Analysis: Chest Quality

Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel BL: TPS Loot and Weapons Chat
#1

Curiosity got a hold of me again so I decided to see just how “good” the chests in this game are. Comparing 100 Rare Hyperion chests to 100 of Borderlands 2 yielded… disturbing results.
TPS at UVHM 70, Borderlands 2 at UVHM 72/OP0. Legendary Hotfix on in both cases.

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I am surprised about the Legendary drop rate but with such a low sample size that can easily change.
However, the amount of Green guns found reveal a shockingly poor quality. Almost 9 out of 10 chests have nothing but Greens in them!

(The Legendaries in question are the ZX-1 and Pandemic)

Let’s compare to Borderlands 2 on 72 or OP0:

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(the row beneath the normal rate refers to guns only calculations. This is done to get a better look at the E-Tech drop rate and gives an insight on how Pearlescents are overall. 16,78% is the combined rate of Purples and E-Tech)

A huge difference. Just about every second chest is full of Blues and even Purples got a significant increase. Relics slightly skew with the result as they are generally poor in quality but the impact is very insignificant.
I am however very surprised that I found the same amount of Legendaries here.

(The Legendaries here were both Legendary Psycho)

(Is it actually possible to find shields in these chests? 200 of them and not a single shield)

What does all this mean? While a significantly larger sample size is required for a precise Legendary rate, the generally low quality of TPS’ chests makes them a very poor farming choice and heavily implies that you most likely won’t find a Legendary after many tries and even if you do it’s probably not the one you want.

Aren’t rare chests supposed to be enjoyable to open, potentially rewarding us with incredible but random loot? With that quality you do not feel the thrill that maybe this time you could find that elusive orange beam or that amazing Purple gun you always wanted.

So what went wrong? We do not expect Borderlands 1 chest quality but we do expect quality loot at the highest level possible in the (more or less) most difficult mode.

At least the quality of Level 9 Glitch chests in the Mutator Arena is amazing.

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#2

I’ve noticed the inferior loot quality for the red chests as well. Just isn’t the same as in BL2. The decreased drop rate might be due to the Grinder: you could theoretically recycle white guns into legendaries and this might be a way to prevent the game from overflowing with purples and oranges. But the loot quality from the red chests should still be higher, they are not that different from white chests right now. I played TPS quite extensively for 5 months straight and only got 2 legendaries from a red chest. That’s not good enough!

#3

Yes, that is a possible reason and a very expensive one too. Eridium grinding is very costly on the high levels and without that you need even more luck to make Purples a Legendary and you won’t get many of those with these rates either :confused:
The Legendaries I found during these tests were my second and third. That’s just bad.

It really feels like common chests are way superior. I’ve found better stuff in the green Dahl chest near the lone Weapon vendor on the way to Felicity. I am not even exaggerating, more Purples in that one than in the rare Dahl variant after disabling Felicity and there are three of them!
Heck, just now a common Hyperion chest got me three COMs, two of them Blue and one Purple. Like, really? And that happened in Normal mode.

#4

Honestly I think this is because of the significantly increased chances of finding Legendary Items of the Day in TPS, along with the Grinder mechanics.

Number of Legendary Items of the Day I saw in TPS since launch: At least 40.

Number of Legendary Items of the Day in BL2 since December, 25, 2013: 1… Seriously.

#5

At this point I treat all non DLC chest as BAR increasers. It really sucks that they nerfed the drop rates, but I think they did the same thing as they did in the Tina DLC. To prevent Moon Stones from becoming useless like Eridium was before Tina’s in BL2, they nerfed the regular chest and made the Moon Stone chest really good. Then you’d use those purples you don’t want for a chance at a legendary through the Grinder. Or the other option for legendaries is vending machines, where I guess their solution to money being 100% useless in BL2 comes in.

But IDK, just speculation. :wink:

#6

From one game with no use for money or Eridium endgame (at least until DLC4) to one with too much use for that.

There must be some middle ground to be covered here. Even if you have 30 Purples to grind you may or may not get a single Legendary out of that and it is probably not the right one either.
We keep the Legendary that may or may not the be right one and hope for another one to be used for the guaranteed Legendary recipe. Even that may not be the right one but there’s an exploit which also consumes time. If you play legit… good luck.

Probably why the Daily Grind requires an INSANE number of normal grinds.

#7

Yeah I think this definitely wasn’t the right approach, TPS was one big experiment with a bunch of fails and some really nice wins.

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#8

I concur with both.

#9

I personally love this game. But besides the playable characters, scaling, low gravity, lasers, and cryo I don’t think much else of the base game was really a success. On the other hand when it comes to the Claptastic Voyage they did an awesome job. And the only reason I’m still adamantly playing this game is because of glitch weapons.

#10

I’m a very veteran BL2 player who has only recently started spending time with TPS. At this point, my farthest progression is L41, so I can’t claim an opinion on the loot system at endgame. Based on general information about scaling, I’m not anticipating irritation with the chest rates. Frankly, I enjoy the grinder, and I suspect that I’ll use a wider variety of guns in this game than I do in BL2. I don’t feel a compulsion to pursue particular guns, except the (easy to farm) Torrent. In that case, the compulsion is simply a love of Dahl SMGs, not a feeling that I need certain guns to play the way I prefer.

All of this to say that I’m happy grinding everything I pull :smile:

#11

Chests in the base game are barely worth a look, and not worth farming.
Some easily farmable chests in Claptraps DLC though. So Perhaps the low base game drops are to push people into getting the DLC. At least the final DLC was good.

#12

Grinder = Good
Lasers = Good
Cryo = Good
Gravity & Oxygen = Nice Wrinkle
Glitch Guns = Nice Wrinkle
Mutater Arena = Excellent
DLC4 = Excellent
Money being useful again = Good
Drop rate after hotfix = Good
Ability to actually find high quality items in the vending machines = Excellent
Willingness to patch and fix problems = Excellent

Lack of repeatable end game Raid Bosses = Fail (the ones they have are good, just not nearly enough for continuous end game play, competitions, etc.)
Initial release with MANY non farmable bosses = EPIC fail (Even though it has been patched and fixed, it turned off so many players that the game never really recovered).

And that’s a shame as the game in it’s present form is quite excellent!!

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