Brawl Busters - Matchmaking

I wrote in my pros/cons list of this game that one of the things that I don't like about it is the matchmaking system. It's not quite terrible enough to ruin my enjoyment of the game completely but I could see how people might not want to play the game because of it.

Here's how it works: You choose a lobby room from the eight listed (2 for beginners, 2 for advanced players, and 4 open rooms for everyone.) Then inside that room, you're provided with a list of available player-created games. They give you a description, the game type, the map, the number of players in the game waiting and the latency of the host of the game.

Speaking of latency, I'm still not sure how it's calculated. I have a really good internet connection so I've never seen my latency below three bars but I see people with red Xs (zero bars) all the time. I'm not sure if that latency is to their login servers or to the host of the game or what.

Once you're in the game of your choosing, you must click "Ready" to show that you're ready to play. Once enough people join and push "Ready", the host clicks "Start" and the game starts. Another button exists for the hosts called "Balance Game." This will move players around on the teams based on level to keep the teams "fair."

In a perfect world where everyone is a mature, sensible human being, this would probably be a fine matchmaking system. But, as anyone who's been on the internet for more than five minutes knows, those people are few and far between, especially in a combat-based PVP game.

Unfortunately, there yet exists in the game a way to make sure you can play on a team with your friends. If you and a buddy join the same game on the same team, there's a good chance you could get balanced off of the same team and be forced to play against each other. On the other side of the coin, you'll often join a game which has all of the highest level people on one team. I'll join these games and sit and watch for a moment as the game sits at 5/8 with a person joining and leaving every few seconds. I wonder if these other people actually get to play the game very often because it seems as if no one would want to play against them.

The LFG system that WoW uses would be awesome in this game because games are so short. They can keep their lobby games, just have special games that are server controlled. Eight people click "random game" and those eight people get teamed up, balanced, and the game starts. It would only take a few seconds and would allow you to spend more time playing the game and less time sitting in the lobby.

I've been trying to come up with a good description for the games I start. "4v4 ASAP" is what I usually put. And of course, I still get one person joining and saying "1v1, let's go."

Next time I'm going to write a basic strategy article from my experience as a slugger.

Brawl Busters - Shop/Gear

In this post, I'm going to talk a little bit about how gear works as well as the real money store.

Currency:

The game consists of two types of currency: Buster Points (which you get from playing the game) and Rock Tokens (which you buy with cold, hard, real money.)  Standard weapons and costume pieces are purchased with BP, cosmetic accessories or appearance changes are purchased with RT and upgrades can be purchased with both BP and RT.

Weapons and Costume pieces:

Gear is class specific. You have five different costume slots: head, chest, legs, hands, feet as well as a weapon. All of the costume pieces for each slot are identical except for the look so you can mix and match to suit your appearance as you wish. Each class has two different available secondary and special attacks which can be mixed and matched depending on which weapon you have. I've been playing a Slugger primarily so I'll use it as an example:

Secondary attacks: Trinity Ball - Fires three projectiles or Continuous Fire - Fires one projectile with a significantly decreased cooldown

Special attacks: Big ball - fires an orb that ends with an AOE explosion or Time bomb - places a bomb on the heads of what it hits and explodes a second or so later

Each weapon will make one secondary and one special attack available. I recommend buying multiple weapons and trying all the attacks out before you decide which two you want to use most of the time. Once you do so, then you can start upgrading that weapon.

Upgrades:

To upgrade your gear, you purchase items that have either single or multiple charges on them from the store. Weapon+ items increase the level of your weapon and hence the damage and Costume+ items increase the defense of items as well as your max HP. Costume pieces also have another slot for what are called "fuse upgrades." These add certain special stats to your gear such as reduced blast damage or increase crit damage.

The catch to upgrading your gear is that there is a chance that using the upgrade item will actually downgrade your item or destroy it completely. This provides the game with a money sink as well as the major advantage to spending real money on RT: upgrade protection. When you go into the upgrade screen, it gives you the option of spending RT to eliminate the chance that your weapon/costume pieces will be destroyed or downgraded. This will save you time from having to get more BP to buy more gear to replace what is destroyed.

Brawl Busters - Overview

I've been playing a bit of Brawl Busters the last few days. For those of you who don't know, Brawl Busters is a F2P multiplayer combat game. There are five different classes and several game modes such as fighting zombies and other critters to 4 on 4  team PVP combat. As you play through the game you get XP which increases your level and unlocks certain items and allows you to choose more classes as well as an in-game currency.

Things I like:

• Game is easy to pick up and play - The game starts with a series of one player tutorial missions that teach you the basics of the game and mechanics as well as allowing you to try all five classes to get a taste of them.
• Balance - Even though sometimes a person will just beat the tar out of me a couple times in a level, I never really feel as if any of the classes are overpowered. Plus, if you decide you don't like a class, you can switch to a different one mid match.
• Controls - The game usually feels responsive and the controls are easy to learn as well as customizable.
• Simplicity - The premise is simple and the objectives are obvious: kill people on the other team.
• Levels aren't important -  Just because a person is a higher level, that doesn't mean they're better than you. It just means they've played longer than you. I've already had several matches where I lead in kills/assists as the lowest level person on the team.
• Pay items aren't horribly overpowered - Items you buy from the real money store are either temporary, cosmetic, or obtainable through the free in-game currency.

Things I don't like:

• Matchmaking - The current lobby-based system kinda sucks. You're at the mercy of people jumping in and out of games or you have to wait on people to click "ready" before you can start matches. Sometimes this makes it hard for you to find a game to play right away. It's always a bummer when you have to wait longer than a match would last to find one to play.
• Items don't always work - One of the key mechanics of the game is breaking pieces of the environment (chairs, lampposts, garbage cans, etc) and getting items out of them. Sometimes it seems as if the items just completely miss even from point blank range. It's probably a latency issue but it can be annoying when you're being beaten on someone and you pop your item to get out of the situation and it doesn't do anything.

I'll get into more details about some of this stuff in future posts.