My way of playing, using non-uniques on the highest mayhem level, was never the only option and it was never even the best option. It was a option reletively on par with using a meta legendary. The damage I could do back when 1.0 M3 was the highest mayhem level with a purple fire vladof AR was more than serviceable. That’s been taken away. Unless you can show me anyone beating any of the takedowns using every non-unique weapon type of every manufacturer on M10 in a roughly equal amount of time it would take someone to beat them using any of the buffed legendaries. I’m purposely using words like “reletively” and “roughly” because this is a subjective issue. And also to set the record straight that I don’t want non-uniques to be “equal” to legendaries in power. Also because it’s subjective, I’d prefer not to have a long winded debate on what that reletive bar would be to balance this game.
Your argument is based on technicalities. That because non-uniques are still in the game, I can still use them on the highest mayhem level. Well I can also use the level 1 starter pistol on M10.
Sure. That doesn’t mean I’d go out of my way to belittle the concerns of people who want the farming process to better respect their time. I personally don’t indulge in farming enough to care, but also recognize that making the time investment better for people who do care isn’t inherently a bad thing for me. It’d just depend on execution. Just like how non-uniques being reletively on par with legendaries doesn’t take away the enjoyment of people who want to use legendaries.
It doesn’t, and I never said it did. But what’s the difference between 20% and 200%? What happens when difficulty is balanced around legendaries that are 200% more powerful vs. legendaries that are 20% more powerful? Again, the issue is reletive. If I was arguing on technicalties, it would encompass the notion that a weapon tier being only 1% stronger prevents me from using the lower tier.
Do you just use technical arguments to purposely obfuscate the point?
Quite the logic leap. Curious to know who insinuated that.
I agree, but what that got to do with anything?
Cool that you agree with this, but it makes me wonder why you seem to have a problem with my overarching point about purples being reletively on par with legendaries.
This sounds like a harsh joke, but it’s the same for me. I can never forget how ecstatic I was watching the BL3 trailers a hundred times over. The first few hours after launch was when I enjoyed the game the most.
The March 28,2019 PAX show. A gaggle of us forum folk watched it on Twitch and were losing our minds with excitement — thread buried in News if you’re inclined. That day was the best day of gaming I never spent.
I got it on Steam after the six month Epic moratorium and enjoyed it for a time. But nothing beats anticipation.
To be fair, as a late adopter (Steam purchase on release, but had to wait to get a better PC, so didn’t play till June 2020) I have no nostalgia for Mayhem 1.0 or anything from that period.
Having put that out there: I’ve made it fun for me the whole time, and stopped playing when I couldn’t, and picked it back up when I could. New content releases are the most fun for me. New farming experiences can be as well and I waited a full year before farming Mayhem 4 and 6 gear.
I opt to take full advantage of scaling the difficulty to wherever I want so I can use whatever I want however I want in the game. The only downside is that doesn’t work for doing co-op most times. But since I don’t play co-op very often I’m generally happy with the game play, and that’s the only reason to play after you complete the story once.
A personal view, which is all any of us can express ultimately. The game was at its best during my first playthrough up to the point when I realized I would be close to hitting the level cap by its end. I took the few remaining skill points into TVHM and was sad to find no challenge at all. Level cap rises have barely taken me into the accompanying DLC. Novelty Mayhem levels are no substitute for properly balanced playthroughs.
I love BL3’s PCs, combat and environments and have deperately tried to find a reason to play the game as much as I’ve played its predecessors. But I can find no impetus to start a new character, something I did MANY times in the previous games, with only one trivial playthrough ahead of me.
In contrast, I’ve been introducng a friend to BL games. We are currently in BL2. We battled our way through the DLCs at UVHM and returned to the main campaign to take advantage of the “new” L80 cap. I’m using a Nurse Maya build (to keep him alive ) and I’m looking forward to that next skill point to get me into “Subsequence”, previously unobtainable with the old level cap. If only BL3 could give me that kind of challenge and progression.
Without being cute and saying ‘before release’ I’d say after Jackpot DLC and before M2.0 - can’t remember dates or anything.
Didn’t know then that Jackpot was as good as the DLC was going to get and it was a boost after the terrible story of the main game.
Balance was all over the place as always but it was also nice for Zane to get a much needed (if poorly implemented) boost at that time with the Seein dead.
When we started to get a look at new weapon gimmicks, that was peak salivation for me. Two gimmicks per weapon? Those slick new Atlas things? I didn’t understand how the new skill trees would work (with the lateral augment perks) until I actually got that far down one of the trees, but their marketing game was on point. (Are they even still doing those Scamp comics?)
Peak BL3 is right now - MM11 makes Mayhem tolerable, and I love almost all the new content (hoping for an Arms Race mode where we get to run it with our builds/loadouts, but the enemy count is like literally five times higher or something).
This is apprarently the crux of our disagreement. I think purples acting as a stepping-stone, bridging the gap between mid-game blues and endgame Uniques/Legendaries, makes a lot more sense than having them try to bridge that gap AND coexist on the same level of power and consistent endgame viability as Uniques/Legendaries. It’s odd to me, because you don’t see anyone claiming that blues should be able to hang with purples, greens should be able to hang with blues, etc, even though they each occupy a clear position of descent in the tier hierarchy. Why are people only advocating for flattening one end of the curve, rather than the whole thing? Honestly, if you want them to be equal, I’d say make all current Legendaries into Unique purples, get red of the Legendary tier completely, and never add anything higher. No pearls, no seraphs, no glitches. That way purple is the final tier, consistent with endgame. Definitely gonna cause a major powercreep on the blue tier, but no cares about those other colors.
Or will “red texts” just become the new boogeyman? At least you won’t see them until you look at the cards.
Thank you for sidestepping my point completely, just to be THAT guy.
Regardless of whether or not purples, blues, greens, or even whites used to able to compete with Legendaries at endgame, the point was, within a tier hierarchy, there is a natural a progression from one tier to the next, so why should the distinctions of the TOP tier (unique effects, high damage, etc) be diminished to allow an ENTIRE TIER of weapons, that isn’t at the top of the hierarchy, to subvert the progression and the hierarchy itself? Just because there’s a lot of them? Because you used to be able to? Why have the Legendary tier at all? Just to squirrel away the most fun, interesting, synergistic weapons in the game, under countless layers of RNG and bad drop rates, like some kind of cruel tease?
Even blue/purple weapons and class mods have min max builds associated with them
2 Likes
VaultHunter101
(So long, and thanks for all the fish)
#34
Class mods in BL2 yes, because you could get different +n levels on blue compared to purple compared to orange (along with secondary perks).
Blue (and some purple) uniques because of red text and weird secondary interactions (mainly the off-hand weapon stuff with Sal, but also crit-swapping, and Grog Nozzle health steal).
Aside from that, not so much unless you happened across something with perfectly rolled parts.
Borderlands 2 is not some timeless benchmark of balance to be striven for. If anything, things were worse in the previous games, and BL3’s push to give the most interesting weapon tier a (rightful) place to shine, seems like objective, sensible progress.
But I get that it’s not for you. Hopefully, moving forward, they include some kind of regression mode/feature, for anyone who wants to linger just below the top. Or at least some kind of “point of no return” prompt, like in New Vegas. “You’re entering endgame content, wherein (literally) top tier weapons are recommended, if not required, and drop rates will scale with that in mind. Adjust your expectations accordingly.”
Ah, LEGENDARY MODE!
Man, I remember on my first playthrough (normal, non-mayhem), getting a purple Mngwa and being so excited (I loved the beam weapons in TPS). Thing was a disappointing piece of garbage. I’m glad the Laser Sploder makes it look like a toy.
I remember using a purple Tediore smg that shot bouncing orbs (wich didn’t really get affected by anarchy) where i never really found any legendary i could use for just that hehe
Haven’t played gaige in while though (hope i still have that weapon on that save hehe)
VaultHunter101
(So long, and thanks for all the fish)
#37
You mean an e-tech plasma caster? Those were a different thing again, although they had the same %drop chance as purples.
I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of how the rarity system is handled in Borderlands, and what sets it apart from other loot based games. The reason why you rarely see people advocate for blue non-uniques, and anything under, to be end game viable is because from a design standpoint, non-uniques represent that classic loot based mentality; higher rarity equals better stats. There’s nothing fundamentally different about whites and purples. Legendaries and uniques on the other hand, are fundamentally different, and are meant to be a break away from that classic looting mentality. Their main purpose is to provide a unique effect exclusive to that weapon, nothing more or less. It’s the exact reason why people want blue uniques to be endgame viable, despite the fact that by the standards of a classic rarity system, their power should technically be no better than a blue non-unique. Meaning they should also technically be worse than non-unique purples.
In BL2, pearlescents and seraphs aren’t fundamtally different from legendaries. They serve the same purpose. The main thing that set both of those rarities apart from legendaries was how you aquired them. Pearlescent are basically just rarer legendaries. The Bekah, for example, was a top tier weapon, but in terms of raw stats, is no better than a purple Jakob counterpart. Seraphs are basically just legendaries that can be bought with special in game currency. Some of them also had major drawbacks to offset their strength. If pearls or seraphs were brought back, it would make no sense to disregard legendaries from end game viability on the basis that pearls or seraphs are the highest tiers. That’s just artifically limiting options.
In TPS, glitch weapons are actually the most unique rarity to be introduced into the franchise imo. They’re essentically non-uniques with a centralized unique effect, that being, they glitch out on reload. Any non-unique weapon in that game could spawn as a glitch weapon. In terms of base power, they’re on par with purples, not better. They even have their own unique weapons, which essentially just boils down to them being locked to 2 of the 4 possible glitch effects. One of them also always does fire damage, the other only does corrosive and has a voice.
6 Likes
VaultHunter101
(So long, and thanks for all the fish)
#39
Glitch weapons and Luneshine bonuses are two things that I personally feel TPS got right within the loot system. Luneshine was a nice bonus to get, but it wasn’t game-changingly OP (unlike some anointments). And Glitch was just a fun mechanic to have as an option.
But i think that’s the one was a pretty cool weapon. That and a stagecoach on anarchy gaige, no need to aim, just unload everything and watch everything die (kinda like Zane with drone’s rad beam and masher clairvoyance turning groups if enemies into a mix of red, white and yellow mist)
Yes, I’ve played the other games, and am familiar with the way they worked. I understand purple used to be the endgame tier, with legendaries, pearls, seraphs, glitches, effervescents, etc, being rarer, adjacent extras. Back then, they it’s arguable that they didn’t even qualify as tiers in their own right, outside of having different drop beam colors. As you said, aside from their special effects, they weren’t that much more powerful than non-unique purples, and they certainly didn’t drop often enough to practically build around more than 1 or 2, and forget builds that required specific parts and/or elements to be worthwhile.
) and I’m looking forward to that next skill point to get me into “Subsequence”, previously unobtainable with the old level cap. If only BL3 could give me that kind of challenge and progression.
was a pretty cool weapon. That and a stagecoach on anarchy gaige, no need to aim, just unload everything and watch everything die (kinda like Zane with drone’s rad beam and masher clairvoyance turning groups if enemies into a mix of red, white and yellow mist)