11 months they worked on IB

Borderlands 3 Moze the Gunner
#1

I watched a video of Randy and another guy talking about how they worked on Moze for nearly a year and they still couldn’t get it right.

I mained Sal in BL2, Mordecai in 1 and both felt really well made characters. Moze… well what the hell were they doing for 11 months? Balacing is so bad that her main selling point is useless in TVHM M3 - literally making me want to reroll and make a different character just to play TVHM M3.

As it is BL3 feels so hollow compared to BL2, missing characters, weak villains, lacklustre story it seems like they really didnt playtest or test in general their product until it launched - AKA early access game.

This is one of the few AAA games I’ve bought in a long time and I’m pretty disappointed with some of the aspects of the game - mainly the clear lack of play testing gone into the product. Its clear no real time was spent testing TVHM M3 as seen by some of the dumb rolls you can get!

Come on Gearbox sort it out…

3 Likes
#2

I’ve only played Moze so far, how does her Grenade build do compared to other characters? I run a forge build with a lyuda and don’t seem to have any real problems.

#3

She has some great builds that can facetank tough content for sure, but pretty much none of them are about using her action skill for anything but triggering shield regen or annointed buffs. It’s just that even with max level only at 50 rn and the scaling toned down from BL2 Iron Bear already doesnt scale to handle the highest difficulty content, and neither do any other pets, deployables or vehicles more or less. Scaling problems that didn’t get bad until BL2 UVHM are already present in TVHM or even Normal w Mayhem. And currently there arent many ways to build around compensating for the issue. Iron Bear needs survivability and damage buffs that scale to endgame, Fl4k’s pets need a lot of buffs especially base damage and some Master tree reworks, and vehicles need a lot more armor/DR or something, or if UVHM gets added its gonna involve a lot of running. High level enemies and the top-tier builds are just doing way too much damage to be so conservative w some of this stuff.

1 Like
#4

Agreed, but Mayhem from what I recall is a newer type of mode, and with the extreme modifiers on Mayhem 3 unfortunately many playstyles will be invalidated in each particular session.

Furthermore, it is naturally the case that Iron Bear will be particularly hard to balance, because on the one hand we may not want a skill that takes so long to cooldown that most of the time it can’t be used, but if its cooldown is made to be able used regularly then it can’t be too powerful, yet people want a powerful mech

Plus I still like Auto Bear even as a turret. Once Moze skills fill out she is powerful enough to attack while Auto Bear provides supporting fire

1 Like
#5

They will most certainly buff up both armor and damage for it, same with many other skills. It definitely should be able to keep up with what you do with guns and grenades, otherwise there is no point using it aside from a quick get out of jail free card.

1 Like
#6

If you step back and think about it, it should have been obvious.

Iron Bear replaces your character, therefore they should have figured out the highest dps possible for moze including her skill tree’s, and then taken iron bear and made sure it was possible to do the same or more dps with some kind of iron bear build.

The key fact that it replaces your character, it should always be equal or a buff to your dps regardless of how overpowered your gear or skill combination is.

4 Likes
#7

sal is a walking glitch.

8 Likes
#8

Exactly. Why can it do a multiplier based off my current weapon?

Sure there would be some kind of exploits to be ironed out but I do the same damage out why cant I do it in.

It’s not even hard to do the maths - take your current weapon and work out the ROF and come up with a multiplier.

If I can be OP with a gun why not my mech?

#9

There were quite a few action skills in BL2 that didn’t scale well into endgame either, so it’s nothing new. In BL3 the characters are mechanically also way more complex.
Based on my experience most balancing efforts in a game are done in the first few hours, which most players will see. Endgame isn’t something the majority of players (casual) will ever encounter in a game like this and therefore it has a lower priority in QA. I don’t know how Gearbox handles those kind of things but judging based on what we got it seems to be similar.

#10

" Endgame isn’t something the majority of players (casual) will ever encounter in a game like this"

That has to be the most stupid statement I have heard justifying bad QA. MOST players of BL as a series are not only going to play it multiple times but will farm endgame.

Not having good end game scaling is a sign that this game was either rushed or made without the care for its longevity. I’m already getting bored of it as it seems end game wasn’t even thought about.

Hell Moze can’t even use iron bear in a lot of the places due to it being low ceilings or caverns or other obstacles forcing her out of the mech.

They spoent 11 months trying to get it right and suggestions on here would have fixed issues we could forsee - hell they knew about issues like this in BL2 but followed the same pattern.

1 Like
#11

It isn’t a justification. I never said I agree with this. It’s just what happens a lot of the times based on personal experience and statistics. Let’s have a look at BL2 on PC. Only about 1/3 of all players killed Jack in Normal Mode, while just ~10% killed Terra (in any of the difficulties). Especially those people in the forums and die-hard fans are usually a minority. From a cost-benefit-perspective, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to balance and test a game based on those folks.

3 Likes
#12

Then why even bother supporting a game for 5+ years and continuously adding new endgame challenges if you arent gonna do anything to improve the experience for the playerbase that sticks with your game. In the first few hours of Borderlands 3, even the first 30, you won’t have enough skill and gear synergies to pose anything approaching the balancing problems of endgame scaling. But why have an unbalanced endgame that will lead your core playerbase to shrink before the first DLC, why have an endgame at all if it’s not gonna retain the design philosophy of the rest of the game when it comes to balance? Obviously GBX is gonna support Borderlands 3, and they’re gonna make balance changes to endgame content. Fl4k’s GitM skill is not that big of an issue until you’re in the endgame boss farming with the powerful synergistic legendaries you already found/farmed, as an example.

#13

Sad but true.

I think they do a decent job of endgame balance (at least they previously did). I was able to defeat most raid bosses solo at op8(10) with all characters. I could also do op8(10)endgame content like DigiPeak, Murderlins Round 5, etc with all characters.

My hope is the power creep and inflated numbers don’t get as out of control as BL2.

#14

I don’t think IB needs to be as strong or stronger than Moze but it needs to offer an effective and dynamic playstyle of its own.

The closest thing to IB in BL’s action skills are Brick and Krieg’s Rampage skills- you drop all guns and gain a playstyle dependent on tanking and brute force. Brick’s didn’t scale that well but while Krieg’s BXR is less powerful than his Hellborn stuff, it’s still a dynamic and powerful ability offering its own advantages, and is highly enjoyed by players arguably moreso than his strongest setups.

Iron Bear would likely require a complete rework to accomplish that tho, which is probably impossible to do at this stage.

#15

Outside of balancing dmg & survivability, the one thing I really hate about iron bear is that the gameplay don’t change, skill tree have zero impact on iron bear. A complete lack of synergy.

The different weapons don’t really make a big difference and you never reach the ‘fun’ of legendary weapons you can get with Moze. It don’t match the versatility of other vault hunter 3 abilities.

Since Iron bear replace your main char, all skills should influence both. It’s like for Fl4k, the pet can’t be removed, why make skills that don’t buff both? If you have the choice to spend point on a skill that buff your main char HP or your pet/vehicle, buffing main char is always better. Just because it scales with gear.

I find Amara more balanced with her skill tree. The blue one is the weakest I think, it buff mostly the ability. In the green tree, all skills push you to more aggressive gameplay. One skill buff gun dmg when close to target. Make sense with a melee focused tree. A skill buff BOTH gun dmg and Ability when you melee. There is a synergy between all skills, gun dmg, melee dmg and ABILITY dmg.
Same with red tree, all buff elemental dmg, turn non elemental weapon to elemental, melee to elemental, dmg buff when using ability etc…

With Moze, you have near zero synergy between Skill tree and IB. Only a few skills that affect it. But no gameplay changer. Outside of auto-bear, but you don’t have other buff in the tree that synergy with a turret gameplay.

I really hate the skills that buff armor or fuel. Ironbear should always viable for all builds and don’t force you to invest in a specific tree. It only affect Ironbear and in the end if you want to play with it you have tto take them and buff them with a dedicated class mod because it’s the only way to buff/scale iron bear HP & dmg.

That lead to my final problem : no equipment bonus to Ironbear. Melee dmg can be scaled with dedicated relic, with weapons bonus, class mod extra bonus, shield etc… But no extra buff to iron bear.
They could release specific relics (or have vehicle relics that buff iron bear since it’s a vehicle). Weapons with more gunner/general anointed bonus that buff you/ironbear when you use your ability, class mod modifiers that affect ironbear (so even a non ironbear dedicated mod could still buff it).

We need dedicated Ironbear gear that could give ironbear some legendary effects and change it’s gameplay.

#16

Would be good if some of Moze skills also work on IB. V-35 could have the thrown grenades a chance to crit, IB splash could double in size and proc fire damage. Even the Demolition Woman Capstone could apply to IB miniguns, as they shoot bullets.
We already have skills adressing his survivability, so damage is what os lacking.

Krieg was a good example, as he drops the guns to rampage but still gets support from the skills and gear (Shield, COM, Relic). IB should be like it but instead gets no support at all. And this is why it ends up being bad.

Having your COM, relic and some more skills affecting it is a good start imo.

1 Like
#17

Wait, Fire in the Skag Den and Torgue Cross Promotion don’t work with IB? That sucks. Was hoping to use those with the mini-guns explosive rounds.

Ugh. Guess I’m going to have to give up on IB for now and just focus on the boring grenade build.

#18

Imo auto bear should have been it’s own action.(moze only has 1 action skill) You would just digistruct iron bear, and he would move around and launch multiple different attacks. The tree would focus on giving auto bear cc and debuff attacks. While the regular iron bear action skill would focus on being tanky and dishing out damage. Auto bear could not use the dps weapons that iron bear has, but could utilize skills like the shield bubble from the other trees. Obviously Any iron bear proc wouldn’t trigger either, like shield starts recharging while entering iron bear.

The third tree could have been gunzerk with all 4 of your weapons. Amara has phaselock, why not. She would have small exo skeleton suit that she would jump in to equip all 4 weapons at the same time. This would have a much faster start up time then iron bear.(The start up frames, black screens entering and exiting)But you would’nt have any debuffs, cc, or tankines, just a bunch of weapon stat buffs while firing all 4 of your equied weapons at the same time.

I personally feel that action skills like iron bear and kreigs are bad designs. Any skill that takes away your guns are going to be impossible to balance. (And take away from loot aspect of the game, the main point of the game) I personally was not interested in moze because of iron bear, I intended on activating it as little as possible even before the game came out.

#19

They work. A few skills. Not sure for Torgue promotion but I get extra incendiary with IB AoE weapons. But all others don’t do anything like in shield of retribution.

#20

Is it Fire in the Skag Den or Cloud of Lead that is procing? As far as I know, only Cloud of Lead works with IB guns but I can be wrong.