So after another week of playing this game I am getting more and more addicted to it. In my quest to unlock the class-specific artifact on Miko I needed to be on the same team as Kelvin 5 times... which resulted in me playing a phenomenal number of PVP matches (which are always faster than a Story mission) because Kelvin is an incredibly unpopular character. In the course of doing all these matches I started to explore other characters and quickly became enamored with them as well and found myself eager to level up those characters after I finished Miko.
The main focus, for me, remains the Story missions and I particularly like that the Heliophage acts not only as a capstone for the Story Mission plotline but also is something you can specifically queue for since it has to be unlocked. The end result is something that isn't quite a raid, but is still considerably tougher than doing the other Story missions and has an epic feel to it. The first time I finished it I did so solo, but doing it with a full group gave me a solid team-spirit "fuck yah!" feeling after Rendain died. In this sense Battleborn is very akin to an MMORPG without any type of overland sandbox, or Destiny/Division without any of the Strikes.
The main downside at this point is that the Gear is a blessing and a curse.
First of all he artifact I got from completing Miko's Lore series was nice, but actually not quite as nice as a blue healing item I had gotten on day one from the very first pack I opened. It has a special Miko-only attribute, but it is pretty freaking weak and only useful if someone on your team takes a really BIG hit while you are otherwise throwing Kunai and not actively using Healing Stream. That's a pretty specific set of circumstances that I don't know will ever come into play, or I can use an item that gives a blanket +10% more healing if I survive for 3 minutes.
The problem with the Gear is that, in MOBA style, you need to gain enough currency in any given Story / Match to activate them and the nicer items cost a lot more to activate. While gaining crystals on some PVP maps is fairly easy, others only seem to garner a slow steady trickle and in either case having enough to activate your shiny new Gear is going to take awhile... it also means forgoing spending those shards on buildables which weakens your overall team. Even in Story missions I only get to activate my Gear towards the end of the fight and still by holding off on spending on turrets or other defense buildables that probably do more than my +8% attack speed or whatever. In many ways the really crappy white Gear that costs 0 to activate is better than the higher rarity items because, assuming you can live with whatever negative side effect is has, it provides an immediate benefit at the start of the game and doesn't take away from buildable support.
I know this sort of thing has been fairly common in MOBAs, but given that you only have a static loadout of items rather than a progression of things that you build to AND that they are relatively weak compared to other things to spend crystals on I feel that Gearbox needs to rethink how they handle Gear and loadouts in general.
I do wish more people were playing this game, but I fear that it is destined to be swept under the rug.
