This game is a Min Maxer's worst nightmare

yeah , to get a full build isnt that difficult . lets say blurred trickster maya , pimpernel / the com / any nade that works for u / grog / harold / Lyuda , seems easy enough to me .

getting a perfect harold might take few hundred run on vendor

I think you are perhaps misunderstanding me. I’m not opposed to change but I’m pointing out that people don’t really have much grounds to complain about Borderlands’ behaviour when it’s consistent with the entire game philosophy.

I think Borderlands has made a number of changes, both from 1 to 2 and then from 2 to 3. I didn’t like a good many of the changes from 1 to 2, but I quite like a good number of changes from 2 to 3. Just because I don’t lament the lack of further changes doesn’t mean I’m opposed to any change. There are things I’d like to see but just because GBX doesn’t share my views doesn’t mean I think they are making a mistake, either.

People leave for a variety of reasons. I’ve little doubt that many will be back when GBX release the next DLC. They appear a little slow with their roadmap at the moment and I suspect that’s a far bigger reason for many “leaving” than any QoL improvements. Attention spans are constantly shrinking and many are tempted by other offerings. I’m just as guilty. I still haven’t played the Destiny DLC I’ve paid for because I’ve been playing Borderlands exclusively since it’s come out. Does that mean Destiny is in trouble?

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It’s possible I’m remembering wrong, apologies. I know he spawns in two possible spots so I may have gotten a bit mixed up. He definitely can go for ages without dropping anything, however, let alone anything with the right stats.

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In the past for most versions of BL starting as far back as BL1 a large portion of players resorted to using a certain program to get the gear they wanted to play with instead of getting it through gameplay. It’s a big part of what gave those versions longevity, also other mods that the community came up with. I would hope after all these iterations of BL they would learn what players actually want, and for the most part it’s not a RNG fest.

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I quit playing PoE back in the Spring, because I was tired of the RNG, thinking:

"BL3 drops in September. I’ll just get back into BL games to get ready. "

And now, BL3 is just as RNG heavy as PoE. You just replace Sockets / Links / Chroms With Anoints, and there is still the massive random Stat farm.

I’m hoping that in the future, GB adds some sort of modding / weaponsmithing in the game.

It’s obvious that the game has parts with statting for the guns, and a pool of Anoints to Roll from. It would be awesome if you could tear guns apart for their parts, and build new guns.

I have a lot of ideas of how to implement a system like this, but I just don’t think GB would ever implement it after game launch.

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I think this is the ultimate disconnect between us. I do not personally think adding some minor mechanics to ease the high degree of RNG changes the fundamental behavior of Borderlands, just like it didn’t change Diablo and other similar games.

I also cannot agree that people shouldn’t complain when a similar game implements QoL improvements that this game doesn’t offer. Back in early BL2 days, a lot of people complained that BL2 didn’t have individual loot when playing coop the way that Diablo 3 did (a complaint that I agreed with). There were a lot of people making similar arguments to what you’re saying here, with comments like “That’s the Borderlands style!” and “It was this way in the first game too!” But lo and behold, they finally implemented this feature in BL3 and it has been great for those that want it. I feel like this subject is in that same vein.

Anyway, to each his own I suppose. If you do not care about this issue then I cannot convince you to see it as important, but I think the extremely high RNG is indeed turning a lot of people off from all of the complaints I see on the interwebz, so I don’t think GBX should be dismissing it. Just my opinion though.

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I thought that something like this would be awesome too, since the building blocks are already in place. However, I can see how this would be a fundamental change in the Borderlands loot style, so I understand them not wanting to go that far. I think a lighter touch, like rerolling weapons, would still fix a lot of the issues.

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Trading is such a different mechanic to farming that direct comparison is misleading.

To me, I see them as comparable, because the results are the same, except the amount effort is not. Do not assume, me calling trading easy equates to making farming just as easy. Again, agree to disagree.

You misunderstand. I’m not looking to take offence at the word “demonizing” but just pointing out that it’s perhaps a bit extreme to apply that label to any form of criticism!

I have no problems with the criticism proposed in these arguments. I do, however, think that they blindly dismiss many players’ concerns and design flaws in the game. Just simply saying “It’s a loot game. Loot games have RNG. RNG is RNG.” does not alleviate players’ frustrations. In my earliest post, I’ve speculated to why drop rates are the way they are. So, in a sense, I do recognize the other side of the argument.

When I mention player effort, do not mistake it as a call for linear progression. In fact, it hasn’t been suggested at all in this thread. Suggestions mostly have been to lessen the strictness of the RNG layers. This entire time, I have not been vouching for some system that rewards you loot after X amount of kills. Wait, actually, this system does exist in the game. The Mail System. I guess Gbx is okay with it. Anyways, I’ve always been in favor of having RNG layers, just not how it is currently implemented.

Most of the game is fair. I’ll agree to that. But some things aren’t. Assigning rare spawns as dedicated loot sources is not fair, hence Gbx deploying this event. Assigning FL4K’s COM and Zane’s to Trial bosses, while Amara and Moze don’t have to go through a gauntlet. Also unfair. A few things do need to be fixed. Not doing so would be a disservice the game and to the players. I just don’t think passing off bad experiences as RNG is a good thing. Sure, the players’ expectations can be off, but when players become discontented and put the game down, I’m not going to blame them for misunderstanding the intricacies BL3’s loot system. It’s not their job to figure that out.

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Given how folks today are happily exploiting things like quest reward farming via save/quitting etc., do you think re-roll feature would be exploited as much, if not more, using the same mechanism?

If you are thinking of “Pay Earl 5000 eridium to place specific anointment on my favorite gun”, this might work…

P.S. Diablo 3 was quoted several times as a game that helps min-max players cope with RNG. How does it deal with dedicated drops? Do people know to go to a specific dungeon and kill unfortunate troll 100s of times to get a legendary Staff of Awesomeness?

Something similar, except you don’t get to choose the anointment. The way Diablo 3 does things is, you can choose two stats on an item to reroll, and you are then allowed to reroll those two stats endlessly, paying a separate fee each time you reroll the item. However, all other stats on that instance of the item are then locked and can NEVER be rerolled, so it gives you incentive to still hunt other versions of the item if you are a perfectionist.

If it were me, I’d do something similar to that. Or, I would make a new currency for re-rolling items, and I would make it only obtainable in end game activities like Proving Grounds, CoS, Takedown, etc. This way people actually have some incentive to play the end game as a method of acquiring a version of the gear they are looking for.

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I think it would be an equal amount the people that exploit save/quiting for better rolls on quest items will also save/quit for a reroll system but at least this system would give players who don’t use such tactics to be able to re-roll a quest item without replaying the whole game up to that point. When you need to put in that much effort it is no wonder people go with such strats.

My more… expanded thoughts.

Introduce a workshop that would allow you to breakdown guns and harvest a single part per gun.

Use those parts to augment other guns. My personal thought would be to restrict it so that you aren’t able to augment Legendary weapons, just Epic and lower rarity. If there needed to be some RNG, that would be “ok”, but I’d love to see it controlled, to an extent where we aren’t just working through a Path of Exile style Lottery, hoping to get the thing that we really wanted, but knowing that trading is the better way to achieve this goal.

The Pre-Sequel had something similar to this, with the Grinder, this would take it a step further.

And, adding a way to go after anoints, would be a lot better than what we have right now. The RNG just feels so Soul Crushing.

I mean if it don’t work for legendaries I just don’t really see the point but maybe have them require multiple of the same parts so it not as easy as swapping.

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Diablo 3 doesn’t have dedicated drops for the most part. Instead it has something called a “Smart Loot” system that makes it more likely to have gear drop that is specific for your class. This combined with much higher drop rates on the higher Torment levels make it so that it usually is not too difficult to find a specific item. Obviously, a system like this couldn’t really apply to Borderlands though since anything other than class mods aren’t class specific.

There are also certain items that you can gamble for using a special currency that can only be acquired by running the end game content (similar to my suggestion above for a re-roll currency), but you can’t obtain all items this way.

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It definitely feels like they are one of the least responsive developers out there when it comes to listening to community feedback. They have done better with this game than any of their others obviously, but even when they do listen the way they go about implementing the requested change is just mind boggling at times. The way they did dedicated drops this time around are a prime example of this.

People love to ■■■■ on Bungie, but in my opinion they do a great job of engaging with the community and making sweeping changes to Destiny based on community feedback. I’m hoping Gearbox keeps following that lead.

Class-specific anointments could work that way as well. I think the issue with both those currently is that class mod drops (along with cosmetics) are biased towards the character(s) in the party, but not heavily biased. There’s possibly some wiggle-room in the loot tables to adjust that should GBX decide to do so.

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This is true! I didn’t even think about this. That would be a good change.

Yeah, I think the bias in Diablo 3 is very high, somewhere around an 85% guarantee that the drop will be relative to your class. I would not mind that for anointments personally.

I am right with you. I was farming KillaVolt. He drops 4 Transformers in 5 runs. NONE are Annointed. I did however get a few Annointed Woodblockers tho.

Considering that nobody said they did I would like to know the point of your remark here.

dude, just be happy the items aren’t time gated behind a once weekly reward system like destiny. the fact that you can constantly farm these items for the rolls you want even with the layers of rng involved is a blessing. signed, an ex destiny vet.

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