Arms Race, make it more like a roguelike game?

Borderlands 3 Borderlands 3 General Discussion
#1

This mode definitly looks like a lot of fun! but I dont really get why it is limiting itself so much.
I know you want to have gunplay at center stage here, but as in any good roguelike game, the real fun starts to happen when you do stuff that just feels unfair and fun! In any rouglike game you want to have those crazy runs where you get op combinations of items, that really make you get a god run.

Right now Arms Race just look like it is always “fair” which ofcourse is also a good thing, all weapons seem to do fairly good and deal okay damage even at mayhem 11, enemys seem fair, and the gameplay looks solid.

But when playing a roguelike… I dont want fair all the time really, I want to become stronger and stronger quickly, increasing my arsenal of guns and/or abilities to overpower my enemys! And in a rogue like character choice matters, each character needs to be a diffrent experience!

Arms Race Roguelike

  • Action skills should definitly be a thing is this, making each character more unique. Why make borderlands not borderlands? and games like apex all now have skills too
    • at the start of Arms Race you could always be able to choose ONE actions skill (zane CAN choose TWO instead, Moze can only choose basic Skills from the top), and for the whole run you only have THAT ONE action skill available.
  • Then you could not only find guns, but also little “skill upgrade sdu” things that could then give you a random skillpoint for your tree when picked up. (or a bunch of random skillpoints when they drop less often)
    • so you get that roguelike feel where you can get overpowered runs with maybe a skill having 15 points in it or something like this. (and skill in this game are already coded to go beyond 5)
    • these skill upgrade would only count for the run ofcourse and will just drop or be looted randomly, giving you sometimes great an amazing skills in your tree, sometimes terrible ones… making each run all the more unique!
  • and then you could have these redchest events also reward you with actions skill augments for the run.

all these random rewards would eliminate the need to menu all the time, but would still make the gamemode all the more unique, rewarding, and would add SO much replay value instead of beeing “just” shoot shoot shoot.

Long Term Progression System Idea

details

Another great suggestion I just heard, was to ability to unlock action skills after the first time you defeated the boss! that would also then make the game mode more rewarding within itself!

THESE ARE JUST ROUGH IDEAS of what COULD BE!

First Boss kill: Unlock Havoc level 1
get actions skills unlocked, while increasing enemy scaling by 10% or something.
(appling my rules to then only take a single action skill at the beginning to avoid menuing)

Second Boss kill: Unlock Havoc Level 2
Unlock Skillpoint SDU’s, while increasing enemy scaling by another 10% or something like this.

Third Boss kill: Unlock Havoc level 3
Unlock Classmods, while increasing enemy scaling by 10% or something.

Fourth Boss kill: Unlock Havoc level 4
Increase all Extractor capacity by 1, while increasing enemy scaling by 10% or something.

Fifth Boss kill: Unlock Havoc level 5
Increase item Rarity, while increasing enemy scaling by 10% or something.

Sixth Boss kill: Unlock Havoc level 6
Allow exclusive Arms Race items to be equipped, while increasing enemy scaling by 10% or something.

(Seventh Boss kill: Unlock Havoc level 7) beyond balance
Get a maginal random assortment of 25 skills and a free augment for your action skill, increase enemy scaling by another 25% or something like this.

something like THIS, would give so much replay value, without destroying the balance of each run, and dont make you too overpowered on each following run, just add more flavour!

and after you unlock each of those, you can just choose at the beginning of each run, which havoc level you want to play with.

further explaination:
regarding level 6, the ability to use the new gear should be fine at this po9int, since you most likely extracted a whole bunch of these in your prior runs, making it totally okay for you to instead use them or else they will become obsolete over time.
havoc level 7 would then be a clear upgrade and overpower you for the run, but also comes with way stronger enemys with no other benefit but to make the game harder and faster. and for some maybe more interesting, without it beeing required to have the same amount of fun and rewards.

what do you guys think?

3 Likes
Brainstorming Ideas to Improve Arms Race
#2

Skills would have to be rebalanced for Arms Race otherwise most people would pick the exact same broken ones and they will ruin the purpose of the mode. But yeah in poe for instance the local rogue mode allowed you to level up a bit and allow skill points.

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#3

From what I’ve seen it’s all about tedior… Find one and start chucking the damn thing…

It’s supposed to be a streaming gameshow or something right?

Why not throw in sponsors? That way every manufacturer gets their time in the spotlight, they could create legendaries for every manufacturer and give those for rewards…

There’s so much that they COULD have done and yet again turned it into something that’s boring after a few runs (or as I see it, boring from the getgo)

1 Like
#4

would they really need rebalancing though?

  • Iron bear probably of the bat would be the most broken one, also protecting you… but remember… without ANY skills… IB lasts mere seconds if you fire your guns… you can only start off with basic gun equipped, so grenade launcher, electric laser and mini gun. (or iron cub ofcourse)… and then the cooldown is like two minutes at base? thats decently fair.

  • Amara is fairly balanced without guardian ranks, beeing able to maybe deal high damage to a single enemy every 30 seconds or so

  • Fl4k just getting off 3 crits or be amara with rakks basically

  • Zane probably would be the strongest one with a clone to distract, the drone for really good damage support, and the shield to support the whole team. or just be rakk fl4k with Mntis
    (maybe Zane should then also only be able to choose a single action skill to make him more fair…

I dont think it would be TOO overly crazy… yes ofcourse it would make it more easy, but also way more fun and still be borderlands.

1 Like
#5

Well, Zane trades his 2nd action skill for grenades (which I imagine are gonna be a bit more impactful in Arms Race because the health scaling is less steep) and without further skillpoints in Drone Delivery, Fractal Frags or Duct Tape Mod that would be absolute (unless I guess if you happen to find a Revengenader).

2 Likes
#6

I think allowing the use of Class mods would have been interesting, especially the ones from Arms Race. Include just the first tier of skills, including the action skills.

Same with artifacts. I think Deathrattles will be popular.

I’ll have to see how it plays before I can really gauge how good/fun it is or if it should have been designed differently. But it strikes me as very odd that you can’t use the new skills in this new mode, that releases in the same patch.

1 Like
#7

The only hope is for modders to find a way to enable action skills.

2 Likes
#8

I would really like them to add a option even for arms race to be able to play with skills and enemies be scaled up and loot is less valuable.

I would settle even if you had to unlock it by beating the boss without any skills first, then unlock a harder run with skills.

I understand that the gun play is the focus but most the vault hunters action skills revolve around the gun and gear that you’re using. (With expections)

I guess as someone who runs alot of Iron bear builds this is hard to hear.

2 Likes
#9

By now GBX should have realized that players want option.

Option for true and solo takedowns
Option for Mayhem mods or none at all
Option to buy a la carte
Option to use skills

4 Likes
#10

GBX can’t balancing all the stuff they have. That’s it.

3 Likes
#11

I’m all for making this mode more Risk of Rain and less knockoff battle royale

1 Like
#12

Exactly. Anyone remember playing a lvl 1-5 Zane? Grenades were at least as good as any action skill. Grenades in early levels are awesome.

Well, considering they are a legendary tier item that we can’t bring in, and can only find, I think that mitigates their popularity quite a bit…and I was just reading another thread, and there are some reports that the new legendaries won’t even work in Arm’s Race :open_mouth:

THIS I find really interesting. How often on these forums (and not just for BL3, but all Borderlands games) do people talk about “everyone is playing the same build”? Well, if you don’t get to choose your build, but one just happens by picking up SDUs, and it is different each time, well that’d force a lot of build diversity…and it might lead people to try out a different build in the main game (e.g. “hey, cold based zane is actually a lot of fun!”).

1 Like
#13

Well, it couldn’t be completely random. I mean, if it were, you could roll skills that are just entirely useless (a lot of the action skill stuff, for instance, unless you have action skills or skills like Death Follows Close or Big Game that only improve other skills but don’t do anything on their own) which would be kind of annoying.

#14

YES!

glad you like the idea, and I have to agree with your points aswell! and it would fit the mode perfectly because you dont need to hop into a menu every time you get a skillpoint. making the gameplay more fluid

welcome to a rogue like ^^ no but in all seriousness, this would all only work if we could use actions skills ofcourse. and then it should defintily be completely random… maybe if there is an entirely useless skill (I can’t think of one tbh) then the game should be able to not grant points in it ever.

1 Like
#15

Another great suggestion I just heard, was to ability to unlock action skills after the first time you defeated the boss! that would also then make the game mode more rewarding within itself!

First Boss kill: Unlock Havoc level 1
get actions skills unlocked, while increasing enemy scaling by 10% or something.
(appling my rules to then only take a single action skill at the beginning to avoid menuing)

Second Boss kill: Unlock Havoc Level 2
Unlock Skillpoint SDU’s, while increasing enemy scaling by another 10% or something like this.

Third Boss kill: Unlock Havoc level 3
Unlock Classmods, while increasing enemy scaling by 10% or something.

Fourth Boss kill: Unlock Havoc level 4
Increase all Extractor capacity by 1, while increasing enemy scaling by 10% or something.

Fifth Boss kill: Unlock Havoc level 5
Increase item Rarity, while increasing enemy scaling by 10% or something.

Sixth Boss kill: Unlock Havoc level 6
Allow exlusive Arms Race items to be equipped, while increasing enemy scaling by 10% or something.

(Seventh Boss kill: Unlock Havoc level 7) beyond balance
Get a maginal random assortment of 25 skills and a free augment for your action skill, increase enemy scaling by another 25% or something like this.

something like THIS, would give so much replay value, without destroying the balance of each run, and dont make you too overpowered on each following run, just add more flavour!

and after you unlock each of those, you can just choose at the beginning of each run, which havoc level you want to play with.

further explaination:
regarding level 6, the ability to use the new gear should be fine at this po9int, since you most likely extracted a whole bunch of these in your prior runs, making it totally okay for you to instead use them or else they will become obsolete over time.
havoc level 7 would then be a clear upgrade and overpower you for the run, but also comes with way stronger enemys with no other benefit but to make the game harder and faster. and for some maybe more interesting, without it beeing required to have the same amount of fun and rewards.

1 Like
#16

The randomness could be mitigated if it offered up three options to choose from, for example.

#17

This is the only one I have some issue with because if we have front end randomness, we encourage people to quit out to get builds they want. We don’t want to encourage dropping out of the game after matchmaking.

Maybe instead, do something like 5 points per extractor touched up to 25?

#18

That’s why I don’t think this would ever happen. They would need to heavily, and I mean heavily balance things in the mode and make bespoke adjustments to skill points and stuff so that it all works.

I’m a huge fan of the roguelike genre and I really like what they’re trying to do here, but I fear its not going to take off fully. While I’m gonna get the dlc and will definitely try out the mode, it sounds like a not-quite-there roguelike mode.

With most things, the support it receives will probably be directly proportional to how many people play it. I would love if they turned it into a legit roguelike experience, but I just feel like that won’t happen. Maybe down the road they’ll add different bosses, but I don’t see them introducing anything revolutionary here

1 Like
#19

I was implying they would have to be found (not that popularity = access). But if they don’t even work, well. WTF GB?

1 Like
#20

So basically no exclusive drops before boss 6? Doesnt sound very good though…

Also dont like the last point with 25 skill points.