Ingame events for Battleborn what could they be, but before we dive into what for events i would like to see for Battleborn let’s start with a recap to see what’s possible. If we look at the Borderlands series by Gearbox Software, mainly Borderlands 2 and the Pre-Sequel, we see them implement the SHIFT System. This let’s Gearbox push hotfixes, these are like soft mini-patches to fix small bugs, balance issues or trigger events. With Borderlands 2 the first small event was an increased spawn rate for a hidden boss. During that weekend you could “easily” farm for his legendary loot drop. Later in the game’s lifecycle there was also a big ingame event called the Hunt. Each day a specific (mini)boss would drop a special weapon and the goal was to kill a x-amount of enemies. This event became so popular that the community started their own versions of this event. Then came along Borderlands the Pre-Sequel i had the feeling that Gearbox would focus more on these ingame events because they added a special SHIFT Vending machine that said it was for events. But it was mainly used to redeem shift codes and collect Golden keys. However The Pre-Sequel did have a few interesting events. The first one was with Halloween, we got a modified boss with a unique weapon drop. To make this more special some enemies got a pumpkin head and there were some themed decorations. Later during the holiday season there was Mercenary Day, again a modified boss but this one was a big tougher to fight against. As a reward for beating this boss you were able to get 1 unique and 1 legendary weapon and if you know Borderlands is all about getting the best loot.
Beefy Battleborn Bosses
Now what can we expect with Battleborn ? It has already been confirmed that the SHIFT system is implemented in the game. Randy Pitchford was excited for what they got in store and can’t wait to share some SHIFT Codes for Battleborn. So all the things Gearbox did with Borderlands could be possible with Battleborn. Although we don’t know everything about the game yet, we do know that loot will be part of the game, so these can function as rewards for completing events. But how will they implement these ingame events ? I would love to see them doing modified bosses that are a bit tougher. Upping the difficulty early in the game’s lifecycle isn’t a good idea for early adopters. Maybe these events should be triggered for players who finished the game and are already playing on a harder difficulty. This way ‘hardcore’ gamers can get there ingame events a bit earlier than that they have to wait until the mainstream catches on.
Challenge Accepted
If you watched some of the Gameplay footage of Battleborn you might have spotted that during the mission on Blizz the player gets specific challenges.
- Collect 1000 Shards within 2 minutes
- Kill 5 Varelsi Badasses
If the player engages these challenges and completes them they will be rewarded with experience points. Leveling up all your characters in Battleborn is a thing, but what if Gearbox increased the difficulty on some of these challenges. I’m not the type for speedrunning, like now ‘go collect those 1000 shards within 1 minute’. What i do like a challenge in combat, now that one ambush where you had to fight against 5 Badass Varelsi, well let’s double the amount of enemies so there are 10 Varelsi coming out of the portals. Also increase their health and damage output to make them more of a challenge. With a bigger challenge there needs to be an bigger reward, therefore instead of just getting +1 XP, it needs to be changed to something more meaningful. I don’t know how important Shards will be in Battleborn. I did hear that Shards are important and are tied into multiple things, but how this all works out is yet to be seen. A reward that worked well within the Borderlands franchise is loot. With Battleborn Gearbox could use Rare Gear Pack with increased chance of a Legendary to engage the players. If you rather want shards there is always the option to sell your Gear.
Community Challenge
Completing a challenge with the whole online community is good for engagement. If Gearbox sets its goal versus reward system up good the community can have some fun with this. With Borderlands 2 there was ‘the Hunt’, kill x-amount of enemies. These things are possible and are very story mode based like the other possibilities i mentioned above. For this community challenge i’m thinking about the multiplayer component. As Battleborn will have 5 versus 5 multiplayer modes it would be fun to do something with this and also this could engage the community to play PvP. A lot of #BadassQuestions are about “will Battleborn be an eSports game?”. But hey if nobody plays the multiplayer modes it won’t be one. Gearbox needs to engage players to play online. A fun thing i found about Evolve was their community challenges. These where ‘This or That’ rewards. Players needed to play specific characters, so have Hunter#1 in your party and play against Monster#2. The team with the highest success rate would determine the price you won. If the Hunters won the community would get a skin for the hunters, but if the monsters had more wins the community would get a skin for the Monster. This way the community had something challenging to do and the development team could balance these two characters better due to all the data they received. So will we be seeing a Caldarius versus Benedict event? This concept could lead up to some crazy parties full with only these two heroes and creating some weird matches. But if you are the throll player and you like to play Rath and hit those two heroes out of the air by picking up the double jump skill, then 2K Games can use the marketing term ‘Mayhem’ again. Another take on this versus concept is the faction battles. Instead of letting two heroes duke it out let’s bring the whole family with Jennerit versus Peacekeeper matches. Each faction wants to determine the outcome of the universe so lets see who wins if it comes down in a tournament.
Well that was my take on ingame events, but what do you think about this ? Let me know in the comments below or social media. If you are a Gearbox member there is an interesting discussion about this on the GBX Forums.
