Mayhem 11 is an admission the modifiers aren't working

Borderlands 3 Borderlands 3 General Discussion
#1

There is no other way to say it - I previously sat on Mayhem 6 for ages because the modifiers were too intrusive and Gearbox has pretty much confirmed this by introducing a vanilla mayhem mode (Mayhem 11).

This is a relief but it doesn’t necessarily mean there wasn’t merit in the concept of mayhem.
The original mayhem had random modifiers that directly affected build effectiveness and was far too disruptive.
The Mayhem 2.0 concept had effectively a Mayhem loadout that had selective modifiers effecting targets. Less random, but still too dramatic in changes.

In my opinion the Mayhem Modifiers should be less intrusive and should primarily impact the minor variations of a combat engagement rather than dramatically changing how combat works. They should primarily add colour and be fun.

Here are a few examples:
Positive Charge: 1 random element AoE is increased by 10%
Negative Charge: 1 random element AoE is reduced by 10%
Tank Zone: All vehicles health increased by 20%
Lean Predators: All creatures/animals speed is increased by 20%
Low Grav: Jumps height and longevity increased by 25%
High Grav: Jumps height and longevity decreased by 25%
Frictionless: Slide speed/duration increased by 25%
Increased Air Density: Projectile speeds reduced by 10%
Decreased Air Density: Projectile speeds increased by 10%
Natural Chaff: Projectiles have a small chance of randomly being deflected
Apex Predators: Increased chance of badass/super-badass/chubby creatures
Swarm: 50% more standard (non-badass) creature types appear.
Rocket Fuel: All vehicles move 20% faster and nitro boosts are 50% faster.
We Are Legion: On death all robots have a chance to summon in another one.
Purple Haze: Anyone gaining second has a temporary vision impairment (like the terror effect but greater) making long range shots more difficult.
Quarknado: Throwing a grenade has a small random chance of causing a mini-tornado to appear that throws out a small number of ravagers, skags or ratches before vanishing.
One Last Grenade: Non-creatures have a chance to spawn a grenade upon their death.
Shield Interference: Shots have a small chance (1%) of totally ignoring shields.

And so on and so on - Mayhem modifiers should be set globally for the day ideally for each planetary location and the number should be based upon the Mayhem level the player selects (1 for Mayhem 1-3, 2 for Mayhem 4-6, 3 for Mayhem 7-9 and 4 for Mayhem 10).

My list is an example of the flavour of these modifiers.

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#2

Nah. Mayhem 11 is an admission that most people don’t want modifiers. Or at least don’t want modifiers to be enforced at the highest level of gameplay

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#3

More so, obviously people like options :wink:

If it where up to me every modifier level had its set of rewards (easy would be an odd ball that makes the game a bit easier to play but lower damage like the bobble head mode lowers crit damage because it’s easier to hit crits)

Options and rewards :innocent:

Also with that, weapons shouldn’t scale with mayhem (skills shouldn’t either)
Like Diablo 3 (sorry to use this as an example) players have the option to make the game as difficult as they want to… The higher the difficulty the better your drop rate.

With that they should seriously overhaul the drop rate (standard game should only drop legendary classmods and a handful of standard legendaries)
Also, non legendaries should get buffed to a viable level (legendaries shouldn’t be meta persé)

But at this point in the game’s life they wouldn’t be able to pull that off (would cost to much money and resources)

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#4

Mayhem 11 was what we have been asking for since GB shot itself in the foot with mayhem 2.0 and those awful modifiers were introduced.

Unfortunately, I lost interest as mayhem 11 was installed and havent played since dlc 5 dropped.

I think this game has seen its best days and they are now long gone.

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#5

People just want options. Nothing wrong with options. That way the people that still enjoy them still can, and those that have been vocal about enjoying the game without them can do so.

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#6

And those best days weren’t all that great either :joy:

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#7

Or just don’t have modifiers at all
People obviously don’t like them because they want to play “the game” and not some weird sandbox like adjusted playground
I mean, you can have that as a joke, as a side thing
But keep it away from the main game

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#8

Like I said, options :wink:

The players have been vocal about their wishes for this game from the start.

GBX however tries to find a middle ground between what they invision and what the community wants this game to be.

iirc, I read somewhere that BL2 was actually a game made by different developers. Where BL3 is a single team.

And it shows in BL3… At times it’s easy to see that ideas got scrapped (weapon parts) and others where taken way to far (legendaries and powercreep)

Mayhem was their way of adding “difficulty” to the game without inflation. But they failed on execution :joy:

Looking at the modifiers there’s no balance, little to no incentive, some are actually just broken, etc. And on top of that they’re forced on you… And then get the “difficulty” tag slapped on them.

I still don’t get why they opted for weapon damage inflation in mayhem… There’s no need for it (on the contrary, people feel the need to play M10 because that’s where the best weapons drop and so make lower levels pretty absolete)

All this because people hated slag in BL2? And BL2 had OP levels and weapon scaling?

They removed the problem AND the solution

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#9

I think the challenge for GBX is that the whole theme of Borderlands 3 has been “Mayhem”. It is what drives most if not all of their marketing strategies. You could create a drinking game based on how many times GBX uses the word, “Mayhem” in their press releases.

Once that is acknowledged, then it becomes clear why they have been promoting Mayhem Mode so strongly. It is the only “Mayhem” related game mechanic in the game. Remove it and the entire marketing design collapses.

I believe that if people really want to get rid of Mayhem Mode altogether (and that includes the ability to turn it off or to choose your own modifiers without any RNG) then an alternative mechanic that promotes the idea of “Mayhem” needs to be put forth to replace it. So far, I have not been able to come up with anything other than what we already have - i.e. a “mode” that creates random modifiers to gameplay and thus creates, “Mayhem” for the player(s).

I will say, I thought the gating in of cartel mobs during the Cartel event was sort of Mayhem-ish. Maybe modifiers like that where killing enemies can randomly spawn new ones would be a place to start. I also like the idea of getting enemies to fight each other. I loved the Goliaths from BL2. Popping off the helmet of one of those mini-tanks always created a bit of “mayhem” (and sometimes backfired). Maybe more of those types of opportunities are in order. Has anyone started a thread for ideas of new/replacement modifiers or game mechanics to produce the feeling of mayhem?

Bottom line, the game needs something that promotes an environment of Mayhem (all jokes about broken mechanics handling that thank you very much, aside). Until someone can come up with something better than the mode with the randomized modifiers that we already have, we are probably stuck with it, IMHO.

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#10

I feel people really like fighting big mobs…

Slaughter house
Proving grounds
Takedowns
Some areas in-game/during the story

And engaging boss fights :innocent:

So why not give bigger mobs and maybe challenging enemies on higher mayhem?

Like I said on the modifiers, give people the OPTION to change their game instead of forcing a broken mechanism.

Up until now (M11) we where forced to keep rolling the dice until we found the least bothersome mods or the ones that didn’t affect us at all.

Elemental immunity is downright handicapping yourself… I could roll fire elemental immunity and not be bothered and only drop my hellwalker :joy: but it’s just max effort 0 reward and it just doesn’t work at all in this game.

The easy modifiers on the other hand where straight upgrades… From easier headshots to more ammo drops from kills…

Mayhem mods are a huge missed opportunity to give players options to play the way they want

Also, what’s wrong with just increasing health on enemies? I loved playing UVHM in BL2 because a lot of enemies spawned with armor… Forcing me to have different guns/elements on me at all times…

To be honest in BL3 I used to play with a wedding invitation and blasted through the game using nothing else… Atm I’m using a clairvoyance masher and 1 shotting everything on M10/M11

I only switch weapons for some bosses but probably use the clairvoyance 99% of the time.

I have 0 incentive to use any other weapon because this one just does the job and then some :wink:

#11

Could be like Grim Dawn, the game has a “mayhem system” of sorts, but it only happens in some Dungeons, special places, and other end game content (rogue dungeons, shattered realm, etc).

When you go to one of those places, a random set of modifiers is choosen, from 1 to 6, and like Borderlands, the more modifiers you have the better the rewards, the modifiers are locked, meaning the only way to change is quitting to main menu, they are a bit more unforgivving, but Grim Dawn is and ARPG so you can “tank” through stats alone.

We could have that in Borderlands, when you have any Mayhem lvl activated (except 11), there’s no modifiers in the “open world”, they are only activated when you enter one “special place”, they are now random, you only see the modifiers when you enter those places, and you can only change by save-quit, this could be interesting, since it would make players have to adapt fast to certain situations.

Buuut, saying that, the current modifiers we have still would need a rework, 90% reduced elemental damage for example is just yikes, using Grim Dawn again, they have modifiers like that, but they are like this example “enemies are resistant to aether damage, but take increased damage from chaos”, and in this case they have increased/reduced resistances, in Borderlands this could be increased/reduced damage of a certain type (fire/cryo for example), but not 90% of course, something like reduced 20% of one but increased 15% of another.

Places were this would apply:
All bosses arenas/areas
Raids
Proving Grounds
Circle of Slaughters (maybe)
Arms Race (maybe)

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#12

Honestly, I think they should just make a planet called, Mayhem, and put all kinds of whacky things there. Maybe make you start by playing Arms Race just to access other areas where you can then unlock skills, etc. It could eventually morph into an MMO of sorts (if people want that). In any event, lot’s of opportunity for endgame content to be had.

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#13

Mayhem 12 is gonna be the addendum that removes annointments AND modifiers and just increases the difficulty and better damage gear for the scaled up enemies.
THEN, the game will be neat.
Freakin’ annointments are my biggest gripe.

#14

They could do so much fun things with all the things they added but every time something gets added it just sucks :joy:

Why anointments had so be such a massive powercreep for example?

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#15

Why were annointments the avenue they chose over having every legendary being a viable option for each class?
Like, imagine you just farmed for a legendary and DIDN’T have to worry about the associated perk, just the element and parts you’re after.
You know.
Like in BL2.
Blows my mind that they want players to really plan out all these different synergies using MATH, especially where some MATH doesn’t work how it’s intended to.

I also hate math btw.

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#16

They just kept canceling out everything :joy:

Instead of fixing the foundation they just keep stacking up crap…

And now they don’t want or can’t go back…

They should just remove everything they added after launch and start over…

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#17

My guess is that Annointments went with the theme that Troy created “The Annointed” and it stems from this. They had this whole thing conceived during the design process, thought it would be cool and ran with it.

I agree with others whom I have seen post that all annointments should be scaled way back to something closer to Luneshine from TPS or thereabouts, as well as simply deleting all the dumb ones and consolidating the ones that could easily be consolidated to stop polluting the loot pool. I also like the idea of assigning annointments to trinkets and let them be add-on things that you can swap onto whatever piece of gear you want (and I suppose there could be some restrictions where it would make sense). That way the gear itself is no longer tied to the RNG of annointments.

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#18

They are also using that word for arms race marketing although there aren’t even modifiers in that gamemode so…they really can can ANYTHING mayhem
They don’t care it it makes sense or not
The game alone is mayhem enough without the modifiers

#19

YES! I remember seeing a thread about that and I agree wholeheartedly!
Trinkets as a weapon artifact. THAT is way more interesting of a concept.

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#20

Vizzini: HE DIDN’T FALL? MAYHEM.
Inigo: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

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