependent on the animation. Some characters have really fast animations and some have slower ones. The damage values were adjusted based on the speeds with some outliers here and there (Ghalt being one of them).
jimjimjimjaboo: Another question regarding ranged vs. melee: Why increase the health pools of melee characters to an extent which becomes a labour upon the healing classes? Would it not make greater sense to have inherent damage reduction for these characters and have health pools far more in reach of healers? An example is Attikus at lvl 1 has 2700+ hp, and level 1 healers cannot even buy a few seconds considering the size of his hitbox or the size of his crit zone. Would it not make sense to reduce damage by a factor proportional to the surface area of the character? IE the easier it is to hit them, the harder it should be to reduce their presence on the battlefield–higher health pools don’t seem to do this effectively.
Why is the game geared toward ranged characters where they often have the opportunity to both move quickly, have the ability to act at range, have shorter cooldowns, more/easier crowd control abilities, benefit from reduced damage from ranged damage fall-off, and in comparison melee characters have very large hitboxes making them the constant recipients of damage focused on them from a distance?
gkRants: We like the high health pools because it allows a melee character to stay in combat without a healer. We’re ok with longer downtimes to get back to full health because we have options there (teleport back to base, healer, or supply station).
We’re trying not to gear the game toward any one direction but we recognize that different strategies become popular in a game with many different layers. We make adjustments to try to increase viability of all types of strategies. This patch focused on reducing the gap between ranged and melee. If this patch did too much or didn’t do enough, we’ll adjust again. We’re recording as much data as we can and following feedback.
jjand302: With kid ultra, the thrall rebellion, face off, and the other Content in this patch now finished, what is being tackled next?
jythri: We’re still very busy! There are a lot of things we are working on with new content and improvements in the game, but we’ve officially teased some things that you should look forward to. There’s another character we’ve teased about after Kid Ultra, and that character is really really cool. We’ve also teased that we’re working on another PvP mode, and I’ll add here that we’re experimenting with smaller team sizes in PvP games. More details on that will show up in the coming weeks, and the other things we’re working on.
Just note – we listen to you guys a LOT for these types of efforts. Keep the feedback coming, and we’ll see how we can address it as soon as we can.
Yellow-Bot: Why are some characters such as Shayne and Aurox labeled as an Attacker despite being tankish? There also other characters who feel more like Attackers who are labeled as Defenders such as Toby and Attikus. Is it only because they have large hit boxes?
gkRants: This is a bug 🙂 We’ll have this fixed in a later patch.
Lysander171: Any plans on reworking some of the gear? I know a lot of players think – CC Duration and Shield Penetration aren’t super useful.
gkRants: Gear is being looked into but there are a lot of variables there so hoping to get something solid to provide details about in the future.
Vahmose: Roughly, whats the target number of unique playthroughs for the October Story Operation? Do you plan on adding more pathways/playthrough options to previous Operations as the new ones come out?
jythri: We wanted to hit hours of play, and I think we do that both with narrative and reward loops.
You unlock specific character skins by earning certain amounts of Ops points AS a certain character. So, take a playthrough time and then multiply that times 30, and you have something approaching what it will take you to unlock everything from an operation. Also, a perfect game after you’ve gotten to max difficulty (getting 100 ops points) will drop a Commander Loot Pack, which has better-than-average loot for that faction. So, there’s an element of long-term reward grind there for those who want that.
WInsecta: As a primarily PVE player who loves that aspect of the game, I’ve recently started playing PVP in order to complete lore challenges. While there are aspects of PVP I do like, the regularly unbalanced teams just overwhelm any positive aspects of the game. Is there any plan to give the current PVP lore challenges an alternative PVE method to complete? Can you share any ideas you have for improving matchmaking beyond just reducing the team sizes?
jythri: It’s something I’ve heard from other players, and am considering.
Most likely, this would show up in one of two forms: either allowing some challenge completion in private matches, or opening up some Players vs. Bots match-in experiences. Those are both sort of the same thing.
If we do that, I want to reserve some challenges (like Pentastrike and Worthy of Song) as PvP-only challenges that can’t be cheesed by setting up private matches.
wrriddle: The game was advertised as a PvE/PvP hybrid and delivered both experiences, but sometimes PvE focused people like myself feel a little bit left out in the dust, because it seems like the majority of the effort goes towards PvP.
Is there any chance, that we may get a little love in the next time and bugs, like Sentinel becoming invincible and breaking the mission, unless Reyna is on the team to push him away, will be fixed?
JoeKGBX: So, it’s important to note that we don’t necessarily see the game as PVE vs PVP in the way you outline here. It’s more a question of our ability to address certain things vis a vis urgency of the issue, bandwidth, etc. In other words, things aren’t necessarily prioritized based on whether they live in the PVE or PVP experiences. To add to that, we try to do our best to make sure that both sides of the game are supported when it comes to community events and the like. We don’t usually segregate certain events to certain experiences, so that why you don’t usually see events that are experience specific. We have done it, but it’s not the norm. We always strive to give everyone the best possible experience regardless of what your preferred experience is.
Aidynino: Because of certain match making times in the past, a friend of mine suggested that if a full team of 5 in public queue over.. say 10 minutes, they should be put against a team of bots. Could that be do-able (if you don’t go with the 3-man teams plan)?
jythri: We’re exploring this now. It’s something we probably CAN do after the October 13th patch, but we won’t have any improvements in bot AI in the short term. As many players have recognized, our bots can be somewhat…clunky…in how they play. Still, might be better than no matches or curb-stomps, especially for new players.
Vinaii: Any plans on adding a respawn button in PvE? There have been a couple times where I’ve been glitched into a spot I couldn’t get out of and it was pretty bad.
jythri: Not specifically, though we are looking for and fixing those types of glitches every time we can.
Vinaii: Toby has a pretty small hitbox for reviving him, is there any plan for fixing this?
jythri: Good feeback. I’ll pass this back to the team.
Vinaii: Have you ever thought of including a Death match for PvP? I thought it might be fun, especially if everyone could start out at level 5.
jythri: Yes. It’s not really the game Battleborn is, and you’ll notice some oddities with certain characters as you’ll have less opportunity for some skills and augments. We will likely try some spotlights in the next couple of months that will increase lethality and reduce cooldown in some modes (probably capture) to explore this idea a bit with players.
Doctor_hoho: please elaborate on all of the El Dragon changes since the stream bullet points were kinda vague.
gkRants: El Dragon is the only melee attacker that has a stun and we wanted to keep that on El Dragon even after our crowd control pass this patch. However, he lost a second off the stun so instead of 2s it’s 1s and his clap damage was reduced.
jjand302: Could you clarify on the mechanics of moving and shooting through allies? Can I hide as a smaller character in a bigger on? Can a DPs shoot through a tank? Does Kelvin still get blocked by his ice wall?
gkRants: All allies can move and shoot through their allies. But we don’t expect players to stand behind other players and fire through them as a strategy. Any character can walk into another character but will be nudged out automatically. Kelvin’s ice wall is counted as a world object and does not allow anyone to pass through it.
ProtoflareX: Would you guys ever consider making character legendaries, as well as loot pack legendaries have perfect stats?
jythri: Yes, it’s worth consideration. We’re trying to find time now to do an audit across all of our legendaries, and vet them for power and cost balancing to be sure they’re where we want them. I’m not sure when that will happen, but when it does, we’ll re-examine character legendaries.
PhoenixML: Is there or was there a plan to exchange gears between players?
jythri: Not other than just quick discussions. It’s an interesting idea, but it’s a pretty big feature technically, and it also fights against the personal satisfaction of getting a good loot drop personally.
schrankenstein: Why nerf AOE across the board? Was this originally the idea from the launch of the game, or a response to data and player complaints after the game was released?
gkRants: We didn’t like one AOE damage skill essentially negating a minion wave. Destroying a minion wave immediately removed a lot of the strategy we had hope to push with escorting minions. AOE skills will still be effective in damaging groups of minions but they will no longer obliterate a pack.
SOLARN01SE: You said that dlc campaign missions will be episodic, shorter in duration but highly repeatable. Does that mean that each of the 5 planned dlc launches will only have one of the “episodic missions?”
JoeKGBX: Yes! The focus will be more on the characters and telling a story in easily digestible bits, but over multiple playthroughs.
Min3r49er: Do you have any plans for my boy Raths secondary melee attack? Stacked against el dragons clap projection and Galileas bolt launching helix raths sad sword throw is all but unused as far as I’ve seen. Maybe but like double the length to make it viable to smack thralls in the face.
gkRants: The secondary attack is already longer than the primary attack and has a longer damage duration so you can helicopter it over a group of minions. It’s great for chasing players and getting that last hit in when they sprint away.
Jiveinator: Will there be brand new legendary loot from the DLC missions.
JoeKGBX: Yes! Each new mission will add new Legendaries.
dobson187: Why is the gear limited to such a small number of items? Are there any plans to update this? I literally have no motivation to play PVE because I don’t want to deal with sorting through my gear. It doesn’t help that the gear interface on PC is pretty rough.
jythri: I’d love to add more families of gear in the future. With the system we have, there are tens of thousands of combinations, but new families or new effects are cool. We’ll get some new legendaries with each Operation mission release. We expanded bank pages a month or so ago, and have been holding more increases to bank pages and loadouts until we could do some optimization on how gear is loaded from the server (currently, the more gear you have in loadouts, the longer it takes you to load in to Character Select). The October 13th patch should have those optimizations, and once we can confirm they’re working, we’ll look at bumping loadouts and bank pages.
This won’t change anything regarding usability, though. Just increasing the number.
BlackPaintist: How soon can we start gaining Command Rank again, or add more rank to maxed characters?
jythri: Looking into this now, but no ETA on when a change will happen.
Jevaira: Is there a reason El Dragon and Ghalt were nerfed so hard? Are these changes just being tested or are they finalized?
gkRants: El Dragon and Ghalt’s changes are both finalized. We didn’t like Ghalt’s ability to take a player from 100 to 0 by himself with the hook, trap, fire combo. There was very little counterplay when a player got hooked into a stun trap. So we wanted to offer some wiggle room for victims.
El Dragon is the strongest burst damage character at the moment. His win Kill/Death ratio was extremely high. So we needed to tone him down a bit. We’ll keep an eye on the numbers tho and tweak them if necessary via hotfix.
the_V0lum3: I noticed nerfs mentioned to Montana… the big guy currently suffers horribly against any team with wound, making him next to un-usable against most comps. Is there any intention to strengthen him against the ability in any way?
gkRants: There wasn’t a goal or directive to reduce Montana’s effectiveness. However, the change to ally players’ collision made it so all knockbacks (Boldur and Montana) that occur on enemy players pass through their allies. But victims on the knockbacks will still be stunned if they hit walls or objects.
