Progression in this game feels very unnatural and weird

Borderlands 3 Borderlands 3 General Discussion
#1

I’m talking about the highly boosted legendary drops that higher mayhem levels offer. It doesn’t really make any sense. As you go higher in difficulty in a game, you should be rewarded with better items, not more items. To be fair, both happen in borderlands 3, but the number of legendaries you get is highly disproportional to their power, which should be the other way around.

I believe higher mayhem levels gear should have higher chance of dropping with good anointments and anointments tailored for your class only rather than shower you in trash legendaries no one will ever use.

At the moment, you feel forced to go as high mayhem as you can to get as many legendaries as you can. People tend to skip mayhem levels because the lower mayhem level you play, the longer it will take you to advance to the next one. One should get the best gear available at highest mayhem level, not the MOST gear.

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#2

It makes sense, just perhaps not in the way you’d like. There’s nothing against your suggestion, but more drops equates to a better chance at getting the drop you want. This means the grind takes longer, which is the current (main) drawback.

There are a lot of suggestions people have made, but I don’t think Legendary drops on higher Mayhem levels is the problem (maybe a symptom, if anything negative at all).

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#3

But you do get the best gear? A mayhem 10 anything is the strongest version of that item.

#4

Read op

#5

I think Mayhem scaling in all it’s capacity breaks the flow of the game. Loot, XP, stat, currency…etc scaling should all be removed from Mayhem mode.

The modifiers are fine as they add mayhem. The reward for playing on mayhem should be something unique that feels like a reward. As of right now with all the different scaling it seems like just changing to a “harder” difficulty makes all aspects of the game easier.

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#6

There isn’t something like “the best anointment” or officially “the best weapon”
The game is at least meant to be horizontal and not vertical. That’s of course not true but it’s intended. What I could see on higher levels would be a rare drop to enable crafting etc. to manipulate guns
But officially deciding which drops are garbage and which are top tier, would eventually nail the last nail in the coffin (is that a saying?)

#7

There’s a best gun in every category and the best possible versions are acquired from Mayhem 10 due to damage scaling.

The best anoinments are the ones that Gearbox wanted to only make temporary because how disproportionately powerful they are. In a game where damage dealing is the best damage mitigation having 150% extra damage that spreads DoTs up 100% of the time is overwhelmingly powerful or the 300v90 for all 1 shot needs.

There are a lot of viable options IMO however the best is clear purely due to functionality. Mayhem scaling just further increases the gap between the viable weapons and the optimal weapons.

#8

Some anointments will always be inferior to others (e.g. bonuses while sliding/airborne). Some are extremely bad and add almost nothing to your character and should be deleted. Some of them are decent, but strictly worse than other anointments. Those should be kept for lower mayhem levels, but should spawn significantly less often on higher mayhem levels.

By best gear I meant the same gear, but scaled. At the moment, guns are like 2.5 times stronger on mayhem 10 compared to 0? Considering enemy health scales to 10000%, it’s pretty bad. But then, some guns should be nerfed and some should be buffed. And either they nerf the health value to bring more guns in viability range or buff more guns.

#9

I think you didn’t understand
There is stuff that is inferior to other stuff because of poor balancing
But what OP suggests is to cut the weak stuff in higher levels rather than just balancing that gaps? Sounds problematic

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#10

I agree with you that progression feels unnatural and weird tho for different reasons.

  1. Legendarys are not special (don’t feel legendary)
  2. The newest weapons are the strongest(with very few exceptions)
  3. Elemental matching doesn’t matter in a way that even tho you match elements with a mayhem 10 gun if, its not a good gun its just aint worth it

I really lost track of what is good and what not but going with the fact that new weapons are always strong i will just stick to dlcs weapons.

We should be able to use any legendary with the right elements, tho I get some weapons are stronger than others on specific VH´s.

Mayhem 10 gear should be the best gear possible! Especially after beating a very though challenge like the Guardian Takedown on 4 player scaling.

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#11

At the moment, Flipper with the pearl is definitely my best gun. Playing as Moze and it never empty’s the magazine.

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#12

I have found this to be true. I think the higher MH levels overpower the DOT and elemental effects when element is matched correctly. This started in the old MH4 with armor, corrosive did not perform like it should have.

I still practice element matching, even though it really is not needed with the current DLC3 weapons. A shock Beacon or Lightshow is eating up armor like it is nothing.

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#13

I feel like adding Mayhem levels to equipment added nothing to the game. Maybe somebody can explain to me how this can be perceived as a positive change because I fail to see what it improved.

I felt like Mayhem Mode was a better progression when the increased drop rate was your only reward for pushing yourself further. Now it feels like if I’m not playing M10 I am missing out and FOMO is a legit phsycological phemonenon that exists and will likely push somebody to playing a higher difficulty than they might personally prefer which could potentially just turn them off to playing the game entirely.

Gear balancing has always been problematic for these games in particular. When your game has 100s of different guns doing different things there are bound to be inconsistencies in power for sure but it sure would be nice if your reward for reaching the highest levels of play in a game that boasts “bazillions of guns” wasn’t “pick 4 of these dozen or so that are viable”.

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#14

Well Flipper is a great weapon over all until…
Until the next DLC and tweaks of the devs comes arround.

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#15

Well i think balance is the butstallion in the room.

Never felt like it matter much what element you use besides on my first play through.
A part of the problem is that they focus on the new content weapons to be very efficient, while meanwhile render the rest of the gear useless.

The buff attempts are just a joke atm.
Tho when they nerf things they make it so you are unable to enjoy those pieces of gear anymore.

Funny thing is Amara is the strongest since day 1.
If they took the game more seriously and not the marketing of the game we would have been rewarded with a better product.

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