The dlc is better than the base game. Except for arms race.
Arms race is a half thought out idea and they threw Axton and Sal in there to try and gloss over that.
When all your characters are identical exceptnfor action skills maybe you shouldnt get rid of those.
The story DLC are very good though. Jackpot is probably the weakest to me because it feela very claustrophobic in spots. Kreig is unbalanced as shit but the story is good
I have a podcast now. It's about video games and anime!Find it here.
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FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
I didn't think Ava was that bad. And nothing in the game was as awful as 2 for me, and in fact improved on its writing in myriad ways.
Everything to do with the writing and plot of Borderlands 3 is completely atrocious. I would argue BL2 had redeeming qualities: BL3 literally has none. Going through the plot of this game ever again ensures I will never ever touch it as a new character.
It’s atrocious and I hated every minute of having to engage in the story. If I hadn’t been having a good time shooting things with my partner I couldn’t have made it through.
The DLC has been fantastic though. Love, Guns and Tentacles was terrific and I can actually remember lines from it! I am glad I persevered through to the DLC.
I feel the exact opposite: BL2 was nails on chalkboard, BL3 was mostly adequate, with some good bits.
I didn't think Ava was that bad. And nothing in the game was as awful as 2 for me, and in fact improved on its writing in myriad ways.
Everything to do with the writing and plot of Borderlands 3 is completely atrocious. I would argue BL2 had redeeming qualities: BL3 literally has none. Going through the plot of this game ever again ensures I will never ever touch it as a new character.
It’s atrocious and I hated every minute of having to engage in the story. If I hadn’t been having a good time shooting things with my partner I couldn’t have made it through.
The DLC has been fantastic though. Love, Guns and Tentacles was terrific and I can actually remember lines from it! I am glad I persevered through to the DLC.
I feel the exact opposite: BL2 was nails on chalkboard, BL3 was mostly adequate, with some good bits.
I can't understand this sorry. BL3 is like the worst part of BL2, where Roland gets shot and Lilith captured with the player sticking their finger in their bum watching it, only we're going to do it repeatedly and rub the players lack of agency (via a forced cutscene) in their face. We're also going to do an entire thing where the antagonists actually start having an interesting argument between one another and then completely forget it exists 5 minutes later.
There is absolutely no way BL3 is better written than 2, with the one notable exception if that if you really disliked Jack BL2 doesn't work at all. At the same time, BL3 just plain doesn't work regardless, but I can at least understand that POV.
I didn't think Ava was that bad. And nothing in the game was as awful as 2 for me, and in fact improved on its writing in myriad ways.
Everything to do with the writing and plot of Borderlands 3 is completely atrocious. I would argue BL2 had redeeming qualities: BL3 literally has none. Going through the plot of this game ever again ensures I will never ever touch it as a new character.
It’s atrocious and I hated every minute of having to engage in the story. If I hadn’t been having a good time shooting things with my partner I couldn’t have made it through.
The DLC has been fantastic though. Love, Guns and Tentacles was terrific and I can actually remember lines from it! I am glad I persevered through to the DLC.
I feel the exact opposite: BL2 was nails on chalkboard, BL3 was mostly adequate, with some good bits.
I can't understand this sorry. BL3 is like the worst part of BL2, where Roland gets shot and Lilith captured with the player sticking their finger in their bum watching it, only we're going to do it repeatedly and rub the players lack of agency (via a forced cutscene) in their face.
That part wasn't as bad as most of BL3's cutscenes. The VHs had just finished a huge fight to break into Angel's home and fight off it's security, so I could see everyone being too tired and stunned to react and then being held off by Jack getting his hands on Lilith. Plus, the cutscene actually ACKNOWLEDGES the VHs being there in some form which again makes it better then most of BL3's cutscenes.
BroloBroseidonLord of the BroceanRegistered Userregular
edited March 2021
BL3's story just seems generally annoyed that the player is around for the narrative at all, with quest givers grudgingly acknowledging that you are a generic vault hunter of some sort, before immediately forgetting that you've solved literally all of their problems and are seemingly the only competent person in the game's universe.
Like out of the story choices you get that demonstrate some agency on the part of the player, you have:
[ ] accept/decline sidequests (you can't really decline sidequests, but you can just... not do them or start them, I guess)
[ ] pick rhys' mustache
honestly can't remember any other story choices you can actually make.
But that's fine! a linear story is fine. but if you are going to put me into a linear story, at least make me an actual participant, or make the NPCs that I have to run fetch quests for competent, or make my antagonists actually menacing, rather than just people who natter at me incessantly on a one-way walkie talkie.
BL3 is the only borderlands I haven't done multiple playthroughs of. One and done
The story is pretty dull. I was hoping that the multiple vault concept would add at least some nonlinearity. Ava is pretty annoying, "oops all sirens" just fell flat with me and navigating spaceship sanctuary was actively frustrating. There weren't even any pure just for fun sidequests that stick out in my mind like Face McShooty
You not doing anything during cutscenes is sort of a given, it's a cutscene, but it happened way too much and was getting predictable in 3. Roland's death was a singular event, jack wasn't showing up in every cutscene doing something like that. And 2's cutscene starts with roland getting shot by a cloaked jack and ends a few seconds later with lilith teleporting you away - like okay maybe you weren't doing something during jack's 10 second monologue at you, but that's much less egregious than 3's cutscenes
AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
edited March 2021
Like the first game does not have a great story, but it also has a story that 100% stays out of the way of you actively enjoying the game.
Edit: Which is why I like Diablo 3 so much. Adventure mode is so perfect. All of the glorious Diablo, none of having a daemon who hilariously reminds me of a cat tell me he's a tactical genius while I kick all of his daemons asses each time he tells me his plans.
I finally sat down and played through all of Borderlands 2 VR on PSVR. And the story is... fine. By comparison BL1 had no plot at all. What was here was a suitable excuse to shoot stuff at things. I'm not looking for Shakespeare here. I like the world, the graphical aesthetic, and the RPG trappings, and if I'm looking to do the aforementioned shooting stuff at things, I'd prefer this sandbox over say a CoD or Doom (not that either of those are bad or anything, we're talking the difference between a latte and a cappuccino). For what it's worth though, I played the Pre Sequel a few years back... and I honestly don't think I could tell you a damn thing that happened in it. I know I liked shooting things as Nisha though, so there's that. As far as BL2 specifics go, Jack was an enjoyable prick, I loved everything about Tiny Tina, and her dlc was the best of the bunch.
BL3 was at an appropriate sale price for everything, so I picked that up. I just want to get through the Tales game. I also have the Handsome collection and that new Lilith dlc, so maybe if I'm crazy enough I'll redownload them and play through it. A shame they never ported that specific DLC to the VR version, but at least they have that "start at lv30" feature.
"The sausage of Green Earth explodes with flavor like the cannon of culinary delight."
A part of the April 8th update was an adjustment to the world drop rate for legendries.
This has gone about as well as you might imagine.
The problem stems from how Gearbox had exorbitantly high drop rates for legendary items as a result of the number of anointments, which were added for this game, that legendary guns can drop with. In order to relive frustration from grinding for the right anointment, the drop rate was increased compared to Borderlands 2. This annoyed people big into the Meta, as it meant that the dedicated legendary drop pool was being watered down with drops from world drop pool, which contains a large number of lesser base game legendries like the Woodblocker that seem to drop at a massively increased rate. It also annoyed people as they felt legendries were not as special as the name implies.
So come the Director's Cut update last week two things happened. A vending machine was added that allowed users to re-roll anointments for 250 Eridium, which had been a largely useless secondary currency for most players since launch. This would allow Gearbox to safely reduce the number of legendary world drops as there was no longer a need to farm for anointments. Two birds with one stone.
Except, if you weren't playing for the Meta, farming for anointments or farming for dedicated drops, suddenly whole swathes of the game started dropping noting but white, green, blue or epic loot. Now in previous Borderlands games this wouldn't have been a problem as the overall loot pool was pretty viable into the endgame. In Borderlands 3, legendries have been such a crutch for Gearbox for so long that the loot pool outside of them is completely flacid in the endgame. The result has been that people not playing the meta in the endgame are getting non-viable loot or what legendries that do drop are still the lesser Woodblocker variety as the chances of a better world drop legendry happening have become vanishingly small. Leaving a lot of areas of the game in the endgame Mayhem mode, which is supposed to be higher difficulty for greater rewards, dropping no good loot. Which is a problem in your loot focused shooter.
To top things off Gearbox decided to do what is a signicant change to how the core gameplay loop flows a year and a half into the games lifecycle when most people probably would have settled into what they safely assumed to be a particular way of playing the game a year ago.
Nothing from Gearbox as yet as to the reaction to the change but the community has been slowly boiling over the weekend and whilst it hasn't descended into a full on flame war, people for the change keep condescendingly gatekeeping any criticism and people against the change have started frustrated name calling.
There's a whole bunch of other stuff that I left out like:
How things that don't have anointments like Artifacts, so wouldn't be any use in the re-roll machine, but are a part of the world drop pool were also included in the reduction.
How the reduction is only for Mayhem mode. So if you play without mayhem mode on you aren't affected. Meaning it's possible to have a better drop rate with Mayhem off than on.
How making the endgame "grind or die" is particularly rough on PS4 and Xbox One owners who have to deal with 2 - 3 minute load times.
How PC players can avoid the 250 Eridium cost to re-roll by save scumming until they get the anointment they want.
An update from the makers of Aliens: Colonial Marines and Duke Nukem Forever for a game by the makers of Borderlands 1 and Borderlands 2.
Sigh this game series was so good in borderlands one and just has gone downhill
I am in the business of saving lives.
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Absurdity MatrixTumbledown GloryOn the OutskirtsRegistered Userregular
edited April 2021
On the general subject of trying to adjust drop rates (and I hope this doesn't come across as a complete non-sequitur), there's a basic problem plaguing the endgame of a loot-based game stemming from:
Picking up new gear can be fun, so long as it helps you.
Putting together good gear is satisfying, but satisfaction is NOT the same as fun.
Early on, these two things go together hand-in-hand. But, from the very start to the end of the endgame, I find my attitude towards loot tends to progress like this:
I need something, anything.
I'd like to find anything better.
I only want this particular thing.
I'm not interested in anything.
This isn't a problem unique to Borderlands, but I'm unaware of any common solutions that keep loot fun and interesting. And since collecting loot is a main pillar of the gameplay, that's a problem! I do feel Arms Race injects a dose of that "mad scramble for gear" fun, even if it's far from perfect and not quite integrated with the whole game like DLC tends to be.
Also, NONE of this is typed with the intent to mute or moot the above critical analysis: I feel it's pretty on-point. When we play, our yells tend alternate between "Randy Pitchford, FIX your game!" and "Randy Pitchford, STOP fixing your game!", sometimes in the same session.
Well I got a pretty good amount of fun out of the game, so these idiotic changes aren’t going to piss me off. I feel like arms race being a cheap knockoff of a saturated genre should have been warning enough that things were headed in a bad direction. Hopefully Borderlands 4 will find a good middle ground for legendary drops. But I suppose there’s always a chance that Randy Pitchford will burn down the company and snort the ashes before that happens.
Wife and I played for about 3 hours yesterday and collectively only got 2 legendary weapons. For reference: before the patch we would at least get 10 or 20 (her luck is insane). It's making opening chests way less fun and making the game feel really boring seeing a sea of green items.
Hell pre-patch I didn't even pick up blues. I went straight to purple and orange and would have to find a vending machine halfway through areas because of all the loot. I sold once last night. That was with picking up blues.
The problem Gearbox has now is that there are so many "trash" legendaries, that reducing the drop rate just increases the grind exponentially. I get that they don't want to make it too easy to get OP, but this is really shining a light on the state of the meta as far as builds go. Going back to the way things were originally in BL2 as far as drop rates is a massive step backwards.
I think I got a grenade and she got that shield that has 0 everything. Keep in mind that we're very casual playing this game. We're just at Mayhem 3 and just enjoying shooting and looting. Unfortunately with these changes it's way less exciting and fun for us.
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BroloBroseidonLord of the BroceanRegistered Userregular
Last week, we lowered the world drop rate for loot while players were in Mayhem levels. By and large, the community has responded well to this change! We did see many members of the community express concerns about the drop rate on gear like Class Mods and Artifacts being harder to find. This makes sense and we totally understand and agree that the overall opportunity to get this gear should be a bit higher. We still want to make sure that Legendary gear is special, but that the time investment feels rewarding. We are continuing to monitor and will make fine tuning adjustments in the future.
Well looks like my wife and I will probably stop playing then. Half the fun of the game was the amount of loot that exploded from enemies and from chests. Now it's just a hollow experience. I'm glad the folks that are deep in the endgame with 400+ hours of playtime are happy though. That's good.
Sucks that I bought both season passes though. At the time the wife and I were having a ton of fun. Ah well this is exactly why I tend to avoid buying them.
+1
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BroloBroseidonLord of the BroceanRegistered Userregular
Well looks like my wife and I will probably stop playing then. Half the fun of the game was the amount of loot that exploded from enemies and from chests. Now it's just a hollow experience. I'm glad the folks that are deep in the endgame with 400+ hours of playtime are happy though. That's good.
they do say that chests will be getting better loot, as will trials
but yeah it's weird that for people who were waiting for all the DLC to drop got a way worse experience now that the last DLC has dropped
Well looks like my wife and I will probably stop playing then. Half the fun of the game was the amount of loot that exploded from enemies and from chests. Now it's just a hollow experience. I'm glad the folks that are deep in the endgame with 400+ hours of playtime are happy though. That's good.
they do say that chests will be getting better loot, as will trials
but yeah it's weird that for people who were waiting for all the DLC to drop got a way worse experience now that the last DLC has dropped
I guess at least chests will get better. But it's going to be SO HARD to go from getting 10-20 legendaries a night to one or two at best. And then 20+ epics to 3 or 4.
Posts
Arms race is a half thought out idea and they threw Axton and Sal in there to try and gloss over that.
When all your characters are identical exceptnfor action skills maybe you shouldnt get rid of those.
The story DLC are very good though. Jackpot is probably the weakest to me because it feela very claustrophobic in spots. Kreig is unbalanced as shit but the story is good
I feel the exact opposite: BL2 was nails on chalkboard, BL3 was mostly adequate, with some good bits.
I can't understand this sorry. BL3 is like the worst part of BL2, where Roland gets shot and Lilith captured with the player sticking their finger in their bum watching it, only we're going to do it repeatedly and rub the players lack of agency (via a forced cutscene) in their face. We're also going to do an entire thing where the antagonists actually start having an interesting argument between one another and then completely forget it exists 5 minutes later.
There is absolutely no way BL3 is better written than 2, with the one notable exception if that if you really disliked Jack BL2 doesn't work at all. At the same time, BL3 just plain doesn't work regardless, but I can at least understand that POV.
That part wasn't as bad as most of BL3's cutscenes. The VHs had just finished a huge fight to break into Angel's home and fight off it's security, so I could see everyone being too tired and stunned to react and then being held off by Jack getting his hands on Lilith. Plus, the cutscene actually ACKNOWLEDGES the VHs being there in some form which again makes it better then most of BL3's cutscenes.
Let's Play Final Fantasy 'II' (Ch10 - 5/17/10)
Like out of the story choices you get that demonstrate some agency on the part of the player, you have:
[ ] accept/decline sidequests (you can't really decline sidequests, but you can just... not do them or start them, I guess)
[ ] pick rhys' mustache
honestly can't remember any other story choices you can actually make.
But that's fine! a linear story is fine. but if you are going to put me into a linear story, at least make me an actual participant, or make the NPCs that I have to run fetch quests for competent, or make my antagonists actually menacing, rather than just people who natter at me incessantly on a one-way walkie talkie.
Uh why
So I can tell you what to do next.
We're already talking just tell me
Nope
getting the feeling this quest could have been an email
It seems like its just going back to old maps to help ava make a podcast soooo
Eh.
Theres a normal raid boss included at least.
The story is pretty dull. I was hoping that the multiple vault concept would add at least some nonlinearity. Ava is pretty annoying, "oops all sirens" just fell flat with me and navigating spaceship sanctuary was actively frustrating. There weren't even any pure just for fun sidequests that stick out in my mind like Face McShooty
You not doing anything during cutscenes is sort of a given, it's a cutscene, but it happened way too much and was getting predictable in 3. Roland's death was a singular event, jack wasn't showing up in every cutscene doing something like that. And 2's cutscene starts with roland getting shot by a cloaked jack and ends a few seconds later with lilith teleporting you away - like okay maybe you weren't doing something during jack's 10 second monologue at you, but that's much less egregious than 3's cutscenes
Edit: Which is why I like Diablo 3 so much. Adventure mode is so perfect. All of the glorious Diablo, none of having a daemon who hilariously reminds me of a cat tell me he's a tactical genius while I kick all of his daemons asses each time he tells me his plans.
Though that means we'll probably have to deal with Vaughn too, which I am not a fan of.
I mean, I need to buy SDUs anyways.
Also, play that godsdamned Science game.
Woo ! The character voiced by a famous abuser who isnt remotely like his character in the game people liked!
BL3 was at an appropriate sale price for everything, so I picked that up. I just want to get through the Tales game. I also have the Handsome collection and that new Lilith dlc, so maybe if I'm crazy enough I'll redownload them and play through it. A shame they never ported that specific DLC to the VR version, but at least they have that "start at lv30" feature.
Don't worry, Moxsy has you covered.
tl;dw
Looks like it's time to nerf Amara again.
Oh hey a waaaaay better version of what happens post-Promethea that didn't make it into the game.
What the fuck, Gearbox.
Shooting and abilities remain fun on with the whole double agent thing
I don't remember this Maurice character being around last time I played but he's very funny and glad he's here.
This has gone about as well as you might imagine.
The problem stems from how Gearbox had exorbitantly high drop rates for legendary items as a result of the number of anointments, which were added for this game, that legendary guns can drop with. In order to relive frustration from grinding for the right anointment, the drop rate was increased compared to Borderlands 2. This annoyed people big into the Meta, as it meant that the dedicated legendary drop pool was being watered down with drops from world drop pool, which contains a large number of lesser base game legendries like the Woodblocker that seem to drop at a massively increased rate. It also annoyed people as they felt legendries were not as special as the name implies.
So come the Director's Cut update last week two things happened. A vending machine was added that allowed users to re-roll anointments for 250 Eridium, which had been a largely useless secondary currency for most players since launch. This would allow Gearbox to safely reduce the number of legendary world drops as there was no longer a need to farm for anointments. Two birds with one stone.
Except, if you weren't playing for the Meta, farming for anointments or farming for dedicated drops, suddenly whole swathes of the game started dropping noting but white, green, blue or epic loot. Now in previous Borderlands games this wouldn't have been a problem as the overall loot pool was pretty viable into the endgame. In Borderlands 3, legendries have been such a crutch for Gearbox for so long that the loot pool outside of them is completely flacid in the endgame. The result has been that people not playing the meta in the endgame are getting non-viable loot or what legendries that do drop are still the lesser Woodblocker variety as the chances of a better world drop legendry happening have become vanishingly small. Leaving a lot of areas of the game in the endgame Mayhem mode, which is supposed to be higher difficulty for greater rewards, dropping no good loot. Which is a problem in your loot focused shooter.
To top things off Gearbox decided to do what is a signicant change to how the core gameplay loop flows a year and a half into the games lifecycle when most people probably would have settled into what they safely assumed to be a particular way of playing the game a year ago.
Nothing from Gearbox as yet as to the reaction to the change but the community has been slowly boiling over the weekend and whilst it hasn't descended into a full on flame war, people for the change keep condescendingly gatekeeping any criticism and people against the change have started frustrated name calling.
Just an absolute shit show.
the borderlands where everyone is unhappy with the game at all times
An update from the makers of Aliens: Colonial Marines and Duke Nukem Forever for a game by the makers of Borderlands 1 and Borderlands 2.
Early on, these two things go together hand-in-hand. But, from the very start to the end of the endgame, I find my attitude towards loot tends to progress like this:
This isn't a problem unique to Borderlands, but I'm unaware of any common solutions that keep loot fun and interesting. And since collecting loot is a main pillar of the gameplay, that's a problem! I do feel Arms Race injects a dose of that "mad scramble for gear" fun, even if it's far from perfect and not quite integrated with the whole game like DLC tends to be.
Also, NONE of this is typed with the intent to mute or moot the above critical analysis: I feel it's pretty on-point. When we play, our yells tend alternate between "Randy Pitchford, FIX your game!" and "Randy Pitchford, STOP fixing your game!", sometimes in the same session.
Damn you, I just keep laughing at this.
Hell pre-patch I didn't even pick up blues. I went straight to purple and orange and would have to find a vending machine halfway through areas because of all the loot. I sold once last night. That was with picking up blues.
The problem Gearbox has now is that there are so many "trash" legendaries, that reducing the drop rate just increases the grind exponentially. I get that they don't want to make it too easy to get OP, but this is really shining a light on the state of the meta as far as builds go. Going back to the way things were originally in BL2 as far as drop rates is a massive step backwards.
https://borderlands.com/en-US/news/2021-04-15-borderlands-3-hotfixes-apr-15/
they do say that chests will be getting better loot, as will trials
but yeah it's weird that for people who were waiting for all the DLC to drop got a way worse experience now that the last DLC has dropped
Wait... I'm getting word...
Oh, oh no.
I guess at least chests will get better. But it's going to be SO HARD to go from getting 10-20 legendaries a night to one or two at best. And then 20+ epics to 3 or 4.