The knoxx run in BL1 was great repeatable fun. Challenging horde, good boss fight, and then great loot.
In other words, I’d much rather farm an enemy horde, and a couple bosses together in one run and have at least 10+ decent chances for legendaries if I’m farming. Attaching one legendary to one guy seems like it was a mistake to me.
What seems more fun to me is to attach that legendary to at least 35 guys in a map. One unique named enemy and 4 badasses. And surround them with 30 peons with lesser odds but still better than randomly from the world somewhere. For instance, the unique guy, 1 outta 10 chance. The 4 badasses? 1 outta 20 chance. The peons? 1 outta 40 chance. Want a bee? Go kill the radio guy on that map, all his badass friends, the skags nearby and the 20 soldiers in the building.
Want a Sham or Bitch? Go kill the bunker and all the robots on his map.
See what this does? It highly encourages map clearing and mobbing.
Also, if that seems too easy, then make the odds harder at the start of the game but easier for each level you gain AND based on kills you make of those guys of that group. Make this trackable in the stats too. Killed a hundred guys in the bunker map? Your odds have now increased by 1% of getting the named legendaries in that area. (some maps are smaller than others, Bunker needs only one legendary pool, but Thousand Cuts could use 3 or 4 pools. )
I agree with your idea. Ive never liked the boss-specific loot. Thus why i never got into farming in Borderlands 2. Its just not fun.
I much prefer world drops. Id hope for this for Borderlands 3, but somehow, I think boss-specific loot is here to stay…
An alternative to that would be AREA specific drops, where any boss in the area has an increased chance to drop it, but all normal enemies and chests have an increased chance to.
A good example of a way to do this (sorta) was SS&P in BL2. Short map with loads of enemies, 4 named bosses linked to a Quest, each with a unique drop of their own and a collective Legendary that they could all drop. Of course, it didn’t stand out as a farming run, but that’s just because the Emperor was a bad legendary… But people still ran the place because it was fun.
A self-contained map, badasses, mobs, unique drops, a legendary and a chest at the end.
World drop is much more organic and more fun, but when you want a SPECIFIC legendary, it’s not ideal.
Of course, world drop coupled with the grinder is sorta perfect: just… Play where you want and you’ll get what you want eventually. But it fell short because it launched with so many non-repeatable bosses and low mob density.
I wouldn’t mind total world drop since we have the grinder, but what we’re lacking is an abundance of areas that are fun to run on their own, like SS&P, Bloodshot stronghold or Washburne refinery.
Right now in TPS, there are few areas that are as fun as these, and the few fun ones are very short (Felicity, Bosun or Denial Subroutine), or are plagued with long downtimes in the middle, or have no fun boss at the end (crisis scar, eleseer)
The only place I can see that has great enemy density, a few bosses, decent length, a few chests and a fun layout that allows you to get back to the entrance easily is Stanton’s liver… But it has no fast travel!!!
I don’t see why they can’t have items that drop from specific bosses be world drops as well. It’s not a programming limitation so it’s possible and TPS already has a few items that now share loot pools.
That’s weapons though. There are legendary ranked customizations that are locked to specific enemies which could be world drops since not everyone loves farming bosses over and over again just for a new head.
Towards the bottom I could see that. I like the top half of that map, the easter egg area. And the top half of the map totally has an interesting detour. You go in there and kill everyone who shows up and then the door opens to 5 chests or so. Would be nicer if the chests in BL2 and TPS had better rarity in general. But it’s a neat little farming run.
edit: The bottom half of the map has the final area with the big shield turret, some long halls and one crowded chokepoint. It’s interesting considering the maps from a mob density point of view. I think they use a faucet to slowly drip enemies into areas as a method of controlling framerate. Instead of being back on a doom map where the level editor put 1000 guys on the entire map and they are all trying to think at the same time.
I personally think the best run in TPS is the subconscious. Why? 3 white glitch chest, a red glitch chest, and 3 boss fights and plenty of badasses on the way/ insecure watch bots that both have their own drops as well. Correct me if I am wrong but that’s a total of 5 specific Legendary loot sources 4 chest 2 rare drops as player skins and then of course any world drops along the way.
Edit: my run is from the fast travel up until the despair/self loathing fight then save n quit
Back to the topic though, I kinda like this idea but then again… I’d change a couple things such as…
I would like bigger maps say like the size of the Highlands from BL2, have one initial fast travel to each area then with the area have quick travels (tele pads that insta spawn you at another region of that location) and have them scattered everywhere. If maps were to be any smaller, loot specific areas would be broken. They’d be too quick to farm as an area farm and the gear seems waaaaayyy too easy to obtain that way. So add a ton of enemies have huge mobs scattered all over that region and have the rates at a pretty low rate since EVERYTHING can drop whatever items assigned to the region. Also with maps so big that adds potential for multiple big name bosses in just one region making a run quite a bit of fun before having to save and quit.
Say there are 30 legendaries you’d have 10 main map areas as big as the highlands with 3 legendaries set to each area. Still making loot specific drops kind of a thing that way.
I’ve gotten used to the way loot drops now, so while I like the idea, it wouldn’t feel very Borderlandsy. However, that strikes me more as a level design thing. Areas that are well designed that allow for easier farming/finding mobs of enemies are GOOD. Fast travels near key or interesting parts of the map are GOOD. Reducing the number of hoops to jump through to get to the desired area is GOOD. Or at least have enjoyable enemies to fight on the way there.
Or just have slightly better drop rates. The ones when it initially started kind of sucked (I don’t know if they went back to how they were at launch or if they are sliiiiightly better now) and were awesome during April and May. So maybe somewhere in between the two extremes with a slightly better chance from unnamed badasses (Like, 1/10,000).
