So today was a bit of a mess for BL2. The level cap increase along with how OP functions created a ton of confusion and not just for players. The game has moments where it dropping me old OP Loot that is on level with level 73,74, and 75 loot.
The shift in difficulty also makes breezing thru the DLC kind of cheap as I can’t even enable OP right now. I really hope BL3 steers clear of this system specifically. Having UVHM and OP being stacking difficulty makes adding level increases or new difficulties really messy. We also have all the fundamental problems OP created where some skills simply do not cut it at OP8 and some skills are beastly with how scaling damage works.
If they want to have an overpowered enemy setting I feel like it should be a flat difficulty increase for the final playthrough that dosen’t work based on levels. It should simply make the game much harder while enemies stay the same level. To reward the difficulty should have really high Drop chances on the best loot and be balanced around skillful play and endgame loot rather then re farming the same weapon for the 5th time.
This way when a level cap increase happens we an play this difficult to level helping us prepare for the new end game. That way we don’t have a throttle that takes us from level 80 to 88 with no loot drop chances in between forcing us to re play other content as an added step.
I’m grateful for the new content but OP dug you guys a hole and I would hate to see that happen to BL3
I really expect gbox gave leveling a lot of consideration, given all the reactions comparing bl1 with bl2 leveling.
remember that the op levels were added on by player demand. gearbox did a decent job of finding a way to push difficulty up so late in the game’s life cycle, although a lot of people found the need for slag a turn off.
op levels were not planned from the get go, so i expect ( and hope) they made provision for scaling.
In hoping the rumored Master Vault Hunter serves the OP itch without turning the loot table upside down. OP is fun and all but man I would just like a static mode that doesn’t make loot farming and loot leveling a whole ordeal every time they up the level cap
The thing is, there are SO many solutions to this problem that they could have implemented even with the OP levels. They could have all weapons that drop at max level stay at max level whenever a level cap increase happens. They could have SDUs similar to skill point SDUs from BL1 that you can farm which let you power up any item to your current level. They could have a machine that you put a gun into and pay 100 Eridium to power up one time. So on and so forth.
It sort of feels like this is an aspect of their game that they just do not care about, which is head scratching. It would be one thing if there was a reliable way to refarm the guns, but some weapons have either no direct loot source (Bekah, Quasar, Cobra, etc.) or are incredibly difficult to get (Twister, Norfleet, etc). I just finally found a Bekah for the first time ever after 7 years and over 500 hours put into this game and now it’s been rendered useless at end game just a couple weeks later. I do not use any save editors and play on console, so I most likely will never find another one. Very frustrating.
I’m actually wondering if they’re just going to do game difficulties in a fashion similar to Diablo 3’s torment levels instead of the whole OP system they did in BL2. Basically you can inflate enemies stats and get a boosted exp and drop rate. However it doesn’t impact the gear itself outside of the whole ancient/primal thing they did in Diablo 3 that was essentially just a way to flag things that had better stat rolls.
I can see that OP8 loot = level 80 loot. That should give players who were able to get there way back when a little bit of a difficulty buffer. When getting back into the game after 2-3 years away from it, playing other things, It can be hard to return to the God you once were all at once.
I think they knew exactly what they were doing.
In hoping that this game doesn’t have 3 playthroughs to reach cap. Based on the statement that the games story missions are at minimum 30 hours of active gameplay that your first playthrough will let use reach level 50. 5 planets at minimum tonse of Side quests and objectives every were. I would hope the final mission is around 35 go 45. Then add some post game Raid bosses, and additional post game quests.
I’ve also heard of this supposed “Master Vault Hunter mode” which is quote harder then UVHM.
My hopes is that MVHM functions like OP for UVHM. You select UVHM and then you can toggle Master to simply power up enemies and increase drop rates. No OP loot just more high quality loot more frequently.
If players can over come the challange they will be rewarded with all the high end loot they can carry, if you can’t well you can spend more time and eventually you can achieve the same result.
This also let’s GBX add in Level increases or new skills at there leisure without the OP confusion.
The best solution is to have some sort of alternative leveling system that isn’t tied directly to your character’s level. I was a big fan of Borderlands 1 weapon proficiency stats. Something like that and BAR would be ideal for endgame, where you are leveling your character in a different way than just raw leveling. Then enemies would scale by becoming more varied with better gear themselves (using this new system) so that they are basically the same level as before just tougher because of these other stats.
Honestly I got the hang of OP8 after time and effort but with them moving the cap its just adding a LOT of effort to get back up there unless you use some of the games more broken set ups. Based on what we see of BL3s character skills trees so far I do not think we will have the issue of some characters being better for solo or being better in a team which would help. Honestly as system of “progression” I think it lacks just about any sort of decent structure. As a system of diffictuly for those who simply crave more of a challenge it dose that splendidly.
Over all BL2 struggles with how “difficulty” scales with player count. Yes enemeis have more HP and hit harder, but more bodies to target and the amount of enemies that spawn do not scale. Finding your right level of challenge is not just about choosing UVHM OP0 to OP8 but also how meany bodies you want to bring along.
I think BL3 can and will do much better in regards to how well the game keeps the level of challenge consistent amount player count and how the difficulty system is handled.
I have a feeling Gearbox learned a lot from the progression in Borderlands 2, it was one of my main criticisms of the game the way damage numbers stack up into the billions and how you’re forced to use a very specific broken skill/item set. It’s ofcourse hard to tell from the footage shown what the game will be like at end game, but i have the feeling the action is a lot more dynamic and you are rewarded for using a variety of skills and weapons instead of just specializing one skill and one gun up to eleven with passives. Balance is always one of the hardest things to get right in videogames, especially when giving so much customization and choices. You want the game to be challenging, without the player needing to use very specific exploits and you want to give a lot of viable options without the game becoming too easy if everything can get you through the game. It’s a really delicate balance, but i have confidence in Gearbox and couldn’t be more happy with what i saw.
OP system has its benefits but I do agree it was a little odd. I would have preferred something more like diablo 3’s end game systems and difficulty adjustments. I would love to have something to work towards, even at max level but the OP system wasn’t my favorite. It needed adjustments anyhow. And XP gained at max level should reward you something (either loot or bad ass rank or both).
sammantixbb
(I guess no one goes here anymore)
#17
It could be possible that, to an extent, the problem was a circle. The game was pretty decent. Then Unkempt Nozzle appeared. “Hey, this is too easy!”
“Fine, it’s harder now”
“now we have to use Unkempt Nozzle!”
A lot of issues with weapons even came from “Trying To Balance” them. Should a legendary really be so much stronger than a Purple? That’s the question they asked with the Volcano. And apparently, we didn’t like the original answer. (I don’t like the original answer. My Maya uses patched Volcano and Gaige has a patched Storm.)
So. Like…it’s tough.
Meanwhile, BL 1. I got a Defiler at 19?ish that is still with me in the late 30s.
I feel you man, that frustrated me as well. It came to a point where i basically refused to use certain skills and items because how imballanced it was, but i hate having to gimp myself on purpose and if you do that than OP levels are anything but fun. I think they kinda went “this is the game now and let it be what it is”. I hope for BL3 that they adressed it from the very start. There will be imballanced exploits though, it’s inevitable for a game offering such a large variety of skills and weapons, but i’m really impressed from the gameplay i saw and it immidiately made BL2 feel really old haha, which is a good sign imo.
IMO the game felt much better balanced at lower levels before the number scaling when completely off tilt. In most cases it’s actually much easier to balance things without the horrendous stat bloating. The other thing I feel like caused a fair amount of the end game balancing issues is that they pretty much only focused on bloating numbers on enemy stats when they could have increased enemy counts if the engine permitted or just added more variants to spawns and refrained from making the variants near mini boss level in regards to HP when compared to other enemies.