(For those unfamiliar: The cortex arena was a repeatable arena fight in Presequel. Its difficulty could be adjusted on a scale from 0-9. On top of that, you could also select two mutators. The kicker: the mutators had different quality chests assigned to them that you could open if you won, and every round, different mutators were randomly chosen that had the good chests assigned to them. The overall 0-9 difficulty also affected the quality of the loot in the chest.)
I have made this suggestion here and there, (since before BL3 was even confirmed, as a point of interest) but @debito20091993 suggested it should have its own thread, so:
What if mayhem 2.0 mutators adopted the Cortex arena’s system?
- Players can pick and choose mutators as they see fit. The mayhem level would only affect enemy health
- Every mutator would have its own +luck, +xp, +currency reward (or penalty). Mayhem levels would also have their own reward tiers (e.g.: "mayhem 3: +100% luck; lootsplosion: -15% luck; Healy avenger: +30% luck)
- Every half hour, a random mutator is chosen that gets increased rewards for the next half hour
The reason I suggest this is because there’s plenty of players who just want an extra challenge but without the crazy modifiers. There’s also players who like some of the modifiers but hate others, and rerolling seems like an unnecessary hoop to jump through (especially since the mutator set is saved to your character anyway). There’s also GBX’s intention behind the mutators, which is (as far as I can guess) to add a bunch of gamechanging craziness and high-octane challenge into the game. There are players who enjoy that too.
I feel like Cortex arena’s system is a good way to please everyone. You can play without the mutators and still get improved loot, but playing with them rewards you further. You are incentivized yet further to embrace unpredictable mutators with even better loot.
PS: +currency rewards would mean more if there was something to spend currency on (e.g. wandering anointers or being able to reset a zone with badass enemies).