Gearbox Wonders Why People Aren't Ripping Off Borderlands

[Setch Dreskar]

To me this just seems very self serving and more of a "Wow our game is so great and perfect in every way, wonder why its not being copied because its just so good, lord we didn't even want to release it because it was just too great and we were afraid it would be copied." - Heavily paraphrased but man that takes a level of self indulgence and delusion I haven't seen since the "DNF was awesome, you people that hated it obviously never played it." line of PR we got a few weeks back.

For me the game was boring, very lack luster in almost every respect. While I know friends that play it, and love the game to death I could barely muster up the will to see the game to its conclusion, and that wasn't because the story had any point or purpose to it, I just wanted to see what this stupid vault thing was. Bloody alien super king, and though the loot system was extensive all the weapons became too similar to one another near the end. I mean other then a stats boost or damage type effect, watch one helix spiraling quad-launch rocket launcher you've seen them all.

Also the driving mechanic was awful at the best of times, and honestly when it comes down to it I prefer the Diablo style, more fantasy setting, loot grinder games. Guns are nice, but since you have a system that randomly creates them, most of the weapons aren't going to feel good or handle well, and just turn up to be like pea shooters with a color swap effect. It may be why in this type of genre I do prefer fantasy setting more because you can go absolutely absurd with weapon types when you aren't going for realism. (Realism in the sense each weapon fires a projectile, rather then say you get a staff that causes everyone around you to explode into ice shards.)

He also needs to remember, though it is a shooter, the game is targeting a very, very specific subset of gamer, and if most people are like me and wanted to come in for either the shooting or the thought of an epic gear grinder with near infinite possibilities they will be put off by both being average at best and the loot system hindering the feel of the shooting system.

So ya, its all just my opinion but to me Borderlands hasn't been ripped off because its not worth ripping it off, its not as good as he wants to believe it is.

 

[LRed01]

It's simple why people don't rip off Borderlands: It's generally bad business practice to rip off a game that's, IMHO, completely and totally shitty to begin with, and itself ripped off games that are shitty (Diablo / Mass Effect / Dragon Age).

Mass Effect,Dragon Age,Diablo (forgetting that fiasco with the 3 attached to it)
shitty
chose one
but it's your IMHO as you said so I'll let it slide.
But overall I agree while the game had quite a big success the foundation of it is quite bad in reality.
Writing is non existent characters are cardboard cut outs and humor...wat?
The only thing I find humorous about the game is that I know some writer was laughing his ass off at the shitty dialog.
The bazillion guns was way oversold when the truth is that the system amounts to nothing but some premade stocks and you add shiny numbers to it.As an mmo player you'll need to try harder to fool me gearbox.
Also the quests were shit they are everything that modern mmo's are trying to run away from the kill that collect it's shit and destroy more shit you can say the combat is totally diffs man but the truth is it is repetitive as all hell the only fun I had with it was when I got 3 more ppl and played and getting 3 people to play with you such a game at launch full price is not easy specially if you don't have a group of friends who you play with (online or offline).I luckily had guild mates at the time but having played alone as well it is something I could not do at all and bear in mind I have a high tolerance for repetitive tasks (wow Tera and other mmo's have conditioned me to that) but I still could not be arsed to go beyond the starting area alone.
Sorry for the rant.
tl;dr the game was only fun with other people, it used several components from mmo's and rpgs except they were the worst parts.Also I don't like fighting 50 guys with a mask and the game telling they're different.
ttl;dr game bad.alone unbearable.

 

[Vigormortis]

It is just another loot-em-up with a camera change, what could people rip off?
Cell Shading? Ok sure, but most other devs can get their graphics to work so they don't need cell shading.
Dull, repetitive gameplay? Plenty of games do that.
Fifty gazillion guns that are more like twenty with tiny variations? Why bother?
Horrible, horrible, PC Port? Plenty of devs were already doing that.

I fail to see anything unique about Borderlands that would warrant copying.

That...that part right there...is exactly why I'm waiting to see how the game turns out before I even consider buying it.

I ended up having a lot of fun with the first game. I say "ended up" because I couldn't enjoy the game until I downloaded several...several...community-made patches and bug fixes. Only then did the game become fun.

But man, was it ever fun. Especially with friends.

Still, Gearbox's complete disregard for the PC version left a very bad taste in my mouth. That's why I never even bothered buying it until it dropped to $7.50 on Steam, with all DLC included.

If, however, Gearbox doesn't half-ass the PC build this time around, maybe I'll buy it full price. But that's a very big "maybe".

 

[ThePenguinKnight]

I think we can all agree Borderlands is far from being a unique game.
Furthermore, the game really doesn't have much going for it since all in all you fight the same few enemies in slightly different desert landscapes with a million guns that all do the same set of things with different damage and elements. Every quest in the game is a fetch quest mimicking the last and the stories attached to them come in a wall of text which is unacceptable these days.

 

[Mrsoupcup]

Fifties style billboards? No, I'm pretty sure there haven't been many innovations as far as billboards go, so calling them fifty's style billboards is a bit unfair. It's like calling a Bicycle playing card used today an imitator for the cards back in the 1890s.
And, I was under the impression Claptrap is supposed to be deliberately annoying and infuriating, not that the Vault Boy does anything funny considering he's a logo.

Yeah, I'd say it brought something new to the table.

I'm still trying to understand that simile.

Honesty after seeing this, don't tell me that Borderlands wasn't borrowing from Fallout.

Spoiler: Borderlands, showing that it to was trying to capture that Retro Future vibe.

Spoiler: Now a few from new vegas.

While not a horrible game, borderlands brought absolutely nothing original to the table.
Seriously, name one thing they did no one else has.

 

[Agente L]

While not a horrible game, borderlands brought absolutely nothing original to the table.
Seriously, name one thing they did no one else has.

Using your logic, every fps is a copy of Wolf 3d and every video game ever is a copy of the first game ever.

Borderlands may not brought anything truly new, but the combination of the diablo with a FPS was a new thing. The way they mixed up many different mechanics in a single game is what makes bordelands unique in its own way.

 

[grigjd3]

Borderlands is a shooter with role playing elements. Fallout 3 was a role playing game with shooting in it. Anyhow, the game had nothing to keep me playing. I bought it on a Steam sale, tried it for a couple of evenings and then gave up on it.

 

[RJ Dalton]

Try new things? Dear god, he's mad, somebody get the straight jacket!

 

[Dutchj]

I get the feeling ( that means it's a guess, I could be wrong ) that most of the people who are calling Borderlands bland and unoriginal haven't played the game for more than 10 hours. Borderlands is quite a vast game, and I think its biggest flaw is the fact that it starts off very slow. The first time I played it I got the same impression and thought it sucked. When I tried it again later I hung in there for a bit longer and I started to enjoy it. Next thing I knew I had put several hundred hours into the game.

As for the whole ripping off business, I think that this also has some things to do with Borderlands being kind of a sleeper hit, a dark horse candidate if you will. When the game came out I didn't hear about it until a few months afterwards. The mentioned 'over 2 million' sales will probably have been pretty gradual, as like they said, Borderlands was Gearbox's new IP and they didn't release too much information about it. I think the game only has a single proper trailer that shows off what the game actually turned out to be. A lot of other promotional material came out after the release, such as the Clap Trap mini series on Youtube and of course also the DLC's and their promotional material.

I would like to add that due to me not having heard about the game at the time of release, I am completely ignorant to its actual release so that entire second paragraph may not make any sense if Borderlands actually did have a good opening month.

 

[jFr[e]ak93]

<img src=http://i3.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/004/457/challenge.jpg>

Challenge Accepted

OT Rage stole the cars/ post-apoc setting. Diablo had the looting. It's also a really hard game to rip off in that the bar was set fairly high... well... except for the story...

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

Ummm...I liked Borderlands as much as the next fella, but original? Really? The setting (post apocalyptic), cel shading and particular implenetation, maybe at a push, but hack and slash has been around for two decades. BL is an FPS hack and slash (or "shoot and loot") and no mistake about that. It is fun, it is funny, cel shading looks great, it's quirky and the gameplay is good, but original, it is not.

Just hope the fix the pathetic scaling problems in number 2. An actual challenging game would be nice. Wish it was better on PC though, rather than a clunky Gamespy filled console port.

 

[Mrsoupcup]

While not a horrible game, borderlands brought absolutely nothing original to the table.
Seriously, name one thing they did no one else has.

Using your logic, every fps is a copy of Wolf 3d and every video game ever is a copy of the first game ever.

Borderlands may not brought anything truly new, but the combination of the diablo with a FPS was a new thing. The way they mixed up many different mechanics in a single game is what makes Bordelands unique in its own way.

No, by my logic Borderlands is an unoriginal game trying to ride on the coat tails of another series success.

And the whole Diablo Shooter thing was already done in Too Human, and it was just as bad then as it is now.

 

[Artemicion]

I thought RAGE was basically a borderlands clone. No 4-way coop, no silliness, but same basic concept? You're in a vast desert and you take on different missions for different individuals?

 

[TheKaduflyerSystem]

Personally, I think that the article was written a little poorly: "Shooter/RPG" What, you mean like...: Deus Ex HR, Mass Effect... the list goes on but I'm lazy. "Shooter/RPG" Surely a Shooter RPG would involve...shooting...and Role Playing... there are a few of those.

Off the top of my head I can't think of any Cel Shaded one though, so you do have that Gearbox

Additional: I Effin love ellipses. They help me convey my usual speaking tone of doubt and sarcasm.

 

[Aprilgold]

Considering that Borderlands is Diablo with guns, I'd say there's not a lot original to rip off.

What, besides its distinctive visual style, clever writing and wickedly dark sense of humor?

If you want to get down to it, Borderlands stole a lot of its visual cues from other games. It is essentially Fallout without the green and the slight semblance of realism. Its humor was done before by old point and click games, at least in a similar style.

The saying "Nothing is original" is what I'm getting at.

"Borderlands was a bad game that's why they don't rip it off"

If you said something like that, then congratulations, you missed the point. You may not have liked it, but Borderlands was a successful game. As it was said in the article, Borderlands made a lot of money, got a lot of critical praise, and has a more hyped sequel coming up.

As for the question of being ripped off, it may have something to do with a lack of viable settings for that specific type of gameplay. Of course, if a company just wanted to rip it off, that wouldn't be an issue. But for someone who is trying to design a setting with the multitudes of guns, upgrades and such just lying around, it's kinda hard to beat a futuristic desert planet with tons of mercenaries and capitalists hanging around.

Call of Duty is successful, does that make it a good game? Success =/= Good.

____________________

It has, go look at All Zombies Must Die, its just Borderlands with Zombies from a top-down perspective.

 

[praetor_alpha]

You forget how ID has worked after Quake 3 came out. They make the engine first, and then slap a game on it. Thus D3, Q4, and RAGE.

I've read/heard that id didn't work that much on Q4. And doesn't engine coding count as production time?