Rant Time! Friend bugging me

Borderlands 2 BL2 General Discussion
#1

Rant time!
How do I deal with a friend who has gone from lvl 50 to 72 OP8 overnight?
Just steam chat spams me with how he can’t kill anything. So I ask him how he got to OP8, and he says he was boosted by people joining his co-op game.
I ask him what gear he has, he says he has all OP8 gear but can’t kill Doc Mercy with his NorFleet. Constantly complaining about how OP is making the game worse, and he should be able to play his class with whatever build he wants. Somehow I get the feeling this guy has never played an online game before where efficient builds are always greater than “doing what you think should be fun”
I check his profile and he has ~150hrs in game. Pretty sure it’s impossible to go from lvl 1 - 72 OP8 and all OP8 gear in that amount of time(outside of making a 2nd account)

Anyone have a friend who has decided to go the “save file” route? I understand people doing it who have already played the game extensively and may want to play another class without going through the grind again, but this guy is driving me nuts.

Rant off! Feel free to burn me or agree with me, it’s all good =)

#2

Sounds like an attitude problem, if the spam chat is annoying you I’d suggest blocking him. Or just tell him to stop playing the OP levels and go back to Level 72.

Save editors may be able to make powerful builds dorm nothing, but that’s only useful when combined with skill and knowledge of the game’s mechanics.

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#3

In situations like this you can ask him to broadcast the game through steam and see what’s going on. He might be doing something fundamentally stupid that he needs someone to point that out for him.

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#4

This. So much this. It doesn’t matter how you got to OP 8, or what equipment you use, if you don’t know what you’re doing, you’re going to have a hard time at it. If your friend had gone the regular way at least once, he wouldn’t be having those issues and you can tell him that. I’d also tell him he’s bullshitting you about getting to OP 8 by people joining his game because you have to go through Digistruct Peak to open up each new OP level and by the time you’ve gone through it 8 times, you know how the game works; unless you’re a complete idiot, which could be the case here.

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#5

^^^^ What he said. Sounds like your friend went the way of Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs, and has now seen that powerful gear doesn’t work if you don’t have the knowledge of how best to use them. It takes playing the game to do that- and for having just played 150+ hours I doubt that he knows any of the characters well enough to really play them well. As a last resort offer to start a new game with new characters for the both of you and see how he plays the game with the character he chooses. After that offer to send him to the appropriate section of this forum for tips/help. If he doesn’t want to do that, tell him he’s on his own and to stop complaining- after all, if he got there legitimately then he should know what he’s doing…

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#6

Tell him to start a new character and level it up himself, and therefore actually learn how to play the game. And leave him to it. That’s the great thing about this game: Its about gear, leveling, skills, character build and tactics. Being weak in any single area = fail. Short of glitching or exploiting, and certain lame approaches, there are no workarounds.

#7

50 to OP8 in one night?
sounds like voldemort.exe

and you know what you’re doing in general. anyway, wise words gentleman

LOOOOOOOOOOL xDDDDDD

#8

His game and he can do what he wants. You have to decide whether that negatively infringes on your enjoyment experience. And it is possible to get to OP8 from 50 in a day with help from friends and power leveling…however as Gulf points out it is extremely unlikely.

I like Ab’s suggestion to try to help the guy vice ostracize him. The game needs as many new players as it can get to keep it going.

I guess, in the end, you have to decide whether you like the guy enough to be patient with him.

1 Like
#9

Man am I silly.

I was busy having all that fun between levels 50-72, and completing OP levels with new methods and techniques, when I could’ve had some one else finish the game I paid for. I may also begin asking other patrons at pubs if they wish to have a few sips of my beer before I’m done drinking it.

Sorry, I’m being facetious, and that really it isn’t fair to you. Your friend should know better than to annoy his friends due to his own mistakes. It makes for a poor friendship.

I suggest the @Chuck80 Method which I’ve discovered via his posts.

It goes roughly like this;

“If you have a Borderlands issue. Try more Borderlandsing in order to solve it.”

Your friend shouldn’t be having these troubles, what he most likely has is a makeshift build which he can’t wield because he hasn’t learned how to effectively use nearly 22 skill points that have been added to his character. He would’ve phased in to these abilities (no pun intended if he’s playing Maya) had he just played the game normally.

He’ll have to retroactively learn how to use them, grinding out time he could’ve spent having fun.

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#10

This is exactly why I suggest people don’t powerlevel and earn the levels by learning how to play. Just like back in the day when high school kids could go strait to the NBA sure there were a few exceptions like Lebron but most failed because it was too big of a jump in competition.

Take your time playing the game getting to endgame, its not going anywhere.

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#11

“Here, have a Ferrari. Now go race those guys in this professional course. You never learned to drive? Who cares? You have the best car so you should have no problems. What ? It’s too hard ? You’re constantly spinning out of control ? You’re right: the race is the problem, not you. You should be able to win driving however you want! Of course the fact that you don’t know how to drive has nothing to do with it! This is an outrage! We demand this race thing to be fixed! It’s ruining cars!”

10 Likes
#12

The fun part of the game is the leveling up…I’d never skip it or power level any character, you just miss way too much of the experience.

#13

Before you tell him all this, you should use one of my favourite quotes by Dr. Zed: “Son… This might sting a bit!”

And then you give him another great quote by Marcus: “No refunds!”

In other words… Give him the old one-two! :smile:

#14

Just don’t duel him for a while right? :wink:

#15

Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs. I love that lol.

Thanks for the responses folks. Talked to him at work this morning a little bit and he still won’t admit to the “save file” technique. He just told me it doesn’t matter how he leveled up so quickly.
I recommended the forums and youtube videos to him, but he is still being stubborn. Came back to BL2 because he was talking about it at work. Had a lot of fun lvling up Krieg with his Zer0 up til about lvl 50 when he spontaneously became BL Jesus overnight.
I"m still hopeful he will realize the mistake he made and come back to Earth and start playing along with my brother and I again.

Until then, I’ll be farting around on my 63 Krieg in co-op games making huge messes and dying at inopportune times for my disappointed co-op teammates!

2 Likes
#16

Well, you know your friend better than we do but it sounds like they need some tough love. Or if you’re good friends and be as respectful as possible. As an outsider, I’d go the first route.

First, by being power leveled from other people and not playing the game, it sounds like they aren’t interested in playing the game as they are fine with other people doing it for them.

Second, UVHM is not for everybody. This may be a tough pill to swallow for some, but UVHM is supposed to be challenging (at least at first, most people on the forums have gotten the hang of it).

Third, by being power leveled, he loses experience. He’s not actively learning how to fight enemies, the ins and outs of each gun he finds, skill synergy, and all that. And OP 8 is a whole new challenge from UVHM.

Lastly, some stuff just doesn’t work on OP 8. Yeah it sucks that you can’t just do whatever. But remember, OP here stands for overpowered. It’s going to make you frustrated sometimes. You can try to make it work, and sometimes it will. If you wanna try to use a Hellfire against Scorch or a Super Badass Loader, go for it. But don’t complain when it doesn’t work.

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#17

This means I get to play more Borderlands?

Win win win, as they say. Nobody says that. I say it.

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#18

It’s not the save editing or power leveling that’s creating the problem, it’s the friends instance on not learning how UVHM works. Power leveling and save editors often receive a aura of “not learning how to play” because some people rely on become more powerful than their enemies and just mowing them down. UVHM is made to keep your enemies on your power level, so strategy becomes much more important. Using a save editor doesn’t in and of itself stop anyone from learning about elemental resistance and what builds are most effective against what, quite to the opposite it can highlight the quirks of game play and you can use a variety of different weapons to test out successful and fun strategies that can be used to dominate even UVHM effectively. It is also more than possible to both talk and/or watch how the power levelers are playing to learn basic strategies and effective techniques in order to overcome tougher challenges.

Much like the many challenges I’ve had trying to teach people how to mod their PC games manually when they’ve already decided it’s very difficult, it’s a losing battle until you can get them to understand that their assumptions of how it works are wrong. Once they’ve gotten it through there heads that it’s okay for them to be confused right now and that they can get better by further learning then they will improve. So In a way your friend is right, it doesn’t matter how he got there, what matters is that he is not accepting that it’s his lack of knowledge causing the problem and not the game itself.

“I may also begin asking other patrons at pubs if they wish to have a few sips of my beer before I’m done drinking it”

And I know this was said in jest, but heck yeah. Ordering a beer, having someone ask me about it and let them taste it has positively affected my love life on more than one occasion.

1 Like
#19

As someone who played alone until op6, I have little sympathy for those who don’t put in a lot of effort and are unwilling to adapt and persevere. The game isn’t easy. It rewards planning, understanding of it’s complexities and nuances and persistence. If people don’t get that, maybe it’s not for them.

#20

Couldn’t have said it any better.

OP, you said he was getting back into BL2, right? If that’s the case, he already should have a basic understanding of his character. If he’s patient, he can tough it out and learn how to adapt himself to the higher difficulty. Try giving him general tips and suggestions and see what he can accomplish on his own. Necessity is the mother of invention after all.

If he can’t just adjust though, then you’ll just have to get it through his head that it doesn’t make any sense to not ask for advice from players who have been trivializing OP8 content for months now. If he is really struggling that much, he really should just at least check out the “100 Tips for surviving UVHM” and the skill guide for Zero, along with watching some youtube videos to find some basic strats.