Game Balance and Mayhem 2.0 (Hotfix thread derailment)

Borderlands 3 Borderlands 3 General Discussion
#21

I would be more welcoming of Gearbox’s ‘balance’ attempts, nerfs or buffs, if I trusted their ability to do so reasonably and with any sort of consistency

This here. I’m not having faith that they really approach this with any sort of method. Could be that I’m wrong, and I just don’t see it. If they don’t want players doubting their decisions, the changes need to show appropriate results in a timely manner, or they have to explain the changes with their intent in detail. I don’t expect the latter of anyone because I understand it takes time out of their schedule. However, I hope something happens with that mayhem 2.0 update that will put all of this into perspective and show these results.

I understand why many are so blindly keen on seeing any kinds of buffs on everything that underperforms. I’ve played games for a long time too, and I know this cursed developer approach of stomping every skill and every piece of gear into the ground that dares stick its neck out from the crowd, until all the “wonderful choice” that players now have is between different flavors of tediousness.

Nerfing all the aspects that combined make a weapon OP is a certain way of fixing it, but that’s usually its death sentence too. In the same vein, you can’t get balance by taking the worst weapons and putting them all the way at the top because that just shifts the balance. The goal should be to take all the bad guns and aim for the middle or maybe the upper third of the good guns, some variance is expected, but the recent hotfix changes seem like they’re all over the place. Something like the krakatoa or lob feels like they just rolled some dice. Would these guns be bad if they only did half of the damage they do now after the patch?

I don’t want to see everyone’s favorite new guns nerfed back into the ground. I just don’t want them to be the reason why a whole lot of other legendaries that weren’t good already, as well as pretty much all the purple guns are worse off because the ceiling was just lifted to even more unreachable heights.

2 Likes
#22

Severely, sure, but unfairly?

Moze was nerfed because she could be invincible while throwing endless grenades which homed into enemies. It was a build that removed health, aiming, and ammo from the gameplay equation, how is that something that can exist without issue in any FPS? You can’t even argue that it was deserving of being left in because it was skillfull, as gameplay of it consisted of mashing [grenade] in the general direction of enemies!

Fl4k’s GITM was nerfed because there was no reason not to take it, seeing as it outpreformed(in both DPS and burst) every other combo of augments singlehandedly, even with slow firing/high damage/low mag guns that should have worked better for the 3 shot version(Rocket launchers, snipers, and shotguns mainly). It wasn’t feasable to buff base fade away so that it would actually be a trade off, so they nerfed the agument so you actually had to consider whether it fit into what you were trying to do.

And finally Leave no Trace was nerfed as you could take any high pellet shotgun, go into fade away, and then shoot off as many shots as your fingers would allow as each shot was fully capable of filling the entire mag. There is no way to balance any other type of weapon to be of competitive DPS without breaking the game.

So yeah, they were severely nerfed, not unfairly.

2 Likes
#23

Isn’t it unfairly tho? As you said there was no reason not to take it which is why they nerfed it but now you have seein dead and spiritual driver making every other class mod zane and amara have obsolete but it hasn’t been tuned down yet and as far as I know no future plans to adjust it but Fl4k and moze (tho I believe moze had an “unintended” interaction with certain nades so don’t know if I can call that a nerf)where quickly shut down when gbx found out how powerful they were.

#24

No, popularity doesn’t make something right. That’s how we got stuck with VHS.

It can be very entertaining to run around nuking everything. But for me, eventually that wears off. I’m concerned about the recent buffs. If everything is good, then it won’t matter much what you use, will it? But, I doubt it’s going to get anyplace like that. I think I’m going to wait and see how things progress.

1 Like
#25

Here’s the thing, I dont mind builds being OP.

To me, a weapon should be average or have a drawback that counters its strength, making it decent at base.

From there, your build, the combined effects of you class mod, relic, skills, and annointments should be what makes it OP.

For the Ion cannon, this was not the case. At base, it had 3+× the damage of other rocket launchers, a large mag size, similar reload time, and better accuracy/projectile speed. And this is before skills, relics, COMs, and annointments.

Now, if you want the Ion cannon to be good, you actually have to adjust your build for it. And every character has the tools available to deal with the increased ammo consumption and reload time.

But the Lob? The Lob is nearly M4 viable at its base. Its not strong because its strengths are being boosted by skills/COMs/relics/and annointments, its strong because they increased its damage by 1050% and now it can steamroll anything at the highest difficulty no matter how poor your build is. Even intentionally making a Zane build with 0% gun damage, with every point into defense and utility, using a com and relic with 0 relevant buffs, I was able to make it through 2 rounds of slaughtershaft before the ammo consumption was too much, which wouldn’t have even been an issue if I had remembered the cutpurse I had in my back pack.

M4 was advertised to be only for optimized builds, but the Lob is just a tad off of being M4 viable at its base. This means that, unlike the Ion cannon, regardless of what your build is it will be OP if even a deliberately terrible build can’t drag it down below M4 viability.

TL,DR: builds making weapons OP by clever synergies or mitagating downsides, acceptable. Weapons being OP regardless of builds with little to no downsides, not acceptable.

However, I do find it weird that its ok that someone has to deliberately shoot themselves in the foot in order to find a challange in this game, but turning the game difficulty down if you want to obliterate everything in your way is out of the question.

4 Likes
#26

And look at where we are now. When was the last time you died playing Amara or Zane? If the devs knew this is where we were heading anyway, why nerf them at all? At this point, those nerfs were pointless. And they become moreso with each and every patch/ hotfix.

2 Likes
#27

Moze’s and Fl4k’s issues were skill based, and could not be addressed by buffing other options.

Amara on the other hands, has decent variety with her class mods, Spiritual driver is only good with gun builds, leaving Phasezerker to be best with action skill focused ones, Nimbus having its own niche of generating a hard hitting DOT, and Im not entirely sure which one Melee builds use the most, but it isn’t Spiritual driver as it does nothing for melee. So while I dont think giving Amara a class mod that is a buffed version of one of Zane’s skills was the best choice, it hasn’t completely wrecked her build variety as far as I have seen. The max % could stand to be toned down as its way better than Zane’s violent Momentum even at 10/5.

As for Zane… Seeing dead is less an overpowered option deminishing the value of all the other options, and more one of the few of his COMs that are actually worth having vs a purple one.

Infultrator and Shockerator are the only decent ones, and Infiltrator requires constantly breaking your shield to be useful and Shockerator’s skills are not that good.

Meanwhile Anti-freeze requires you to litterally jump through metaphorical hoops to get its bonuses, Cold Warrior has little synergy with whats its supposed to be buffing and the DOTs are not that strong, Techspert has 5% chance to reset Drone duration on kill, which can be done with other builds much better than this one, Executor’s ok, but why does it buff elemental DOT and chance?

Now if those were buffed and no one used them, that would be a different story.

2 Likes
#28

Probably 2 sides of the same coin here. Both feel unsatisfying because it doesn’t mean playing according to their idea of mastery. One wants to slide through the game at its hardest without any opposition, the other wants to be efficient in playing without sacrificing choice.

There are more forms of mastery, like beating a game as fast as possible, no matter if that makes it easy or difficult, and also finding some way of beating a game under heavy restrictions.

1 Like
#29

I haven’t had any experience with the meta Amara builds, but Zane still needs to aim, still can run out of ammo, and needs to keep freezing enemies in order to stay alive.

In other words, Zane can’t stare at the screen with unfocused eyes and mash [grenade] to win, he still has to engage with the game.

2 Likes
#30

yes, that’s…exactly what I’m saying.

#31

Never said they don’t have other options I’m just saying what you said about how Classic FA was nerfed because

Maybe I’m wrong beacuse I don’t play these 2 nearly enough but these class mods outperform every other class mods these 2 vault hunters have and there is no reason to use anything else unless you just don’t feel like using it. You are right skills and class mods can’t be held to the same standard I guess.

#32

Yes. :slight_smile:

So to reacp, I do support the sentiment about the nerfs seeming pointless, for a variety of reasons. However, balance is important, even in a single player game. Remove any challenge and it’s no longer a game really.

I’m rather interested to see what Gearbox does. The one thing I keep wishing for most, is likely what we’ll see the least - significant Story (both in quantity and quality). And, a bit of agency would be nice as well.

#33

Firstly, the Seein’ Dead and Driver objectively make all 3 of those look tame. The only one of those you could argue should have been balanced was Hex-spam Moze…but by M4, the nerf to the Hex alone would have made it balanced if the issue was AFK. So why remove Tesla interactions, nerf the Bloodletter and place a timer on MoD as well? Not to mention the various more indirect nerfs on the core Moze setup (like the Flakker). This is what I mean when Gearbox is irresponsible with their balance changes.

Base Fade was never worse than GiTM, GiTM was simply more popular in the early game life cycle. If GiTM was so good it would still be competitive, yet now it is among the weakest setups in the game which noone uses. Besides, if the idea was to nerf a dominant augment, then Ties that Bind is way more egregrious. I feel these ‘GiTM too OP’ arguments are completely dated, and like I said months back? Gearbox should have waited to see if it srill remained dominant after a couple months of meta development (and the buffs to GB and RA) before nerfing. As it is, you won’t find a single experienced Fl4k player who doesn’t consider GiTM a waste of time, and it atill wouldn’t be ‘OP’ were the nerfs reversed. This idea of GoTM being a god skill which outclasses everything belongs to a completely different era and now people know better.

If being really, really good was a reason to nerf LnT then we should be seeing waaay more stuff get nerfed. Why can’t Fl4k fire a shotgun ‘forever’ in fade away (so 3 shots) when Amara can oneshot a room or Zane is basically invincible and can do anything? Besides LnT still works with shotguns, and arguably shotguns only- not placing a timer would have increased his synergy with more weapons.

Also, this isn’t a ‘skill issue’, between his low survivability and lack of crowd control Fl4k always required more skill to play than Amara, nevermind Amara and Zane in their current shapes.

Basically, these arguments were presented before and they only had weight back when Gearbox had any sort of consistency to their changes, but now we are seeing a team who thought the Butcher was too OP but the Lob is totes’ okay.

6 Likes
#34

that honestly how pve game is , even the dev try their hardest and make everything have exact same dps , at the end theres always something more preferable , example: A gun that does splash will be better than 1 without .

the only thing they can do to balance the gamebefore it reach the state where game no longer update is to buff everything and buff the enemy simultaneously . until things get settled like previous borderlands.

atleast we can already tell m2.0 gonna be difficult with all the buff going on

#35

I also said

Blockquote

It wasn’t feasable to buff base fade away so that it would actually be a trade off

As well as

Blockquote

Moze’s and Fl4k’s issues were skill based, and could not be addressed by buffing other options.

While the hights of gun damage you can reach with Spiritual driver might be too high, and Seeing Dead is just Cosmic Stalker and Bounty Hunter mashed together, Amara has a variety of viable class mods that people seem to use, and Zane needs most of his actually buffed to a usable level before it can be assessed whether Seeing dead is too strong or if its just the lack of competition. Fl4k manages to have a variety of COMs used, and they have a nearly identical COM that activates Hunter Kill skills as well as making bosses count for beast/human/robot for the purposes of Interplanitary Hunter and Hunters Eye.

#36

It’s pretty obvious that Seein Dead is overtuned compared to every class mod in the game. It’s the outlier no matter how people try to sugar coat it. People are actually doing true Takedown speed runs with no action skills equipped because of it. Meanwhile any Moze and most Fl4k builds struggle to even solo True Takedown.

Yet De4deye is still the stronger bossing com. Fl4k’s killskills aren’t that strong unfortunately making it miles below Seein Dead in comparison even if the mechanics are similar. If you read up in the Fl4k section you will see Fl4k mains complain they can barely even tell a difference which COM they have equipped in the same build.

2 Likes
#37

I think the problem at the core is that the usefulness/efficiency of kill skills is inversely proportional to the game difficulty. So, the harder the enemies you fight, the less use you get out of them. De4deye and Seein’ Dead get rid of that flaw, which has a much bigger effect on Zane because kill skills are a more major build option for him.

2 Likes
#38

Think that is a big issue for SoR Moze builds, as well.

#39

I am finding Seein’ Dead Zane, SNTNL & Barrier, to be a bit like a cross between Krieg and Sal.

By this, I mean the build is super tanky (like Sal) with gross damage output and a need to manage skill uptime (like Krieg)

You can still die if you don’t manage things properly. Lob or not.

#40

Here’s my 2 cents on this post in the hope Gearbox and 2K will read it…

The number 1 reason most people want stronger weapons, improved skill trees, and better equipment in general is because there are many items in this game locked behind difficulties (M4) and/or very difficult areas for many players such as proving grounds and Take Down. In addition to that, farming for better equipment with the anointments you need or desire can take a really long time with drop rates and the randomness of RNG, which tends to be pretty bad in my case. Then there’s the fact that those of us on console are having to wait eons for load times instead of being able to fast travel to respawn bosses! It just adds insult to injury when we are farming on console.

Fact: While watching streamers on PC before you could skip cut scenes, some found it was faster to quit the game and go back in than to watch the cut scene. They can do that because up to date PCs with an SSD drive have extremely fast load times. On console it takes more than 60 seconds in most cases just to get back into a playable state in the game after quitting.

My Recommendations:

  1. Stop locking gear behind difficulties and remove limitations for what’s already there (Spiritual Driver)…
  2. Stop forcing us to quit and restart to farm areas and bosses
  3. Add some logic to anointments or reduce the amount of them and make them less character specific
  4. Increase the backpack space so we don’t have to go back to the bank so often, or make it so we can send more than 10 items per hour via the mail system and don’t make them expire for at least 30 days.
  5. Increase the bank and add tabs for the different types/categories of shared equipment with each character having a dedicated tab of 100 items just for them.
  6. Add a hardcore difficulty to the game (outside of Mayhem modes) that scales everything to 4 player, but DO NOT lock any gear or items behind said difficulty.
  7. Consider adding a mode where those that really want a challenge can simulate adding more than 4 player scaling by choosing 6 or 8 player scaling if they are in need of a challenge, but again please do not lock any items behind this difficulty.

I’m pretty sure Mayhem 2.0 is already finalized or very close, so it is probably too late to consider my recommendations. However, I’m sharing just in case it makes a difference in the future of this game. There has to be some way of making almost everyone happy without nerfing the fun out of the items we’ve farmed hundreds of hours for or making the game so easy it is no longer a challenge. I feel the best way to accomplish this is by adding difficulty levels without requiring people to play on the harder difficulties to obtain the items they want in game.