Loader Pet, Yes I Am Still On This

Borderlands 3 FL4K the Beastmaster
#1

So yea, Loader is here, it isn’t changing, and some people like it. FL4K is my favorite hunter in BL3, and part of that was the symbiosis between FL4K and the pets. You can visibly see that each pet was wounded in some way and FL4K helped them, and they formed a bond with FL4K. I feel like this shared dynamic is broken by introducing a mass produced machine into his menagerie. When I heard we were getting a new pet I was so pumped to find out what it was. A stalker? A kragon? Thresher? Maybe another new creature like a saurian, a bellik, a wolven, or a devil. I would have even taken a varkid.

Then I found out nah, instead of any of the dozen creatures they could have given him, it’s just a loader. You know, the thing we killed hundreds of thousands of in bl2 and tps, at least I did. I’ve read up on it some and it seems like it was done to give him another ranged pet, and that’s definitely something he needed, but literally almost every single creature in the Borderlands series has a ranged variant, so you can’t convince me that they couldn’t find a suitable ranged BEAST for the BEASTmaster. Hell, if they HAD to do a robot, why not a converted Maliwan hound? Those things are awesome, and getting to have one fight beside you would have been awesome, and while it’s a robot, it’s still a robot beast.

At the end of the day I’m just going to stick with my Gunslinger Jabber. I’ve tried the loader and it’s got some issues still. I’m just disappointed with this decision, along with several others made throught BL3’s lifespan. It seems like, for what ever reason, someone(s) at Gearbox wants to keep going for the less interesting choices what with the funeral being cut, killing Auralia and Maya, it just seems like bad choices just keep getting made. The game can’t be perfect, I know that, but this is hands down one of my favorite franchises, I’ve spent hundreds of hours playing these games and I always stumble across some new thing I was unaware of before, and to me that’s amazing. Sitting here now looking at BL3, and thinking of what it could have been instead? It hurts. I still love this franchise and continue to be optimistic about it’s future. Good luck and stay safe everyone.

TL/DR; They could have picked from a dozen cool creatures, but they stuck us with a refurbished piece of cannon fodder made by a man we put in the dirt seven years ago.

8 Likes
#2

This exactly, well said @WalkerBohh. Overall an exemplary rant ! ! !

2 Likes
#3

That also goes for the creatures he’s otherwise befriended (Skags, Spiderants, and Jabbers), but I was also surprised at the non-creature pet. I was sure it was going to be a Saurian, especially since they already come with variants with mounted lasers and armored plating.

In combat, I’ve found their behavior fine. I have no expectation that the pet be a ‘fire and forget’ summon, and I do have to work around some of their limitations, but building around making me the support class (for certain values of “build” here) is still pretty fun, and they can handle most mobs. I let an Eridian Skag carry me to the Seer at MM10. He plowed the way through (but the Seer… forgot that he was mostly shock shields, and spent literally, three hours working his shields down with a Sawbar, dropping every Herald I saw, until I fell asleep and woke up at a New-U). :roll_eyes:

#4

The point I was making about having killed so many was the fact that the loaders are mass produced, so finding parts to fix it would be extremely easy, and that special bond FL4K has with the other pets isn’t there. There isn’t anywhere to go to get Skag eyes or Jabber/Spiderant limbs. Not with Zed gone anyway. FL4K found broken beasts and fixed them, made them better, and now they fight beside him. I’m pretty sure if a loader got damaged it could throw a rock and hit 3 loaders with replacement parts just lieing around.

3 Likes
#5

I do share your sentiment when it comes to not getting a different pet witht the 4th skill tree. Thinking about it, as mentioned before, we could have gotten a “reprogrammed” maliwan dog bot, or a saurian with a laser (which was what I thought we will get) both of which of course would be “ranged” attackers.

However to play devil’s advocate here, the war loader bot kind of grew on me, with its funny voice lines and all, not to mention although kind of a bad AI currently the missle attack command is kind of cool not gonna lie. Still I am kind of sad that we didn’t get a different one. I will of course stay as optimistic and hopefull for the future as you will be! Well these were my 2c on the matter, stay stafe everyone!

2 Likes
#6

I just wish the loader pet was Jimmy Jenkins, the rare wee loader from BL2 whose have-you-seen-him-he’s-lost posters you see everywhere. It would have been perfect. Poor lost Jimmy finally found a home with FL4K. :smiley:

Well in my head canon, that’s how it’s gonna be heh.

7 Likes
#7

I would’ve liked a Varkid tbh. Fl4k doesn’t have a flying pet and Varkids could fight from ranged.

A Saurian would’ve been cool too, could give them a function where you could ride them.

Would be nice if we could have 3 pets out at once that have different functions like that. Oh well.

4 Likes
#8

Strange that devs did not do that. It would be a neat idea for a legendary class mod: melee override - summon your 3 pets for a duration. Extend each pet’s duration by dealing different type of elemental damage that was pre-determined to each pet.

5 Likes
#9

Oh yeah, thanks for the post, I despise the loader bot with an unending passion. I know I sound harsh but really don’t want Gearbox to make that mistake again, so for me the more open criticism the better. As you mentioned on the reasons Fl4k was a great character was because the awesome bond between synthetic and organics beasts. I loved interacting with the skag, jabber and spiderant hearing what fl4k had to say about them. The loader on the other hand interactions suck, fl4k doesn’t even say anything to it and I don’t blame them for it either.

Thanks again for the post.

5 Likes
#10

honestly, this could be easily fixed by giving the loaders creature parts

as in, he upgraded them with flesh

edit: which also allows some cool sentience, if he swapped the cpu with an animal brain

2 Likes