#612

I had a Revenant soldier follow me down to Harker last night. I was also playing solo and hadn’t extracted any of my gear. That was an interesting fight. Managed to do it though :grin:

1 Like
#613

They need the ability to randomly get skills from chests or other ways. That could be interesting, especially if the skills drop in random order. Or maybe even other VH skills that aren’t VH specific. Like you can get Zanes movement/damage skill but you are on Moze.

2 Likes
#614

After finishing my first round I have to say this is an even bigger snorefest than I imagined. Just for the record I still use green guns (and up) in the main game if I like them, like the Dahl pistol and SMG’s but having a whole mode which is solely stripped down to gunplay while then having “only” white guns that reload/fire slowly and sway the whole time is making this a reaaally boring experience.
It is as if somebody thought it would a stellar idea to forgo the refined gameplay from 3 and somehow make it feel like I’m playing a drunken version of Borderlands 2 (nothing against 2 it just doesn’t really have smooth gunplay like “real” shooters)

I don’t know who said this but I agree this mode is good if you mindlessly want to shug Tediore’s at Spiderants every 200m. The map is so boringly empty it feels like the spawn points are broken. Run, run, run, enemies spawn, oh now suddenly enemies are in the area I just left and shooting me in the back, run, run, run :sleeping:

Also some nitpicks:

With how the basic white gear has no bonus stats it is rather a hassle comparing the guns at lv. 65 for the tiny number tweak. Reminds me of the unnecessary big numbers of Borderlands 2 and makes the already not fluid fight loop even more boring.

Also that items are directly put into the bank is a bad joke. Especially with the bug that, you know you still haven’t fixed since launch, where every item shows as new. So now I can spend several minutes after each run just to pinpoint the 5 new new gear.

And that you have to return to Sanctuary is making it really easy to just not bother with another round at all…

One last thing I almost had to puke at all the horrible meta commentary and jokes, at this point I’m really not sure if Gearbox is that bad or if they are actually trying to make fun off us.

Phew excuse me, that got way to long for such an uneventful thing, like I said it is totally obvious why we got sucker punched into purchasing this together with the the skill trees. Otherwise nobody would have bought it.

19 Likes
#615

I agree, it is really bad. Once you get some solid green or even better blue gear, which is rare, the boss is pretty easy. Get a Legendary gun and its game over.

Overall though, it is poorly constructed and unimaginative. They put together Fortnite and BL3 and made a huge, stinking, turd.

You can’t use the new Loot or Skill Trees in it. How lame is that? Who thought that was a good idea? Every Vault Hunter in this game has been conditioned to avoid “White” gear.

I’m already tired of it and it is barely a day old.
This is the best GearBox can come up with?
Personally, I think this is the worst thing they’ve ever done.

It’s a total rip off. At least the new skill trees seem interesting.

9 Likes
#616

For every other VH than Fl4k, yes.

#617

Lol I messed with fl4ks seemed stupidly broken lol

#618

But not Amara or Zane levell. More like broken as in trash. The entire skill tree has nothing to do with the rest of the trees.

#619

My thoughts on the new arms race are that it is a good groundwork for a fun new mode, that with some changes could become better.
I quite like starting with no gear and using whatever i happen to find as i progress, it has me using guns that i would not otherwise be using for some variety to the BL gunslinging, but i am in agreement with the topic creator that allowing use of our skill trees might improve the experience.
As a fl4k player i missed having my pet along for the ride, and action skills seem so core to BL. Perhaps, if the skill trees were not included into arms race, then unaugmented action skills could be, like having a single skill point.
One other change that i recommend is to have extracted loot mailed to us in the social tab instead of going directly into our banks. It would save hassle when our banks are full and allow us to keep track of what has been extracted. After my first successful run i ported to sanctuary and promptly forgot what i had extracted, finding them will be a little bothersome.
Other than that, i can see arms race becoming the most popular matchmaking option even when it is no longer new.

5 Likes
#620

I think they should probably introduce a rougelike levelingsystem for Arms Race
that way the characters actually dont feel the same

each round there are some badass-bounty dudes you have to kill
and gain like 3,5,10, 20 skill points for killing them depending on their difficulty
(should be appropiately many of them to get down far the skill trees in that round)

so you can make descisions on what to level on the fly which is core part of rouge-likes
at the END of the round that SKILLTREE should be RESET like in every good rougelike ever

4 Likes
#621

sounds like an interesting idea I had BOUNTY TARGETS for SKILLPOINTS in mind

1 Like
#622

yes the arms race game mode should include skills again
to make it feel even more like a rouge like which it probably was supposed to be
and make it feel less like every character is the same again.

I think they should probably introduce a rougelike levelingsystem for Arms Race
that way the characters actually dont feel the same
each round there are some badass-bounty dudes you have to kill
and gain like 3,5,10, 20 skill points for killing them depending on their difficulty
(should be appropiately many of them to get down far the skill trees in that round)
so you can make descisions on what to level on the fly which is core part of rouge-likes
at the END of the round that SKILLTREE should be RESET like in every good rougelike ever

gunfire reborn is a good example for a rougelike shooter that could be the basis of this mode
but I think bounties on badasses would feel more borderlands like than say find a scroll or item to get skills

1 Like
#623

Just a quick heads-up before anyone rage quits.

In local coop the extractor (at least the one after the boss) derps out when used by two players at the same time: once one player uses his extraction slots the other players slot are used up as well.
While my wife extracted 3 items, my slots where “used” as well without letting me extract. It even prompted me with an info saying sth like “cannot extract anymore from this machine”.
Happened twice.
That.was.great.fun.

3 Likes
#624

I think in order to do that they would need to slow down the timer because the circle shrinks pretty quickly. Would be cool though, also if they added another map or let you keep going with increasing difficulty until you die - increase drop rates as difficulty goes up sort of thing

1 Like
#625

Maybe badasses could drop red/green/blue/purple orbs that grant 5 skillpoints in the respective skill tree. Would need UI work but it would bring that RNG factor to runs. Maybe some of them drop multicolored orbs that can be exchanged for 5 points in the skilltree of the player’s choice.

The other concern besides UI and balance (I assume) is that they don’t want players sitting at the levelup screen, mulling over the trees in this quick mode. Give 'em a simple, more or less binary choice, and that’s tricky to do with BL3’s setup.

2 Likes
Brainstorming Ideas to Improve Arms Race
#626

You could also just go inside with your current build enabled
They have to balance it around your power anyway and I think it would be hard to balance enemies around a single map, run that is so fast and where you are gaining up to 20-30 skillpoints?
Better just let people have their builds?

1 Like
#628

I miss using Blue & Purple weapons and mods from the older Borderlands. Even BL2, Blue and Purple mods were viable end game ( I only did a few OPs though before moving on).

That’s the main reason I like Arms Race but wish they develop it more. I love the guns in this game but only the legendaries work end game. This mode is too barebones right now but I can, at least, use a Burst Fire Dahl sniper and it kills things. A win for me. But it definitely feels under tuned. They could do a lot here ( earn your skills back as everyone says but even then, just make them time based - power-ups that last a while or something. Much they can do).

So…ok with potential. And the rewards are good.

5 Likes
#629

Even though it baffles most of us, it had to have been a conscious decision for them to switch off skill trees. We can only guess at the reason, but they might be valid:

  • skills make gun variance irrelevant? Not sure if this is actually the case but they clearly wanted the vanilla weapon drops to feel impactful
  • the meta would be stale? Moze mech for damage and safety independent of drops; fl4k pet for damage independent of drops, and rezes; to name two of the more obvious ones
  • everyone being equal is a nice boon for co-op: without builds, anyone can play with anyone. There won’t be a level 65 character roflstomping his buddy’s level 20 session.

There’s counterarguments for all of these, suggestions in this very thread to fix them, so if I had to guess, what ended up happening is that they looked at the deadline, and decided to take the sledgehammer approach and just disable all skills entirely. We can only hope that there will be improvements later.

4 Likes
#630

Yea well
The trees are way to unbalanced and broken to provide a balanced ground to play with
So even with random drops
Give moze five points -> fitsd -> roflcopter
Also iron bear^^
But without skills the game is so pointless, it’s just fortnite with better graphics
The whole idea was very poorly thought out

7 Likes
#631

Well, from what we know, they had about two months to do it. I assume most hands were working on DLC4 before September. I think first impressions matter and the better decision would have been to take more time on arms race, and release the purple skilltree pack separately in november, but I guess they wanted to hit that Christmas season.

1 Like
#632

So yeah… Money over quality…

Just like the rest of the game :sweat_smile:

Reason why they don’t even playtest their crap… That would take resources away from development which means less money…

Just look at how many people bought arms race thinking it would be the best thing since sliced bread… And realizing that it’s just… Boring…

Gbx is good at hyping things…

8 Likes