I certainly think that had Overwatch not come out that Battleborn would have done significantly better. However, that doesn't mean that I think it would have been as successful as Overwatch is (which recently celebrated 20 million players.) And I still feel that the true litmus test for the game was when it went on Humble Bundle for $15. That was a 75% discount on the game, and it included free in game currency. If the game had maintained its player spike it got from it then you could at least say that its blunders were more due to bad timing. But the fact that the player base went right back down to pre-sale levels just proved that it was the game itself that was hurting it.
Still, at this point going F2P can't hurt. I mean how can the game do any worse than it currently is now? The peak playerbase of the past 30 days is 626. Then again it'll still run into difficulty going F2P thanks to Paladins being out now, which has an average for 24,000 players and is seeing constant updates and improvements. But again, at this point, why not go F2P? Well, that along with making some fundamental gameplay changes. It's not worth doing an overhaul and still charging money because the name is so tarnished. Best to try the Evolve thing at this point, although it should be noted that that also had a huge dropoff after it went F2P in the first few months.
http://steamcharts.com/app/273350
