What can be done to improve the BL3 experience?

Borderlands 3 Borderlands 3 General Discussion
#1

Personal Opinion: I think Borderlands 3 is a good game, but it leaves alot to be desired. After playing Borderlands G.O.T.Y, and BL2 the looting aspect of the game was satisfying no matter how many times I replayed content or farmed for weapons. Even the Pre-Sequel, while objectively the worst game in the franchise, I loved what the devs attempted to do in making loot at least somewhat unique despite having fewer than other than the other games. The looting aspect is the biggest flaw in BL3 right. I think the Mayhem levels just add onto the feeling of loot not being as special.

While the OP levels in BL2 are not perfect, it added something for players to strive for if they wanted more difficulty. When I play BL2 it always felt satisfying, no matter how many times it got repetitive. When it comes to the Mayhem levels, I canā€™t find any satisfaction, not even in looting weapons.

What are your thoughts?

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Ideas to improve Bordelands 3 overall experience
#2

My experience was the complete opposite of these: Iā€™m more and more convinced that TPS was peak Borderlands (weā€™ll see how 3 looks when it ā€˜maturesā€™ with more content), and the OP levels were, in my opinion, the best difficulty slider I have ever experienced in a game (Iā€™m still miffed at the muggles who banged their heads against OP8 or werenā€™t otherwise ready for UVHM and complained loudly enough that I think they scared Gearbox away from continuing its use in future franchises, even though it was completely optional). With the OP levels, I could legitimately scale weapon strength and combat difficulty on the fly.

To your point, as someone who plays Borderlands for the combat and not the loot, Iā€™ve been having the time of my life for the last 8 years straight. BL3 has not left me wanting for anything so far, and I imagine it will only get better with time.

14 Likes
#3

Well I agree, but for very different reasons than anything you mentioned I think. I think they need to do something to make it possible to farm specific anointments on items.

Iā€™m not sure how the Mayhem Modes donā€™t feel satisfying yet you think OP levels didā€¦ The OP levels were an absolute mess of horrible scaling, health gating, and constantly re-farming the same items over and over again while offering no reward for increasing the difficulty in terms of higher loot drops. The Mayhem Modes are much better designed, with the exception that you canā€™t customize the modifiers (although I think this feature is coming with Mayhem 2.0).

I think youā€™re looking at BL2 with rose-colored glasses, frankly.

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#4

I generally found the looting aspect of BL2 to be awful up until that final hurrah DLC. Loot was far too non-existent to be satisfying before that.

And the only time loot was remotely satisfying for me in this game was during the farming event. When bosses and named enemies arenā€™t dropping anything and the best chests have white and green loot, thatā€™s unsatisfying for me.

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#5

I like the looting in bl3
It might take forever but it is the game soā€¦when you got everything you want, what else is there to do?
In general, I think the rank system could be changed so every character can spend them for themselves, respec them, and specialize more into specific stats. But I understand, this could lead to unbalance and itā€™s just supposed to be something to show you ā€œprogressā€

Becoming specific, moze needs a little overhaul or even rework imo. but thatā€™s discussed enough already^^

VHs should get a 4th skill tree because we need something for not getting new VHs and that has to be more than 1 com per dlc and a few skill points to the point where we can almost finish 2 whole skill branches

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#6

A slider for text size. LAN play for consoles.

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#7

More Raid bossesā€¦

It would be great if they could re-engineer game maps sections to have a RAID modeā€¦

Less animations in menus and 60fps as standard.

The gameplay is truly great IMO. So much better than pretty much everything co-op on the market.

Something needs to be done about drop rates for build specific itemsā€¦ Or just the ability to download builds from GB streamers on console.

Once x2 playthroughs complete, the ability to start a new character with x2 playthroughs unlocked. So you can have multiple builds to play with without getting story burn out.

Darker storyā€¦ Pegi 18?

Skip dialogue buttonā€¦

Definitely one of the best games out thereā€¦

8 Likes
#8

Honestly , for me the main issue is my favorite VH, Moze. For whatever bizarre reason, she seems to be not only ignored but almost hated by the devs . While the other VHs have gotten better and better since release, Moze has been the worst since the Hex/MoD nerf a month after release.

Worst yet, she doesnt have any good annointments. All the others VHs can keep annointments constantly triggered and each has at least a game changing one that literally doubles their damage output (sentinel 100% cryo damage, 100% bonus damage after Rakk attack etc).

Moze has none. Then she has useless skills like Force feedback or utterly contradictory skills like "click click " that go completely counter to a tree about ammo regen .

Its bizarre how they actively ignore her so much in a game that has 4 measley vault hunters.

6 Likes
#9

something super revolutionary that the world is not ready for: fix all the bugs! All those tickets opened and still nothing

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#10

The OP levels were an absolute mess of horrible scaling, health gating,

Hmm isnā€™t M4 the same? All M4 takedown videos involve relying on health gating to stay alive at some point. Itā€™s just that we had grog nozzle so it was much more spammable. Iā€™m not defending OP levels here. I think any scaling that SOLELY buffs HP/dmg is lazy and stupid.

I donā€™t know maybe make the endgame actually involve more skills? The way I see it is with some specific build you just need know boss phases and when to press mouse 1 or throw grenades, which is very achievable for those who have the full build. Meanwhile, it would be very hard for people who donā€™t have the build to survive. Thatā€™s why some people claim M4 is easy while others say itā€™s hard.

I know itā€™s a loot game but the endgame is not gonna get better if we simply draw the line between loot differences. A few thoughts on improvements:

  1. Improve Mayhem mode buff variety. I think M3 was sorta going in the correct direction but horribly executed. It basically broke down the OP buffs and made then random. There are a million interesting things that could be implemented with the buffs but they picked the most boring ones. What if we buff the stats a bit but focus on giving certain enemies new abilities e.g. psychos can now teleport; gigabrain can actually temporarily invert playersā€™ control; getting hit by the eridium beam/balls now gives slag effect; 25% of the fire dot damage now penetrates shields; cyro now can freeze players for a brief moment as well. You are honestly only limited by your imaginations at this point.

  2. Make the game more strategic. Like how in most RPG games have different classes that actually focus on different things? Tank, DPS, Mage, Heal etc. The synergy between characters in BL3 seems lacking. Maybe in the next BL game redesign characters to have specific roles and make the endgame scale to better cooperation.

  3. Increase the skill cap. Add cooldown to health gating. Lower the jumping and strafing accuracy. Add mechanics that award skillful plays such as invincibility frames at the beginning of sliding (just as an example). Add more variants to Bossesā€™ attacks to make use of the i-frames, like dark souls and monster hunter.
    A good example in BL world would be Voracidous. It would be sick if players can slide through his multi-chomp. This way players with better skills but sub-god-tier gears can actually shine.

  4. Add a PvP mode. Maybe a regional versus mode like L4D2 where players vs human-controlled bandits. Or even add playable vault hunters that work for the ā€œbad guysā€ with a separate story line and add a story-focused versus mode. The point is one can only make a PvE game so much more fun but PvP games have a much longer longevity. Check out CS:GO, dota etc.

EDIT: block quote

#11

I have mentioned that there is way to little synergy between characters in co-op situations. Especially when you look at COMā€™s, there has always been team boosting class mods in BL games, why are there none here?

I donā€™t like the idea of PvP in this game however. I would rather favor increasing competition in co-op play, like my Takedown Leaderboard idea.

3 Likes
#12

This is a small thing to the experience, but how about some new heads and skins. yes i saw the new dlc ones and they suck. almost all the heads and skins in BL3 have been very uninspired. the streamers got the best ones in the game months ago. I have a feeling they have about 5-10 good heads and skins they are just sitting on to sell as mtx later this year.

5 Likes
#13

I donā€™t think itā€™s anywhere close to the same. I personally havenā€™t watched any videos where people need to health gate to survive M4, and I also donā€™t rely on it. In OP levels, starting as early as OP1, health and shield values became totally meaningless because 2-3 bullets put you into FFYL no matter what. Itā€™s why people started cheesing the game by reducing their health to 100 because it was easier to get back above health gate quicker. I donā€™t think M4 is anywhere close to this.

Iā€™ve personally never understood this complaint. You taking more damage and enemies taking less damage is the basis of like 90% of gamesā€™ difficulty scaling. I canā€™t think of any game I have played recently that doesnā€™t work like this. BL3 is no different. GBX canā€™t be expected to add new enemy AI or whatever for every difficulty level.

This is coming with Mayhem 2.0, so letā€™s hope the modifiers are better thought out. I am also hoping that you can pick which ones to apply, which is rumored to be the case.

This has been brought up in a couple polls here, and the community overwhelmingly voted no. Almost unanimously. This is a PvE game. Balancing PvE and PvP would be a nightmare with how crazy and random all the weapons and skills are.

3 Likes
#14

Iā€™m surprised as well that they donā€™t have weekly and daily leader boards for the Takedowns. Seems like a pretty obvious feature to implement.

#15

Oh, that is weirdā€¦ not that I play co op like ever, but I kept a slew of these in BL2 for those rare occasions (and, frankly, many of them were pretty good on their own).

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#16

Thereā€™s nothing stopping someone from launching such a thing on the forums - rather like the BL2 time trials. I foresee a fair amount of thought would have to go into devising rules and stipulating how submissions should be done, but it is feasible. Just needs one (ideally a small team) of people to manage the submissions and spreadsheet(s).

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#17

This would be nowhere close to the same thing though as having it built into the game for the entire BL3 playerbaseā€¦

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#18

That would actually be quite a bit of work though, especially comparing PC to console. How do you enforce anti-cheating when saves are purely local and not server-side at all? And if you canā€™t prevent cheating, then such a feature would be pointless.

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#19

I mean, Time Trial missions are far from a new thing, plenty of other games do this successfully. Diabloā€™s Greater Rifts all have leaderboards, for example. But yes, theyā€™d have to make sure cheating is resolved, and I would probably break it down by console.

Maybe this is something they can work on adding after all of the DLCs are released to give people something to do at end game.

#20

As long as the game is on PC you will not stop people from cheating with certain programs and modded weapons. Not unless they implemented a robust anti-cheat which is entirely unrealistic, too much money and time required for that and the game is not built from the ground up to support one which is required for it to be even mildly successful. Time trials leaderboards built into the game would be literally pointless because of that. Btw, there is now modded gear on all consoles as well as PC.

2 Likes