Hello gearbox and fellow Vaulthunters,
Its me again.
Game is out for 2 weeks now.
I have played for over 200 hours.
I have basically every item in the game.
(and yes I farmed them and traded for them, this thread is made probably one day before any save editor hits… and I have done no duping and I am not planing to use either)
am I happy about it? yes.
am I exhausted? yes. ( but it was a hell of ride so far)
would I want to continue farming if they right now added 20 more legendary items to the game? HELL F*ING NO!
(would I do it though? ofcourse I would…)
So Iam totally unaffcted by any of this, just want to make this clear, this is NOT a personal issue, but an issue that I and many others see, not everyone agrees on everything, but everyone agrees that THIS is not it right now
I have made plenty forum threads already adressing all kinds of issue, regarding balance, nerfs and loot.
and I am very active on those topics.
and to put it quite simply: farming in this game sucks big ass non-binary robot ‘beep’.
we heard so many diffrent arguments over the last days “nerfs were bad”, “nerfs were good”, “bl2 farming was the best”, “diablo farming now is way better”… bla bla bla.
- YES the nerfs were good and needed, Borderlands never was about raining legendarys and it never should be… this game especially hase SO MANY great and uniquely diffrent weapons that even a white gun can be impressiv!
BUT here is the problem you ran into… nerfing is TERRIBLY TERRIBLY BAD and devastating to a community that has never experienced such a thing in all of our loyal lifespan is this non-competetive PvE oriented How-can-we-break-the-game game… so give us ACTUAL data, tell us EXACTLY how it got reduced, so all the rumors just flat out stop.
BUT BUT thats not all, if you want to nerf our loot, AT LEAST give us new refreashing and diffrent ways to play and experience this amazing game!
Because besides this late game “grind for loot” disaster we have right now (and the low level cry babys) this game is:
AMANZING SUPER DUPER OMGWTF KAWAII EXPLOSIONxCORROSION AWESOME FUN!
(DISCLAIMER: this thread uses a lot of capitalization, please read these parts with a shouting torgue voice in your head! thanks!)
SO JUST LET US PLAY YOUR GAME and dont make us farm a tree, a huge rat, or a rich minority person. (dont just take them away from us… give us MORE and BETTER options instead!)
I am here to tell you what we as a community came up with, I gathered so much intel from diffrent people, diffrent experiences and opinions…
and the solution to this… to me at least… seems SO freaking easy… SO freaking simple… and is SO borderlands like…
want to here the solution?.. well
MAKE EVERYBODY HAPPY!
We need 3 steps to do this!
/insert ad here: and with these 3 SIMPLE STEPS even YOU can have GREAT LOOT in YOUR game Vaulthunter! Trust us! we are professionals!
Step 1. First you need to understand your player base, there are BASICALLY only 3 types of players:
The Filthy Casual
- runs around and plays through the story, maybe even complete it, wants to finde some nice loot and uses what ever he gets
The Borderlands Player
- understands how the game works, enjoys the mechanics, the skill variety and even knows which legendary or unique items would fit their build to improve it.
The H4RDC0R3 Grinder/Theorycrafter (me 
)
- knows basically everything about the game, is efficient, innovative and wants to min/max their build to the absolute peak perfomance level!
Step 2. SO, what do each of those players actually want from the game regarding loot?
The Filthy Casual
- wants ALL the shinys! look its shiny, I want to use that! so to make them happy have reasonable BASE loot drop chance for legendarys, ESPECIALLY on bosses, mini bosses and challenges.
AND let the casual know that even if you nerfed some parts of loot in the game, it has nothing to do with him playing his level 24 character on Eden-6 and he will be just fine! maybe even just buff drop rates by 0.1% on normal and just tell him you just BUFFED it! by how much? by EXPLOSIONS%?! this will make him happy
The Borderlands Player
- wan to be treated fair, want to play and enjoy your game, want to play through it multiple times maybe, wants to kill some bosses maybe, find hidden rare enemys, do challanges, maybe do a slaugther dome or 2, or just run a trial every now and then for fun! basically he wants to play your game and everything it has to offer, because again, the game is amazing!
AND he want to be REWARDED for doing so!
The H4RDC0R3 Grinder/Theorycrafter
- you know what they want. they just want the loot man, not any loot, the good stuff mmhhh those juicy annointed legendarys! Tasty! they want it fast, they want it now, they want it hard. Do they want any loot though? NO, they only want the loot they are looking for, they dont care for 95% of legendary drops in the game anymore, they only want THEIR stuff, their good stuff
Step 3. So now that we know who your palyers are, and what they want, HOW can you give it to them?
Well, I’ll shall now present to you! After all this foreplay! Finally!
THE FIVE ULTIMATE BADASS LEGENDARY SOLUTIONS TO FIX THIS GAMES LOOT ISSUES!
ONE:
Keep ALL drop rates at a reasonable high level! this inculdes all world drops, all boss and all challange. also keep all world drops available as world drops, so you can always find something new maybe!
- who will be happy about this?
the casual most importantly! he will find is legendary every now and then and will be totally pumped about it! and will keep playing.
The Borderlandsplayer will be happy too, he might find a new class mod he did not have before, or a new gun that he can maybe play around and test with. this is the Diablo experience they want, get all the loot everywhere by just playing the game!
The hardcore doesn’t really care as he is farming his boss anyway, but he’d be happy that everyone like the game he so much enjoys.
- has this been achieved by the game?
I’d say actually yes.
this games loot drop quality I think is ON point… it just was surrounded with so much negativity now, that it just made everyone unhappy. but as we adress the next points, this should be fine in the long run. IF the following changes get implemented in some capacity.
TWO:
Spread out the loot pool!
So just like as in BL2 every named Enemy (bosses, mini bosses, challange mobs etc.) has its very own personal legendary that only he can drop! which is fun and nice!
But we have SOOOO many guns in this game that there can’t possibly be enough bosses and big guys to carry all these right?.. THIS IS BORDERLANDS PEOPLE! OFCOURSE they can!
just sit down for a day and go over each and every named enemy in the game, and then just add 1-4 more FIXED legendarys to their loot pool, so they always have a guaranteed chance that you can rely on that THISspecific enemy has a chance to drop THIS specific legendary you want a better version of!
Example: Giga mind now not only has its own signature gun the smart gun XXL (that still only he can drop) but now also always has a CHANCE to drop the brainstormer (hehe get it?), the Cutsman (because alieny-ish?) and the Maggie (becuase it is totally unrelated to giga mind and borderlands sometimes is weird like that so deal with it, and we have another reason to complain because not enough thought was given!)
these three legendary items still can drop everywhere BUT they will have a MUCH higher chance to drop from Giga Mind compared!
- who will be happy about this?
the hardcore player will love you for this change! because not only can he reasonably farm the weapon he trys to get BUT in anddition to that he doesn’t have to kill the SAME BOSS over and over and over and over and over again… he can actually farm diffrent bosses now for the weapon he wants! he can develop new strategys to take them out faster and has fun and rewarding gameplay… and is not lost in all the random garbage loot he doesn’t even care about!
The borderlandsplayer will also enjoy! because he can more easily get the weapon he needs for his build if he really wants it… without spending night and dayp laying and praying to RNGesus to please just get this ONE gun he wants…
and ofcourse the casual doesn’t even know nor cares! but he will be happy if he sees a shiny still!
- has this been achieved by the game?
absolutly not… right now, if you want loot, you just farm treeboi, go offline, farm treeboi, cheat, farm treeboi, save edit, farm treeboi… you get my point… farm treeboi…
why? because he can drop everythin in the game and is the most reliable to kill fast with a nice chunk of droprate. this is not fun for any one, it was fun at first cause you got all the legendarys really fast to test them out, but now it is just tedious… you just prey to rngesus that you get your loot… thats all you can really do… because you can NOT farm for the item you want… or you just play the game regularly and then just cry when you think you could’ve farmed 200 legendarys in this time… which MAYBE, ONE item, COULD have been useful…
THREE:
Make diffrent game modes APEALING and REWARDING to Play!
Trials are super fun!
SlaughterStar is super challanging and fun!
Circle of slaughter is actually quite fun!
are these game modes worth playing your time for loot? absolutly NOT!
As much fun as they are, they are SO disapointing when it comes to loot… I can do mayhem 3 trial in 3 minutes, SO I AM SUPER BADASS RIGHT? I did all the side missions! now what I get for it? A (singular) box with blues and purples… yay!.. thanks I guess? or maybe the ocasional random legendary… this is not worth my time when I can kill treeboi 10 times during this and just get 20 legendarys…
its a really easy and rewarding fix for that! make it scale with 2 things:
mayhem mode and time spent!
mayhem mode simply increase the rarity of the chest:
- so for mayhem 1 you get a BADASS chest with each item in it having an about 25% chance to be legendary
- mayhem mode 2 gives you a SUPER BADASS chest with each item in it having an about 50% chance to be legendary
- mayhem mode 3 give you a ULTIMATE BADASS chest with each item in it having an about 90% chance to be legendary AND a VERY HIGH Chance for them to be annointed!
TIme spent on the other hand increase the AMOUNT of boxes you get!
- so if you can do it within 15 minutes you just a single regular chest of your mayhem level
- if you complete it with 20 minutes remaining you get TWO BADASS chests!
- AND THEN IF you can complete it with 25 minutes still on the clock you get FO…THREE BADASS CHESTS!
NOW THIS is insentive to actually play the new and exciting game mode you gave to me!
(and while we are at it, remove drops from all enemys completly and just add all the loot to the final encounter ina huge lootsplosion, since it is really counter intuitive to pick up loot in a time trial game mode…)
ALSO add UNIQUE and EXLUSIVE legendary drops to each of the trial endbosses, so there is more insentive to do and try all the diffrent trials and not just brainlessly farm a single one (if this then becomes the meta)
Same goes for slaughter dome… I did this… I really did this all the way to the end… it took me over 2 hours to complete!
you wanna know what I got for it?
A single red maliwan chest with a purple sniper and a purple relic… the third spot was empty…
this is the biggest joke in this entire thread… (type a “F” in your comment if you read this)
I expected 3,5 or even 10 chests for defeating these super dumb giant f’ing robots at the end… I got a single red chest…
so yeah… I dont want to complain I want to improve… I dont really have an optimal solution here either… but maybe give me this read chest after each successful round, so I can get a quick reward, and then give me my 3-5 BIG DICK F’ing chest when I done it all… give me those ULTIMATE BADASS CHEST (just make them a thing… come one this also sounds amazing and sounds so much like torgue!)
same goes for circle (although I haven’t even tried to complete it personally, so I am uncertain about its rewards)
- who will be happy about this?
everyone… everyone?
- has this been achieved by the game?
NO. the gamemodes are fun… but to get loot, they are just no option at all! they are a JOKE! and not worth any effort whatsoever. as one of the big selling points, this is a HUGE disapointment.
FOUR:
REWARD gameplay descissions! this looks quite similar to number 3, but is actually quite diffrent.
what I mean by that is, give a player, who just wants to play the game the way he wants to more feel good moments! OR even better give them new ways to play the game for himself or enjoy with others with little things that might not even be quite clear at the beginning.
here is an HIGHLY experimental (mabe hard to implement) example idead that we just figured out in another thread that should help player experience when helping a friend or just roam around and clear areas and enjoy all the diffrent maps and planets you gave us:
there are so many rare mobs in this game right? why not implement an invisible timer of some sort that says: if you were not in a region for maybe an hour, all rare-spawns will guarantee spawn.
so this on first glance will just be an overall improvement to the first time palyer experience, as he not only gets rewarded for exploring immediatly but he will learn about a rare enemy that spawns in this location, maybe triggering him to maybe try and find him again and as we mentioned before in point 2 have a nice chance at sweet loot!
but then you give it some more thought and you can come up with a whole new playstyle for the game that is ever changing!
so you can basically play some kind of “farm train” as we see it in othher mmos, where you kill a bunch of diffrent bosses in a group running a calculated line from rare boss to rare boss. and hop from map to map! this can be really fun too.
so you start in lectra farm wick and worty, one punch and all the the other guys, then hop into the next map and kill the rares here…
sure it would not be as efficent as boss farming, BUT it would do two things:
- let you play in another way
- AND have new players or just palyers randomly running by always see a cool character and have a have a cool little fight!
and I am sure you put effort in it, you can come up with even more ideas in the future!
- who will be happy about this?
Casuals and Borderlandsplayers alike will enjoy this, it gives you some obvious insetives to go out and actually play the game, search for these rares or just encouter them by accident! since you will always have a unique playing experience when finding one of these enemys. with the timer it can not be abused (since it can still be farmed by reloading) but it will have some guaranteed impact on the playing experience!
also the hardcore might find this usefull as he always learns where exactly the mob is when he first trys to get to it.
- has this been achieved by the game?
obviously this is an experimental idea, so it can not possibly have been in the game. butsimilar thought could have been given to this topic, but sadly has not been done. there is NO reason for me to run around in devils razor, the splinterlands, sandblast scar(did you even know this existed?), the anvil, ambermire… etc. all these areas are completly unused… give us reasons to go there.
FIVE:
HEART.
stay in contact with your community!
BLOOD.
work hard to deliver the best gaming experience.
SOUL.
stay as cool as you are gearbox!
seriously, this game, this franchise is amazing, this community is amazing!
The bordelrands 2 community played your game for 7 years! 4 years without any update whatsoever, because we love this game, and we love you gearbox, the creators of this game!
Dont ever lose focus, nor the bond to your community. listen to feedback. improve everything you can, fix issues, and dont cause new ones.
- who will be happy about this?
jokes aside, everyone will be happy, and everyone is for the most part. remember that we just complain because we WANT this game to be great much the same as you do! we want this to be THE game. and so far it is quite that, sure it has issues, but every game has… so dont let that get to you. just do what you do, do what you always did!
- has this been achieved by the game?
Absolutly YES! Thank you at everyone at gearbox for this amazing game and the countless hours we still have to put in it.
the loot right now is a mess, but this is a tiny tiny tiny complaint in a vast sea of greatness (sprinkled with some more other tiny tiny complaints obviously 
‘caugh’ iron bear/pet/drone scaling late game ‘caugh’)
I hope you enjoyed these compiled thoughts and ideas… and I really dearly hope we see some changes.
to everyone else, do you have more ideas? did I forget something? did you enjoy the read or find it helpfull, do you agree or disagree? PLEASE let us know in the comments! and dont forget to like!