Borderlands 3 - DEV UPDATE: FINE-TUNING MAYHEM 2.0

[Sidartha]

@c.shoju

3.) Guaranteed Anointed Drops. I appreciate that you have made everything M8 or higher anointed, but that needs to be lower. M6, more likely. You quickly get to a point where unanointed items are just not good enough to matter, as you progress through Mayhem difficulties.

Why do people keep saying this? You only get guaranteed anointment on M10. This was confirmed by Noelle in the previous patch notes comments when asked for clarification. Unless something has changed since then or he was wrong? I would actually be happy if it was guaranteed at M8 and above but I do agree it should probably be M6 and above.

@mattm33

Whether it is GBX policy specifically or mandated by 2K, I swear there has to be an “admit no fault” policy going on. Even the way the patch notes are repeatedly worded, “ Addressed a reported concern … ” rather than just saying “we fixed a glitch” feels like oddly clever wording to avoid admitting any actual mistakes were made.

Funny that you mention that. I commented about that on one of the early patch notes threads how their wording of fixing “perceived” problems was sort of passive aggressive or something like it wasn’t a real problem but they fixed it anyway because we all “perceived” it as a problem.

@mattm33

Anyone that signs up for this forum is hardly a “causal” gamer. A casual gamer plays this game til level 35, beats it once, then goes back to playing NBA 2K once a week until they find something else that interests them. People that are posting routinely on a video game forum and maxing our multiple characters are definitely not “casuals”.

Well said. I would also add that being able to endure tedious and boring “difficulty” also doesn’t make you “hardcore”.

[lolli42]

if everything is on par with the O.P.Q, the game is over as soon as you get any gun
you can kill every content in the game
gz
lets play cyberpunk

[Baraqueda]

Huh??? How is this update catering to casuals???

Last I heard mopi, kobi, lazydata, shadowevil, k6, and joltz have been wanting these changes ever since mayhem 2.0 dropped dont tell me u think they’re casuals

[Sidartha]

@flightx3aa

This sentence alone implies that the norm are underpowered, and the outliers are overpowered. We don’t normally label the outliers as the norm.

So I would say that the few outliers are overpowered.

Well said. In general I don’t think nerfs are a good policy but context is important. I actually saw your YT video on this subject and for the most part agree.

I think given how M10 has played out it makes sense that a few outlier weapons be toned down a bit but only in the context that enemy health/shields is being toned down a bit and pre 2.0 weapon scaling is being fixed. In that context those weapons like YC or OPQ should still feel just as powerful and will likely still be leading the pack…only difference being that there is an actual pack of other weapons that are even included at all.

[Bigredtarheel]

Story mode was never really difficult to begin with and never has been in BL. Before 2.0 came out I went through the story in TVHM using only white gear–including shields/mods/grenades, etc. I think I died twice throughout the entire story. Granted, you’re not in MH mode during the story, but if you can beat the story rather easily only using white gear, it’s not that hard (and I consider myself to be an average skilled player at best).

I’d rather have them create new content with new legendaries and other unique items to find to keep me engaged rather than messing around with mayhem levels.

[gelboy]

With these changes, I’m actually more hyped than ever for Guardian takedown

i can finally feel something again xD

[flightx3aa (ThiccFilA)]

Sure and I agree with this to an extent. But mainly my counter is against people who just hate the word ‘nerf’ because of what it implies.

What gearbox is talking about is lowering the mayhem scaling, then readjusting weapons to match.
That isn’t what a normal nerf is.
So to say ‘dont nerf, just buff’ with this context is irrelevant.

Another thing when it comes to the story, is yes it’s just a main story it’s not meant to be the hardest content in the world. But my playthroughs of this game before and after they buffed everything on M4 for no reason, where very different. And I’m not complaining because I loved the buffs to M4 they gave us week after week, a TON of weapons became viable for endgame and it was great. But when I found a hellshock my next playthrough, it was actually just trivial. And it’s worth mentioning imo, I’m not the only person who’s said this either.

[lolli42]

i guess even if there was a gun that could 1 shot wotan without any build adjustment, people would beg to not get it nerfed :x

[gelboy]

once the drops are spread out, I hope the dedicated drops increase per mayhem level/playthrough mode, and not a static buff though

i dont want to be getting legendaries all the time in playthrough 1… but tyreen should definitely guaranteed drop on first kill like EOS in TPS. make her chests guaranteed purple+ too.

[Bigredtarheel]

I agree with that. I’d hope the point of all of this is to (a) make it so more than 5 or 6 guns are usable at the highest levels and (b) find a middle ground where at the higher levels you’re not taking out bosses in two seconds, but also not spending 15 minutes where all an enemy does is absorb ammo. The Takedown, slaughter shafts and proving grounds to me are examples of things that are challenging and fun (and sometimes frustrating) due to the volume of enemies and chaos going on, but no one enemy just absorbs ammo so as to make it tedious.

Now if they’d only allow you to respawn at the last vending machine when Wotan kills you rather than re-playing that whole section, I’d be a happy camper.

[Greblokneb]

I need one thing.
I need the game to stop crashing on Xbox.
That’s it.

[thesuicidefox]

People have been throwing around the word “power creep” but don’t know what it really means.

Power creep is what happened with OP level in BL2. You got so incredibly strong as a vault hunter that they needed to introduced incredibly ridiculous mechanics to compensate. In other words, the damage scaling is out of control. The simple fact that most enemies health regen would outpace the damage of all but the highest DPS weapons is power creep.

What we have in BL3 is not power creep because things aren’t so ridiculous they need a ridiculous mechanic to offset the damage you can put out. The scaling in BL3 is way lower than BL2. The enemies don’t even do more damage at higher mayhem, they just have a larger health pool. You don’t need to health gate to survive or debuff every enemy to actually kill stuff. It’s just there are a lot of weapons that simply underperform, but the high end weapons are right where they should be. Yes, Yellowcake kills stuff really quick but as I pointed out it eats ammo pretty fast and you need to be a certain distance to really get damage from it. Too close you do nothing (and potentially down yourself) and too far and you can’t hit them.

OPQ doesn’t instantly kill enemies either. It does solid damage but majority of enemies take a clip or two to really take down. That’s not power creep that’s a weapon working as it should.

[boombumr (Here comes the BOOOOM)]

I can’t find it easily on YT (damn the algortith) but there are plenty of videos of DT wrecking OP10. DT solos bar brawl while Gaige AFKs, one hits bosses, etc…The scaling between PC and console was different, so if you played on PC I can see where you’re coming from. But on console where DT actually scaled correctly he demolished things.

Axton and Roland’s turrets were more support tools than anything. Them not killing things was to be expected. Also, Maya’s elemental skills aside from Ruin operated completely independently of her action skill and Backdraft (with a dedicated build) and Helios were both solid.

And the main potential issues are that

1. The bonuses would not make abilities gear dependent, as they already do depend on gear, but would make them further gear dependent. The upside of ability builds to me is that they have a lower absolute ceiling than gun builds, but they also have a lower barrier to entry. If they take just as much work to put together as a gun build to put together, then they lose their appeal if they aren’t massively buffed to compensate since, let’s be honest, builds based around damage abilities in Borderlands never outdo gun builds.
2. If the bonuses just give hundreds of % of damage like anointments do, then they overshadow your build to a fair extent. For example, the most pet damage I can for FL4K from the skill tree is 452%. If a bonus on gear gave 400%, that would be equal to almost my entire skill tree. The extra power would be nice, but it would make the choices I make for my build feel pointless.

Again, a lot of this hinges on how GB handles these bonuses. The post also mentioned looking at anointments, so that may alleviate some of my concern as well. For the moment, let’s just say there is reason to be apprehensive, although not exactly alarmed, about how this will effect these skills.

[thesuicidefox]

No the outliers are where the scaling SHOULD BE. They function just fine at m10. Nothing kills stuff too quickly (aside from Yellowcake which is to be expected as it is a heavy weapon… if an enemy can tank multiple hits from a HW then the HW is way underpowered). The reason you only see certain weapons is because the others aren’t good enough. The norm should be where the best weapons currently are, not somewhere in the middle. You’re just watering down the game at that point.

Enemies on m10 are just fine as they are. They really don’t need to have their health tuned down if all the underperforming weapons are just scaled properly.

[Bigredtarheel]

I’d agree this isn’t a nerf–scaling down mayhem levels and then not re-adjusting the OPQ and others to some extent would exacerbate the current issues. You just don’t want them to go too far. E.g. with the Ion Cannon it was a fun weapon to use, but when it became a 6 or 7 rounds per shot weapon with a 35 round mag size, it took away the fun and many people stopped using it. Making it 3 or 4 per shot would have made it less OP, but also still fun to use. That’s what I’m hoping for here.

[flightx3aa (ThiccFilA)]

I mean to be fair power creep does not require an amount to be qualified as power creep or not. As it stands, mayhem scaling is 12.5x from M10 to M4. And weapons only scale 2.5x. Guns like the monarch and reflux, are exact part for part copies of weapons like the dictator and brainstormer, but with significantly higher damage numbers, in some cases over double on the cards. Same with a lot of the new weapons. Just because bl2 and op levels were significantly worse, doesn’t mean powercreep did not occur.

@thesuicidefox

No the outliers are where the scaling SHOULD BE. They function just fine at m10. Nothing kills stuff too quickly (aside from Yellowcake which is to be expected as it is a heavy weapon… if an enemy can tank multiple hits from a HW then the HW is way underpowered). The reason you only see certain weapons is because the others aren’t good enough. The norm should be where the best weapons currently are, not somewhere in the middle. You’re just watering down the game at that point.

Enemies on m10 are just fine as they are. They really don’t need to have their health tuned down if all the underperforming weapons are just scaled properly.

And my response to this is lower the mayhem scaling, and then readjust the overperforming weapons, not just nerf OP weapons for no reason. INSTEAD of buffing gearbox favorite dozen weapons, and just make the viable weapon list slightly larger. Your argument could work if all that was proposed was to nerf yellowcake for no reason, but that’s not what’s happening.

[thesuicidefox]

Exactly. Try using OPQ/YC against Maximilian or enemies with physical shields. They just reflect/deflect that ish. Or enemies immune to rad, they take WAY less damage from YC. Also good lucky using it against flying enemies.

[mattm33]

I always look at it as there being three groups that buy games like this:

1. The totally casual gamer - The guy that is probably going to play this game through once or twice - or might not even finish it once - and then move on to something else and will MAYBE come back and check out a DLC or two.

2. The dedicated average Joe - These are what Id describe as the meat and potatoes of your dedicated gamers. This is the category that the majority of players fall into that will play this game long term. These players will max out a character or two, maybe join the forums, maybe play on max difficulty for a bit, dabble in a little bit of farming, try all or most of the DLCs, and make some builds here and there. This is the group you cater your game to IMO.

3. The extreme hardcore - This is the group that maxes out a bunch of different characters, can boss farm for hours and hours on end, thinks even the hardest difficulty is too easy, has a YouTube channel, knows all kinds of crazy builds, spends hours testing different weapons and items, etc. This is the tiniest group by a long shot, and I often feel like a lot of this groups’ demands would hurt the quality of the game for the vast majority of players (i.e. requesting that loot is insanely hard to acquire, expecting end game activities to be game breakingly hard with no difficulty options, etc.).

I don’t know what you want to actually name each of these groups, but I feel like group #2 is arguably the most important group to satisfy.

[flightx3aa (ThiccFilA)]

@thesuicidefox

Exactly. Try using OPQ/YC against Maximilian or enemies with physical shields. They just reflect/deflect that ish. Or enemies immune to rad, they take WAY less damage from YC. Also good lucky using it against flying enemies.

How is this actually an argument when yellowcake is actually one of the better weapons against enemies like this considering you can just aim near their feet and damage them with splash instead.

[nwff]

These games need a procgen replayable endgame. There’s no point climbing the progression ladder just to end up at a point where you have nothing to use your powered-up character on. The reason for a procgen activity is to give people something to do that isn’t just figuring out the most time-efficient pindleskin run loot cave. Please, look at Grim Dawn or Diablo 3 if you need ideas for repeatable pseudorandom gameplay modes