Gun modification defeats the purpose of what the game is
I have always disagreed with this… Because it relies on two assumptions…
#1 people play because they want something… And once they get it the game is over…
That’s literally the dumbest thing I ever heard come from Armstrong’s mouth… It was never true… People stay for the possibilities. Not the outcome. If your game isn’t fun at the core nothing they could acquire will keep them playing.
In fact, an unfulfilled desire will destroy the game in a much worse way than acquisition of anything ever could.
The lack of a skullmasher was a nail in the coffin for me after I killed vora on op8. It still affects my desire to play bl2 to this day.
People are playing because they are having fun playing… Looking for stuff is just an excuse to keep doing what they already want to do… The tools that drop are just more ways to have fun doing what they already are.
#2 A gun modification system would destroy the player investment cycle
This is not something that Matt Armstrong said because he wouldn’t even entertain the idea of such a system existing…
In his view the way that the game played in the fact that the parts would almost never reasonably drop with the exact combination that you wanted meant that there was always an upgrade to search for, at endgame anyway… In fact the guns were always sidereal during that paradigm of borderlands… Guns were originally meant to drop very very sparingly, so as to preserve the potential worth of blues and greens… Legendaries were meant to be almost mystical in their rarity… The handful of legendaries a player was intended to have experienced were supposed to leave an indelible imprint on the player and were designed and implemented to survive within the memory of that gameplay long after everything else faded… And the sighted surkov I found, as well as the pestilent defiler prove that his vision succeeded…
And he was right… That system worked…
Until duping, random pubs and modding shattered the delicate balance of that idealistic rational.
Modding showed up and the game literally exploded… People were making guns… Like whatever you could imagine that was already part of the game could be kitbashed into a gun that you could shoot… It was ridiculous and amazing…
Some guns crashed the game and some were just nutty… Players getting launched into the air from multiple sledges shotgun barrels…
But there were among the detritus you can imagine Masterpieces of quality…
I will never forget a mat_3 Hyperion masher… Intentionally downgraded 9 levels to make it balanced… That gun should have existed anyway… it was so beautiful… The white handle and metallic crimson are indelibly imprinted upon my mind…
It should have been a thing… It literally SCREAMED crimson raiders… But I digress…
You might say that gun modding destroyed the player investment, but duping did that long before any worthwhile hex editing happened…
In the end modding ruined the multiplayer in bl1, even after the filters gearbox implemented, there were items going around that corrupted save files and there were still broken ass 1 shot weapons…
But it also created some pretty epic hype… people were interested in a game where stuff like that was possible… And at the point where they kind of stamped out the majority of the garbage (and simultaneously killed off any balanced modded weapons as collateral damage(worth it)) craw/ knoxx opened up this different kind of endgame…
It was an endgame that people played waaaay more than the initial paradigm of borderlands ever imagined… and it wasn’t something that they initially intended… Vanilla borderlands was designed to have this set playtime lifespan, of a few playthroughs and if you were really interested on all characters… which was no matter how you look at it in, an amazing value considering what was out there…
They just didn’t envision that anybody was going to keep playing after hitting the level cap and finishing the second playthrough… But lots of people did… Including me…
I logged over 2500 hours on one character… And at least half of that was played with my idealized gear. I was a walking proof by contradiction to the idea that if you get what you want the game is over.
In fact to me that’s where the game actually begins…
Borderlands and all of its game systems and philosophies have worked… the design imperatives and the paradigm that the game is developed under has changed and shifted even over the course of DLC Post release… I have watched this game grow and mature and develop in many different ways…
But without question the most captivating that this game has ever been was in its potential. I picked up the original copy of borderlands with the brady games guide… I didn’t use the quest steps or general knowledge of the game guide very much… but I wore through the corners of the pages where it showed the gun catalog of what was possible…
The possibilities/ imaginative potential of unknown things held only so much sway… But the search for something known held my mind in such complete and total rapt attention… I was absolutely captivated… I searched and searched and searched for what I thought was an ammo regenerating tediore sniper rifle known as The glorious savior…
It was actually an SMG and when I found that out it broke my heart… but my volcano kept me warm, and my Orion told me to keep looking up…
And then a few of my friends started playing with hex editing… and I started researching the weapon parts to understand what was going on and what they were doing… And then I started making requests… At first it was mainly because they had no self-control and we’re ruining the enjoyment of the game for me… but I was good at it… I could find this happy medium where the game was still challenging and the stuff that was being brought into the game existed on the same level as what the game could already produce… Don’t get me wrong it was clearly of a finer quality but it didn’t trivialize the game…
That internal feeling discovery and level of personal investment has never been achieved by another game before or since… When creativity was coupled to the Discovery and potential of the weapon parts system, it literally eclipsed every other game in terms of motivating force. My mind impulsively consumed and asimilated all of the knowledge surrounding weapons in the game… And started spitting out some really cool s***.
I had absolutely no idea that a game could do that to a person… I was absolutely baffled by why it wasn’t an intended feature of the game… my mind played out the possibilities and saw that it could totally not work and obviously would ruin the game unchecked, but Ialso found quite easily that it could work…
And it did work for me… I wish that some of those things that I imagined had a way to be part of the game like some of the stuff that is part of the game these days…
It’s a treasure hunt damnit…
I wish that I had a way to go into detail about how I imagine loot pools should be structured into this hierarchy and that there should be this Pantheon of possible combinations on each location, resulting in this ecosystem of loot that makes everything have this potential relative worth…
Being interested in and researching and then finally finding/manifesting something that came from the result of a lot of searching, researching and player investment… The rabbit hole can be so freaking deep dude… deep enough to make a sane player happy to find a white weapon on a specific world… Because it is one step in this epic adventure to manifest a possibility within an amazing game system…
Yes borderlands random weapon generation works… but it’s only part of the bigger picture of what makes the game tick (and the essential element to what I envision)… The loot system has already radically changed from its initial vision… and depending on the way you design it you could get a much more rewarding system with far greater longevity… I say that so easily, but I have been able to see it in my mind’s eye for years now… Years
Also to be totally clear <3 u K0rN_B4LL
I’m just venting on this idea I have been carrying for a really really long time.
Sigh… I wish I could fly out there and just talk to them. What I wouldn’t give for just one of these ideas buried in me to see the light of day and become something real. Fear is such a terrible thing… After investing so much it would have me not even post this reply… How much greater the trajedy of a vision that doesn’t manifest out of my own inability to face the unknowns in real life…
Sorry for the wall everyone… I guess I haven’t had an outlet in awhile.
