I just wanted to say, mods will probably remove this post. I’m not sure there’s a way to talk about… Workarounds, let’s say, without it getting removed. I agree with the sentiment though. Another workaround someone can use if it existed would be to somehow maximize their drop rates, and be almost invincible and almost be able to 1 shot everything if they really wanted to farm the most efficiently with minimizing the amount of life clock spent.
Why? Because farming for the right anoint sucks. Personally I would prefer anoints to work like trinkets and be super rare. That way I can take one off weapon and move to a different. Or that anointment trinkets are regular rare but bind to weapon when used.
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Matrixneo, you read my mind with this post. (I can see you also have impeccable taste in movies.)
PLEASE listen Gearbox. PLEASE. Killing the same boss over and over again every 3 mos is NOT fun.
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I’m not sure if it’d be worth the effort to add an entirely new feature to “fix” the incremental level cap refarming, especially this late. the best fix would be in the next game, don’t release level caps this way. whats done is done unfortunately.
Thank you. Stated so well.
Even if I was on pc for BL3, I’d prefer not to. I want the experience to be in game. To me, a gear level up machine is simply a missing feature in this loot game. Plain and simple.
I dont know how many more level cap increases are on the way. And, it would still help with mayhem 1 through 10. And it would still help players who hold on a great not max level legendary + annoint that they really want to spend X eridium to upgrade.
The gear level up machine is a great feature to have, even when the game won’t have future level cap increases.
And it would have been even better to have such a feature available from the launch of the game.
So, I’m still hoping we’ll see it in BL3. If not, maybe I’ve raised enough visibility on the issue that Gearbox will notice it for BL4.
More likely an annointment re-roll machine. They aren’t gonna make a level up machine.
We won’t agree on this, but that’s fine.
A gear level-up machine goes against one of the core gameplay mechanics in Borderlands. It’s part of the game and part of the “lure” to keep farming for weapons and items. It’s the added nature of Annoints and the sheer uselessness of entirely too many of them that has broken that system.
I can see a “gear reroll” machine, where you can spend eridium and try to get a different version of your item at the same level, but I don’t think GBX will ever add a level-up machine and I personally don’t want one. It would ruin part of the fun.
Another “fix” to this problem would be to make more of the items viable at all stages and reduce the sheer number of junk items. There are billions of guns but only a small handful that are good at any given level of play. Purple quality items should perform fairly well at all levels, but not spectacular like legendaries. As it is, there are useless purples and blues everywhere. Any legendary should be viable but there are a ton of them now that aren’t worth picking up and that’s sad.
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Just a reminder, folks.
This isn’t an appropriate place to talk about how or why you cheat.
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So when is still a valid subject then?
Nope.
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From what I remember about what they said about their vision for the game (back sometime in BL1 or BL2 days), they want the player to go out scavenging the lands when they want to update their gear. The experience of fighting through the borderlands and picking up cool, unexpected stuff off the ground is what they want to prolong and encourage. “Yeah, you like your stagecoach with triple damage after slam, but have you tried this tube magazine+bayonet shotty with quadruple melee after slam?” They don’t want players hunched over a crafting table, using the same four guns for entire playthroughs.
While this is nice in principle, I reckon that A: the guns lose their unexpectedness after a while, and endgame players know what they like, and B: the eridium/dollar fee for upgrading a gun could be made high enough so that we’d only level up guns once in a while. Money/eridium having a purpose would be nice anyway. Gathering either is more fun than miniboss farming for sure.
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There was an article about how gearbox viewed this kind of thing…hang on…
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I to believe what the article says. Imagine if you could of payed eridium to get a 94% Sham in BL2 or just reroll a 91% sham until it becomes a 94% one. It removes the main attraction of borderlands which is the chase and I would be rather upset if GBX caved to the strange demands of the OP…
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The idea is that Borderlands 3 is a slot machine seems superficially true but it fails to understand how slot machines create a sense of reward and why BL3 breaks that model - especially in the end game. The allure of a slot is a jackpot. That is the shiny. Modern slot machines all understand though that you need incremental rewards to keep giving people that rush, overcome frustration, and keep them hooked chasing the shiny. They literally are programmed to pay out at a set increment in order to keep you hooked. Those incremental rewards are useful (money) in allowing you to continue the chase and feel rewarded. You also think you are closer to a reward because each pull gets you closer to the X pulls you need to win (nevermind this misunderstands probability it is the way people think when they think about a 1/1000 chance for something).
In theory, BL3 tries the same gambit. You want a Kaoson as the Jackpot you can get incremental rewards (other legendaries) to soothe you- including the lights and sounds a slot machine uses as well to make it more painfully obvious. In fact the social sharing of X found Y is precisely the same as the lights flashing and bells ringing in a casino to motivate other players. The problem is the “useful” part of the reward system or the “progression” part does not exist in BL3. The incremental rewards in BL3 are not only not rewarding (something the incremental Shams in BL2 are by contrast) they are actually frustrating partially because the Monocle is trash. Also because you don’t actually want a Kaoson, you want a SNTL Cryo Kaoson. This means certain incremental rewards (a Kaoson with any other annoint) actually make you feel like you are regressing because we all know the Kaoson only drops every 20 runs (roughly) so a failure on the incremental doesn’t bring you closer to the jackpot but actually puts you as far away from the jackpot as you will ever be ( again ignore how probability actually works).
An optimal system would likely make the weapon itself variable (the jackpot) but annointments incremental (purchased using a resource) because then you still need to chase the shiny, but you also have a sense of progression towards a goal and you get a better feedback loop.
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The article makes a solid point and I agree to an extent. That gameplay loop worked in BL2 to a certain extent. It works in BL3 to an extent as well except for annointments. If an “annointment reroll” machine is out of the question, then the pool of available annointments needs to be dramatically reduced OR annointments need to be rebalanced.
For example, yesterday I farmed Complex Roots for hours upon hours. I filled my inventory with complex roots. Not ONE TIME did one drop with an annointment that was worth the effort. Same with the Flipper, Light Show, and Beacon. I can fill my inventory and bank with those things in a relatively short amount of time, but getting the proper annointment is an exercise in futility; it’s a chore rather than being fun.
Now, for a single character, you’re looking at spending several days of that same thing for each item you need for an M10 Takedown run. That’s not a fun gameplay loop. I’d rather see the item drop rate reduced and have the vase majority of annointments be useful so when I do get the item, I have a much higher chance of it being useful. Or, like I said, reduce the impact of annointments so they’re not as critical.
Along with that, we have a problem of only a small handful of M10 legendaries even being useful, and those only with the right annointments. Player choice has been drastically reduced across the board. In my opinion, balancing the game around the annointment system was a mistake. I’m not sure how to correct it at this point without significant changes to the power levels of all items and annointments or, again, removing all of the underpowered annointments.
Bottom line, the game should be fun and farming should be rewarding. That goes away when I’m looking at my 100th Flipper that still doesn’t have an annointment I can use.
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Never understood the people so against rerolling, the sheer randomness and abundance of useless drops doesn’t increase engagement for most people, it just makes them quit playing. If you could keep on farming and know for absolute certainty you can change and make your imperfect gear work through time and effort, I am sure it would engage more people even if it takes farming legendaries and other resources to sacrifice. The worst feeling of all in these types of games is spending days or weeks farming for one thing, and having nothing to show for it since gambler’s fallacy is very much a thing.
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You nailed it. I said something about this back in BL2 days. For example, my system to fix it would have tracked each kill of the bunker that you made. And each kill of the bunker would increase your odds of getting something from his legendary pool on the next kill. It would decrease the odds if something did drop from that pool. Essentially it’s more like a deck of 1000 cards than 1000 sided dice.
I like your idea. Imagine if you could cash in legendaries for “annointment currency” and then you could use that currency + eridium to apply annointments to an item.
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