Hopefully this fits here. Not really sure whether it’s fit for BL2 or BLTPS’s forums. Apologies in advance if this should be other there. Anyways.
After playing through BLTPS a lot (though not UVHM yet), I’ve come to think about it a lot. I, personally, have had trouble constantly playing it like I constantly play BL2. I’ve got… so many playthroughs and hours into BL2. It always has me coming back. I can recite everything in the game at this point and now exactly the fastest way to complete every mission and every route on every map. I struggle to play more than a few hours of BLTPS, even after long breaks of several days.
So I thought about it. And I think I pinned down the issues.
First, I’ll point out what I like/love about BLTPS and what I think it did better.
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The story. I think it’s great. It’s short, as it’s meant to be, but I really like it. New characters introduced, particularly Athena and a strong emphasis on the Eridian side of things (which was pretty much ignored for 99% of BL2’s game) is a nice change of pace. It’s nice seeing the decline of Jack throughout the events that occur.
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Most of the areas are nice. I particularly love Tycho’s Ribs and Eleseer, along with the space station.
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Gameplay improvements. A big one is the inability to be damaged by vladof AoE grenades anymore. I’m surprised that was never patched in BL2. It’s fantastic not have to worry about walking into your own grenades anymore, if they’re vladof. If not, then using cryo grenades for melee Athena would be a real pain.
I also, personally, think that cryo is a great replacement for slag. I don’t mind slag, at all, but it has no interaction. No real effect. It’s simply “make enemies have mountains of health and force the player to use slag to kill them” which takes up slots. Cryo works differently. Having cryo interact with explosive damage, melee damage and aerial slam attacks creates much more variance of play, particularly on harder enemies. And makes explosive damage more relevant, I think.
Laser weapons are great. Most ARs are basically crap, and I think they’re a nice replacement. They tear through ammo, but they’re an alternative to SMGs (which I use a lot) and quite accurate. Effectively giving them sub-types (SMG as blaster, shotgun as splitter and sniper rifle as railgun) is pretty neat as well.
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Grinder. It can be annoying, at times. But I think it’s a fantastic addition as a sort of way to “customize” your guns. It’s not really a build-a-gun, but it allows you to do something else other than farm world drops or raid bosses for the 500th time in a row for drops. And do something with your inventory other than just sell everything.
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Shock damage. I’ve seen people complain about shock damage in BL2, in that it’s a wasted element that no one uses. Which indirectly hurts Gaige. I think this is fixed in BLTPS. What with Marines having larger shields than health (and quite a bit at that) and the Eridian guys are absolutely loaded with health. Then having Boson be 95% shields gives you a boss to really fight that uses shields and shock damage. Oh, and Shadow-TP and EOS.
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Glitch weapons. I think they were an awesome addition that really added to the variety of the game. They’re great fun when you get them, despite just being weird looking weapons with purple-stat rarity.
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Interesting skills. A failing of BL2 is that you don’t really have any interesting skills there, for the most part. There’s some nice stuff. Mostly on Gaige (Interspersed Outburst, Electrical Storm, Claws, Discord, that aerial damage thingy) and Maya (Cloud Kill, Sweet Release, Slag Orb, Blight Phoenix, Sub Sequence). The rest of things are just various buffs to various stats.
BLTPS has things like Money Is Power (which is just a variant on Discord, I know). Sponsored By is really unique and amazing, I think. As is Company Man in how it works. Nisha’s Law & Order tree in general, with its emphasis on aerial slams and mixing melee with guns, even if Zer0 already did that kinda. Wilhelm with his Saint tree capstone and the healing zone. Wilhelm’s Wolf dive bombing when he dies or the skill ends (would be great if Deathtrap did something like that).
Now, for the issues I think it had.
- Pacing. This is the really big one, in my opinion. I think it has absolutely god awful pacing. By which I mean the frequency of running around and enemy placement. About… 75% of the game, maybe 80% involves the player driving, running, boosting somewhere. The enemy placement is very sporadic and it takes so long to get to the areas where you can actually fight things consistently. Of which there are only three: the space station (which is about 70% of the way through the game), the Robot Industrial Facility (halfway through the game) and Tycho’s Ribs/Eleseer (end of the game). Claptastic Voyage is a lot better about this, but that’s too little too late, I think.
BL2 does it amazingly. You do move from place to place often, but you’re always dealing with enemies of some sort, or going through a gauntlet. Maybe it’s just a lack of content and a shorter game. I dunno. But BL2 has Frostburn Canyon, The Dust (buzzard camp and that prison thingy), Hero’s Pass, Lynchwood, Sanctuary Hole, the entire area leading up to the Bunker and afterwards with Angel, Thousand Wood Cuts and the bit with Brick in the story, the facility with Bloodwing. The list goes on. Lots of gauntlets for the player to really test their ability.
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Enemy types. This is another big one. I know this is a lack of content, but I think that BLTPS had great enemy types, but issue with placement and lacking in quantity. Shuggaraths are only encountered in the large icey place (forget the name). Torks are only encountered in R&D and the robot facility. (Torks are great, btw, I love them). Rathyds are tied to torks. Everywhere elese it’s just humans, short human, big human and the eridian guys which are just weird versions of humans with a bigger emphasis on shields. Lost Legion Eternals are great, though. Love transforming enemies.
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Lack of raid bosses. I know, another content issue. Still important, though. A reason I think I have issue to keep playing BLTPS is that I know nothing is really waiting for me. It has like 10% (if that) of BL2’s unique and legendary items which heavily limits variety. This is compounded by the fact that only two raid bosses exist: Sentinel (which is a story boss, which I felt was sort of lazy and turning a story boss into a raid boss just isn’t fun) and Shadow-TP/EOS. Both of which I think are amazing bosses that are really fun fights. Dunno about Iwajira, haven’t it yet.
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Balance. I don’t think this was really something that was on 2K’s minds when they made the game. But… ouch. At least with Sal, he relied on powerful equipment in order to abuse Money Shot. The fact that Jack & Nisha just decimate everything is insane. Jack with his permanent kill skill system that gives him something like… 65% gun damage and 20% Relaod Speed, Fire Rate and Accuracy. All of which are unboosted. Along with amping his Jacks, all in the same skill tree. Further leveling giving him infinite grenades, which is just crazy.
Nisha with her massive amount of stat modifying buffs (Tombstone being a big one) with survivability tacked on. At least with Sal, his survivability was tied to his action skill.
Athena I feel like she’s okay because her shield thing is a frontal damage limitation and maelstrom takes time to ramp up.
Anyways, that’s how I feel about it. How about everyone else?
