Next Up In Battleborn vs Overwatch: Battleborn Drops Its Price To Compete.

[Vigormortis]

This works out for me. Battleborn's beta was far more entertaining than Overwatch's. There's just something about Overwatch that just...I suppose the best way to describe it is that it did nothing for me. Every time I loaded it up to play it felt like I was forcing myself to do so.

I'm not quite sure what it is. I don't think it's the character designs, though they do feel disjointed. It wasn't really the gameplay, though, while solid, it wasn't really that entertaining.

I don't know. I guess, as a package, Overwatch just bored me. It just feels...dull. Can't entirely put my finger on any specific reason why.

Battleborn, while not the 'best thing evar', was at least marginally entertaining during the beta. If the price has dropped to below $40 I might actually consider picking it up. Though, truth be told, I'm just waiting for Titanfall 2 for my multiplayer fix. Until then I can use Doom and (maybe) Battleborn to tide me over.

 

[Bobular]

I think if Battleborn had moved it release back a month they would have made a whole load more money. With the hype around Overwatch most games would be well served avoiding this month just because people have a limited amount of money and time, and they're most likely going to buy Overwatch so wait until they've had another paycheck.

The only reason Battleborn was compeating with Overwatch is because they chose to come out at the same time.

 

[Smooth Operator]

Well it's good news for consumers because you get an awful lot more with Battleborn, although I would still call it rather light on content.
But they do not have the name, there aren't 20mil rabid fans waiting around for whatever they produce, unlike the competition which will overshadow them completely simply based on company popularity.

 

[Fallow]

I consider Battleborn more entertaining than Overwatch, and if I'd buy one, it would be Battleborn.

That said, neither is worth $60. For Battleborn with all the season passes and microtransactions I'd pay max $20 (and I guess an extra $20 in the end for all the extras), and Overwatch, which feels like the multiplayer module of a real game, is worth maybe $30.

If what I keep hearing about player attrition is true, I'd probably not get Battleborn at all though. If you sell a game on competitive multiplayer with official servers only you better provide enough players, that's not on me to arrange.

 

[AzrealMaximillion]

MOBAs are rather new to the console market. I'm pretty sure Gearbox is more concerned with the console market than PC since Battleborn doesn't have to compete with say LoL in that regard.

Battleborn does have to compete with Paragon which is being well received in its beta stage and Smite which has been kind of popular on consoles for a while now. The price tag along with its season pass AND microtransactions already makes holds Battleborn back in terms of it being a long term game.

I truly don't think Gearbox felt confident enough in making Battleborn free and charging for heroes like SMITE or going with microtransactions like Paragon.

Battleborn is a good game, its just got a few design choices and pricing choices that hold it back. People in the Steam forums are upset that the price cut happened in order to compete with a game that it shouldn't be competing with.

Gearbox should have made a better effort to market what the game was to people. The consfusion on whether it was a shooter or a MOBA or a hybrid didn't help.

 

[AzrealMaximillion]

I consider Battleborn more entertaining than Overwatch, and if I'd buy one, it would be Battleborn.

That said, neither is worth $60. For Battleborn with all the season passes and microtransactions I'd pay max $20 (and I guess an extra $20 in the end for all the extras), and Overwatch, which feels like the multiplayer module of a real game, is worth maybe $30.

If what I keep hearing about player attrition is true, I'd probably not get Battleborn at all though. If you sell a game on competitive multiplayer with official servers only you better provide enough players, that's not on me to arrange.

Overwatch is only $60 on consoles. You can get the $40 version on PC. I payed $60 and I love the game to be honest.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

MOBAs are rather new to the console market. I'm pretty sure Gearbox is more concerned with the console market than PC since Battleborn doesn't have to compete with say LoL in that regard.

Battleborn does have to compete with Paragon which is being well received in its beta stage and Smite which has been kind of popular on consoles for a while now. The price tag along with its season pass AND microtransactions already makes holds Battleborn back in terms of it being a long term game.

I truly don't think Gearbox felt confident enough in making Battleborn free and charging for heroes like SMITE or going with microtransactions like Paragon.

Battleborn is a good game, its just got a few design choices and pricing choices that hold it back. People in the Steam forums are upset that the price cut happened in order to compete with a game that it shouldn't be competing with.

Gearbox should have made a better effort to market what the game was to people. The consfusion on whether it was a shooter or a MOBA or a hybrid didn't help.

Gearbox should've just marketed it as Borderlands PvP really. I never played a MOBA before but it was really simple to get the gist of the game. It's an objective-based game where you level up each match ala Borderlands. I'd say the majority of the console audience would "get" it (as MOBAs haven't really broken though on consoles yet) by just saying like Borderlands but with XYZ, plus you get the Borderlands brand in there. You play it just like any other shooter by seizing map control.

 

[Worgen]

Battleborn's main problem is being the only MOBA made by people dumb enough to charge full price, plus seasons pass, PLUS microtransacions, AND have heroes locked behind gameplay grinding. Its a good game mucked up by greed and the fear of it not taking off.

Yeah, Im really enjoying the game and so far havent really had any issues finding matches but the inclusion of full price and a season pass is really short sighted. They should have done a all battleborn pack, like the god pack in smite. I suppose fullprice I can understand but the season pass is super weird since you can't break a moba player base up like that.

 

[Worgen]

That's nice, but why would I even buy Battleborn, even at a decreased price, when I just got Overwatch?
Or, if I had to choose, why choosing the game with much less players and much less extras (videos, comics, etc.)?

Don't get me wrong, Battleborn looks good, I'd most probably enjoy it. But Overwatch has a very strong charm, it just sticks, you end up caring for the characters.

They are actually 2 rather different games. Overwatch is kind of a more different version of tf2. Battleborn is closer to a fps moba, just with single player content included.

 

[Jandau]

What I find hillarious is that while everyone is arguing over how much did Overwatch wipe the floor with poor Battleborn and how much of that was deserved, the true victim here has been forgotten - Paragon. Any of you even remember Paragon? Yeah, thought so...

 

[DudeistBelieve]

Indeed, in an attempt to compete with Overwatch, Battleborn has already dropped it's price to $40 [http://www.gamespot.com/articles/retailers-discount-battleborn-as-overwatch-prepare/1100-6440074/] despite the fact that it hasn't even been out for a month yet.

Two things:

1: I still think it's ridiculous that they're putting so much effort into competing with Overwatch when the games really only have two similarities: they're both shooters and they both have classes/heroes. That's really where the similarities end, and while there's certainly audience cross-over between the two games, the fact that their gameplay is - if you ask me - so completely different from one another, I still say they're not in direct competition with each other. Battleborn is much more like a MOBA. There's minions, customizeable gear loadouts, in-game leveling up with ability specializations, etc. Overwatch is a traditional fast-paced Arena Shooter. Two teams fighting for a single objective at a time.

To be clear: I'd say Battleborn is competing against games like Smite while Overwatch is competing against games like TF2.

2: I would definitely be pissed off if I bought Battleborn for $60 only to hear that they dropped the price two weeks later. There's no word yet on if Gearbox intends to compensate those players that bought the game for full price at launch, but they'd better give out some goodies to those players otherwise they're going to have a lot of pissed off fans on their hands. I think an easy thing to do would be to toss everyone the Season Pass for free if they paid $60 for the game...but that doesn't really help the people that bought the game at full price AND already have the Season Pass.

1. Battleborn made its own bed with the way they marketed the game. Everything about their mainstream marketing seemed like it was trying to ride on the coat-tails of OVerwatch. And that just killed it. If I were Gearbox I would have done anything to avoid releasing on top of Overwatch like they did. Or at very least, I would have marketed the gameplay over the characters to do my fucking best to stand out. Gearbox did none of these things. Every ad that ran at local Gamestops, promoted 25 chracters and chaos, which made it look and sounds like an Overwatch knock off. Which Overwatch's marketing completely overwhelmed them as well so it isn't all their fault.

2. Don't hold your breath. It really wasn't hard to see this coming. With the $60 price tag and shitty promotions, Battleborn had no choice but to knock it's price down and honestly...I don't think this is going to work either. The game is going to get crushed by the sheer mountain of Overwatch promotion, from players who don't know any better.

But that doesn't mean that Battleborn isn't going to have it's own audience of players that took the time to look into the game. A quick look at Steamspy shows that Battleborn on PC sold 118K copies and as I write this has 94K concurrent players. That's like an 80% retention rate during Overwatch release week. I'd say that's a pretty good player hold.

That being said, I don't imagine Battleborn is going to get a huge influx of players anytime soon. But for now, at least the player base seems to be steady.

This. To the point that I was even getting confused about the two.

 

[Hawki]

What I find hillarious is that while everyone is arguing over how much did Overwatch wipe the floor with poor Battleborn and how much of that was deserved, the true victim here has been forgotten - Paragon. Any of you even remember Paragon? Yeah, thought so...

I would have thought Paladins would be the "forgotten victim" here, but scuttlebutt is that Hi-Rez dug its own grave. Paragon is too early to call, as it's been marketed as nothing but a MOBA. Battleborn and Overwatch at least have the similarity of aesthetics and the "hero" idea, while Paragon is far colder in its aesthetic and how it approaches character (bereft of identity).

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

Fame and success draws people and Blizzard is both famous and successful. Gamers trust Blizzard and they imediately assume that their game would be a huge success. And if it's a huge success they know it will have populated servers for a long time. It's a self fulfilling prophecy. Maybe Battleborn doesn't want or intend to compete with Overwatch but they don't really have a choice. They are competing whether they like it or not. And it's really hard to draw people to your product if you don't offer some amazing incentive. And Battleborn just doesn't do that. It's got a very greedy business model and people don't think that it will stay relevant for long.

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

They're both full priced games with no single player. They are both the same to me. Maybe i'll try overwatch during a bargain sale. Battleborn just makes me want to ignore it. I have no idea why. It seems to scream dreariness and unoriginality like a bag of smouldering sprouts.

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

Maybe i'll try overwatch during a bargain sale.

Right, because bargain sales are what Blizzard is famous for.

 

[Vigormortis]

AND microtransactions

What microtransactions? I know about the season pass, but I didn't see any 'microtransactions'. The Marketplace content is bought with in-game currency earned by playing matches. As far as I'm aware, you can't spend real money to get that currency.

They're both full priced games with no single player.

Um....Battleborn has a campaign. And you can play the entirety of the campaign and versus modes solo and offline. <.<

They are both the same to me. Maybe i'll try overwatch during a bargain sale. Battleborn just makes me want to ignore it. I have no idea why. It seems to scream dreariness and unoriginality like a bag of smouldering sprouts.

That's kind of funny to me as I think that is my major criticism of Overwatch. Everything I've seen and experienced from it just screams "The team behind this are creatively bankrupt". It's like they just hobbled together the basic gameplay structure of Team Fortress 2 (without the nuances), and filled the "class" roster with an eclectic hodgepodge of characters whose individual designs and aesthetics just don't quite mesh with each other. Similar to the design philosophies in League of Legends.

I guess what I'm saying is, to me Overwatch just seems like a Team Fortress 2 clone with an identity crisis.

Fame and success draws people and Blizzard is both famous and successful. Gamers trust Blizzard and they imediately assume that their game would be a huge success. And if it's a huge success they know it will have populated servers for a long time. It's a self fulfilling prophecy.

Pretty much.

Diablo 3 was a complete catastrophe at launch, and for quite some time after, yet it remains one of the most successful PC games ever.

How I wish I could be like Blizzard. Wouldn't really matter what I do or make, people would lap it up and ask for seconds, and thank me for taking their money in the process.

Maybe i'll try overwatch during a bargain sale.

Right, because bargain sales are what Blizzard is famous for.

Overwatch! With GOTY content! Now only $79.99!

 

[DefunctTheory]

AND microtransactions

What microtransactions? I know about the season pass, but I didn't see any 'microtransactions'. The Marketplace content is bought with in-game currency earned by playing matches. As far as I'm aware, you can't spend real money to get that currency.

Battleborn is scheduled to have micro transactions sometime in the near future. From what they've said, it will be limited to cosmetic items/stances/whatever, so as long as Gearbox keeps there word, I guess there's no harm done.

They're also going to pay wall (DLC bleed) PvE content, but I'm fairly certain 99% of the people playing don't really give a shit about that.

Maybe i'll try overwatch during a bargain sale.

Right, because bargain sales are what Blizzard is famous for.

Overwatch! With GOTY content! Now only $79.99!

Supposedly, Overwatch is pretty much guaranteed to be free of paid DLC or expansions for quite some time, if not forever. I imagine they're going to focus on the 'hat money.'

 

[Luminous_Umbra]

They're both full priced games with no single player. They are both the same to me. Maybe i'll try overwatch during a bargain sale. Battleborn just makes me want to ignore it. I have no idea why. It seems to scream dreariness and unoriginality like a bag of smouldering sprouts.

Except Battleborn has single player and co-op.