Everyone feel free to drop your BL3 hot takes that you know not everyone will agree with as I’m interested in seeing the varied responses. I’ll go first. My hot take is that the Guardian Takedown is actually one of the best pieces of content in BL3 and the only things that are holding it back are the lack of dedicated drops after each boss kill and the fact that the loot that is dropped is extraordinarily weak compared to other meta weapons in the game. If the gear that is dropped gets a major buff in both quality and quantity then it’ll be S tier content in my eyes
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Fun topic @Backlash029!
My hot take: I don’t think adding more content, removing anoints, etc. will “save” BL3. That’d be nice, yes, but Bl3’s problems are so innate to its design that fixing them might as well mean making an entirely different game.
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I feel like Guardian Takedown would have been at home in the Pre-Sequel. At least because of the platforming aspects.
I guess that’s one hot take (Or something). My other would be that Bounty of Blood has the best overall side missions, which are also the best parts of the DLC. The dialogue and humor are brilliant, and the town of Vestige changes whenever you complete a mission and/or according to your choices for certain ones like the Meatman Prophecy. For that reason it’s my favorite along with The Legend of McSmugger.
Also the Facepuncher is a crutch, levels of difficulty break game mechanics and should just stop being a thing, and I hope they never give Iron Cub immunity to it’s own damage because hearing Moze rage over it getting blown up is awesome/hilarious.
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Zane is extremely poorly designed being so heavily reliant on kill skills, not every legendary needs to be good but should have a reason to exist so they don’t overlap with other legendaries, one shotting bosses is just boring
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Original Mayhem 3 was actually good and fun, but needed slightly better modifier intelligence. (It needed to not double roll you into hell, basically)
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Looking back, I really hate DLC4 because of its thematic and environmental impotency. It such a scummy their own asset flip that I did not expect from AAA developer. Every other DLC had environments/maps that are momoriable/stylish/recognizible (for me, at least):
DLC1 - Hyperion architecture, verticality, luxury, poverty, trash, industrial complex.
DLC2 - flesh motif, frozen lake, huge mushrooms, Vendigo, blizzard and concrete, and, of course, the level that leads to final boss.
DLC3 - japanese, cowboy, dinosaur motif, dominating orange and green colors, cave map, weird deer-like animals, underground facility map, that one explosion, crystals, final boss.
They are not very original ideas, bit they have decent amount quality and love up into them. On the contrary, playing DLC4 made me fly through the content just because I bought it, not because it was enjoyable, though it had its moments that were few and far between. Overall, what a ■■■■■■ experience it was.
“Hot take” is (probably) my irrational hostility toward DLC4. 
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m4 should have been the only endgame and everything balanced around it. aka nvhm tvhm for easy stomping and m4(aka mayhem mode without 1 2 3) for endgame lovers
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Gearbox has been incredibly reactive to community feedback, and at times perhaps too keen to respond to it. BL3’s post-release support and changes in game design, balance and direction are a classic example of “you can’t please everybody”, and I wonder if they’d just ignored some of the earlier criticism that the game might be in a better (or at least less controversial) place now.
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Couldn’t agree more. I ran through DLC 4 once with each character and I don’t plan on ever doing it again. It’s a shame how thrown together it was.
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For me it’s the story, humour and main villains which I believe to be the worst of the whole series, I preferred what little story bl 1 and the humour and villain/s of bl 2 and the pre squeal over anything 3 had
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Mayhem modifiers were not a bad idea just poorly implemented (bugs and imbalance)
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I might be alone in thinking this, but my hot take is that I don’t think the 4th skill trees should be locked behind paid content with the rest of DLC5. It might come across as wanting a freebie but I say it more in the sense that it reinforces the overall lack of smart design in the skill trees, first by handing over more money to Gearbox and giving them the impression that they’re doing a sufficient job before we even get to sample it, lowering the amount of people who can test it (because we can’t assume that every single active player just ups and buys every DLC that comes out,) and then also the fact that the vault hunters got mixed results because of it.
Fl4k got screwed over more than anyone else because of this - the Trapper tree is essentially a downgraded version of Moze’s Shield of Retribution which is also one of her less flattering skill trees. Being a Moze main with Fl4k as my secondary character, I totally empathise with any discontent from Fl4k mains - handing over more money only to realise that yet again, Gearbox refuse to learn from past mistakes of theirs.
Moze’s Bear Mother tree is not that spectacular on the surface but it’s not terrible like Fl4k’s. It’s more of a sidegrade tree that allows you to expand further on Iron Bear/Cub builds more than doing Moze herself any huge favours besides Big Surplus. Amara’s new capstone can be very alluring but overall, Enlightened Force I would say is another sidegrade tree that expands on her proficiencies in melee combat. I think overall, Amara and Moze are sort of in the middle of the vault hunter crew where their 4th skill trees are not amazingly OP but not bad either, which is kind of how it should be in all fairness.
Zane is on the opposite end of the spectrum from Fl4k but that’s not entirely a positive aspect. I can understand locking gear to their respective paid DLCs, even if in Zane’s case it means paying extra just to unlock both Seeing Dead and the Spy class mods. But if you don’t have the Professional skill tree, you’re missing out on tapping into Zane’s full potential far more than with the other vault hunters - even in a PvE game, Gearbox have somehow created a paradox in making one of the vault hunters a P2W character. And this gives the devs more of an excuse not to bother addressing how poorly designed his original skill trees are overall.
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I totally understand. I know the new skill trees were supposed to “address weaknesses” ((whether those weaknesses were true or not aside cough fl4k cough)), but that should’ve just been done for their entire kit instead of selling a skill tree that has all the “solutions”. IMO the focus of the new trees should’ve been on new playstyles instead of power-creeping the hell out of the existing ones.
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I think Rhys should have been an antagonist in some capacity. Not villain mind you, but have his interests conflict with ours somehow. Tales was all about Rhys rejecting the corporate ladder, and while it might be repetitive to have him go through that again, I think it’d be more interesting to have us clash and test the heart of the character. A lot of Tales’ (BL2 as well!) charm was these nobodies coming together for the greater good and overcoming the ■■■■■■ environment they live in.
Corporations are the villain in BL and its really backwards that suddenly Atlas (and jakobs) is the “good” corporation.
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On the other hand this could make for separate factions between corporations in the next installment.
My hot take: Borderlands 3 is a good game and an excellent entry into the franchise. It made significant improvements in game play, environment variety, enemy variety, and weapon variety. There’s issues of course, but Gearbox has made a concerted effort to address many of them. I’ve sunk several hundred hours into this game, and will probably sink a lot more in the years to come.
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Personally I still liked DLC4 for what it is. Though I can’t really forgive the Hyperion “soldiers” just being Handsome Jackpot residents with different voicelines.
Which was weird considering they brought classic bandits back.
I have always thought BL3 was a “good” game. The problem is that it seems that, with some adjustments, it could easily have been the pinnacle of the franchise. It just seems like they missed on a lot of opportunities that could have been addressed, as long as they have supported the game after release now.
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I wish DLC4 had more time in the oven. I don’t think it would’ve ended up this way if it weren’t for the circumstances surrounding it. Sadly, we got it despite that and while I can never fully dislike it because of how it was made, I can’t recommend it to anyone to buy as it doesn’t match the value you get for the other 3 at the same price point.
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