The Secret's no secret...Battleborn

So the secret is pretty poorly kept.  Battleborn is coming and already there's been articles written, footage posted on YouTube not to mention a website set up by Gearbox itself.

So there's nothing here that could be considered a "spoiler" or "confidential".

Battleborn is first and foremost a Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA) just like DOTA and League of Legends but with a story mode tacked on. If you want an idea of what it's like just take Borderlands, mix in some Unreal Tournament with a dash of DC Universe and you pretty much have the look and feel of the game.

What hasn't been disclosed is how characters are developed and I won't disclose it either for two reasons.  One, it may actually violate the NDA and Two, I don't really care.  For me it was an overly complex and vague process that's common to the genre.

You see I don't care much for MOBA's.  They are the cornerstone of all that Major League Gaming (MLG) crap and I have no use for it.  It's a game not a profession no matter how good you are at it.  It's an arena (pardon the pun) overpopulated with fragile egos and online extroverts that take games way too seriously.

Whatever happened to fun?  

With games like these, character development is always limited to what you can buy or earn which is why so many of them are free to play.  They're usually supported by the Freemium model which means you may get the game free but to be effective you're going to have to plunk down some cash for the goodies.  Over and over again.

Battleborn isn't going to be free but it feels like it should be.  Not because it lacks quality or polish.  On the contrary it looked at least as good as any Borderlands title and gameplay was well sorted save for a few clunky controls.  Overall, however, it's leaning hard toward the MOBA genre.

And those are usually Free-to-play not Triple-A...

I should mention that Gearbox is adamant about how the game isn't a MOBA but rather is something different with MOBA-esque elements.  

Perhaps they're going for a hybrid of sorts which would explain the presence of a single player component in an otherwise online focused experience.  The inescapable fact is that without a rich single-player experience, Battleborn is just another League of Legends with a first person perspective.

As such I wouldn't bet on the single-player (story) mode to disappear as that would remove the justification for a triple-A price tag on it.  That  said, my sense is that the MOBA component will still be far more popular than the single player game.  Something I'm confident Gearbox is aware of.

As for me, I don't care much for MOBA's so my enthusiasm for Battleborn waned after about 30 minutes.  I gave it the college try for about 5 hours but my opinion didn't change.

That's not completely the game's fault, it's just a genre I'm not into.

Don't get me wrong, I didn't hate playing Battleborn, There's a lot to like about it.  (for a beta that is.)  

I just found elements that detracted from what I believe Gearbox wanted me to get out of the experience.  Most of which landed squarely in the lap of an awful matchmaking process akin to those seen in Call of Duty games.  

I'm pretty sure Gearbox was more interested in actual gameplay performance than the lobby you had to suffer through to get there.  Long wait times, lopsided player matching and players falling out of queues are all well documented annoyances in public forums.  I'm certain there were far more people turned off by the lobby experience than the gameplay itself.    

I don't see this getting any better when the game is actually launched unless they dump the whole matchmaking thing.  It didn't get better with Call of Duty games and I'm seeing the same type of game mechanic at work here.

Remember, however, that all of this opinion is based on impressions of pre-release software so things may change but I'd guess that at least 80% of what I saw will show up on launch day.  Still, that testing was so focused on online play this late in development tells you where Gearbox's head is at with Battleborn.

As for the release of the game, well, that's been pushed back from February to May.  Perhaps the technical testing was more revealing than Gearbox expected.  The release date changed between the first and second "load tests."

I have suspicions as to why based on my own experiences but sharing them might violate the NDA.  I'll say this, think about the kinds of things that have delayed the launch of a triple-A title over the past 5 years and it's likely the reason is in there somewhere.

In the end Battleborn is poised to be the MOBA Borderlands players have been hoping for but only time will tell if that's enough of a market to make it a success for Gearbox.

But that's just my opinion...