Five 5 Things I Like

1.) Goal Oriented PvP modes with long TTK in an FPS

I’m an old gamer and this is the very first FPS competitive game I have had any interest in playing. I love that you can have a 0-2 kill match and still be the most important player on your team in a victory. So kudos to the devs in getting the spirit of their PvP mode right. I am absolutely having a blast in PvP in BB, and that is something I never expected would happen.

2.) PVE & PVP Modes Combined with PVE not being an 'after-thought’

I’m a PVE gamer. I didn’t have any plans on playing the PvP, but the PvP is such a blast that I’m enjoying that too. I wouldn’t have been able to get some friends to buy the game if there wasn’t a lot to do on the PVE side.

I love, love, love the random challenges that you get through-out the PVE mission, and really enjoy the different dialogue which takes place through-out multiple mission replays.

I understand that the PVE isn’t for everyone, and I do think that PVE solo is a bit too hard for the casual gamer (though I do just fine), so there are things to still work out. But I appreciate the time and work they have put into the PVE, and I look forward to the additional content which will be coming out via Season Pass.

3.) Unique Characters/Different Play-Styles

I really feel that there is, at the very least, one, if not quite a few more, characters to suit any particular gamer. I think they have done a great job at keeping the characters unique, and setting up a wide range of kits to fit pretty much any player’s preferred gamestyle.

I also appreciate the fact that you can excel with one type of character in PVP while excelling in a completely different type of character in PVE.

4.) Command Ranks/Character Ranks/Lore/Titles - I.E. Progression

I love progression. I love putting time into something and seeing a tangible reward at the end of it.

It’s fantastic to get to a particular command rank and then unlock that character you were wanting.

It’s so much fun to unlock a character mutation, and then whine about it not being any good, or choose it next play-through to see if it can help you, or to use it to finally allow you to change a character’s play-style.

And I really like having the lore challenges.

I especially appreciate well-thought-out lore challenges which helps a player learn how to better play their characters. A specific one which I think truly captures the spirit of the lore challenge is the Orendi lore which asks you to push-back targets into your shadow-fire pillar. That is a fantastic challenge which helps the player learn how to better utilize their character’s kit. I wish more lore challenges were like that, but though there are some problems with some lore challenges, overall I think it is a great addition to the game.

I know there is no Prestige mode available at the moment…but I am certain they will implement something, because it is something that is desparately needed for this game…so I’m going to pre-emptively say that I love the fact that at some point they will implement something to cater to those stuck on Command Rank 100 or Character Rank 15.

5.) Gear, Gear, and more Gear

I love the fact that there is gear in this game. I also appreciate that it is intended to be a helpful tool to aid a player, rather than being the ‘ultra-tier-god-mode’ aspect which determines who wins and who loses.

I love the implementation of gear into the game where shards are the price for them. This was absolutely brilliant and what is so great about the implementation is that common/green gear can absolutely be the very best choice for a particular character in a particular mode, rather than everyone just going after legendaries. Coming from BLs, (and having grinded a good amount of legendary gear in BB) I love that my PvP loadouts are more based around ‘perfect’ common/uncommon gear than legendaries. It’s just refreshing to see that any rarity can be a valuable addition to a load-out based on the specifics of the situation.

I also like the fact that I can farm legendary gear from the story missions.

Five Things I Don’t Like

1.) PvP: A solo-queuer like myself against pre-made teams

From a PvP perspective the only thing I really don’t like is getting obliterated by a pre-made group. I completely understand that if I don’t join up in a group I have no-one to blame but myself. But since I don’t have any gaming friends who play PvP, and since I’m not the most social of people, it can be a bit difficult.

I hate solo-queing into a team and hoping that their will be a pre-made of 3 people or something on my team, since I know that it will greatly reduce my chances of getting killed in a game. (I don’t mind losing, just hate complete obliteration)

I also know that there isn’t anything that Gearbox can do to address this, at this time. Forcing pre-mades of a certain number to be paired up with similar number pre-mades would negatively impact the queue times, so as much as I’d love to have a solo-only queue set-up, it’s not realistic given the numbers currently playing. Perhaps in a couple of years there will be enough players, but for now, it’s just something I have to deal with.

I do mention it here though, specifically because it’s what I most dislike about playing PvP…that I never know when I’m going to run into 3+ straight matches of solo-queue vs. pre-made…and never even have a chance to compete.

2.) PvP ‘Scoring’ system

I really, really dislike the ‘Scoring’ used for PvP matches. It makes zero sense for an objective-based game to then be scored based on Kills/Assists. None whatsoever.

I firmly believe that this scoring lends itself to having players play death match rather than the modes objective. I especially notice this when a team is losing. At that point, if people figure they are going to lose the match, they then figure that at least they can try and get a good score and start working for kills even more so, rather than still attempting to work the objective. All-in-all it is poorly conceived and needs to be fixed.

If someone has the most kills/assists, but no shards, minions, thralls, objectives, while also having the most deaths…and your team loses…that person should have the lowest score on the team, not the best…because it just encourages poor decision-making.

3.) PvP Only Lore Challenges

As I mentioned, I’ve mostly been a PVE player, and the friends I got to play the game only play PVE. Now I have personally branched out into PvP and find it a lot of fun. But none of my other friends will ever do it. So it’s frustrating hearing them complain about PvP only lore challenges which they can’t complete because they won’t ever touch PvP.

And I hear about this every single time I play Co-Op PVE with them…and ultimately I’m hoping that it doesn’t become such a large focus of frustration that they lose interest in the game.

I keep telling them that this issue is being looked at, so I really hope that some sort of fix is put into place. (Either by changing the challenge, or allowing some sort of completion via private PvP games)

4.) PVE Failure: Challenges and Missions

As mentioned in the things I love…I love the Random Mission challenges. However, I hate being given a challenge which cannot be completed. Archive in particular is chalk full of them. (i.e. Collect 1000 shards…when you’ve already collected all of the shards, or kill X number of enemies…when you’ve already killed a few…and there are not enough left)

I also dislike the Object Mission Failure set-up. If you lose an objective (say Sabotuer 3rd objective or Chronicle) you should lose a certain amount of lives, and then respawn at the last respawn area to re-do the objective. If you don’t have enough lives you lose the mission. That way you have a chance to recover and not lose the time put into the match. Number of lives can be equal to the number in the party…or twice the number of people in the party for smaller groups, ect. Just allow lives to be consumed to keep the mission active if an objective is failed.

5.) Inability to Farm Bosses

Pretty nick-picky…but I do wish I could just farm Mission Bosses for gear, rather than having to play the whole mission. Now, I can get through most missions in about 25-30 minutes (except for Heliophage) while playing solo, so it’s not horrible…but after having killed Pete/Hyperius/Terra/Vorac/Dragons/Bunker 100,000,000 times, it would just be refreshing to be able to do something like that in BB.