One shot mechanics is lazy design

Borderlands 2 BL2 General Discussion
#1

Causally walking around and suddenly out of nowhere BAM! Zero shield with 1 health left in less than a second.

Many games use this mechanic to define high difficulty but I think it is just plain lazy. Could there be some sort of warnings beforehand?

That’s all I want to say. Thank you for reading.

#2

I think I see where you went wrong!

Joking aside, it is frustrating when it happens, but in some ways it’s part of the game: learning to recognize which enemies pose the greatest threat, prioritizing your targets, taking advantage of terrain, … And there are usually warnings (change in music, siren sounding, ominous door opening up) although they can be easy to miss in the heat of a frenzied mob.

On the bright side, at least when you respawn you don’t have to fight every single enemy you already killed over again just to get to the same spot. That sort of thing drove me absolutely nuts in HALO and the like. While it can be frustrating, and some of the raid bosses down-right mean and stingy, it’s actually nowhere near as bad as it could be…

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#3

I kinda get where TC’s coming from. It wouldn’t be so bad if it was a somewhat level playing field. But the fact that a Goliath Blaster can pop out and shoot me point blank with dually slag rocket launchers and take no damage and doesn’t get slagged is kinda of infuriating.

Same with the JNK loaders in the Badlands, they can spawn and dance around in the slag all day long, but if I even dip my toe in it, I’m covered.

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#4

Even if they took slag, it’d still be infuriating!

Granted, but they’re not exactly hard to take down. I think the worst things are the first times you ever meet Mad Mike, Bad Maw, Saturn, etc. (Or, the first time you encounter them in UVHM and find that their murder dial got turned up to 11.) Once you know what to expect, you come prepared and they’re manageable.

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#5

Unbelievably shady. Can’t imagine trying a one life run or something and having that happen.

No they’re not, but if they spawn in a friggin’ slag bath, they should be slagged! (and if they walk through it they should be as well)

Lol, I remember getting insta-killed by Mad Mike so many times my first time through UVHM.

#6

I’ve kinda grown to like this because it keeps me on my toes and makes target prioritization a big deal.

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#7

Ehhh, to each their own. I think it’s absolutely ridiculous.

#8

The reason I don’t mind it is because they are limited to certain maps and certain locations so you know when to lookout once you have played the game a few times.

#9

I’m with @Derch on this. I really love the brutality of this game. It’s part of why I’m still coming back every day in 2016. I don’t want it to be easy to 1-life.

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#10

Yeah I’ve played a ton, I get that. Another thing it could be is a Maya vs Zer0 thing. With Maya, I tend to chill behind the 3 point line and pick em off, and then enemies like that aren’t a real threat. But Zer0, more specifically melee Zer0, does not have that benefit and he’s my main. He is not a fan of those types of enemies and situations. lol

My second most played is Gaige and she’s kinda the same.

#11

I don’t mind enemies that one-shot me if I know exactly where and when they are coming. Suicide Psychos and EXP Loaders are easily recognisable and once you spot them, you can take countermeasures.

I do have an issue with rocket launcher wielding enemies, more specifically Heavy Nomads, Goliath Blasters and RPG Loaders. These guys can spot me from a mile away and even if I think I am defended, they’ll find some miracle angle to shoot me from.

Here are my issues with those guys.

  • They sound exactly like the enemies they spawn among. For enemies who can one-shot you, I find it strange that they do not have unique voice lines. Even HOT Loaders have different lines from regular Loaders but they aren’t nearly as dangerous. In areas like Sawtooth, you can have a Heavy Nomad spawn on the other side of the map or behind you, but you’ll probably have no idea until you are health-gated by his rockets. Such a powerful enemy should have unique voice lines to let you know he has appeared on the battlefield.
  • Some of the launchers that they use against you feel stupidly powerful. I once had an RPG Loader spawn with an E-Tech Bandit launcher and it carpet bombed me like a B-52. There was no cover against this guy. It kept me on my toes for two solid minutes before I could snipe his arm off. Some E-Tech launchers can even hit you through walls. A Nomad Blaster used one of those launchers to ruin a one-life playthrough as I was using the elevator in Sawtooth. That guy didn’t have a line of sight on me or anything, he literally shot me through a wall. It also feels really unfair if the enemy uses a launcher against you that has a projectile speed increasing part for you cannot even rely on distance for safety.
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#12

that part I do agree with

#13

Having unique voices is not only sensible, it’s appealing in that it encourages and rewards situational awareness. It would primarily benefit the type of people who are really going to dial in and try to learn the nuances of the game. Whiners gonna whine, but learners would definitely appreciate it.

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#14

UVHM and OP levels are add ons to the original game, and that is the only place I’ve found things like that (other than when I wandered into on overleveled area). They aren’t integral to the game.

#15

Yeah, but then you learn to position yourself to kill him first and fast. It’s the same with Goliath Blasters and Heavy Nomads - you know where they’re likely to spawn and kill them first. Those guys are no joke. I could swear that some Goliath Blasters are using Badabooms. My first experience with a Goliath Blaster, I remember looking up after killing a spiderant near the end of Bug Gulch to see a sky full of rockets coming at me, and then wishing I hadn’t killed the spiderant because I was pretty sure I was going to need a second wind. The Blaster was so far away that I didn’t really know at that point where all those rockets had come from. It was a WTF moment.

That was a long, long time ago, so I’m not sure, but IIRC, I died, respawned and immediately got killed again by the rockets, still not knowing where they were coming from. When I realized it was a Goliath gunzerking with two launchers, I distinctly remember thinking, “Seriously, dude?”, and I thought it was funny, but I was also a little pissed at the same time: like, who thought it was a good idea to give a goliath two launchers? It was hilarious, and like so many other things in BL2, it felt like the fine line between being trolled, and being funny. - how you feel about it might depend on your mood.

#16

[quote=“tsoi933, post:1, topic:1545560”]Many games use this mechanic to define high difficulty but I think it is just plain lazy.[/quote]I don’t think that mechanic defines high difficulty, I think it’s made to take the edge off when people step into a higher difficulty and get floored. Without it, you just die out of the blue. With it, you have a moment to get to cover and consider whether or not you’re prepared to be there, or at least get a look at what it was that wrecked you for consideration on a second approach. If they were being lazy, they wouldn’t have bothered adding this code, and would be reading slightly different flavors of “I don’t like dying in one shot” topics.

[quote=“tsoi933, post:1, topic:1545560”]Could there be some sort of warnings beforehand?
[/quote]All the warning you need:

image
warning.jpg855×512 202 KB

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#17

I know where the OP is coming from. I dislike it too to some extend. Oneshot-attacks are a bad Design choice to make a game harder.
The best difficulty-settings i have played so far are those of Resident Evil 5. Resident Evil 5 did a great job with its difficulty settings: the enemies attack faster, their attack animations are sped up, they have (just slightly) more health and in total, they act way faster than normal if the difficulty goes up.
Sure, the damage goes up too, when one chooses to increase difficulty. But the biggest advantage Resident Evil 5’s difficulty-system has over Borderlands is the intelligent registration of a players abilities. If you play good, the game gets harder; if you play bad, the game gets easier (the chosen “difficulty Mode” determines in what range of the “true” 10 levels of difficulty the Game can vary).

#18

I’m not too bothered about getting one-shot, even as melee Zer0, since there is still that one second where I can ghost into Decepti0n and heal up before counter attacking.

What does bother me are those DoTs that I can’t do a damn thing about even after I drop the baddie who shot me with it. I’m in the fight, trading damage for damage, dropping baddies left and right, and manage to Execute the last guy. However, my shields are down and that bitch just lit me up with a weak-ass incendiary laser! My kill skills expire, decepti0n is on cooldown, and there’s not a single target left for me to hit! And now I just wait until that DoT takes me from 100% to FFYL to respawning.

Oh, and don’t get me started on achieving a Rank 5 Second Wind challenge, immediately AFTER I respawn from dying…

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#19

We should have a Second Wind challenge for ‘ones that didn’t count’.

I hear you on the DOTs in any event. Most things I can handle by dint of experience - although I agree with what others have said about insta-healthgate enemies needing unique callouts, given that the spawn staggering in some places can put them immediately behind us.
(Also, a Bandit e-tech launcher should not have a reload time of 0.0003 seconds, however skilled the Blaster wielding it.)

DOT scaling and proc RNG, however, are the work of Satan.

#20

[quote=“cioran, post:19, topic:1545560”]Also, a Bandit e-tech launcher should not have a reload time of 0.0003 seconds, however skilled the Blaster wielding it.[/quote]Oh wow, a Goliath Blaster with some variety of Prazma Canon? I think that would be way fun - I’m fairly certain that these guys don’t compensate their aim for weapons like that, and aiming straight forward with one of those really limits the range on them. Are you sure it wasn’t a Topneaa (whose reload speed could be very quick, and whose shots fly fairly true)? I’d love to tango with a Goliath Blaster rockin’ a Prazma Canon, but a Topneaa (or Launcher, or PFBG for that matter)? Well, I’m still down, but that’s a much more delicate fight.