Why Dedicated Loot Drops in MM4 Have to Be (Nearly)Guaranteed In Borderlands 3 By Design

Borderlands 3 Borderlands 3 General Discussion
#1

Greetings All,

Here I am again, with another one of my “Design” threads. Not trying to be an armchair developer or anything. I just want to explain why dedicated loot drops must be nearly guaranteed from sources. I would like to explain why from a purely design perspective using the realities of farming and very bad math skills.

Some of you have already scoffed at the title. Thinking that I must want everything handed to me. No my friend. Please read what I have to say so I can explain why Farming is literally impossible in BL3.

Borderlands 2 Comparison

Variation within a single piece of gear has exploded in ways that couldn’t have been accounted for in Bl3 when compared to Bl2. There would only be an issue if that variation was made relevant. In borderlands 2 many guns had parts that didn’t do much to change the way a gun functionally benefits you. Typically your biggest relevant variation within a gun is Double Penetrating vs non-double penetrating. That was a reasonable variation and made farming not seem so monumental a task. Drop rates had to be OK. They didn’t have to be fantastic, Yet it seems like BL2 had ON AVERAGE better drop rates than Bl3 by a long mile.

Borderlands 3 is not like that . The variation has taken a new level. Anointed Perks have corrupted a manageable yet imperfect machine and turned it into an out of control downhill spiraling mess that will only get worse as difficultly increases(level caps and Mayhem mods) and new anointed are added to the game via content drops.

The Facts

Some of you do not know, but we have over 70 anointed perks in the game. I believe 50+ of them are weapon specific. With shield and grenade getting a pool of around 20. That means at MINIMUM there is 50+ different versions of a single weapon. You think that’s it? Well yes… but no. Lets stack 6 different elements. lets stack double penetrating vs single fire. Lets put prefix’s on there. Guys I haven’t been in school for a few years. But lets do a TINY example.

If the legendary weapon you are looking for comes in:

  • only one element(Hopefully right?)
  • only one prefix(This is a extreme lowball)
  • only has 2 ammo modes(double penetrating or not?)
  • Comes in 1 of 50 anointments(oh crap it can come in no anointment too. So double ALL OF THE MATH YOU SEE BELOW)

There is (already) literally 100 different versions of that gun. Now add just one other element choice? 200 versions. lets add just 3 prefix options which most guns have more of. Whelp There is now 600 versions of that gun. Hopefully it’s not a maliwan gun with 2 different element modes! And the Developers are constantly adding entire batches of anointed types with every content drop(terror event, Takedown event). Wev’ve reached potential thousands boys!

We the players are not only suffering through RNG to get the damn gun to drop. We now are hoping the one gun relevant to our build is dropping out of potentially 100s of variations. I could eliminate the entire prefix category and there would still be comfortably hundreds of variations of one gun on average in BL3.

Class Mods are probably worst

Guys I haven’t even BEGIN to talk about Class Mods. There are 38 secondary stats in the game. If i remember how to do math, from secondary stats alone, There are in between 8436-9880(couldn’t remember the formula) different combinations of just that subset lol. I haven’t even mentioned the Skill buffs in class mods, Which MULTIPLIES these base numbers. NOT ADDITIVE. This is bonkers. They put these things behind Trial Bosses?! Does that make a iota of sense to you?

The Solution

In M3 or M4 and above( I don’t care which but I lean towards M4). Dedicated Loot Sources need to have nearly GUARANTEED drops of their dedicated loot. It needs to rain legendaries. Anointed Gear with the introduction of M4 are no longer the “icing on the cake” of builds. They are the glue that makes builds viable. We can’t have them buried under LAYERS of RNG. Class Mods should have NEVER been allowed to become this varied and now the player base is dealing with the consequences. They MUST Be nearly guaranteed from their dedicated farm.

This is not borderlands 2 anymore. This is not an MMO. I can farm and successfully get a specific legendary gun to drop 50x and not get the anointed I need or the prefix I need or the combination of prefix and element and anointed I need.

disclaimer: If my math is off at any point please do it for me. I am positive the numbers will still be unacceptable. I forgot how Permutations and calculations with or without replacement worked to be honest.

Edit:

Last Piece

If you feel like nearly guaranteed loot drops are a step to far I implore you to try to farm General Bean on Athena’s and test the waters. You will see that even when a specific gun is guaranteed on a easy save/quit farm of a weak mini boss, it will not be as rewarding an experience as you may think. And this is literally the lowest common denominator. The grind is still there.

58 Likes
Unfortunately, I am completely done with this game
Good Job on the DLC Gearbox (no spoilers)
Why is everyone complaining about drops?
Drop rates: thanks but it’s not enough
Event drop rate
Bonus Boss Loot is great, can we keep it this way?
Bonus Boss Loot is great, can we keep it this way?
Borderlands 3 Hotfix [01/09/2020]
#2

I have to agree.
I’m the kind of player that enjoys to farm, i can deal with farming a good weapon in this state.

But class mods…damn. that’s a bit too mutch.
Class mods are too mutch useful and needed to have that mutch RNG in it.
The solution can be as easy as to just put in game a boss that drops only class mods.

6 Likes
#3

I think this needs to happen especially with the rare spawn enemies like Borman Nate’s, and Wick and Warty, who have no guarantee of actually spawning making this even worse.

12 Likes
#4

I agree to a certain degree. Guaranteed drops should be the ones from sources at the end of some kind of gauntlet, like circles of slaughter or trials, or rare spawns.
Sources farmable in quit/reload circles are fine IMHO. Maybe the rates for dedicated loot are a bit low but…

5 Likes
#5

If you’ve farmed General Bean for the westergun for ANY amount of time. You would know that what you said is simply not enough of a solution at all.

The Westergun is basically a guaranteed drop. Good luck getting the anointment you want out of 50. Isn’t their a double penetrating variant as well? Or wait, that gun comes in 2 element combinations at a time too.oh boy. Doesn’t it wildly vary in ammo capacity as well?

Do you want me to calculate the math on that or has my point been proven? The Guns are ALREADY the RNG. We don’t need layers of it

12 Likes
#6

I disagree with dedicated loot drops being guaranteed. Yes the current drop rate is appalling and needs a change. What’s the purpose of Mayhem mode at this point?

I would suggest a 25% chance to drop the dedicated loot drop (shared with everything in its pool) and I think M4 should drop anointed versions 100% of the time it drops. 50% for M3, 25% for M2 and 10% M1. This way there is actually a reason to play a higher Mayhem mode.

17 Likes
#7

farmed the one pump chump :sweat_smile:

after around 50 kills it dropped… no anointment haha… such waste of time :frowning:

6 Likes
#8

yeah i agree. the way this game seems to be moving, the dice roll shouldn’t be wether or not you get the gun it should be wether or not the gun had the right prefix, parts, element and annointment.

class mods though need serious attention, and fast. it really needs to be adressed once and for all - class mods are the foundation of a build, it’s what make it or break it. 10% droprate(being very generous with this number) and the thousands different combinations makes it near impossible to get one you actually want. we’re in the 0.00000000000000001% territory.

they release M4 with the purpose of higly min/maxed synergiezed build but doesn’t actually give us a way to creat such a build unless you’re on PC with cheat engine or play a class that are just OP regardless of what’s being used.

13 Likes
#9

the loot system right now is like playing on a claw machine

32 Likes
#10

now that’s an accurate comparison :rofl:

2 Likes
#11

100% agree I really want to know who is the genius who thought it was a good idea to put class mods behind trials that still blows my mind.

I think they should remove world drops from bosses loot pools entirely and leave only the dedicated drops then up the average mobs chance for world drop legendaries.

5 Likes
#12

I would love to agree, but for the average player guaranteed drops would kill every kind of satisfaction. For the more casual audience there is no big difference between getting an item and getting it with all the perfect parts. Perfectionists are a big part of the hardcore players, but those overall are just a small part of the player base as a whole. In short: Guaranteed drops would ruin the casual experience and make legendaries unrewarding.

I would rather have a more rewarding and systemic solution: Instead of guaranteeing drops I would increase the chance to around 20% base (with higher rates for harder/longer farms), and increase the chance further the higher the Mayhem level is, up to 50% on Mayhem 4. Then, I would also have dedicated drops have a higher chance for anointments than world drops, to a point where on MM4 dedicated drops are almost always anointed. This would reduce the variance on a 1/0 scale (1= with or 0 = without anointment) and therefore reduce the overall variance by probably over 50%. From that point on it’s a factor of parts and anointments, so the usual spiel.

Edit: I would make an exception for the trial and slaughter bosses and their Mayhem 4 only gear. Those farms are just royally ■■■■■■ up. Those I would even agree to give a 100% drop rate as they are Mayhem 4 exclusive and take a while anyway.

11 Likes
#13

Yes!

This is the sort of solution I would wholeheartedly support…

3 Likes
#14

Thanks. My idea definitely isn’t perfect, but I think it hits a good medium for most players.

#15

This is such a odd way of thinking… Instead of lets scrap annointed variations to be interchangable small bonuses to the gun and rebalance the game around lower dmg values and scales. No lets add more stronger loot lmao m4 is not a measuring point of the game and mayhem 2 and uvhm brings god knows what. Game has a huge problem which is dmg based annointed gear. I would rather only have other perks and 0% dmg perks.

9 Likes
#16

Yeah try farming the boss on the Trial of Fervor at M4, and see how you feel about the dedicated drop rate buff…

4 Likes
#17

Could you elaborate on this?

1 Like
#18

Hey. As a player with slightly over 6k hours on my BL2 Krieg save file alone, I agree.

I’ve also played Diablo 1-3 extensively as well as POE and many many other loot based games.

I obviously do not mind farming, but with the level of rng present in BL3, it is nearly impossible for me to get excited about the prospect of loot farming…

Like right now, I am looking for a Raging Bear w +3 Stroke/+2SS *+splash, +cooldown and +incendiary damage.

Can someone calculate the odds of me EVER finding this specific peice of gear?! Or even close to it? Even add in trading and buying items from eBay and It’s still gonna be astronomically difficult process to find what I want. Basically impossible. And that doesn’t give me incentive to wanna play the game…

If BL3 is gunna emulate D3’s loot system(it does) then they need to go ahead Full Monty and add endgame gear altering options similar to Kanais Cube, that allow us to alter the text and numbers on item cards.

We need to be able to have crafting options that allow us to alter item cards, add specific annointments, change text bonus.

Crazy Earl could change/add annointments.

Marcus could let us change gun parts.

Tannis could use her siren powers to change certain items(class mods) a little bit.

There simply has to be more variety for this game to achieve the greatness it deserves.

Currently it is a frustrating experience that feels unfinished.

Edit: I’m fine with BL3 loot system being similar to D3, Diablo has a very well done system(after much changes) but if GBX is gonna go that direction(which they have), they need to go ahead all the way and create more options for the endgame gearing experience to feel more rewarding and achievable.

Note* I don’t want things handed to me(over 6000 hours on Krieg remember?) And I have no problem grinding/farmi g bosses or zones but with all the variety of different item combinations, it needs to feel like it’s possible for me to obtain a particular item. Right now it doesn’t seem possible to obtain certain items and that takes away the desire for me to try.

14 Likes
#19

Yea a gun that does 100 ase 50 for two mags on ase 300% on as trigger or 130 on swap is infinitely more desirable than some 11% fire rate or 40% on slide or accuracy while jumping and such. Which invalidates not only base legendaries for endgame but also vast majority of all annointed gear that is not about gun or elemental dmg. Which is btw broken on its own spawnin extra pallets to register that bonus elemental dmg and so forth. Shields give u 50 ase dmg nades give u 50 ase dmg… Ffs game is dmg stacking simulator on already meta guns it is boring and bloated af and if gbx does not redesign the concept everyone will end up with same setups on same characters.look at how memey recursion is look at all zanes running with maggie and Bekah as lead guns. No elemental matching just plow setups

10 Likes
#20

Also, why do items always have to drop from bosses? Couldnt we have zone wide drops where each mob has a tiny percentage chance to drop an item?

Just more variety in farming would be cool is all.

2 Likes