In BL2 the way you play any particular game of it is totally dependent on what Legendary’s you manage to find whereas in BL3 it’s pretty easy to get just about any usable legendary.
There are other reasons, but I think that’s why BL3 replay-ability has dropped so fast. Repeat plays are always the same. It needs change.
I think a huge factor of the replay-ability of the main game is simply the narrative - storyline, humor, side quests, characters, etc. When that is fun to experience, then playing through it again is fun for its own sake and not dependent on what weapons or gear you acquire. Finding certain gear then adds to the enjoyment even further.
I also agree that getting Legendary weapons easily takes away some of the enjoyment. I think a large part of that is the reward aspect of playing. If you take away the excitement of finding a legendary then you take away some of the excitement of playing. And if you take away some of the excitement of playing, then you naturally take away the desire to re-play.
If I knew how to make a poll, I would try asking a bunch of questions from multiple angles around what people enjoy the most out of a Borderlands game and why (and maybe what is not liked as well).
I enjoy BL2 much more than BL3 because…
Of course there are many other reasons but I am going to keep my list simple
bl2 is simply better because it has functional core game guns in endgame
Not sure if you played UVHM and OP levels or not, but BL2 wasn’t any better balanced at endgame.
My problems with replayability stem from the writing/story directions, mediocre humor, and lack of sidequests (more so for DLC’s).
And only 2 ■■■■■■■ raid bosses?!?!
Here are my very most basic thoughts about BL2 vs BL3 in general:
BL3 clearly is a better game in every conceivable way - assuming that it worked and performed as advertised, which unfortunately it does not.
BL3’s skill/gear/GR Perk interactions are so screwed up that an average player could not get even 50% of the potential out of the selected VH without consulting YT, Reddit, these forums, or some other 3rd party source.
As a result, BL2 is way more accessible to the average player than BL3 has been, at least to this point.
GBX should have spent about 6 more months prior to the release date in working the kinks out of BL3. Just MHO.
Nah you gotta own THC and 3 - then you have one big game universe with 18 classes and nothing to hate on. Not to mention it wasn’t that long ago that you had to start Borderlands 2 at lvl 1.
Tell you what I hate on; opinions that stem from places that don’t play THC+3 actively 
I’m on Team BL2. It has a better story, more content and real humor. In BL3, Gearbox’s constantly micromanaging skill trees and gun stats which often causes other bugs & crashes. Also, when you found a BL2 legendary, it was rare, OP and special, unlike a majority of those BL3 which litter the landscape.
I don’t rate games vs. games like that. I have an equal amount of time, roughly in both BL2 and BL3.
BL3 will likely hold my interest for longer going forwards, but that doesn’t make BL2 bad, even by comparison. I prefer a lot of the changes in BL3, but that doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy what works in BL2.
Honestly, bit of a hot take, but this whole Thunderdome situation about the two games just turns the whole situation a bit reductive. They’re video games. People have preferences. It’s not like many people are that interested in the nitty-gritty of the design, and even when they are, some things still come down to preference. And that’s fine.
@Bremen1 I guess my point is perhaps subjective when I think about it, but I was really excluding story considerations. I feel like if you just look at the game and gameplay aspects, BL3 clearly is the evolution of the franchise.
But I did not mean to initiate some sort of “which is better” debate (although upon reflection, maybe it is me that is the dummy, because the title of the thread IS “BL3 vs BL2 thoughts,” so yeah. I personally just feel that it is fairly clear that BL3 evolves the franchise well beyond BL2, and I guess that is what I was trying to say.
I personally like BL2 more than BL3. It’s like comparing your 2 children to one another: you love them both the same, but it is clear which one is the more gifted/blessed, assuming that is in fact the case.
I just was generally trying to say that I personally feel that BL3 is the superior product. Unfortunately, the way that BL3 has been handled, probably makes it seem like BL3 is the worse product - when I really do not think that is correct.
I mean the main complaint right or not, about bl2 was that more legendaries weren’t usable , if bl3 is in a state where nearly every legendary is able to clear top content I see no reason to be upset about that.
That just means you could use whatever you want.
and honestly with high enough bar I could use whatever the heck i wanted with my build on bl2, a friend of mine has an entire krieg build that’s just a firehawk a lvl 15 blue shotgun and him standing still.
the lack of replay-ability based purely on things that bl2 has that this game doesn’t is: raid bosses, better dedicated farming experience, a story that doesn’t make you cringe/rage, more player agency/control, a more open map design; that’s about it really.
You could say better balanced progression between difficulty modes, but I’m pretty sure most have adapted to mayhem by now, so that’s not really it.
Purely honest the core game play is fun and good, i think the problem is a combination of all the stacking disappointment from the perceived constant failings of the dev team, as well as a feeling of lack of reward for playing.
Wwhen i quit dedicated drops were absolutely broken, no point farming because getting the right drop was next to impossible, I’ve heard that’s improved somewhat, but still no where near where it should be because there are too many factors to overcome and nothing to mitigate the rng ( i.e. element & anoint reroll/choice).
And then there’s all the forced refarm, when you finally get the perfect gear or a good setup, it would either get nerfed or a new game mode/event would drop, or a tiny lvl increase just enough to make your effort feel worthless but not enough to be able to really do something with the skill points.
So you’re constantly thrust back into that un-optimized farming experience which was just frustrating time wasted instead of actually playing the game.
Which like i mentioned early undermines player agency, fostering the feeling that what you did in the game wasn’t up to you, but instead dictated by whatever crap would be thrown on your head next by game organizers.
I’m not trying to throw hate on the dev team, I’m just trying to say that the differences between bl2 and bl3 aren’t that great, and that i believe that the issue of this game not reaching the same level aside from the differences I mentioned first, has more to do with how this game was managed, than any concrete points of difference between the 2.
Everything is better in BL2, except for the gunplay, and the absolutely GODAWFUL SCALING in BL2. Yes, the need for Slag is another form of poor scaling.
If the scaling in BL2 was like it was in BL1, or even TPS, then BL2 would handily rotflolcurbstomp the rancid, buggy guts out of BL3.
As it stands, I cannot abide the scaling in BL2… so I play BL1 and TPS whenever I want a BL fix, these days.
I shall occasionally go back to BL2, just to run through it with one of the extremely cool and well-crafted cast members, each with their own unique hotness, but I shall probably never go back to BL3.
BL3 is just plain bad. Which sucks. Especially due to all of the cool guns in it. But 90% of those have been nerfed into utter crap, anyway, so yeah.
unless that was the entire point, to teach you to make use of a mechanic, that became more and more useful with each mode. The tundra and annex were both areas where we had mordecai helping by auto-slagging enemies, to subtly show us how slag could be useful.
The thing is it really isn’t, and I hate Borderlands 3,but if I put my negative feelings aside with things actually scaling, and when hotfixes are actually applied, the game is good, not the story but just running around shooting stuff its good.
There been a lot of buffs recently and I’m not really in the loop on new meta but as I’ve only heard about buffs and no major nerfs I’d imagine most things should be ok now.
I’d call the game more annoying than bad, but again that’s due to bad management, people say it was so much better now, but people hated mayhem 1.0 when that came out, and people hate mayhem 2.0 now.
Imo that’s both for the same reason, that they kept players from engaging in the game the way they want to, if they would just create a patch that would allow players to turn off all modifiers I think that would be enough for many.
I think the replayability issue is changing really quickly. Now with end game focus the game will prevail
It appears that that is what Mayhem 11 will be- a play level with NO modifiers. Now if they would only reduce the impact of anointments…
I have no problem with anoints (well I do, but there’s no un-ringing that bell) and I meant for every mode not just 1 and then penalizing us for it.
For me, BL2 became unenjoyable at UVHM. It didn’t help that I frequently got underleveled drops. Most of my characters ended up stuck there at a disappointing stage of development. I much prefer playing BL3, being able to enjoy playing my characters to max level, and actually getting items.