Improving the Borderlands

[crimsonshrouds]

Hey I was just watching some videos for the new Borderlands the pre-sequal and I felt myself getting into the hype. I've dismissed the thoughts of getting it, because I got bills and my work is cutting my hours -_-. Another reason I have no intentions of getting it is because I stopped playing borderlands 2 out of frustration and boredom. Lately, my only game of choice is Dark Souls and I've just made a pyromancer who I've kept at soul level 1 all the way to the boss fog-wall in sens fortress. (I'm thinking about leveling up now)

So I got to thinking about how I would improve the borderlands to get my interest back in the series.

1. My number one problem with borderlands 2 is the enemy scaling. They seriously need to tweak how much damage enemies do especially when people are playing alone because not everyone has friends, especially ones with the same console as you. I've played the borderlands series thus far as a loner and borderlands 2 was almost completely unplayable for me on true vault hunter mode. I can't tell you how many times I would be put into fight for life from full health in a single hit. Then add to the high amount of damage the enemies deal with how much freaking damage they take and we have a problem. I was playing against doc mercy who ate everyone of the grenades I had. Seriously fuck Doc Mercy. When I finally did kill Doc Mercy, I felt no sense of satisfaction or accomplishment. I just felt anger like I had just finally broke down a brick wall with my face and had wasted my time because their was an even bigger wall behind it.

2. They need to revamp the gun system. I know their whole gimmick is a bazillion guns but only about a hundred of them are useful and the majority of those are legends. There is a problem when a lvl 29 Unkempt Harold does more damage than almost any gun I can find at level 40. 90% of guns i've found in borderlands 2 are fucking useless except for selling them.

Also for fuck sake let us be able to carry as many weapons as we want if you are going to give us random junk to sell instead of good weapons. The same should apply to ammo if your going to make enemies freaking bullet sponges.

If you are going to give us sniper rifles at least make them viable in the upper levels. I never use snipers near the end of playthrough 1 because all the enemies start becoming bullet sponges and I would run out of bullets before I could clear an area.

I think making the guns scale with your level damage wise and get rid of the level requirement for them. The random numbers that you get when it comes to damage seems very detrimental to the game too me. I would make it so you could just rip apart the guns and use/combine the manufacturer parts to make your own guns along with the random gun drop. Give you the ability to have a weapons that suits your gameplay styles. They could make a near infinite amount of guns instead a bazillion. Also make the manufacturer parts a form of currency or a possible item to buy. You could add a degradation system so money/currency actually carries weight. Having 99999999 money or whatever seems meaningless when vendor sells the only decent weapon for 99999999. Seriously, the economy in borderlands 2 is fucked.

3. Your characters need to be more specialized like in other rpgs and it should let you switch between the characters at anytime during the playthrough. I would also give them all at least 3 action skills but you can only have one equipped at any one time.

I'm not a game designer so maybe my ideas wouldn't work.

Tell me your thoughts and whether you agree with me or any ideas you would have to improve my ideas. Also how would you improve the series?

 

[nomotog_v1legacy]

I fully agree with your first point. Damage scaling is out of whack. Looking back, I enjoy the first zone of BL2 the most because it's about the only time that you really dual with enemies where you both have the endurance to duck it out for a few shots. As you go along, battles take place in the blink of an eye. Increase the time to death on things.

I think I would like to see borderlands take more cues from old school shooters. You know things like faster run speed. (the ability to doge more attacks) The ability to carry and equip more guns. (I ponder if you could go back to old school and let players equip one gun of every class.) More accuracy and better ability to run and gun.

My big idea on how to improve the game would be adding alternate fire to the weapons. Give each weapon a semi random alt fire ability (that maybe acts as replacement for the action skill?). Things like deployed shields, shots you can detonate, Xray vision. Take every alt fire ability from every game and just copy them all.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Yeah the looting system was never much good. Too much vendor trash, and not nearly enough things to spend money on.

 

[Skops]

I still like Borderlands, but I have never really liked Borderlands 2. Probably one of the biggest reasons why I dislike it is that lack of balance for enemy scaling in Singleplayer. Shields in BL2 are near worthless.. Unless it's playthrough one and you're several levels higher than the enemies around you, that shield isn't lasting more than 1-2 bullets. Apart from the multiplayer trophies, I never played BL1 with other players and I had a great time with it. BL2 is just a really irritating experience if you're playing by yourself. So if there is one thing I want the most improved for Borderlands from now on, it's better enemy scaling.

Other things I would want are just returns of Borderlands 1; Weapon proficiency, Combat Rifles/LMGs that don't suck, Dark Humor (Not the meme/reference driven humor of BL2), no manufacturer gimmicks that hinder guns more than help (DAHL), No more Slag.. Please for love of god no more Slag.

Most of my issues with BL2 comes down to a certain 'balance' I felt was there in BL1 and wasn't in BL2.

 

[Wasted]

Is it too much to ask for a functional auto-loot option? At the moment the auto loot only seems to pick up 30% of money and ammo, but won't auto-loot them from boxes or pick up Eridium. I have no reason to ignore these times and it gets tedious smashing 'E' trying to pick up loot.

Also, a 'Refill All Ammo' option from the ammo vendor.

 

[AT God]

My personal issue with the Borderlands series has been the combat. I like to play games solo because I like to be meticulous and search entire areas and grind at my own pace instead of having to ask other people to hang back or what ever. I prefer to feel in control of the story, I want to read the text boxes, hear the briefings, etc. Therefore, I try and beat everything solo, and then will later find people to tackle tasks that require alternate players, like Raid bosses and such.

That is probably why I have so many issues with Borderlands, because I don't play it coop. I personally feel that the best way to scale coop games in difficulty to correspond to more players is through two fairly simple tactics, increasing the number of enemies and increasing the health of enemies. That works perfectly well for coop, once you understand that more players means the usual enemies you have faced now have more health, that is all the learning you have to do. However, I really hate how Borderlands handles difficulty scaling, especially because it undermines the very usefulness of the game's key feature, the huge number of guns.

My experience with Borderlands, first one and second one, is that instead of creating new enemies to signify harder challenges, the game simply increases the health of known enemies as the game progresses. This undermines the essential coolness of having a large amount of unique weapons, because the moment the game increases enemy health, your favorite gun that you were so happy to get as a drop becomes worthless compared to a run of the mill, leveled weapon. I like to use snipers and pistols in Borderlands, usually have a sniper and revolver as my main weapons, shotgun for bosses, and an assault rifle/smg for killing lighter enemies. However, every time I enter a new level, it seems that my guns become outdated. Making an enemy take twice as many bullets as he did in the last area isn't fun difficulty scaling. It would be much more fun to make me fight 2 of the previous levels enemies, that way my guns still feel useful and the difficulty comes from having more threats, needing more precision, and having to be extra conservative with ammo.

This approach would also solve an important issue with the game's rewards. An issue that hasn't been resolved, at least not by the first 2 games, is the quest reward system. When a quest rewards you with a cool/unique gun that does something interesting, even if you were at the appropriate level, that gun quickly becomes useless since there is no way of making the gun meet the constantly scaling health amounts of later enemies. The gun recycler thing that supposedly lets you improve loot items in the new game might be able to fix this problem but I don't think it does as it stands. If they included a way to increase the level of a weapon without changing it's characteristics, I think that would be extremely beneficial to the game's balance and enjoyment.

When I was playing through Borderlands 2, after beating it and getting to the point where I felt like looking into modding the game, I found a program that let you construct guns using the game's assets, basically attach the various components that make up certain gun types. In that, I found that it was possible to create quest/reward weapons at any level, meaning that the issue of quest reward weapons becoming obsolete after an hour of gameplay was already fixed in the game, but wasn't given to the player without modding tools. The only possible problem with giving players the ability to level up older weapons is that for weapons with extremely unique characteristics, it might unbalance them. I think there could be easy ways around this, just through simple monitoring of how leveling affects these unique weapons.

Also, being able to change gun colors would be nice, not a real issue, but I hated finding a sniper rifle that was superior in stats only to equip it and find out it had some goofy color or texture on it that made me not want to use it.

 

[gigastar]

2. They need to revamp the gun system. I know their whole gimmick is a bazillion guns but only about a hundred of them are useful and the majority of those are legends. There is a problem when a lvl 29 Unkempt Harold does more damage than almost any gun I can find at level 40. 90% of guns i've found in borderlands 2 are fucking useless except for selling them.

Also for fuck sake let us be able to carry as many weapons as we want if you are going to give us random junk to sell instead of good weapons. The same should apply to ammo if your going to make enemies freaking bullet sponges.

If you are going to give us sniper rifles at least make them viable in the upper levels. I never use snipers near the end of playthrough 1 because all the enemies start becoming bullet sponges and I would run out of bullets before I could clear an area.

I dont see where youre coming from with this. When i was making the jump from level 61 to 72 i was mostly using whatever greens/blues i thought were best at the moment. Though yes, the Harold is grossly overpowered.

Money is largely worthless anyway since theres little chance of a vendor having something worth buying. And ammo is only an issue on the first playthrough. After that each ammo drop is inexplicably gives twice as much.

And snipers are viable at higher levels. But not if theyre of Vladof or Dhal make (poorest ammo economy compared to other brands) and using the incorrect weapon element for any enemy results in a massive drop to your damage output.

Ultimately, near as i can work out youre either not using guns that are up to date, or youre trying to do something stupid like use a fire weapon on anything thats armored or shielded. Also note that in TVHM and UVHM elemental bonuses and penalties are much more extreme than the first playthrough.

 

[Shingeki no Gingerbeard]

I had a bit of a rough time my first play through BL2, but I was also learning the ropes. I made some mistakes, but I got better. I played all the DLC on normal before advancing to TVHM, and I was probably in my 40s when I finally made the change over. Even with that big an advantage, I was only 52 when I cleared TVHM. Everything was competative, and with Handsome Jack dead all the DLC is 50 as well. Tiny Tina's is supposed to start at level 42, and Mister Bony Pants Guy was 50. Yeah, it's tougher than most of TVHM, but it's not all bad.

If it becomes too difficult, I'll swap out Axton's Guerrilla tree for Survival.

 

[Rayce Archer]

-Aim needs to matter the whole time. After level 40 or so enemies have so many damn hit points that shooting for the head is meaningless.

-All the really good guns are anchored to bosses, which makes grinding really unrewarding. Regular enemy drops need to be better.

-Particularly the DLC for BL2 got very lazy with some bosses just emanating elemental novas you can't avoid as a means of artificially increasing their challenge. Enemies should be tough because they're smart and maneuverable, not because they have bottomless HP and blow up nonstop.

-Running and gunning needs to be more viable. On high levels I always just beat Big Game Hunt and Campaign of Carnage by cheat-camping in the hidey-holes they obviously provided for that purpose, because if I stepped out in the open I'd just get swatted.

-Enough with the "raid bosses" that you need 4 people to kill, just learn to scale enemies already.

 

[EbonBehelit]

There is a problem when a lvl 29 Unkempt Harold does more damage than almost any gun I can find at level 40.

That's not surprising, since the Harold is kinda broken. You should see what Salvador can do with a pair of them

I too found most non-legendary guns to be pretty useless in BL2, which made the Pre-Sequel's trailer a tad disappointing, since I could recognize most of the gun models in it.

.... and one of those guns was the Harold. Nisha is probably going to be the new Salvador. Yay?

 

[RedDeadFred]

I still like Borderlands, but I have never really liked Borderlands 2. Probably one of the biggest reasons why I dislike it is that lack of balance for enemy scaling in Singleplayer. Shields in BL2 are near worthless.. Unless it's playthrough one and you're several levels higher than the enemies around you, that shield isn't lasting more than 1-2 bullets. Apart from the multiplayer trophies, I never played BL1 with other players and I had a great time with it. BL2 is just a really irritating experience if you're playing by yourself. So if there is one thing I want the most improved for Borderlands from now on, it's better enemy scaling.

Other things I would want are just returns of Borderlands 1; Weapon proficiency, Combat Rifles/LMGs that don't suck, Dark Humor (Not the meme/reference driven humor of BL2), no manufacturer gimmicks that hinder guns more than help (DAHL), No more Slag.. Please for love of god no more Slag.

Most of my issues with BL2 comes down to a certain 'balance' I felt was there in BL1 and wasn't in BL2.

Honestly, I think the first game was too easy, and then they just went the opposite direction for number 2. I was running a dps Siren build in the first game and nothing ever lived for more tan a second with me giving it direct fire. Even Crawmerax was really easy because of her phase walk. I would run in, kill as much stuff as possible and then phase walk to run out of any trouble while also healing almost all of my health back and giving my shield a chance to start recharging. It was a lot of fun, but probably too easy. Then again, this as a fully leveled character with two of the best weapons in the game for my class (Hellfire and Double Anarchy).

2 is definitely a lot harder to solo on the second and third run-throughs. I have managed to solo TVHM without too much issue as Zer0 (his kunai do a ludicrous amount of damage and make everything easier to kill -especially if they slag the enemies). UVHM was a lot more slow going. All I'll say about it is this: having a slag weapon is pretty much mandatory.

How they could improve the series for me would also be scaling back the enemies a bit (but only in the later play-throughs). Less nova abilities from raid bosses as they're nearly impossible to dodge and make soloing them extremely difficult (still haven't beat Voracidous by myself -beat him with friends though).

Edit: I should mention that I like the loot system almost exactly as is. The best equipment can be gotten from almost any loot source (albeit at an extremely small chance) while also being tied to a boss or two where they drop at a much higher rate. I like this system but I do think they should increase the chance of getting good stuff from random loot sources.

 

[gigastar]

-Enough with the "raid bosses" that you need 4 people to kill, just learn to scale enemies already.

You dont need 4 people to kill raid bosses.

That's not surprising, since the Harold is kinda broken. You should see what Salvador can do with a pair of them

Forget that. Gunzerk with a Slagga and enjoy the 240% damage modifier that Slag delivers in UVHM.

Or even better, dual wield with a Moxxi weapon and enjoy the lifesteal effect working for the Harold.

Or even more batshit insane dual wield a pair of Vladof rocket launchers and use a class mod to boost 5 Shots... Or 6 to 11/5 and watch as you regenerate rockat ammo.

Nothing aint ever gonna be as broke as Salvador.

 

[Poetic Nova]

I thought the scaling in BL2 was fine, untill UVHM which was a wall of meat in the beginning untill I relearned the ropes.
Legendary's are supposed to be rare, so except for some bosses i think the droprates should be kept this way.

Spoiler

appearantly, the scaling got toned down in TPS and making sure vendors spawn less "trash". The latter making sure that legendaries won't feel special anymore imo

 

[Poetic Nova]

There is a problem when a lvl 29 Unkempt Harold does more damage than almost any gun I can find at level 40.

That's not surprising, since the Harold is kinda broken. You should see what Salvador can do with a pair of them

I too found most non-legendary guns to be pretty useless in BL2, which made the Pre-Sequel's trailer a tad disappointing, since I could recognize most of the gun models in it.

.... and one of those guns was the Harold. Nisha is probably going to be the new Salvador. Yay?

Harold is not a harold anymore. Was renamed, got a new spread and it's pellets listed.

 

[Michael Tabbut]

-Enough with the "raid bosses" that you need 4 people to kill, just learn to scale enemies already.

You dont need 4 people to kill raid bosses.

True enough, I fought The Dragon Raid Bosses on the Tiny Tina DLC using Krieg solo.

 

[Scarim Coral]

I definitely agreed with the gun/ loot system. So many time that my purple weapon was far better than the gold or the pink rarity guns.

Even then I think there should be a way to customize the gun itself as in taking the gun apart and switch that parts up for another gun if they are the same make since eg the rarer Hyperion shoutgun look the same as the previous Hyperion shotgun but the stock is different and it got a bayonette attached to it. I mean some people can take a gun apart and resemble it in real life.

 

[Kopikatsu]

One of the main things I've heard the developers talk about for the Pre-Sequel is that they have addressed the horrid level scaling. I can't tell if they did a good job or not since I'm only level 24 and can't beat this stupid, stupid random boss (RK5, if anyone is wondering), but meh.

Like seriously, fuck RK5. Fast moving airship that occasionally leaves the area and does insta-kill bombing runs that have huge AOE and friendly fire, so if you get hit by one you're fucked because it kills all the enemies around you and prevents a second wind.

I got it down to one bullet left on my first try. Currently on my 20~th try. Shit's the worst. And there are SO MANY ENEMIES in the area that I literally cannot use Nisha's Showdown (which I've completely geared myself for) because it just straight up breaks if I try to activate it.

I will say that the fact that the game has a Dan Vs reference means that it automatically wins in my book. Dan Vs was one of my favorite TV series ever, and I was super pissed when it was cancelled. I'm so glad that somebody else remembers what it is.