The Algorithm too damn long, final boss a tedious slog

Battleborn Open Beta Single Player/Story Mode Discussion
#1

I tried to solo the The Algorithm and ran out of time during the final boss (ISIC? ISAC?)
XboxOne, playing the Mike character (the one with stealth)

The bosses all took too long and were rather dull fights.
The spider’s minions were dull, they just charge straight at the player. There is very little cover to help manage damage.
The multi-phase design with fumigation was nice to break up a long fight.

The final boss was a mess.
Tons of graphical glitches (acceptable in beta)
Again, no cover. In fact, the boss arena is the dullest I’ve experienced: a circle enclosed in walls.
Lots of meaningless cosmetic graphical hoo-ha
Boss fight mechanics tedious and stuff doesn’t work.
I have to shoot vials in his legs, that’s fine, but there’s four of them. He does tend to make the weakest one face me which is thoughtful.
But you often can’t shoot the vials. Some times he’s in some mode where the vials drain and you can’t shoot them. Some times he’s jumping through the air, so can’t shoot them. Some times he’s charging straight at me and shots don’t seem to land. I can see the vial coming right at me during a charge, but none of my bullets register. Maybe the leg is going up and down too fast. Not that I can shoot much during a charge: I have to run away, then turn around for a burst, then run away: repeat repeat… will he ever stop charging?

Once I did drain a leg vial, he stops and squats. Ok, now what? Shooting most of him still has no effect. It wasn’t until the third vial I spotted that something had dropped out of his central capsule and was shoot-able. This target was smaller than the vials. There was no hint the real goal was to shoot this thing.
Time ran out before I got to the floating head stage.

Throughout the level, some times damage numbers don’t appear. The damage bar is going down, but this tiny change is hard to see so I’m not sure if I’m doing any damage. Seen most on the final boss.

I don’t like the graphical design. There’s too much stuff on the screen. And all of it is screaming for my attention because all of it is blastingly bright. I can’t immediately distinguish the interactive vs static content. Once stuff starts shooting at me, it quickly becomes a sea of noise.

The power ups are totally random. A bunch of colored balls that do various stuff, some I never figured out. I can’t really control which ones I get because drops and box contents are random. I can’t use them tactically, so they’re just noise in the game play.

The mobs were not especially fun to fight. Some just charge straight for the player. Some just stand there. One big guy turtled and put a shield around himself for no reason. I can’t shoot him with the shield up, it killed the action.

I love Borderlands, and played most of the BL games and DLCs.
I’m not feeling the love for Battleborn.

I really want a big co-op pve shooter to play with friends, but I fear this won’t work.
That’s why I’ve made myself late for work writing up my experience.

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#2

To be honest, some, not all, of your concerns are a direct result of playing solo. I agree that missions can be extraordinarily tedious when played solo. Oscar Mike was the first hero I played and I also played The Algorithm solo and it was indeed a slog. I can only say it is more fun with teammates. Should the game cater to solo play? It is tough to answer that because I suppose you can argue that if it exists it should be fun, but at the same time I feel Gearbox does not intend the game to be played solo and it is more of a “player beware” thing. You can, but it is not ideal.

Some of the enemies and sections only make sense when you have teammates, like that one enemy you fought on that bridge part that puts up the shield (I forget its name, but totally know the one you are talking about). with teammates you can go down the sides of that part and take out snipers and work on that one enemy over time as its shield are down, but solo you cannot do that without probably dying. You have to slowly chip away and it sucks. I spent a long time here solo and died once or twice.

For Magnus ISIC, there is no need for cover because all of his attacks are telegraphed and easy to dodge. You can move out of his jump and dodge his charge, and just run around when the missiles are firing. The leg things you need to shoot are not so bad when you have a team of five working on them, but when I did it solo (and also did not know about that central core) the fight probably took me 15 minutes, total, which is crazy.

2 Likes
#3

Agreed the attacks are easy to avoid. Though it means running away, which means no DPS because you can’t run backward.

Solo mode needs tuning for solo DPS.

Agreed, it would be much more fun with more players.
I hope the encounters self-tune for the number of players. Is five players much easier than two players?

#4

I’ve solo’d the algorithm with several characters and Oscar Mike is fairly easy. The final boss just takes a while waiting for the opportunities to attack. You can easily avoid ISIC by using invisibility.

#5

I first tried it solo and it took me an hour, but doing it with a team only takes 25 minutes. The dialogue made the mission an absolute joy to play.

Power ups -
blue orb: gives bonus points
green orb: restores health
purple orb: gives over-shield for defense buff
red orb: bonus revive for team
yellow >> orb: massively boost movement speed
yellow circling arrow orb: reduces cooldown of all powers

#6

Try soloing with Marquis. Pretty easy. I didn’t even die once in the whole mission.

He is also easy in the other mission. I only died once when i couldn’t kill the last shield support in time in the final phase of the end boss.

#7

The ISIC fight is a bit of a hot mess right now. The minions in both the Geoff fight and the ISIC fight are suicide chargers (get close, then explode), so it makes sense that they charge the player headlong. Geoff also has some melee minions, which, again, have their best chance at damaging the player if they just charge at the player. A couple gunbots wouldn’t have hurt (outside of the firmware/fumigation areas). Cover is not needed in the ISIC fight, since none of his attacks deal very much damage, and most of them are very clearly telegraphed and relatively easy to avoid. Cover in general doesn’t seem to be much a part of the PVE, instead staying mobile appears to be your best option for avoiding damage and letting shields recharge. There also appears to be a bug currently that sometimes ISIC’s leg batteries have their hitboxes in the wrong spots, especially during his charge attack. After his 2nd knockdown, ISIC does seem to like to spam his attacks where he shields his batteries. While this makes sense (wouldn’t you want to protect your weakspots when you’ve taken heavy damage?), from a gameplay perspective it is a bit tedious. The fight is significantly less tedious with a team, since ISIC tends to focus one player, allows the other to focus on dealing damage.

But honestly, I’m still not sure how you took 2 hours with OM for The Algorithm though. When I first went through all of it (my first attempt, also a solo, was with Rath, which was terrible for the ISIC fight and I ended up dying there), solo, with the DPS snail that is Miko (at least compared to OM), it took me about a little over an hour with a snack break in the middle (and server time still goes down when paused solo).

But in the end, if the game hasn’t sold you, it hasn’t sold you. No one is forcing you to buy and/or play Battlebron (unless they are, in which case they have some interesting ideas on torture). I like the game, but if you don’t, don’t buy it. Use your consumer power by refusing to consume.