Borderlands 2: How they fixed "The Bee"

[Garland]

Imagine my surprise when firing up Borderlands 2 today to discover an annoying buzzing noise accompanied with persistent amp shield noises. Thinking back to various discussion over The Bee shield in the last month, I removed of The Bee from my character which caused the noises to stop. It would appear that in a stealth patch independent of the new DLC released yesterday (as the sounds were not present last night) added these noises, and it kinda worked. I really don't want to use the shield now because the noises are damn near the most annoying thing I have experienced in the last month. The noises even sometimes persist through loading screens as well. I can turn down sound effects, but still, if this is the "nerf" Pitchford mentioned on twitter, I applaud the cleverness of the fix.

Thoughts on this addition to Borderlands 2?

 

[Brendan Stepladder]

Didn't play Borderlands after the update to notice. Sounds like an... interesting solution.

I can't see it working well in the long-term.

 

[Skops]

i am confused. what is 'the bee' shield? as far as i know, thr biggest issue w/ borderlands 2 isbadass rank reseting

 

[Garland]

"The Bee" is a legendary Hyperion Amplify Shield that has very high amp damage for the cost of zero shield (normal amp damage sacrifices shields for extra damage). Because it costs no shields, it can be fired continuously until the player is hit and the damage bonus applies to each bullet fired (even pellets). Combined with a shotgun which fires 5-30 pellets per trigger pull, The Bee easily takes down the final boss and the bonus boss in seconds. This has been largely attacked as the most overpowered strategy in Borderlands 2, polarizing much of the community into those that use The Bee and think it works as intended and those who think it should be removed from the game cause it breaks difficulty.

So goes the story and now The Bee still has all its amazing powers, but makes an extremely irritating noise when used. While other bugs are in the game, the various Badass Rank resets being among the most detrimental, the use of The Bee has been a point contention since the game was released. Many ideas have been thrown at Gearbox as to how The Bee could be balanced or "fixed", but this is the solution currently enacted.

 

[Atmos Duality]

Adorable "nerf".

Still game-breaking and trivializing though. My friend got obscenely lucky and nabbed a level 50 Bee during a mission, essentially rendering the rest of us pointless except as a means to Res him when luck doesn't go our way.

Not joking, he oustrips our damage by an ENORMOUS degree solely due to that shield.
Makes the game boring.

 

[hazabaza1]

Oh no.
I must now turn my sound off to use my ridiculously over powered buff.
Horrors.


Should have made it like the Bane and made you move slow or something.

 

[Dansen]

Oh no.
I must now turn my sound off to use my ridiculously over powered buff.
Horrors.


Should have made it like the Bane and made you move slow or something.

Oh god... The Bane...
It works well enough but that...that voice...

"BAM, BAM, BAM, BAM, BAM!"

"RELOADING WEAPON"

"SWITCHING WEAPON!"

And thats when I realized the entire quest was a fantastic joke.

 

[WoW Killer]

Ha, that's funny. Still no luck getting a Bee myself, but I'll probably not bother now.

Still, the only fix they needed was to give it 1 shield damage on activation so that you still have the delay time between procs. It'd still be significantly better than other amp shields.

 

[Ice Car]

That sound was always there when shots connected with the amp damage bonus.

 

[Garland]

That sound was always there when shots connected with the amp damage bonus.

I know the sound you are referring to and I can say with certainty that there is an additional buzzing noise, which I'm not even sure was anywhere in the game prior to this. It also spams the amp shield sound in addition to the buzzing. The hit connecting sound is still present (the one you are referring to), but I never found it that distracting.

I'm just now realizing how difficult it is to discuss sounds in text without devolving to strings of capitalized consonants.

 

[Garland]

Oh no.
I must now turn my sound off to use my ridiculously over powered buff.
Horrors.


Should have made it like the Bane and made you move slow or something.

Oh god... The Bane...
It works well enough but that...that voice...

"BAM, BAM, BAM, BAM, BAM!"

"RELOADING WEAPON"

"SWITCHING WEAPON!"

And thats when I realized the entire quest was a fantastic joke.

I think the addition of the fitting buzzing noises to the shield is representative of how much of a joke the division and flaming on both sides of The Bee's usage has become. To me, what better way to trivialize infighting within the community than to just a little sound to The Bee. Of course this is speculation, but seeing as this is the first adjustment that has been made to the shield since the game has been released, I think it speaks volumes to the insignificance of the debate and any schisms it has caused.

 

[josemlopes]

Why do people want the sound removed? Its clearly there to annoy the people that use such overpowered shield, I like the idea andyou cant exactly call it cheap tactics since whoever finishes the game with it needs a big amount of patience

 

[Terrible Opinions]

Y'know, I would have used The Bane if it didn't slow you down...

And The Bee confuses me. Bees die when they sting people. The Bee defies the standard of the amp shield in that it doesn't hurt you when you fire. If anything, it should take more shields away...

 

[Garland]

Why do people want the sound removed? Its clearly there to annoy the people that use such overpowered shield, I like the idea andyou cant exactly call it cheap tactics since whoever finishes the game with it needs a big amount of patience

I haven't read of anyone demanding they remove the sound; I rather like it being in the game as it amuses me.

 

[SomeLameStuff]

I don't use the Bee all the time anyway. I only swap into it when farming or in boss battles.

Still, funny nerf that.

 

[Coffeejack]

That sounds almost as annoying as the Hyperion quest-related snipe rifle that nags you as you fire or reload. Not even selling the gun made it stop nagging me. It actually caused the nagging to happen every single time I changed weapons. Axton had to be put down. The horror.

 

[L0dest0ne]

I just love how Gear box included all of these unique weapons. Considering how half of the game's selling point is it's comedy, it seems to work well. And so what if one gun is overpowered? Its a singleplayer game. Yes I realize you can co-op, but its not as game breaking as it would be in an MMO.

 

[Assassin Xaero]

All those "talking" guns annoyed the hell out of me, so guess this works.