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#1

Hello Gearbox developers, if any choose to read this.

These are 2 cents from an old gamer, been playin’ games my whole life.

Borderlands is among my all-time favorites, I had more fun with BL2 than I did with say, Fallout 4. Which is saying a lot considering the efforts invested there.

I was just hoping that you guys noticed, or took account, when trainers and cheats became abundant in Borderlands 2 for the PC version, the online player base dwindled so rapidly that one could hardly find other people to play with.

Games like Counterstrike invest in a surveillance and bans for players who abuse the implemented game-designs (wall hacks, aimbots, etc.), do any of you believe the pay-off of having something like this would monetarily beneficial in the long run, through maintenance of the online player-base (which then incentivizes other players to join)?

Or will the next Borderlands be another, easily cheated game, which deflates the player-base and devaluates all things earned? Will players who want a balanced and fair co-op game be forced to move to other gaming platforms like XBOX/PS4? My opinion on the matter is pretty obvious. But business is business, so I know gearbox will likely make the choice that provides them with the most income, like virtually every corporation.

P.S. @Gearbox allowing 2K Australia take the lead on Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel, may have hurt your # of follows more than you will know. A lot of people just don’t look back, they treat game titles like a relationship. People catch on to the obvious money-grabs; and how depressing for the series, or the name of the company? You want money, raise the price of the games, don’t produce trash and destroy a legacy. Some CEO should be trash-canned, or whoever made that decision. Hire American voice-actors, for God’s sake, and if the company is losing its sense of humor with aggressive capitalism, hire some comedians. Half-assing this next Borderlands means the end of this game for me - for many, you guys already drove the knife in with the Pre-Sequel. It was bad enough to where I will thoroughly read reviews of your future games before ever making a blind purchase. Trust level = decreased. Bad move.

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#2

Borderlands games were vulnerable to cheaters because they used offline saves to allow the game to be played without a connection. Times have changed, and BB is online only. Whether the change will be carried into BL3 would be a matter for wild speculation.

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#3
  1. The game was released 4 years ago, so of course there’s going to be a loss in the player base.
  2. Over the past year, the number of people playing on Steam hasn’t dropped below 5k. Now this is just one platform and I’m sure there are many gaming companies who wished they could tout these types of numbers.
  3. “Games like Counterstrike invest in a surveillance and bans for players who abuse the implemented game-designs…” You can easily block cheaters from your game; there’s no reason for GBX to spend the money to do so for you. CS is a PVP only game, so of course it has anti-cheating software. Left 4 Dead 2 has both PVE and PVP, but since it’s PVP is separate from the PVE side, it also has anti-cheat software. Leave that out of my BL franchise because it’s not needed.
  4. Making it online only would ruin it because that doesn’t fit into the spirit of the game. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it and the game isn’t broke in the way you’re claiming.
  5. “But business is business, so I know gearbox will likely make the choice that provides them with the most income, like virtually every corporation.” Gaming companies can only make games if they have revenue coming in. And guess how they get said revenue? Surprise! It’s by giving their customers what they want. But as a whole, GBX is very dedicated to their fans and are still releasing Shift codes to this day for a 4 YEAR OLD GAME!
  6. GBX didn’t develop TPS because they were working on Battleborn and needed a break from the BL franchise. It was 2k’s decision to use an Australian based developer to make TPS, hence the reason why they used Australian voice actors. Funny how that works, eh?

Yes I am fully aware of how sarcastic my post is, but I’m feeling pedantic and you miss represented quite a few things, Clithoma. My trust level is the same as it always was: I enjoyed all three of the BL games and I’m sure I’ll enjoy BL 3. I will wait to see how it pans out before I get it, but that’s only because of financial reasons. I may wind up pre-ordering based on the info released, but that decision will wait until I see more information.

God I hope not. I don’t need another online only game. Smite and BB are bad enough. I can understand why because both have PVP aspects, whereas BL just had dueling.

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#4

God I hope not. I don’t need another online only game.

Ditto here. This would be a major disappointment. Sometimes an extended internet outage is exactly what gets me back into gaming again and that would obviously be quite impossible…

That said, I wouldn’t be mad if there were some optional servers that only allowed characters and items not tainted by offline saves.

#5

If I’m totally honest? I much prefer having it offline. Not everybody has access to internet all of the time. But I also don’t mind having cheaters around - as it’s not directly a competitive game, these make little difference. And while I probably would’ve given up long ago had save editors not been available, it means that I can keep messing around and experimenting with weird builds and customised weapons, before trying to work towards them on my legit characters. This sort of thing has probably added another 150 hours onto my time in Borderlands.

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#6

Online only is a deal breaker for me. I doubt they will change the formula they have as basically having it only online will affect day one sales quite a bit and really the launch is where the bulk of the money is made.

Actually the leadup to BL2 was fantastic but the rollout of the patches and DLC that followed really pissed off a lot of people. There were so many rage quitters back then. It was not until TTAoDK and that things started to get positive again. Pre Sequel was actually a lot of fun to play. It’s main failing was not enough to do in the game. DLC was too short.

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#7

I actually liked TPS…

(Mostly due to Fragtrap)

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#8

I’m pretty sure online only BL will not happen. BUT, one thing I always wanted in a BL was an online only hub town. Where vault hunters can meet up with other random people to trade or team up for quests. Obviously there would be nothing to miss if you were offline, but it would be nice to fast travel to a place in game where you can meet other people. It would also be a safe way to trade without the fear of getting hacked items. You could even have to walk through a scanner that checks your back pack.

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#9

Same for “Destiny”. Not sure what happens with “Smite” and “Battleborn”, but connection funnies result in the screen going dark; when the lights come back up, you find that you’ve died, even if there were no enemies present. And if it’s just you in the area, you risk kissing your progress goodbye.

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#10

Yeah, I don’t believe that game was a money grab. If it was, that was an incredibly incompetent decision

That seems… incredibly biased

You should always do that imo

This (yay for hat :clap:)

This is a very good idea

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#11

It can happen in Smite as well because the enemy team has a free target to beat on.

I agree. The Australian actors didn’t bother me, but Pickles and Springs bothered me as characters. I loved most of the humor in TPS except for those two…

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#12

Ditto.

Needs to die a flaming death staring at his own hackneyed false cockney accent and needlessly explained rhyming slang.

Meh. On the fence on that one - at least her voice had a genuine accent!

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#13

The most common complaints about BL2 from experienced BL2 players (< 1000 hours) on the Steam Forum over the past few years boil down to one universally shared desire. This is a major issue agreed upon by serious fans who hope to see it remedied in BL3 (or whatever it will be called).

  1. Call it Borderlands 3 if GBX is the developer. K.I.S.S. and don’t get creative - even if it were not the case, to the BL fan-base, it’d infer another BLTPS which is something GBX sincerely wants to avoid.

  2. The save system must be overhauled.

After soloing the game from 1 to 80 / OP8 on a player’s first class, the vast majority of players feel compelled to install third-party software before they have another solo go or their first coop go on their second class. GBX surely knows the reasons players do this far more intimately than any of us. But the one of these many reasons upon which everyone agrees that most demands GBX’ attention in BL3 is the save system. The way things are now, Steam’s cloud saves of the game cannot be accessed by customers who’ve lost drive abilities for the local systems on which the game had once resided. Their synced cloud saves cannot be accessed by customers who need to reload their current game onto the old system with a fresh new drive or a new system with new drives which means that in a very real sense their cloud saves offer little if any benefit to the very customers most in need of the service.

Character saves replete with all the gear etc that character owns at whatever current level he most recently played must be auto-saved by the GBX game each time the player closes a session naturally or the session is closed because of a system crash. This will demand 100% GBX online sessions (if only for the purpose of the proposed continuous saving) and the ability to save many more full character saves per session than GBX currently allows the room for.

In fact, a very progressive suggestion has been made of a dual save system in which in addn to and separate from the character save itself, the player can also save separately “an item pool” which includes all of that character’s XP, BA ranks, in-game money, eridium, tokens, crystals, et al along with all of that character’s gear. In this way, the BL3 player can transfer at will any or all of his worldly possessions among and between any or all of the characters which he has built and which he may in future build.

This would solve many of the current major complaints that force the player to engage in such excessive item grinding and press him into installing third-party software in order to save all of his characters, levels and worldly possessions.

As you’ll notice, I have omitted from my suggestion the item creation / modding functions commonly included in such third-party software. Again, I stress that most of the experienced BL2 players on Steam don’t like installing third-party software for sake of modding / iten creation but feel compelled to do so for sake of the save system, failing GBX providing this sort of software directly and in-game.

Accordingly, it maybe overdue GBX start to supply this sort of software as part of the game in BL3. The experience of BL2 has proven that if GBX doesn’t provide the needful, third-party developers will do so. Because of the fundamental gaming requirement of a level playing field for all, while it’s clearly against the best and the long-term interests of the community to install third-party software, many years of experience have proven that the community will continue to do so as long as the developer fails to offer its own reasonable substitute.

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#14

I love TPS and I only have the vanilla version.

#15

I agree, I play the game offline all the time because I don’t need Internet on anything other than my phone. If I need a new update or DLC, I plug it in and get them. I have played the Borderlands franchise, and bought more copies of it on more platforms, than any other game hands down. While I don’t use save editing and whatnot, I don’t mind the players that do. I’m a purest who believes in getting what I find and it just makes it that much more delicious when I find a perfect parts weapon that I already have an entire build in mind for. While I don’t get to use the Community Patch, I enjoy the work of the dedicated fans that do and I’m sure Gearbox does too. Why would they deny free testing from people who love the game? Making it online only would absolutely kill it for me and I’m sure many others. That’s why the first and only copy of Destiny my wife bought me is still sitting in its plastic wrap, on my entertainment center. I didn’t even touch it and played the presequel instead. That’s just this minion’s opinion though.

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