Leveling in BL3

Borderlands 2 Gameplay Discussion (Spoilers!)
#1

I’ve always felt the penalty for death in Borderlands is just too meaningless. Losing money just doesn’t suck that much when everything you can buy can reasonably be dropped in-world. What do you guys think about a 10% - 20% reduction in experience points if you die? And this option could be toggled in the settings.

#2

By skill points I assume you mean experience? because if you mean skillpoints I think you’re insane.

Even still, leveling takes long enough as it is I feel like adding that as a penalty would just be annoying. The way I see it, if you don’t die at least every once in a while , you arn’t pushing yourself enough.

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#3

I do mean exp points, not skill points. I’ll fix that. You know in terraria there are three settings based on what happens when you die:

You keep everything
you lose everything
Your character dies completely

As a Terraria fan, the latter really makes you think about how to approach any given area. If not part of the main game, I would like to see some sort of extreme hardcore mode where if you die, your character is done.

#4

I dunno, I’ve never been much of a hardcore player I usually gauge my strength based loosly on how much I die, so I wouldn’t use it, but if enough people ask for it i guess it would be a cool thing to add.

#5

I am not sure if such a mode is a good idea, especially if the host’s settings apply to all players. A devious host could change his or her game settings to hardcore mode right as another player is about to die. There is a similar mode in Diablo III. In that mode, your character is stored server side. However, you don’t have to actually legitimately die in-game to lose your character. If (for some reason) you lose your Internet Connection or Connection to PSN / Xbox Live, etc. while playing Diablo III in Hardcore mode, you permanently lose your character. A famous DJ (Deadmau5) recently had this happen to him with a high level Diablo III Demon Hunter character.

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#6

There are to many stupid ways to die in Borderlands

Parked the car wrong and tried to get out, oh you died.

Quest item in a precarious position, oh you jumped slightly wrong and died (I am looking at you blood fruit on building roof in TK Baha’s DLC)

Silence the Voices on Kreig Proccing 4 times in a row, and you smash your own face off.

And those are only the ones I have done, I am sure there are plenty of other ways to die that are completely out of the control of the player, especially when people put platform challenges in 1st person games, I CANNOT SEE MY FEET, how am I supposed to know when and where to jump???

#7

I’d like to add having a dodgy odd controller which often refuses to accept that you’ve stopped pressing the movement stick and leaves you ambling slowly forward. There have been many occasions where I’ve put the controller down for a second to do something else and come back to find I’ve walked off a cliff, it has made my 1Life run a bit hairy at times.

As for the idea of losing experience points for dying, I think it could possibly work if it was optional, for casual gamers who maybe aren’t that good at the game and die a lot it would be a nightmare and I would guess that it’d make a lot of people give up on the game pretty quickly.

#8

End game options and challenges will make the next game, and maybe that would be the time to add it. Once you’ve done the game, then you have an option to play through hardcore? Would seem fitting. But why punish everyone with XP loss. Everyone has to have a fair playing field to start, after that more options would be nice for sure.

But being punished is ok to some, not too others. The initial game design has to cater for a wide variety of players. So starting out should be fair play to all. In a game that uses xp to level up, a lot of people would despise that idea.

#9

Dying seems bad enough for me. I don’t want to be the guy fighting the Dragons or Terra needing a constant revive and i don’t like dying fighting them solo, even though it happens. Not dying I suppose is a self imposed challenge, I don’t need the game punishing me to a certain behavior. For those folks that want to run willy-nilly and trot back to where they died single player I don’t mind, let them. They aren’t hurting me solo and they won’t last long in multi-player with folks that don’t play in similar fashion. They remove themselves from the game if they go down constantly and nobody else does, or worse rage quit after the after the 5th downing in 2 minutes when someone doesn’t revive them.

#10

I’d like to see all of these added as options, not core elements of the game. I think it adds value. I do think there should be some penalty for dying, though. I don’t play online. Never have. So, my view is myopic on this. Everything I’ve done in the game has been in single player. I wouldn’t mind the extra challenge. I do, however, understand how this could be problematic in multiplayer.

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#11

I don’t think this is a good idea.

Imagine you’re taking on a raid for the first time on your character. You have no idea about the mechanics of the fight. You will die many times until you figure it out, and you will lose XP.

Gotten into a slump with gear while leveling and dying a bit more often? Now that leveling takes longer.
Accidentally drive off a cliff? Lose XP.
Playing in a game with overleveled characters? You better hide like your life depends on it.

There are too many things in this game that result in death that are out of the player’s control for this to work. And honestly, there are better ways to punish people than forcing them to lose progression on a character. Losing 7 milion dollars means you can’t buy a legendary. Losing 7000 XP means the game just invalidated time you spent working on your character for no reason.

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#12

Dying is actually pretty common place in the game and it’s a big part of the experience. The game goes out of its way to tell you that dying doesn’t matter and that’s actually part of the fun. You need to die a lot to learn how to play it properly. The game is very “trial and error”, by design. I think punishing players for dying actually goes against the style of the game and it’s a bad idea. Losing loads of money when you die is punishment enough and facing enemies many levels higher than you in the OP levels is already enough of a “hardcore” mode. People looking for an extra challenge can try “one life” runs on their own, so I don’t think it’s something that needs to be included in the game officially.

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#13

I don’t see the harm in making one life only a toggle-able mechanic. It could be a way to unlock a super awesome legendary or pearl that has no other way of being unlocked. I don’t think any of what I suggested should be part of the core game experience. I think more option(s) for players endgame is nice.

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#14

But its also something the player can do on their own without having a game mode.

Let me put it this way; hardcore makes sense in a game like Diablo where you can’t drive off a map, fall through the world, get stuck in the environment, duel other people, etc…

In BL however, any of those things can happen. FFYL timers go wonky, vehicles don’t cooperate, and co-op partners might not be great at their jobs.

Also, why can’t players just use the 1life restriction on there own? Why does there have to be a mode for it? OP levels were one thing, you couldn’t over-level the game content that much without using cheat engine or some other 3rd party software. A one life run is something you can easily do yourself, just delete your character when you die. Plenty of people have done it. I don’t see a need to have a mode around that, especially when things like the mutator arena and DP exist to provide challenge and loot.

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#15

I died in game last week, in Lynchwood to farm the Sheriff’s badge, and the train ran over me.

I know, everyone gets run over by the train at some point, but farming the Sheriff? Why am I even on the train track.

And that’s the problem, I wasn’t, I was inside the station, I had just zoned in, ran down the stairs and thought I would check the ammo crates at the doorway, just as I get to them, the ringing goes off, I hear the sound of the train, and boom, insta-death, no shooting, no nothing.

To many ways to die in this game without even mobs around to even think of having a toggle for 1 life mode.

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