The new Mailwan Takedown should scale to solo play

Borderlands 3 Borderlands 3 General Discussion
#1

Disclaimer: based on the Borderlands show the Raids are designed to be 4 player Co OP focused. Yes The devs said the Raids can attempted solo but made it a point say that you’re probably not going to get very far.

A couple reasons why I feel going the Destiny Co Op focus route is a mistake.

  1. We are ignoring the foundation Borderlands franchise was built on. Borderlands 1, 2, TPS…all content was able to be done Solo. IMO this increased the longterm viability of the game since you probably wont get a dedicated group of Vault Hunters years after the game is released. Year 1 or Year 5, doesnt matter…you can start the game and do everything by yourself.

  2. Borderlands has a very weak position on (out of fear of being banned) let’s say…“not so ethical ways of playing the game.” Its the main reason why I play solo on PC. It wasnt a big deal up until this point becuase its was a single player focused experience. Not anymore.

  3. What’s going to happen if you attempt to matchmaking with a build thats “Off Meta?” Are you going to get kicked, forced to change your build.

  4. The B3 Vault Hunters at this time really isn’t built around teamwork. Is there a dedicated healer class? Dedicated tank class? If there a class that reliably brings people out of fight for your life?

Moze for example is very selfish Vault Hunter. Bottomless is useless in a team, Her demo woman tree is about to be nerfed into oblivion, and SOR only applies to her. The only thing I can see is a 100% Iron Bear uptime build to have a chance at team synergy.

These are just off the top of my head. I come from Division 1 and 2 and it simply didnt work. I like that we are getting raids…I think Gearbox needs to seriously take a look at their stance at solo play for them.

59 Likes
#2

You just don’t know what you want…
It’s not released yet. I love to see people complain before they even try it.
The same “only possible with 4 player coop” was about BL2 raids… Jeez…

10 Likes
#3

How many time are we going to use the "Wait until its released " line. The community said things like Pets, IB, and Zane would be underpowered well before launch, “We waited for release”, and yet here we are.

Theres no harm in talking about something before it becomes a problem, not when its actually a problem that needs to be patched after the fact.

26 Likes
#4

Moze can give away health to give her team all fire damage on their guns while Fl4k can negate that penalty with their team constant healing. Amara can keep a crowd under control while Zane zooms between targets picking them off to proc his kill skills and keep his damage going.

I don’t know what character sheets you’re reading, but these characters are built for team work. And that’s just a very shallow reading. Let’s not forget that Amara can whittle the room down while Moze throws grenades to keep everything hiding and Fl4k can mount a multi prong assault while Zane slows the herd. Or Moze can take a bunch of damage and do some tanking and Zane’s barrier can keep everyone safe.

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#5

There’s no harm in the discussion involving recommendations to not make value judgements before the content is out, too.

You want a discussion, right? Agreements and disagreements? Or just agreements?

Raids were never advertised as solo-able in BL2. It takes a moderate amount of investment into the game to even gear correctly to do so in the first place. Or at least, moderate involvement with a community like this one. If you want to talk about past games, also recognise how the past games advertised the same mechanics.

Heck, the flavour text for a raid boss mission famously just said “You. Will. Die.”.

10 Likes
#6

I think it’s important to have a functional matchmaking system and fluent online components before endgame raid type content is released. I think it should be optional to play solo too and completely agree. But if it’s going to have a mandatory 4 player feel I wanted to express some concerns.

Unfortunately right now the game has very basic online matchmaking riddled with bugs, lag, and no server browsers. I hope Gearbox takes this into consideration before releasing this content.

I love the game but I mostly play solo, and whenever I matchmake for proving grounds, CoS, or campaign there are always a large amount of issues I’ve never had with any other multiplayer games. Teleporting in the sky instead of with other players, crippling lag when regional matchmaking and my own internet speeds aren’t an issue, no lobbies for boss runs or to keep groups together, it’s very basic online play that we’ve seen decades of improvements upon in other games but not here.

I’m not a destiny fan AT ALL but going online and playing with others in that game is extremely smooth and easy (except for on raids) and almost completely devoid of bugs. Even in borderlands 2 we could at least see the lobby before we joined and check out a little more info. We can’t even see what class mods we’re using.

Playing it solo would eliminate these issues of course and it’s one reason why I agree with your post. Also Destiny and Division are both IMO wildly flawed when it comes to group content, and shouldn’t be anything more than a very basic example of what gearbox should be shooting for. I think Gearbox should be forging their own path on this one. The competition is just supremely overrated and a breeding ground for elitism.

Destiny has long spurned solo players in both design and function of their activities and has all but required most content to be played by a minimum of 3 people. You can still solo stuff fine but you can just feel the developer breathing down your neck to beg 2 of your friends to buy or play the game and tackle content with you. Division has less issues but still gets bogged down by missing important details like a bad call for backup matchmaking system, too many difficulty levels and options (the map is a mess), and generally grouping for missions can be a fustercluck of people improperly pathing and getting ready, afk, mission bugs and events not triggering, etc.

I’ve been thoroughly enjoying the game and the Halloween event, and I’ve played mostly solo but spent a lot of time doing CoS and proving grounds with others. The online issues really should be a priority if Gearbox wants to release challenging online content.

9 Likes
#7

Exactly. Raids have always been for 4 players in Borderlands. Iirc most of the questqivers even said something about, bringing a full group of friends for the best chance at winning. They even had Hammerlock remind us of that in the Bl2: Commander Lilith DLC.

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#8

I think the main difference between B2 and B3 is this obsession with balance. As soon as a single build starts over performing, its gets nerfed which hurts the solo experience the most.

Gearbox is making a giant gamble. If these raids mechanically can be done solo ( they didnt say you have to be in a group for envormental puzzles or team specific mechanics to overcome) then there really isnt a reason to make them 4 player co op at all. The reason why Destiny raids work is becuase the raid themselves require teamwork, its not just a glorified horde mode.

Now do I believe these raids will never be beaten solo…of course not. However advertising an endgame activity with 4 person co op that discourages solo play is NOT a good idea in a Borderlands game.

It should be advertised as the hardest most rewarding content in the game that’s possible solo but gets enhanced if you play in a group.

13 Likes
#9

This is a strong misunderstanding of what and how they’re balancing. It’s not “as soon as something starts over performing”. They’re seeing things abused in ways that break the content, or things are popping up that shouldn’t have that they missed because they didn’t think a thing through all its ways.

Let’s talk Leave No Trace. They designed it mostly for Jakobs Snipers. Regular snipers in general. Then they saw that with a Jakobs shotgun and Fl4k running Fade Away (a thing from a different tree that probably didn’t even occur to them to fully check out with this skill) and suddenly there’s an Infinite Shotgun, which was not intended and renders Moze practically niche less.

Recent Grenade situation? They’re trying to get their grenade definitions in line. Beam grenades giving infinite grenades due to the way they tick is, again, not what they wanted, and renders Bottomless Mags Nicheless. They’re not going “oh, that’s some fun. Let’s ruin it” they’re going “ahhh…crap, that is NOT supposed to happen…my bad”. There’s a LOT of moving parts and not all real world applications had been tested.

Everything is gonna be awesome. All the characters still kick ass and they’re working on making the ones who are behind get a little better.

10 Likes
#10

Along with the “Wait till release” I’m also done with giving Gearbox the benefit of the doubt that everything is going to be good. I have been throughly disappointed with this entry and they are doing the thing I hoped they wouldn’t do… minimize the single player experience.

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#11

…I literally didn’t say everything would be good. I said it is good. :slight_smile:

#12

I would use different arguments, but I wholeheartedly suppport the main premise: no content must be behind a multiplayer wall, ableit a “soft one.” BL has no change in competing against “true” multiplayers, so please, for the sake of gamers and your own franchise, let the game be for solo and make it harder only when multiple players are present.

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#13

Yet they add terror mechanic via annointments so that EVERYONE can be a bottomless mags moze… but even better.

The nerfs to moze and the introduction of terror and buffs to big boom blaster has rendered Moze nicheless as a whole.

As for OP’s post, yeah i agree with you. I’m 100% certain that the raid(s) will be soloble, but just by advertise them as a 4-player activity is probably off-putting to a lot of people, and great news to a lot too ofc. But this is, imo, a single player game first and foremost - they should probably make it clear that it will be soloble, but you’ll have more fun with friends… which is obvious. Even fallout 76 is fun-ish with friends.

5 Likes
#14

Sadly they already did the same thing with Battleborn. Every major patch would rework things: completely move skills down or up severel tiers, numbers were changed, even some skills or effects would work totally different than before… in the end every of the 30 unique chars was somehow equel making every match just a boring back and forth without anyone dying except if you would go 3v1.

I think you could even say this all started when they started patching things like the Digistruct Peak skip.

I mean I get things like nerfing the CC + Bee but these weekly nerfs just after launch are just ridiculous, makes it seem like they didn‘t do any play testing at all.

Like it‘s almost funny how they buffed sniper rifles in the first? hotfix, as if that wasn‘t a complaint since Borderlands 2.

1 Like
#15

Tonight I decided to queue for a Circle of Slaughter, M3 with Fl4k. After a minute, the game loaded with 3 of us, Bandit CoS. Oh well, I can solo that “fertilizer” let’s hope the other two know what they are doing. Round 1, Wave 1, I start shooting from cover, while the other Fl4k and a non-flak character who met an untimely death rushed forward. Mid Wave 1, the surviving Fl4k retreated to me and we finished clearing the mobs. Then we travelled to the opposeite end of the map to catch 2 stragglers.

Enter Wave 2. I shoot, the other Fl4k rushes forard, out of position, no cover, meets their maker and ragequits like the first guy. I finished the round alone and decideed to come here and make one more plea for reconsidering scaling the Takedown for 4 people. Who wants the experience I just got? Yes, there are forums, servers and what not for the most dedicated 1% of the player base. Please, don’t lose the other 99%. You need us.

11 Likes
#16

Raids are the thing that made me stop playing Destiny years ago. I simply don’t like being forced to play with other people. It would not be a problem if Gearbox was not obsessed with balance for Bl3… I cannot see something like grog or ahab dual wielding Salvador getting far before being “fixed” in this game, and “easy mode” interactions like those were the things that relieved the stress for me, making me think “well, at least I know I Will be able to clear anything if I desire, sooner or later”
Crossing my fingers this won’t shoo me away from the game…

11 Likes
#17

Beacuse there are no servers lol
The player who is choosen as a “host” acts like a “server”. So if that player has a terrible internet connection, everyone in the group will have terrible connection since “server” can’t process data that fast.

I tested it with few friends and that seems to be the case.
My internet speed: 300 mb/s download° 20 mb/s upload°.
Friends joining my group never had lags.
Friend with ~50 mb/s download° and ~2 mb/s upload°.
Everyone who joined him had lags…

°-Internet speed is based on speed test in browser. Be advise that the “real” speed is only 10% of what you see.

2 Likes
#18

I can’t be the only solo player who smiled at this and thought “yeah no way to get Axton through digistruck 10 without a team…”

Bring it on I say.

3 Likes
#19

That’s good for you, but there’s plenty of other people with lots of lag issues present in this game exclusively.

I usually don’t have bad lag myself, but have occasionally run across games where it’s incredibly laggy for no reason, only thing I can think of is it must’ve matchmade me with someone at extreme distances.

And I didn’t mean literal servers, just a sneak and peak of the host / game you’re joining, their level, quest, etc.

It’s late 2019, being able to inspect players gear besides what rarity it is, open game to friends instead of just public, carry players in a lobby for efficient boss farming without d/c the whole group, stuff like this should be standard in any modern online game.

I’m not saying this game is egregious because of the lack of it, I’m just saying it would be a better game for it.

4 Likes
#20

Exactly. This is usually where people say ThEn iT sHoUlDnT hAvE mAtChMaKiNg.

Or JuSt PlAy WiTh FrIeNdS.

Ugh. Everyone I know is on Destiny’s D or playing call of duty or just whatever besides this game. Making friends on discord or reddit usually serves up super clingy teenagers who spam party invites any time you sign on, spaced out 420 fresh out of college afkers, or ultra busy career professionals who are only on once a week for 30 minutes.

I’m exaggerating a bit but my point is designing content exclusively for group play or basically making it mandatory outside of using broken solo builds that will inevitably get nerfed isn’t a great idea.

We don’t know exactly how this will play it but I’m hopeful it’ll work out, all the balance changes thus far have been more surprising than game ruining. At least IMO.

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