esports
Paladins is getting in on the Battle Royale trend with its own unique take, but it still needs to take some inspiration from PUBG and Fortnite to really make it shine.
We knew that it would happen eventually, and now we're starting to see the first wave of additional devs who also want a slice of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds’ success. With PUBG having sold millions of copies and achieved huge acclaim, many developers are now adding Battle Royale modes to their titles. While some have been really quite good, such as Fortnite, others maybe need a lot more work.
One of the most interesting – at least on paper – is the recently announced Paladins: Battlegrounds. This new mode will be added to Hi-Rez Studios’ hero shooter before the end of March, and has quite a few differences to the other Battle Royale titles out there. For starters, the heroes will remain the same, so you will be playing as heroes that have abilities, and are designed for specific roles. It will also be a team based mode, meaning team composition becomes a key factor, much like regular Paladins play.
It sounds like a neat idea, and if it plays similarly to the main modes in Paladins, then it could be something truly special. But this is a combination that hasn’t really been tried out before. We know hero shooters work, because Paladins exists, and we know Battle Royale games work because PUBG and Fortnite exist, but together, well, that’s an untested idea. In order to to make sure that Paladins: Battlegrounds is a success, these are the things that Hi-Rez need to learn from PUBG and Fortnite.
1. Remove invisibility
We're actually big fans of the idea of letting every hero keep their weapons and abilities, and have them all from the start of the game. It makes things feel very different and means that playing with a different character can totally change the game, which certainly isn’t a bad thing. However, there are a few abilities that we are a little worried about in the context of Battle Royale.
The main one is the ability to go invisible, namely Skye’s Hidden ability that makes her invisible for 7.5 seconds unless she gets close to enemies. In the close quarters combat of most Paladins maps, this isn’t much of an issue, but in the sprawling open space of Battlegrounds, this might feel a little unfair. With most fights starting off at a distance, 7.5 seconds of invisibility is more than enough time to totally disengage, find some good cover and have a massive advantage. It basically makes her impossible to pick off.
Sure, characters should be kept the same for the most part, but this sounds a little unbalanced in the scope of a Battle Royale mode, so maybe there should be a few tweaks here and there to certain abilities.
2. Keep the map accessible to everyone
A lot of the Paladins heroes have an ability that gives them some kind of advanced movement, from teleports to dashes. This means that some heroes will be able to traverse the map in different ways, and if the map doesn’t equate for this, then certain heroes might be able to reach areas – and potentially loot – that others can’t. This is of course not ideal, as it gives certain heroes a significant advantage over others, whether that’s just for better positioning in a fight, or being able to access some loot boxes others can’t.
The solution to this is to thoroughly test the map a lot, and make sure that every single area is accessible for every hero, and also make sure that there aren’t any areas where certain heroes might be able to get stuck – a pitfall that PUBG’s Miramar fell into. If Hi-Rez can make sure that no heroes have a huge advantage because of the map, there’ll be no issues in this department.
3. Make sure there’s lots of loot
The early gameplay videos from Paladins: Battlegrounds have shown off the game and its mechanics pretty well, but there is one area that seems a little lacking: the amount of loot available. Loot is a big part of Battle Royale titles, and a good early game looting sesh can be the difference between a win and a loss. But in Paladins: Battlegrounds, each hero can seemingly only carry four pieces of loot, and there doesn’t seem to be too much variation in what they do. In fact they all seem to only add stats to the hero.
That lack of interesting loot could start to feel repetitive – and stat boosts, especially the ones that the gold loot seems to offer, could make things very unbalanced. PUBG works well because in certain situations, almost every weapon is useful – even the frying pan – so even a bad loot start can be used to your advantage. But with stat boosts seemingly giving a lot to the players who've managed to grab some loot, fights could become very one-sided a lot of the time – and that’s just not fun for anyone. Make sure there’s a lot of top tier loot for all of the players, and this will surely become less of an issue.
4. Remove the randomness
Perhaps the biggest concern for us is that at the start of the match, you’re given a random selection of eight heroes to choose from. This could theoretically mean that your game could almost be over before it has even begun, a problem PUBG and Fortnite don’t have, as everyone starts off with an even playing field with no advantages. If you get eight characters that you can’t play well, or you get characters that don’t make a good composition, then you could be in trouble.
The heroes you get to choose from will have at least one from each different class, so there is that, but if you don’t own any heroes in the game then you will only get four to choose from. If you and your team are all in the same boat then you could be struggling to put together a solid composition, which could turn new players off the game. This seems like a bit of a needless feature, but there is a fix: Hi-Rez could look to Riot Games’ League of Legends model, where there's a weekly rotation of free heroes, and people are also free to pick from any that they already own. In that case, then everyone is on an (almost) even playing field at the start of the match.
