So in regards to future Borderlands games I feel the key aspect that needs to be preserved is the loot.
When I think of Borderlands my first though has always been and will always be the elemental guns and unique projectile/gun effects (along with co-Op with your friends). One of my greatest fears is to loose one of these elements that have been added over time.
Personally I hope That Cryo and Slag will return in future games along with shock, acid fire and explosive perhaps with more multi elemental interactions and more elemental hybrid guns like the Tsumami from BL1 and the Florentine from BL2. Considering the elemental modifiers it could be quiet interesting to have say a mixed elemental gun tailored to say wreck shielded fleshy targets and so and so forth.
Likewise the unique red text effects are one of the things that make me look towards all the red text weapons. It is quite disappointing to get a cool red text gun only to find it is extremely sub par compared to other weapons/shields/grenade mods ect. I belive that every Red text should be a viable option for max level play regardless of their gimmicks and special perks.
That said I feel high quality purple tier items should be able to compete with red text equipment
In short I hope for high diversity in loot but without the issues of Borderlands 2 where only a small subset of equipment are viable in high level play.
In some ways the restrictive nature of manufactures in Borderlands 2 hinders the viability of some weapons as certain manufaturer perks have strong limitations, that said the flavor they add is useful at the same time.
For instance Perhaps we could see say explosive becomes a normal element via a specific Tourge elemental part. That said Torgue weapons would be guaranteed to be explosive and would give a bigger boom and maybe have more damaging splash damage/loud explosions.
We could also stand to see Torgue make Snipers and the like again with mechanics that Mr. Torgue would approve of say No scoping bonus as he is Torgue big explosion and naturally slow motion explosion or things along that line of thought.
That said the manufacturer interaction found in the Torgue vending machines was a nice mechanic I would love to see again perhaps expanded to more gun manufacturers with various loyalty tokens for each that can buy items with a legendary or maybe even on rare occasions pearlescent weapon. Seeing those really spurs you to try and collect enough tokens that you don’t miss “the one”, while also giving desperate players an alternative reliable means of obtaining a particular rare weapon at a far higher cost should farming the boss in question have been disappointingly poor in its drops. (Such as the infamous BNK3R)
The next point of discussion is leveling. The boosting of the level cap multiple times with a game that wasn’t designed for that scaling was really apparent so I ask that future borderlands games stick to there design plans with regards to leveling. I know for me the most enjoyable gameplay is going after bosses and arena quests or playing a DLC/Playthrough at max level with some of your friends. Borderlands 2 had such a tedious level curve that training up another character for higher level play got quite tedious. Perhaps BL3 could have a mechanic to allow you to say pay money/Eridium on one character to boost the level of another lower level character? I feel it would be a good mechanic for evening the levels of characters as levels differences often get in the way of a spontaneous Co-Op session with friends.
i.e. You are playing with 2 friends and are playing a level 40 character with two friends with level 40 and 41 and another friend who is rarely available wants to join but he only has a level 29, and level 50 character.
Sure you could all start a brand new campaign but you can only tolerate the opening sequences so many times. If their was a way to quickly adjust a character to the proper level then it would be far easier to have good co-Op experiences.
this along with a higher level playthrough that scales to the highest level like UVHM and allowing resetting would maximize replay ability and Co -Op expereinces
Another point more in regards to rare enemies and bosses is to make them more memorable fights without simply scaling up health and HP.
For instance Looking at raid Bosses Vermivorous the invincible was my favorite boss to spawn in late game play where you tried to find the varkid that could become "the one"Dexiduous The invincible had the opportunity to be interesting however his loot pool and battle were not enjoyable enough to make him worth fighting again.
I would love to see all story and raid bosses be more than meat shields they should be powerful, with raid bosses being particularly challenging but even they should have effective solo/duo/trio strategies for each character or combination.
Pool loot should be far more common than the normal drops with truly epic challenges like raid bosses or even a digistruct peak like gauntlet giving a guaranteed change at one of the legendary equipment found in their pool(heads and skins should form a separate pool) along with some seraph crystals that can be redeemed for some select equipment.
Perhaps a guaranteed seraph item that can only be obtained from the particular boss+some crystals that can be traded to a vendor and then a large number of regular items of blue(or even better purple) tier or better.
Raid Bosses are to difficult/important to have these crappy whites and greens.
For side objective games that give loot the best examples in my opinion have been the Tiny Tina slot machines( which had a chance to give seraph crystals(otherwise raid boss only), as well as Peralescent and Legendary Weapons.) and the Grinder in TPS which gave a way to ensure a non legendary item of the rarity and type you want. This objective shouldn’t be at the expense of normal loot and I feel that Red text gear might have been better off left out.
Lastly I would love a way to immortalize those weapons that helped you out so much that you grew attached to them to the extent you just can’t sell it they need a place where they can be put on display for all to know your glory list. BL2 had far too little bank slots to hold my gear hall of fame, I wish we could at least have a larger Bank than BL2 offers more akin to the maxed Bank of BL1 in size.
