BL:TPS player numbers had steadily dropped and are holding with BL player numbers on steam charts. This is not good for a game that is less than a year old to be only performing as barely well as a game that is six years old and more than three times worse than a game that is 3 years old. All signs indicate that interest in BL:TPS will drop steadily past that of BL which has held fast for a long time. You can say all you want about this BL:TPS but even the hardest core players are chosing BL and BL2 over it. Clearly something is amiss with this game. The concept and execution of the game was strong, the content was light when concerning end game content and season pass. The trouble is that it has strayed away from what people following the series admired the most about BL and that is a western, sci-fi, wasteland loot n shoot. Getting people back for BL3 is going to be a hard challenge for Gearbox.
To be fair, people wanted to go to the moon since BL2. I’ll never understand this as a knock against the game since we got a whole game instead of a DLC for the moon base.
Could it have been longer? Most certainly, and the lack of content is my main gripe with the game. But I don’t think its fair to hold the setting of TPS as a negative against it.
Now that’s going a bit far.
I love BL1 to death, but there are elements in TPS that greatly outclass it, such as the skill tree designs. Likewise, there were things in BL2 that outclassed BL1, like special weapon effects.
Changes that come along with each BL game are the result of changes that the fans ask for. The softer scaling of TPS was due to frustration with the scaling of BL2, and a desire on some fans part to return to BL1 type gameplay. The change to the loot system in BL2 was due to a complaint of BL1 fans that the loot did not have much variety ( I loved the BL1 loot system, but I believe Derch has said that he prefers the variety of BL2). The entire presence of any narrative was yet another change the fans wanted.
So to say that Gearbox shouldn’t take fan criticism into account is a bit ridiculuos in my opinion. So long as it is financially and technically feasible, they should at least be open to any suggestions the community throws their way, since we are the ones who buy and play the game.
And also, to say the that it was only design flaws on GB part that are to blame for TPS poor sales seems to ignore fan perceptions of the game even before its release. As soon as gameplay footage was released, people were already saying its was BL2 on the moon (I still do this because at its core its still too dang similar). Whenever a character was released, people where criticizing the characters (Nisha takes no skill, auto-aim suxs, RNG action skill on annoying toaster, captain America ripoff, mobile turrets aren’t you that guy I killed in 4 seconds, etc…). When the game was released, there were a few bugs in the game that were patched in BL2, and that turned people off.
And then there is the lack of support for TPS. There is only 1 campaign DLC. While it is an extremely high quality DLC, the main game is simply too short. This was an instance where quantity may have outdone quality. With only 1 campaign DLC, not many good mobbing spots in the main game, and maps with little enemy variety, it becomes diffficult to replay this game as many times as the previous two games, especially BL2.
Now, I understand what you’re saying. BL2 did stray very far from BL1, and I don’t care for many of the changes. But as you said, the fans voted with their wallets, and BL2 won by a lot. This doesn’t mean that GB should just ditch everything about the 1st borderlands game that put the series on the map, but we do have to realize that this the direction that most fans want the series to go, the direction that will make GB the most money, and the direction that will ultimately get more people playing these awesome games. And that direction will be in line with the types of changes they implemented in BL2 and TPS.
Heck, considering how much they changed in BL2, who knows what BL3 will look like? It may go off on an even greater tangent.
TL;DR- GB should listen to fan input, there was a lot more to do with TPS flop than design flaws, and the direction of the series will continue to tread closer along the lines of BL2, not BL1.
Also by the end of BL2 they seemed to have balanced out the game but I guess lost a lot of fans along the way. At the end of TPS we go basically nothing but one expansion DLC. What then do we expect from BL3? The only thing to be sure for certain is that you will probably not get what you hope or imaging from the the marketing pitch and instead a rollout that will start well, contain a lot of grief and maybe get it sorted out by the end. This to me speaks of waiting for BL3 GOTY which would have been the wise choice for BL2 also
Its not so much that TPS is a bad game, but there are other games that people have been waiting for.
But they didn’t precisely because they were expecting a carbon copy of BL2. Who would pay 60$ for a game that was so similar to the fully fleshed out product they already had? Just by building over BL2 , they lost a large portion of would be fans.
And that has nothing to do with the quality of the game, but people’s expectations. The only reason we re even hving this conversation is because TPS has to contend with BL2, and that is a losing proposition.
I personally find TPS to be too repetitive (primarily enemies and environments) and short-ish to keep replaying. I may eventually level up all my toons, but after spending a lot of time with one or two already, I’m finding myself doing a playthrough, switching to another game or two for a while, doing another run, playing another game, etc. It’s the only way I can do it at this point without boring myself to death.
And nobody get me wrong: I’m not trashing the game by saying this. I’ve spent a lot of time and had a lot of fun with it, glitchiness aside. But repeating it three times each for six characters without breaks is just not possible or fun for me. Plus I’m still working on a few toons from BL2 so a complete pause from the series is needed at times.
Do you have a source on that?
I keep hearing and minorities vs majorities of the fan base and never any thing to back it up
Its really not that simple, gearbox has more sources of feedback than the forums.
Simply put, tps needs more contents, more raids for players to experiment with and talk about, and finally gears that have players talk about too. I don’t mind paying for more campaigh dlcs.
Pre-Sequel was made for people that wanted more Borderlands. And since Gearbox was busy on Battleborn and people kept saying " I WANT TO GO TO THE MOON BASE, GEARBOOOX!", so they gave the game to 2k Australia.
The only problem with TPS is the price, because it clearly is overpriced. And I think thats the main reason some people don’t like TPS, they were expecting something on par with BL2 because of the price.
I’m not worried about BL3 at all 
I have to agree with John. It was a price comparable to BL 2 that caused people’s expectations to be so high. That and the number of additional factors which gave the game somewhat a blackeye initially.
And it is such a shame. The game in its current form with the corrections that have been made is quite good. And the new gravity mechanics and additions of lasers and the oz gimmick all add to the overall robustness of the entire borderlands series.
And Don’tPanic…
Don’t Panic.
The borderlands series has a far far longer lifecycle then virtually any game that I know of or play consistently. Even this short nine months with TPS is FAR longer than I play virtually any other game before shelving It.
BL3 will be fine…no…better than fine. It will be a HUGE hit just based on the name and the success of the original series.
Now will it be as successful in the long run as the originals?
Only time will tell.