Parts Discussion (remaster)

Borderlands General Discussion
#1

Well, finally started up the remaster. I’ll say this already, getting it set up is a lot faster. I didn’t have to do any fiddling out of game to avoid motion sickness. Great performance too. Albeit turning off the windows key seems to have made the game pop the windows key every time I alt tab… Might just skip that option.

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Random Talk Thread, MK. IV (Part 1)
#2

Space bar refills puts it up with the best in the franchise IMO.

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#3

Honestly, one thing I was surprised by is the new weapons. I was only a bit curious earlier, since you know, fixed parts. Now I’m outright sad, because Silent Night is so good that using it was a borderline religious experience. It disintegrates enemies it’s so overpowered, and it killed Nine Toes in one shot. Genuine pity these are part locked.

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#4

It still freaks me out how BL1 and BL2 have two completely different end game crowds…

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#5

I was just thinking about that earlier, BL2’s release didn’t just mark an influx of new people, but marked an outflow of BL1 players. I wonder if we’ll see major changes like that with BL3.

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#6

I’m more interested in just the two radically different endgames.

BL1 - Lets go kill craw thirty thousand times and thottbot dream gear from the legendaries we got
BL2 - Lets go get our dumb gear out and murderfuck something on OP8
BL3 - Let’s go play the game and discuss our overt sexuality?

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#7

Well I mean, that’s one possibility. Not one I expect, but hey!

Yeah though, I think the different play philosophies proceeded to a degree from the different games themselves. Different players want different things.

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#8

I made a big post on the reddit the other day in a thread talking about the different loot systems. By big I mean 1.4k words that I rattled out in a little under an hour while taking calls at work. The one thing I’m not worried about is the loot system, because I really think the system in each game is different because it works for what the games were aiming for individually.

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#9

I don’t entirely agree with that, the loot systems are similar enough that judging their design comparatively is reasonable. I just think that some people flat out don’t want the same thing from a game, even in the same subgenre. Apart from that… I’ve just strangled my loot hype and let my inner cynic run wild. It worked for making me less disappointed in TPS’ loot, so I expect it’ll work for BL3.

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#10

I think each is a product of it’s times and overall game design, but we’ve been down this road before and will just go back and forth with essays for forever if we go any further.

So lets go from that into wild speculation-

I think BL3 will have higher loot drops, mostly to make anthem look stupid because that’s what the genre looks like right now. I think legendaries will be more unique but less “wacky” than they were in bl2 - I’m not expecting anything as warping as bee, DPUH, shockhawk, but a lot of interesting gear that’s situational. Most of all, I think the system will be tuned to the game and I think gbx has done a good job of that in the past so I’m not super worried about it.

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#11

Heh. I’ll consider you wildly optimistic, but apart from that I think it’s likely to be more and not less wacky just based off the trailers. Not willing to go much further out on a branch than that though, we’ll see what happens when it happens.

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#12

Here’s my crazy thing - I think the use of the word “Billions” instead of “Gazillion” (or something else) describing the amount of guns means we can probably expect a dumbed down weapon system because of the criticisms of that same boast by the OG crowd on BL2. It was a highly called out thing that a lot of people complained about. This doesn’t surprise me, because I feel like in alot of ways, BL2 was a response to a lot of the criticisms of BL1, so I’m expecting BL3 to kind of mirror that and the current state of the market.

The current state of the market is that people aren’t super happy with Destiny 2 or Anthem. If GBX responds with some higher level loot distribution with less variation so you can more easily get the “good thing” you want.

But obviously that’s me making guesses.

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#13

As of now there are about 189 threads full of guesses. Yours are some of the better ones I read yet… so, steady on!

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#14

… This is one of the times I think you’re just off. I remember some of the complaints from BL1, and the only ones I can think of that got addressed were story and polish. Which I’m still not sure counts as a topic exactly? I mean more polish just seems like it might be more funding, but then again given other games I suppose it’s possible.

Props for the depressing predictions on itemization though, and here I thought you were all rainbows and sunshine all the sudden. Still I think it goes against your essential argument otherwise too (if it’s backlash against other problems, I would expect a more complex, coherent itemization system. Plus billion does argue for that if we assumed it wasn’t cosmetic/locked changes again.)

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#15

Well part of my overarching theory is that the reason BL2’s loot system is so simplified compared to one’s has some backing, in my mind. BL1s loot was zany and off the wall because parts of it maaaaay have been poorly calculated late in design, like a lot of things were. It was based a lot on “old guard” loot games like Diablo/D2 where there were huge ranges of itemization and getting a “perfect” was so rare that it made some builds plausible and made the individual item so rare that it could get 3-4 times it’s trade value. So they were working from that, which many people were used to given the genre, and as stated, the biggest complaints on BL1 were story and polish.

They delivered on that, but the other problem they’d have with a heavily randomized loot table is what you see in BL1 - you ge a good roll on even a purple and that gun can carry you for 10-15 levels. That wasn’t something they wanted, so they toned down that and made huge upgrades in the guns you’d see every 5 levels or so, and smoothed out the elemental system to be more reliant on the rock paper scissors element because it was so important on craw and people seemed to love eating crab meat. Basically you don’t get anything insane but you get the updates you need to progress the story, while making big story points relevant on your first playthrough by slowing down play on the whole.

Them slowing down the loot but giving you the tools to fight what’s coming at you makes you watch how much better they did at the story and polish, basically.

Here’s the problem with that - the market has really changed a lot in the years since BL2, especially in the genre. Getting high level legendaries is either easy and encourages optimizing your character based on flat stats (Torchlight/Diablo 3), or is highly guarded and metered because of microtransactions or other factors (Destiny 2/Anthem). GBX watches this market pretty hard because well, BL is a flagship franchise. It’s where their money gets made. It’s why colonial marines was a goddamn joke and Battleborn, despite the popularity suck done to it by OW, was as good and engaging as it is - they invest heavily in their own IPS and look for free cash in contract work to keep their flagships up.

I say all that to get to my point that you probably find depresisng, but I’m not too bent out of shape about-

I have never once read a comment outside of BL2 criticism of a loot game needed a more “complex” loot system.

Skill trees in rpgs? God, that’s everywhere, and there’s plenty of praise for TPS in that regard. High praise for the story they pulled off in 2… but only the core, hardcore audience that stuck around after BL1 is calling for higher randomization/drops. I agree, it could be interesting in this day and age to see something so classic pulled out with it, but it’s not something that people are clamoring for. Loot games right now are more about the dopamine rush of that “rare item color” on your screen and trying out your new gear for the next time.

To close out this out - higher randomization with loot that has the potential to be extremely high powered makes people like us (and people like you, especially happy), but the average gamer who’s going to pick this up… as long as they’re seeing orange, they’re happy. It was the single biggest complaint of BL2. GBX also had to respond to a crazy amount of criticism from several weapons and mechanics that “slipped through” in BL2 to make crazy op weapons. I see them responding with a heavy hand on the loot system because the idea of putting out that many fires again doesn’t seem appealing…

But again, im guessing.

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#16

I did actually come up with more examples of complaints after posting (boss design, terrain, confusion about things like the proc pools/awesome level, playability) that got addressed, but what you just posted doesn’t quite match your hypothesis. What you describe as a problem with pacing wasn’t exactly something that players were screaming about.

Contrasting that with the lower part of your post… Ars, the dumbed down nature of the Diablo 3 loot system was probably the biggest single complaint about the entire game, and that carries over to other loot games as well. Actually looking back at BL2’s launch specifically the two things that I recall inspiring the most furor were the reduction in fatalities, and the itemization. Yeah, part of that was the drop rate, but while it’s hard to separate out, part of it wasn’t.

Still, that all aside it doesn’t stack up for me for one reason. That it assumes Gearbox is paying a level of obsessive attention to the community that even Battleborn didn’t show.

Edit: Also, heading off to eat now.

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#17

Is it? Honestly after they removed the RMAH and added necro, I’ve not read a thing that’s not a total handjob to the game. I’m not gonna say it’s not, but again, these are probably the hardcore people who are still playing well after the sell by date. But that’s my guessing.

No, it wasn’t, but GBX really wanted people to see how much work they put into it, so they made sure it was paced properly. I mean, imagine one shotting blood wing with a masher on your first playthrough? Missing all that jack dialog? It’s a thing.

I still say Battleborn was pretty polished at launch, but could not even dream of competiting against a new flagship by a publisher that has enough money for its own launcher. 90% of my playtime was in the earlier thing and polish wasn’t an issue.

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#18

Someone crunched the numbers in one of the BL3 threads. Given the known number of manufacturers and the same parts system, an estimate of 1.3 billion combinations drops out. Which is actually higher than the same calculation for BL2.

So I’m not overly worried about it. Besides, some of the preliminary info on the manufacturers’ gimmicks looks pretty cool.

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#19

I’m… really optimistic about the vladof one.

I’m hoping for a weapon customization system over a crazier loot pool…

Like bad.

I love the idea of stapling barrles on barrlles.

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#20

Referring to launch, I mean even the RMAH was based on it ruining the itemization via that whole stat-stick thing.

Not what I meant, I’m referring here to paying that level of detailed attention to the community. I just don’t think it’s a reasonable assumption, neither from my interactions with developers, nor experience with other games that actually tried it (Firefall et al). Gearbox isn’t showing any signs of that type of behavior, and I know of no company that succeeded in that. It’s just… Too hard. Most dev teams can’t even really keep up proper communication between groups on the team (see recent Bioware expose).

This one goes back to my earlier concerns for me - is that like BL2, where if you calculate variants for each shared legendary BL1 comes out way ahead anyways due to certain part locks? Or is it something else? I’d say we don’t know yet, and shouldn’t assume either way.

I mean, I’m giving you a like cause I love that type of game, but I don’t support it in Borderlands.

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