Gear level up machine - please make one, and let me know when it happens

Borderlands 3 Borderlands 3 General Discussion
#1

@gearbox We need one. We need a gear level up machine. We need a way to update our gear when level caps are increased. And we need a way to level up an item when we are trying higher mayhem levels and want to use gear that used to serve us well.

You have created a gear system that produces very unique items. I love that. But going back out to refarm at higher level caps doesn’t quite cut it. The chances of getting that unique item we loved to drop again at a higher level seem very slim. Will it have the right parts and the right annointment? Not likely.

For me this currently creates a disincentive to play at the “max level” for very long. Because after 1 to 3 months you might increase the “max level” again and invalidate my special finds.

I’m one of your best fans from the very start. Release day of Borderlands 1. We’ve always needed a gear level up machine in every borderlands. But the problem is compounded in Borderlands 3. From the frequent level cap increases, to the very unique items, I just don’t feel like playing at max level very long. Why should I bother hoarding and farming items right now?

Instead I have been creating new low level characters or playing other games. I’d rather be enjoying the endgame right now and then enjoying new levels to raise up to, because I could use my old gear at the new level cap.

Eridium, cash, xp, time, a new currency, whatever, could be used to to level up older items.

Please make a machine or feature to do this and let me know when it happens.

Mods. Please dont merge this topic. I don’t want it lost in the other threads. Besides. The topic says it all. If we follow this thread and it does happen, we should all know when a gear level up option appears.

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#2

I approve this.

It should be very expensive (like 1000 Eridium per level per item) but we should have the possibility.

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#3

Something like that. Yea. And perhaps you’d have to fuel it with other legendaries.

#4

Can I ask why do people want this?
I understand that want for gear to come up to level as they release new caps but from an endgame point of view it is completely unnecessary. The point of borderlands as a series is to loot new gear to make builds. You might find low level gear but that won’t cut it at the higher levels. Once the final level is decided and reached why would you want to make your game that was designed to be a looter not a looter.

3 Likes
#5

hopefully we stop at 60

It lets you go down 2 trees. even if we get another skill tree i think 60 will work just fine

1 Like
#6

A) a legendary item should be worth more than money.

B) as a player I have no guarantee that the current max level is the final max level. So, playing a lot at the “current max level” feels… shallow. I don’t know if items I get will be good forever or only until they decide to raise the level again. They could release the final DLC of the season pass and still go up the level cap 3 to 6 months later. Or even wait 6 years after initial release and then increase the level cap again (they did that with borderlands 2).

Yes, the game is about loot, so give us a way to really care about specific pieces of loot. Let us level up an item with our character. Right now it feels more like seasonal fashions. You get some good drops but they are only good for about 3 months. Also, it creates an uneven experience.

Someone picking up the game today will experience levels 35 to 60 the same way we experienced levels 35 to 50. Just a blur or steady climb as you try to get all the skill points available, and you kind of don’t care too much about any items along the way because they will be under-level at max level.

I see things, I this case, a little 4 dimensionally. I don’t care about my items at any level because we aren’t at final max level or don’t really know if we are. So it’s easier for me to play new characters because at least I know I’m not at max level.

c) it doesn’t have to be this way. we could have a gear level up machine, or 50 could still be the max level but some kind of new system could have been implemented after level 50. You could be given extra skill points without increasing the max level. I would have been much happier with that.

Until the level cap increased I was playing the game almost nonstop. Once level 53 happened I went to a trickle. Instead of encouraging me to play more, it did the opposite.

Most loot games still played today have a “level up your loot” function. Legendary items in most loot games still played today make legendary items worth more than cash. Breaking them down makes them worth legendary materials which can be used to upgrade other legendary items. Or it provides you access to a reassignable legendary ability.

4 Likes
#7

Yes. Please.

And we can help Marcus Munitions reach retirement with a new enterprise!

1 Like
#8

i hope this never happens thanks

4 Likes
#9

Ah the “this game has it why not this one?” argument.
Well simply this is not those games.
I have never felt that leveling up in borderlands has ever made a weapon completely useless, especially when it is only 3 levels. In bl2 I was able to go from op1 to 8 with a regular dpuh (yes I know I’m using arguably the strongest gun.) That was on uvhm which increases health, damage reduction, damage, and elemental effects of the game. Bl3 we have tvhm which does the same but to a lesser degree and there is no health regen.

To get back to the topic if we level up from 57 to 60 and can still play NVHM without any of the added difficulty of UVHM or even TVHM then why make it so the limited time weapons (which were in bl2) would be more than viable in the new max level. This is even more true if you get a newer weapon with the mayhem level added. If you want to still use a mayhem 10 OPQ then play m8 at level 60 and you’ll be doing nearly the same if not more damage than when you were at m10 at level 57.
And if you want to argue drop rates are low tell me how you went about getting a perfect sham to drop. Oh and I want that done without glitches or someone gifting you it.

#10

I don’t wish to rain on anyone’s parade but there have been 1 or 20 threads on this subject. A quick search would bring up a recent one.

#11

This exactly. It has been discussed many times and it will never happen if gbx is smart. The moment borderlands becomes a resource grind to up a weapons level instead of a looty shooty it dies to a huge portion of its fanbase…

1 Like
#12

Well. They can do it in a gearbox way.

No matter your opinion(s) on a level up gear machine, my point about “selling legendaries for cash is unsatisfactory”, still stands. We at least need to get something else for selling old legendaries. Give me some eridium with it. Or give me a new currency and a vending machine based on that currency. Sell 10 or so legendaries and buy a new one from the special legendary machine. At least that wouldn’t exactly be the grinder from TPS. Plus, it wouldn’t really feel grindy if selling a legendary anywhere would count towards it.

Rolling for a perfect sham in BL2? Yea, no thanks. Killing the same enemy 100 to 1000 times in a row is extremely tedious. You spend 90% of your time just saving and loading. I don’t mind the “boss tour” enabled borderlands 3 fast travel nodes that are very near to most of the games major bosses. But the whole save/quit/reload thing is annoying.

And you’re kind of making my point for me. Say that you do get an extremely nice drop and it’s even a level 60 item. And perhaps you don’t get to play BL3 very much for a month. You sign in and see the level cap has been upped to 70. Good luck getting that extremely nice drop again.

I have a couple of level 50 items I’d consider near perfect, especially in combo. But are essentially transitory items now. Just more items on the way to max level that I can pass off to further character files I make. But they will be outclassed by other items and underpower at level 60 mayhem 10. For sure.

Put another way, why let me get unicorns that I can’t keep around?

And yet another way. If this is what we can expect for the next 6 months to whenever, then I won’t be playing more than 5 minutes at max level. Which is a shame, because I was really enjoying the level 50 endcap while it lasted.

If all my items are going to be transitory anyhow, I might as well embrace that and never play at max level for very long. And because gearbox won’t bother to tell us what the max level plans for the game are, that is extremely annoying. I might have to wait until a year or two from now before I can bother farming at “max level”.

Or they could just add a feature that should be in the game. I know this isn’t all about me, but I’m certain it’s a huge turnoff for lots of players. Dont give me that “it wouldnt be borderlands” spiel. Adding VS, would screw up the game. Adding a level up gear machine would not. They would do it gearbox style and all would be fine, eventually. (it might be buggy at first because that’s also gearbox style, haha.). But eventually it would be just right.

1 Like
#13

I don’t think leveling gear up is the way to do it. Re-rolling annointments would be the way to go. After all, getting the base legendary you want isn’t that hard, what’s hard is the annointment you want. I know we have threads on that too, but I would say that method would be better than a gear leveling up machine.

6 Likes
#14

Are all legendaries easy enough to get?

I would be a fan of a reroll mechanic for anointments. It would ease some of my concerns. Still makes me feel kind of lame for storing 600 level 50 legendaries. (300 each in two banks. one in my main profile and another in my split screen profile)

Getting just cash for selling a legendary seems pointless.

I’m also a fan of a “collectors book” or something like that in game. Honestly I like some of the mechanics in destiny, but I want some of those things in Borderlands. I prefer Borderlands series for lots of reasons.

#15

I’ve never been the type of BL player that farms bosses for that perfect roll. I just can’t bring myself to suffer the monotony. I did it a few times in BL2 but then I found out that Bad Maw has no dedicated legendary drop and wasted a whole day. Left a bad taste in my mouth ever since…

I would be ok with this feature personally but Borderlands fans have a fondness for tradition that runs deep.

#16

I’m with you on reroll annointments. I don’t mind farming for items at max level, but farming for annointments goes a step too far. They’re not minor bonuses to an item, in a lot of cases they can make or break an item. Alternatively, reduce the annointment pool to only include useful annointments. I don’t mind if I get an annointment for another class, that’s fine, but the useless annointments kill me.

There are too many non-viable ones in the pool for it to be fun. Collecting 100 of the same legendary, hoping for a viable annointment, is unreasonable and a waste of time.

If they reduce the annointment pool to only useful ones (looking at you “while airborne”), then it’s not so bad to farm an item at varying mayhem levels as you progress through them.

1 Like
#17

Right? Not only do items have like 17 or 30 part slots, but they also have an “anointment slot”. For me those are often game changers.

#18

This makes zero sense. If the grind is for a gun or the grind is for a resource it is still a grind. The only difference is the latter is less of a lottery ticket which, I guess, if you jones for that slot machine dropamine hit makes it a lesser experience.

The thing is if I am grinding for resources I can grind what I want. You love fighting the Ruiner…,great. You love mobbing Athenas, great. Both enable the opportunity to “get” the gun you want. Frankly being able to vary what I do instead of obsessiveLy looping and killing the same boss over and over and over and over and over and over and over is a win for player freedom.

F*$% Katagawa Jr. I never want to see that friggin awful encounter again…but if I want the Hawk go fight his teleport-y ass. No thanks…and spare me any “you want it easy” because mobbing a Circle of Slaughter is light years harder than popping the Ruiner.

2 Likes
#20

Console player…frankly given the number of people sharing save files I have no idea why PC players have any issue getting items but us console peasants have to do it the hard way and the double whammy is that farming is a looooooooong process to save and quit for us.

#21

Having to resort to a save editor shouldn’t be a solution though. I’m not a fan of gear leveling with the player in any sort of RPG or RPG type game. It was the annoint system that broke grinding and made it entirely too tedious.

Going from M1 to M6 or M10 should require getting new weapons and I’m fine with that. What’s not good is the sheer number of annoints that are useless or will not work with your character. Getting “airborne” or “while sliding” is bad and getting annoints specific to another class adds to the misery.

While there is a power disparity among weapon parts, it is not nearly as bad as the disparity between annoints. If the devs would remove the useless annoints and balance out the others, we’d be a lot closer to fine than we are now.

I’m not telling anyone how to play their game, but the fact is you could sink countless hours into a single piece of gear when moving from one Mayhem level to another one. Those on PC have every right to turn to an editor to circumvent this outright broken system. Trading is also not an answer here. I am absolutely convinced that some of the Youtubers are using an editor because there is no way they’re getting perfect stats on that many items in as short amount of time as the videos come out.

A simple system of removing useless annoints and only dropping those that work with the class being played would work fine. It leaves the timesink of grinding in, while keeping it at least somewhat rewarding and reducing the temptation to use an editor.

Now, this doesn’t fix the balance issues of older legendaries being significantly underpowered compared to those from the latest DLC, but I think that system is intentional to encourage sales of the new DLC. It’s perfect, release free content that almost-but-not-quite requires items from the new DLC and you “encourage” people to spend cash.

Alternatively, you could have a system to spend Eridium to reroll the annointment on an item until you get the one you want. This is less ideal but not as extreme as allowing a player to level up an item or convert one item for another; I am strongly opposed to that in any way. That way we have an Eridium sink and still encourage farming.

Lastly, game balance could be overhauled so that annoints are less “requiremnts” and more added bonuses. Some classes and builds rely so heavily on annoints at higher Mayhem levels that they are critical to the build. As it is, there aren’t that many viable builds out there to begin with for every class. Every action skill should be viable at M10 with the right talent choices and gear, minus annoints. The annoint should not make or break an action skill or play style. This solution requires a rework of too many system though and is the most unlikely to happen. We’re back to the BL2 trap of the Grog Nozzle, DPUH, and heavy reliance on Slag. As much as I loved BL2 and like to look back on it fondly, OP levels meant being heavily restricted in build and weapons and ALWAYS having to have Slag. Switching weapons every trigger pull was not fun.

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