Avoid Community Patch; is it possible?

Borderlands 2 BL2 General Discussion
#1

Is it possible to set the game to NOT play with anyone running the community patch? I HATE it; I want to play the game as it was intended by the developer (as I have done for over 2000 hours) and I really resent being forced into games with people ‘adding mods’ - running fast in low gravity, etc - if I wanted that I’d play the ‘Pre-Sequel’.

On top of that, I’ve just had a weapon removed from my inventory whilst playing with someone apparently running a ‘weapons randomiser’ mod. It’s getting to the point where I’m preparing to stop playing all together.

Is there a setting to help me with this, or are we stuck with it, and there’s no consideration for anyone who doesn’t want it?

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#3

Yep, playing with trusted friends is your best bet. I was friends-only (though these days I’m pretty much just offline-mode solo) even before the UCP and its spawn came out; there were already nefarious shenanigan-y hacks and mods out there that could screw with your own game files. (On a side note, I will never run the UCP. Some of the more minor weapons tweaks interest me (ie, giving some of the weaker pearls a little nudge), but I would want the changes to be an officially tested and QAd patch from Gearbox themselves. I want to stand in solidarity with console players who have no access to it. And I mean no offense to anyone, I do think it’s cool in general to dig into something and see how it all works. :slight_smile: )

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#4

Do it? Make them hit the way you think they should be hit, use them, tweak them, and give them your own quality assurance. The patch can be as invasive or not as you see fit; it’s surprisingly easy to alter on your own; the stock patch is just the authors’ version of where to draw the line on the spectrum between nothing more than a single rarity fix to making everything in the game a one-hit kill. Tweaking a couple of pearlescent weapons and nothing more is a snap.

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#5

Unfortunately similar perils exist in the console world - and I suspect those folks are less forthcoming about their hacks.

Still, this is exactly the reason why some of us expressed concern back at the beginning. I have no solution other than get to know people here and through the Steam forum.

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#6

How?! This is a patch that one person can install on their game, which then affects anyone else who joins them in the open multiplayer lobby, without their permission. If this were a single player game, I’d agree, but it’s not, so I don’t. I think you’ve missed the point.

How can I avoid this without stopping playing the game? Play in single player mode? That’s what BL1 was for; IMO, BL1 was clearly a single player game they added a multiplayer option to, whereas BL2 was written as a multiplayer game that you could solo, and the introduction of this patch has destroyed the multiplayer side of it (for some of us at least).

As someone who’s heavily investigated modding in other single player games (especially Fallout NV and Skyrim), I can see the appeal, but it should stay in single player games, and not be forced on those who don’t want it. I have friends who absolutely totally and utterly will not mod their (even single player) games, playing them only as the developer intended, and I completely respect that; this community patch does not.

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#7

I think Adabiviak was responding more to Rumplebunny’s comment that the stock UCP went too far beyond a couple of minor tweaks they were interested in, rather than commenting on its use in multiplayer. Most of the regulars here (including Adabiviak) would absolutely not use the UCP in a co-op session if you requested them not to. Randoms on steam? Who knows.

Unfortunately it’s not just the UCP that can mess with other people’s games during co-op play - that problem existed long before the UCP. Other than ask in the on-line play section specifically for partners wanting to play vanilla only, there’s not much anyone can do to prevent this.

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#8

What console do you play on? From the sound of it we could play sometime if you’re on PS4

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#9

:cry: @MassiveGat - I’m on PC.

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#10

Darn. Oh well. Just kill the crap outta Jack for me, ya hear?

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#11

What MassiveGat said. I wanna hollow that @#$%%^^&'s gourd and eat nachos out of it.

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#12

@Rhort first off, I love this thread and your post.

I’m with ya. :acmaffirmative: I couldn’t agree with this^ more. :innocent:

Edit: this brings up a good point about Co-op and the UCP. If a random using the UCP joins my game, will my game be affected? or is it “host” specific?

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#14

This is part of the problem - it seems there are many - to say nothing of all the Discord stuff. Or at least it seems to manifest in a lot of different ways ( and not just the way Ad or Hattie custom tweak their games ). I stopped paying attention to the change-log, so not sure any more.
The randomizer seemed to impact the OP. I think it was @nombre who used it with a buddy and I thought it was a super cool thing to see - but it would super uncool to spring that on a random.

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#15

Yeah, I’m talking about the single player experience: one can use it in their own single-player game, and turn it off for co-op with others.

The same way you avoid players who are douches, use modded gear/BAR, or anything else you don’t want in your game.

I only look at the game through the lens of the single-player campaign myself, with a co-op mode tacked on… the way I avoid playing with randoms and the various issues they bring is a) I always play in offline mode or ‘friends only’, and b) the people I do co-op with are all cool about disabling that sort of thing in other peoples’ games.

Maybe start a Steam/Discord group for non-UCP co-op and advertise it here? Make a set of rules for handling UCP in co-op environments? (“When someone joins your game and you have the UCP on, immediately let them know.”, “Make sure you have a fresh game started without the patch loaded when you join someone else’s game.”, that sort of thing. Get yourself a pool of players who are down to skip the patch (and anything else you’re not a fan of; I’m sure players with illegitimately modded gear/characters wouldn’t be welcome either, for example) for co-op.

This is the reason I pay a buck a game for Mann-Up mode in MvM in TF2: keeps the riff-raff out.

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#16

I’m still holding out hope Gearbox will release at least one more hard-coded patch for the game. There are still some fixes that need to be hotfixed in at startup; I’m hoping not only those fixes will make it in to an actual patch, but also perhaps a couple UCP-inspired tweaks (like those pearls… and Nuke needs a buff in UVHM dammit. :smiley: )

I know they’re busy and underway with BL3 and thus may not have any manpower to spare for BL2, but I can still hope I guess. :wink:

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#17

Sorry, I am one of the UPC runners and I allow others to join my games. The main reason I enjoy is simply the Lucrative Opportunity speed buff. Just allows faster gameplay w/ characters like Axton & Krieg who don’t have skills like Sal’s Bus and Maya’s Fleet.

If I knew somebody that joined my game didn’t enjoy the patch I’d gladly disengage it. I think would just require another “exec Patch.txt” right?

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#18

Given the abundance in public lobbies of modders and users of hacked/modded characters with infinite BAR and one hit wonder weapons, people playing with the UCP would be the least of my concerns when playing with randoms in public lobbies…playing “as the developer intended” went out the window a long time ago in public BL2 lobbies which is why I don’t play in any (at least not at max level, it’s better at lower levels because the one hit wonders will max out everything including character level)…

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#19

@Tokesy97 - this is probably pointless at this point, but it might be worth making that a dedicated category for people to indicate whether or not they play or don’t mind playing with the UCP.

I know there are a few that have posted themselves there ( like @Kurtdawg13 and @Caridomati ) whom I know full well have no interest.

Speaking of which, I guess I should get off my butt and put myself in there…

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#20

If you re-run that command, it’ll just reload it to basically no effect. I’m fairly certain that you need to quit and restart the game (or if you’re crafty, you could make a different patch file, name it, “unpatch.txt” or something, and revise all the text to “undo” the changes for the version of the patch you currently have back to vanilla values. You would still need to back out to the character selection screen for this… still easier to quit and restart.

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#21

My advice is to be proactive:

Make a backup of all your character saves in a separate directory as often as needed (when you get a sought after piece of gear or hit a new level & what-not). That way, should anything occur in a Co-op game involving the Patch, which I enjoy running personally, doesn’t cause you to have your characters or game impacted.

I worked under the presumptions that the Host has to be running the Patch and not someone who joined, for changes to affect the other parties in the game. But maybe not, like how you can unlock the Slaughter Domes if you haven’t bought them by joining the game of someone who has?

Regardless, and ounce or prevention is worth a pound of cure.

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#22

I know this trick works on console, without hacks or the like. Not entirely sure why, though. I assume it’s a minor bug in the game record-keeping or something.

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