Without barrels, the game would be even more laughably easy… Situational awareness does factor into your gameplay…and I like that. They really need to intro wall dodging in the next version after TTW.
I use them to blow up psychoes etc. Seems to work for that!
They make using nova or spike shields a real challenge, you almost can’t use them unless you are constantly vigilant about where you are and what’s around you. The same for RLs. And even when you really pay attention, you still suicide like 50% of the time because you can never see all of the barrels. There’s really no reason barrels should get the player’s AOE bonuses, extra elements, or Mayhem scaling (which I believe they still get IIRC but I could be wrong on that specific point).
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I agree with you.
Barrels make nova shields more trouble than they’re worth and they might as well not even be in the game.
Sure, you can say “situational awareness” but if you have splash and AoE bonuses, the “situation” includes almost an entire map, with all the barrels you cannot see ready to end you. I get downed by barrels seemingly 100ft away from me. It’s absurd.
If they’re going to keep them, then balance them.
I never spec into Conflux. Or Anima. I’d probably be getting downed from barrels two areas over if I did lol.
I get where you’re coming from but the thing is I don’t use it. It uses me. And when it happens 99% of the time due to self-damage it gets really f**king annoying. But if it doesn’t bother you, you’re a bigger man than I.
I simply think barrels should give you a chance. One-shotting is stupid and I’ll never agree with it, regardless of how I feel about falling into FFYL.
@Sejanus I honestly don’t mind going into FFYL. My main, Fl4k, goes down a fair amount because my primary build is a Deathless build. It’s fine and doesn’t make me feel “weird” like it does some players. FFYL is a game mechanic and it actually can be used to your benefit sometimes.
But it’s the builds focused around nova shields, specifically the Frozen Heart where you’re going to want to maximize AOE, that barrels feel like a dumb design concept. Amara would be an excellent character to run an ASS Frozen Heart on, but good luck with that - you’ll go down constantly between barrels and water. I run an ASS Frozen Heart on Zane with a MNTIS build and don’t seem to have as much trouble, possibly because of all his insane health regen and he does not have as many extra elements and elemental effects. Not that Amara doesn’t have insane health regen also.
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I hear you.
I mind it because my goal is to make builds that I can clear rooms with without going into FFYL. If that wasn’t my goal I probably wouldn’t care.
That doesn’t mean I don’t like the concept of FFYL; I just don’t like going into it. When I do, and it’s because I got beat in combat, I use it as impetus to improve my approach. I’m fine with that. So the point is, in itself, I’m fine with FFYL; what I mind Is sucking (by my own definition).
When I complain about it, though, I’m complaining about barrels. Just to be clear, which I may not have been.
I also understand that others, like you, use FFYL as a tool or a part of the concept of their build. People often did that with Clappy in TPS too. No problem there. It’s just not what I aim for. But all that’s merely preference. I agree that there’s nothing wrong with FFYL and I’m glad it’s in the game; as said, for me it’s a signal I’m not doing the best I can do.
Or that my Frozen Heart nuked me with a barrel two football fields away. There’s the problem.
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I understand where you’re coming from, but I don’t use it to go into it. I use it as a fail-safe. It’s a tool to use, when needed, to not die. Again, your issues are more situational awareness. I get that barrels shouldn’t get mayhem scaling, etc… But that doesn’t seem likely to change since BL3 is in the review mirror. Complaining about how they put you down doesn’t solve the issue. And we all know that barrels exist and what they do to you. So the question is, what do you do about them now, knowing that the state they are in is not going to change? And the answer is easy… You learn where the barrels are and keep your peripheral sight engaged in looking for them. They are easy to spot and just as easy to get rid of.
My goals are the same as yours… To clear a map/room/area without going into FFYL. The difference is that I use it as a crutch… I use it to keep me in the fight when necessary. Going into FFYL is a long animation. If I’m trying to do a speed run, I obviously want to stay out of FFYL as much as possible. Avoiding barrels helps keep me out of it. And puddles… Be wary of puddles.
Do you happen to have one point in Duct Tape Mod? That gives you splash immunity …
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I’m gonna have to disagree with you there. In my experience they are often in places where it’s virtually impossible to see them. They seem to be placed deliberately so as to be hard to detect or to surprise you or to blend in with the background. I have tried to blow up all barrels before entering combat and it almost never works. There’s always a few in some corner or behind geometry I couldn’t see, waiting to give me an unpleasant surprise.
There’s also the bigger problem of barrel-hunting altering the flow of gameplay.
Now, I may just be someone who’s bad at Where’s Waldo, or you may just be someone who’s good at it. Either way, situational awareness doesn’t cut it for me in BL3 as much as it did in the prior two games. There’s too many barrels, with too much range.
With a nova shield. I can deal with all of this when I don’t use a nova shield. The intent of what I’m running with now is, or was, to use a nova shield, as originally stated.
I don’t expect it to. But criticizing any work of art, or whatever we think games are, usually doesn’t. On the other hand, advising people on how to adapt to flaws doesn’t solve the issue either. The issue is the flaws.
In any case, I’m not sure where the discussion got turned into thinking I’m here here to solicit advice on how to mitigate the problem of barrels - I know full well how to do that: don’t use nova shields.
I understand, believe me, that knowing where all the barrels are in every single room in the game and being able to shoot them at range without getting downed by enemies in the meantime would lower my FFYL frequency. In general, in a Borderlands game, in my opinion, one should not spend so much time thinking about barrels. They literally determine aspects of builds. That’s coconuts.
Oh yeah - that’s definitely it. I don’t play Zane too much any more and so I forgot about that.
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Well, in my experience… Which is well over 4000 hours of actual gameplay (thanks to covid)… Barrels are easy to spot and easy to get rid of… I do it all the time in my gameplays… Again, it’s about situational awareness… You can’t disagree with that.
I play urad deathless with a death’s blessing com and an Infernal Wish shield. If I miscalculate my movement during a run of either True Takedown, then I die. But I know my surroundings and what to look for. So it’s not that you can’t or shouldn’t use nova shields…
See… You limit yourself by putting caps on your abilities. I don’t know how many times I’ve said it, but I play deathless on Amara with full points in Anima. I rarely use FFYL. Unless I’m doing speed runs. Then the frequency goes up. My whole point is that you’re complaining about something that isn’t an issue. And that’s not my opinion. The game is super easy to play and health gating isn’t really a thing. All you need is shield and ffyl with the right build and you can complete any content in the game at the highest difficulty.
It’s an interesting discussion - just yesterday as I was taking my R4kk Fl4k (with an ASS Frozen Heart) through Cistern of Slaughter, I made a point of shooting barrels at the wave start and NOT to stand in the water while flinging R4kks around.
Also in addition to avoiding Nova shields (to a degree, see above), I usually stay clear of any nova-related skills or anointments, since keeping track of reloads or shield state was becoming too much for me.
I can and I do. But I haven’t poopsocked the game either. Give me 4000 hours and maybe I will be able to tell everyone else that flaws are really not flaws because I know the game well enough to work around them. I wouldn’t tell them that, but it’d be nice to have the option.
And the view that barrels shouldn’t one shot the player has nothing to do with situational awareness. That’s a principle.
It is your opinion, based on your highly unusual experience. Insisting in stronger terms doesn’t make it otherwise.
I am of course delighted you have attained elite knowledge of the game so that barrels never blow you up outside of a few mishaps when you’re speedrunning, but - since we’re apparently telling each other what we can and can’t do - you can’t generalize from yourself to the overwhelming majority of the player base.
Even very good and knowledgeable players with plenty of situational awareness don’t run with Anima or nova shields (see: Lazy Data). It isn’t because barrels are not an issue. They seem to think they’re an issue. I think they’re an issue. Nearly all people, unskilled and skilled, think they’re an issue.
It’s fair to say they are an issue - except for you and the few people as dedicated and aware as you. I’m not sure what makes you want to argue about that. You just feeling like telling everyone else to git gud?
Lastly, I never said I was having trouble completing any content. I specifically said I wasn’t. I asked a question about barrels and expressed a dislike for the way the mechanic was implemented in BL3. I agreed that they make nova shields more annoying to use than they should be.
I would really like to end this argument which is going nowhere fast and just agree to disagree. This thread was not created for an argument about barrels and whether or not I’m a tunnel-visioned noob who lacks situational awareness.
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