I really like BAR and its ability to choose your rewards to your liking, but Proficiency does make more sence since you gett better at using a certain type of weaponry.
But, to an extend both aren’t perfect, BAR makes less sence since you experience some kind of proficiency on all weaponry at once if you decide to choose lets say ‘recoil reduction’.
Proficiency has the tendency to make your character overspecialise in certain weapon classes if you’re not carefull, leaving you having to grind the other weapon classes you like at end/late game.
Maybe I’m nitpicking, but this is my view on both.
It’s just as easy to focus on BAR stats that play directly into using sniper rifles while also boosting other guns that you are using. Completing challenges makes you better at using the gun. That’s just by gaining experience with the weapon. To me, that’s building proficiency not increasing the value of a stat just with that weapon type.
How about we have both then? Bar could have small boosts while prof. would be the bulk of the bonuses. I’m just hesitant to embrace prof. by themselves really cause they seemed rather generic/cookie cutter in BL1 or didn’t make much sense really (no sniper accuracy enhancing!?!).
Another “solution”/compromise that I just came up with could be for gun stats the Proficiency skill now determines the effectiveness of the bonus the BAR stat does (if at 50% prof for snipers the BAR bonus would only be at 50% strength for them but if you’re at 100% pistols or whatever you get the full bonus for them).
I’m not super familiar with proficiencies as I’ve stated numerous time I never played the original (I know, I know, I was going to buy it on Steam during the Borderlands sale except everything OTHER than BL1 was on sale >_< )
But it would be neat if a specific gun that you use a lot got an extra little bonus for doing so many awesome things with it. Or if it had attachments like Dark Cloud (I may be showing my age, JK I know I’m not that old). Or if you could find manufacturer parts and could take them to Marcus and have him build them in to a gun you already have to change it’s stats to get “perfect parts”.
I actually would love if they tied this bar/proficiency stat bs into parts or weapon unlocks as opposed to hidden background stats. I think hidden background stats are a lame way of rewarding the player for playing a lot. Unique rewards for mastering a thing is WAY better because there’s no inherent grind based gap between players. Everyone’s characters are on the same base line other than the choices that THEY make with their gear and skill points (and NO, i don’t think that choose 1 of 5 things to upgrade with each BA token to be anywhere close because there’s no actual choice to any of it, you get enough of them where your characters just get a general boost to everything).
Weapon proficiencies promote using one type of weapon for the whole game, and that is counter to the core loot design of borderlands 2 as described by Paul Hellquist.
I personally don’t like proficiencies because it feels like my new purple weapon I get in a weapon type I had not been using till that point is not at and probably wont reach its full potential in its entire lifetime of use unless I’m at endgame.
I wish so bad we can get proficiencies back!!
I want the so bad!!!
Also I desperately want eridian weapons back I wish I could have been able to rock Pete with gaige and a thunderstorm.
I’d be OK with them returning so long as they became part of the overall BAR system. I’ve finally made it to 100K BAR and it’s a brilliant feeling to be able to see all that progression since 2012. I didn’t like profs much because they felt restrictive, and I hate it how everyone tells me I’m wrong for feeling that.
Cool have your bar have it unlock non stat things like customizeables or golden keys or weapons ot w/e I don’t really want proficiency either cuz unlockable stats, especially limitless unlockable stats, trivialize the game to a point where its either too easy or warrants an unfair difficulty spike.
ROFL, Gaige +Thunderstorm = electric death.
Do agree 100% it’d be awesome if “real” (not e-tech) Eridian weapons returned, just so long as they were a bit better balanced this time around (doesn’t make you run slower for no reason for example).
I’d like to see BAR as delivered in BL2/TPS today disappear. I don’t want the game to get easier artificially as I play-- if anything, the game should become harder, to match what hopefully is my increasing skill at the game. I’d like my characters to see the same challenge level as other players, so that I’m not outgunning them in coop by mere virtue of the sick-ass number of hours of gameplay that I’ve accumulated. Conversely, I’d like to think that I’m still playing in a balanced fashion when I disable my BAR bonuses.
Mind you, I like the challenges themselves, I like the minigame of accumulating points for otherwise pointless challenges, and I particularly like the little flag-of-escalating-badassitude that TPS uses to annotate your character’s name-- nerd flair! I just don’t like it affecting the difficulty of gunplay.
Suggestion: unlock silly skins to players with sufficiently obsessive BAR. Or unique dance moves (BL3 will have dance-dueling, right? Right??). Or some other piece of in-game purely cosmetic flair. Maybe unexpected dialogue from otherwise random NPCs. (Please come back, Lieutenant Colonel Space Helicopters-- your planet needs you now more than ever.) Or make characters of that player glow a little longer, a little bluer, when stumbling out of the New-U.
Second suggestion: let BAR bias the rarity of loot drops. The player can allocate points to different classes of loot that they’d like to see increase (minutely) in rarity.
I wasn’t too sorry to see BL1’s weapon proficiency disappear: as much as I loved the crazy effectiveness of a weapon with maxed proficiency, I prefer the ability to respec a Borderlands 2 character to a completely new build on a whim. I mainly miss the sense of history that it gave a character.
Suggestion: track more history about a character, with a usage/kill stats page. There is a fair bit of this in the BL2/TPS BAR challenges, but I’d like to see open-ended counts.
Second suggestion: have a character’s weapon proficiency bias the class of items found in loot drops, such that characters with more rocket launcher experience than revolver experience would tend to find more rocket launchers than revolvers.
This is a good idea, maybe not for weapon drops, cuz that would be kinda wierd for farming (LIke there’d be scenarios like x drops the norfleet-splosion to we need to pack a lobby with rocket proficiency people to we can superfarm norfleet-splosions). I Would love if it did cool stuff for weapons that werent stat based, maybe as an additional selectable weapon proficiency (So you don’t lose your ‘respec on a whim’ style), where you could, for example heavily weigh the Ammo drops, buy ammo at a reduced cost in shops, have your gun slowly regen ammo over time, or add special, non stat-affecting, effects to your weapons (For example make it “shoot lasers” like some of the uniques in TPS, or give it a gem skin from BL2, add a cool sight, or make it golden or w/e), things that would show your love for your weapon without actually affecting their stats.
Those loot biases would only work for world drops. They don’t make any sense for boss special drops, yeah.
I was trying to think of feat-type perks for each weapon class that proficiency could unlock. Maybe weapon-class-specific character skills are all replaced by feats. Respeccable when you reset your skillpoints.
I don’t think that the game becomes artificially easier. It’s taken me nearly three years to get to 100k BAR (I don’t like to farm BAR, so it’s just what happens naturally for me). There’s nothing artificial about a three-year-grind! I like the way BAR increases stats across all characters. The game is insanely hard in the OP levels and any boost from BAR is negligible anyway.
The game can still be made harder for those who wish it so. Do OP runs with white gear. Disable BAR. limit yourself to one gun type only. No need to get rid of BAR altogether. Similar to Paragon levels in Diablo, I like the way players are rewarded in a tangible way for putting the hours in, and then can use those increases to start new characters.
[quote=“Daemmerung, post:35, topic:376055, full:true”]
I’d like to see BAR as delivered in BL2/TPS today disappear. I don’t want the game to get easier artificially as I play.[/quote]
I don’t like the badass rank the way it is either.
I do love how TPS tells other players your BAR though.
Also In BL2 I played that game way way more then I should have prestige every character at least once each Gaige and Krieg 5 time each just for something to do.
My BAR was Out of control high and I honestly could not tell the difference in game play. That could be just me but even when the perks said they were all 13-14% each still without looking at the damage numbers seems the same as off.
Plus I can’t stand when people try to act like you have zero skill if you play with your bar on. Guess that why I never care about time trials. I put the work in to get that BAR that I high I’m keeping that ish on!!
But with all that aside I think the weapon proficiencies were a way better system.
Maybe GBX could figure out some type of hybrid of the two for BL3.
Or… Or… Here me out on this one…
Scrap all of that junk and JUST GIVE MY MY GOT DANG THUNDERSTORM!!! and ball blaster pew,pew,pew
