Replay without any keys but with the DLC?
Borderlands 2
Which one? I have only had problems on THV with the uber-boss and L50 missions. On normal, I cleared everything pretty easily. Starts with P?
It wasn't a person... I forget the name of it. I think I was severely underleveled.
There's one small part of the entire game. An optional challenge in an arena that gets progressively harder. That's evidence that the game wasn't made extremely easy because of the gold keys? Blah. We walked through, with no problem, 90% of the game. There was no challenge outside of the 2 optional challenge arenas.
And to say "But the next play through is harder!" is crap too. Yes, the monsters and enemies level up, but so do the gold key weapons and everything else about your character. Gold key weapons will always out level the enemies keeping the game an easy walk through.
I think gold keys should have been used at times where normal loot wasn't getting the job done and we couldn't progress without some help.
But you're soooooooo wrong.
Look, I'll admit that the keys DO help you out. They give you purple weapons at your level that truly shouldn't be at your level.
In fact, I think the ultimate achievement should be beating the game without a key or twinking. Something we could have established immediately once we saw how big the weapons were that the chest gave.
However, beyond that are factors you simply do not take into account.
For example, tell Gordon to dump his healing shots. Get rid of them. Let's see how easy it is to keep each other alive now. That ability alone, IMHO, has "broken" the game more than the Golden Chest. Even with all our overleveled weapons, we still routinely find ourselves on the ground in fight for your life mode.
I'll stop dropping my turret, which is essentially a fourth member that we don't need to worry about, yet draws fire. You'd shit if you saw how easy Deathtrap makes things.
There are four of us.
And let's disable all badass bonuses. Hell, mine are all between 6-10% at this point.
Also, let's stop using sniper rifles. One thing I've noticed in both games is that sniper rifles DO make the game easy. Picking people off from so far away that they can't fight back tends to make things simple.
You need to remember that the game is always throwing enemies at us. Thus, they can't ALL be able to kick our ass or they wouldn't be able to have areas respawn. At that point, the game wouldn't be fun as you wouldn't be able to explore. Some folks SHOULD be pussies compared to us.
If I was designing BL3, I think one of the things I'd focus on is keeping new areas leveled above the players, so while older areas aren't a challenge, new areas are always a challenge.
"Happy slaves are the worst enemies of freedom." - Marie Von Ebner
"It was always the women, and above all the young ones, who were the most bigoted adherents of the Party, the swallowers of slogans, the amateur spies..." - Orwell
"It was always the women, and above all the young ones, who were the most bigoted adherents of the Party, the swallowers of slogans, the amateur spies..." - Orwell
Amen.Leisher wrote:If I was designing BL3, I think one of the things I'd focus on is keeping new areas leveled above the players, so while older areas aren't a challenge, new areas are always a challenge.
And it's amazing how much difference a few levels make. About 5 levels is a HUGE difference in capability, from being completely unable to fight (5 levels down) to having good combat (at level) to just wiping them off the face of the planet (5 levels up). I think that plays into it.
It's not me, it's someone else.
BTW, all of my healing abilities and shots also affect the turret.Leisher wrote:For example, tell Gordon to dump his healing shots. Get rid of them. Let's see how easy it is to keep each other alive now. That ability alone, IMHO, has "broken" the game more than the Golden Chest. Even with all our overleveled weapons, we still routinely find ourselves on the ground in fight for your life mode.
I'll stop dropping my turret, which is essentially a fourth member that we don't need to worry about, yet draws fire. You'd shit if you saw how easy Deathtrap makes things.
"Be bold, and mighty forces will come to your aid."
The trivial/impossible looks like it's mostly just a comparison between your level, and the "level" of the mission. Of course, as we all know, missions at the same "level" vary wildly in difficulty.
I second this.
There's one small part of the entire game. An optional challenge in an arena that gets progressively harder. That's evidence that the game wasn't made extremely easy because of the gold keys? Blah. We walked through, with no problem, 90% of the game. There was no challenge outside of the 2 optional challenge arenas.
Ok. Hold the phizizone.
1. What about Lynchwood? That place with the train tracks where we got rung a few times?
2. Consider that we've not leveled up the evolvers much (goliaths and especially varkids).
3. We've glossed over all the boss- and kill-related challenges unless we stumble on them (most of the time).
I will say that the ridiculous (though finite) availability of purple weapons means that I can pretty much always spin the wheel, potentially get a kick-ass gun, and slaughter a particular brand of critter. Weapon superiority allows us to slack off, split up, and launch uncoordinated assaults that succeed. The gold keys are a bit less volatile than the slots at Moxxi's, so I'm also 50% likely to get a shitty item or an item type of don't want. If anyone wants to see what the final part's like with no purple gear, I'm game.
I've still got 30.
51, I think. I may keep them until I hit the cap.
In fact, I think the ultimate achievement should be beating the game without a key or twinking.
Nah. The ultimate achievement is beating it using only white weapons. It could be an achievement, called something like "Racist" or "Honky." You could combine it with another one in which you never use your special ability and call that one "Handi Man" (from "In Living Color").
For example, tell Gordon to dump his healing shots.
As Leish argues, that's part of his abilities, part of the game ... like gold keys, and (raid) boss farming. That's as arbitrary as calling bullshit in Gauntlet on the wizard and capping his potion usage at five per level (because, hey, you've got to kill that Death sumbitch in the mazes).
Gearbox didn't make this so people had to coordinate virtual 4-person death squads with the precision of a military raid. They made it for average people to blow shit up, and then give you every chance to get something that causes a larger explosion. If you want to make it interesting, they included lots of extra incentivized challenges, then Steam achievements, and on top of that you can make up on your own weird rules, like Honky-Handi Man. Of course, they build shit that way to drive replay value up.
I remember playing Thief on the "no kill, steal everything, do everything" rule because it made it more interesting, especially towards the end when everything was non-human and therefore fair game.
Diogenes of Sinope: "It is not that I am mad, it is only that my head is different from yours."
Arnold Judas Rimmer, BSC, SSC: "Better dead than smeg."
Arnold Judas Rimmer, BSC, SSC: "Better dead than smeg."
Double fuck that. ULTIMATE achievement is winning it with no weapons, melee only.Malcolm wrote:Nah. The ultimate achievement is beating it using only white weapons. It could be an achievement, called something like "Racist" or "Honky." You could combine it with another one in which you never use your special ability and call that one "Handi Man" (from "In Living Color").In fact, I think the ultimate achievement should be beating the game without a key or twinking.
"Be bold, and mighty forces will come to your aid."
ULTIMATE achievement is winning it with no weapons, melee only.
Four Zer0s would have no problem doing that. Unless there's some cheap-ass mission where you have to shoot something from a distance (the circuit box in the first part of the game, for instance). The boss fights would be ultra-brutal, but not impossible.
Edited By Malcolm on 1356749054
Diogenes of Sinope: "It is not that I am mad, it is only that my head is different from yours."
Arnold Judas Rimmer, BSC, SSC: "Better dead than smeg."
Arnold Judas Rimmer, BSC, SSC: "Better dead than smeg."
Yes, we do go down when we split up and do our own thing. I've mentioned that myself. But it's not often that we actually die. More often than not, my gun absolutely melts an enemy allowing me to survive. I don't worry about having back up because I know I'm most likely going to win. When are we in the most trouble? When there's nothing close enough to melt or someone steals the last kill while you are in fight for your life.
I would have much rather played the game as a team instead of four random people running around doing what they want and only occasionally needing help from friends. When we first started playing, where no one had used a gold key yet, we would move in as a team. Gordon sniping, I'd try to flank and we always used cover. It wasn't long before we'd all barrel in trying to get as many kills as we could before someone else got it. Just as many times as we met a true challenge, we'd split up in teams of two and clear an entire map before meeting up with each other. With the enemies supposedly beefed up for multiplay, that shouldn't have been so easy.
Of course I don't want the game to be so hard that it becomes frustrating and a chore to play through. But I feel like we played the game on easy instead of normal. I think playing with looted weapons would have added enough of a challenge that we would have had to try sometimes. When was the last time anyone actually kept and used a looted weapon? We never had to try hard at anything (except that last arena). We just walked through the game with no risk of failure of any kind.
I'm not saying the game was ruined or no fun or anything like that. I'm just saying the game was made way too easy.
As far as abilities and bonuses. The bonuses I would compare to runes and masteries. A slight bonus that would only come into play in a few battles. Abilities. . . I never saw them as crazy over powered. Yes I see your turret mow through enemies and I've been revived more than once by Gordon's balls. But more often than not, I didn't need Gordon's balls to survive. I easily killed enemies during FFYL. Gordon's ball use would have been more important had we relied on them more than we did our uber weapons. I appreciated Gordon's balls, but rarely needed them. More often than not, I was about 3 bullets away from killing an enemy to survive when Gordon's balls would hit me. A bit more effort would have been required on our parts with looted/bought weapons only. Hell, money might have even been a part of the game instead of just a steam achievement.
I would have much rather played the game as a team instead of four random people running around doing what they want and only occasionally needing help from friends. When we first started playing, where no one had used a gold key yet, we would move in as a team. Gordon sniping, I'd try to flank and we always used cover. It wasn't long before we'd all barrel in trying to get as many kills as we could before someone else got it. Just as many times as we met a true challenge, we'd split up in teams of two and clear an entire map before meeting up with each other. With the enemies supposedly beefed up for multiplay, that shouldn't have been so easy.
Of course I don't want the game to be so hard that it becomes frustrating and a chore to play through. But I feel like we played the game on easy instead of normal. I think playing with looted weapons would have added enough of a challenge that we would have had to try sometimes. When was the last time anyone actually kept and used a looted weapon? We never had to try hard at anything (except that last arena). We just walked through the game with no risk of failure of any kind.
I'm not saying the game was ruined or no fun or anything like that. I'm just saying the game was made way too easy.
As far as abilities and bonuses. The bonuses I would compare to runes and masteries. A slight bonus that would only come into play in a few battles. Abilities. . . I never saw them as crazy over powered. Yes I see your turret mow through enemies and I've been revived more than once by Gordon's balls. But more often than not, I didn't need Gordon's balls to survive. I easily killed enemies during FFYL. Gordon's ball use would have been more important had we relied on them more than we did our uber weapons. I appreciated Gordon's balls, but rarely needed them. More often than not, I was about 3 bullets away from killing an enemy to survive when Gordon's balls would hit me. A bit more effort would have been required on our parts with looted/bought weapons only. Hell, money might have even been a part of the game instead of just a steam achievement.
Looted makes them different? How is using a gold key different than spinning slots or farming a raid boss?
You want difficult? I propose we go thru the rest of the game with nothing higher than blue. Let's see what happens.
You want difficult? I propose we go thru the rest of the game with nothing higher than blue. Let's see what happens.
Diogenes of Sinope: "It is not that I am mad, it is only that my head is different from yours."
Arnold Judas Rimmer, BSC, SSC: "Better dead than smeg."
Arnold Judas Rimmer, BSC, SSC: "Better dead than smeg."
Then don't farm and don't use slots. Those are just more mechanisms to make the game easier. There's no explicit difficulty level, but keys, slots, and farming are like setting it to beginner.
I've never farmed. Whatever I get the first time is what I get.
Looted is different because purple is RARE. Not true on keys.
I'm basically doing my TVH in blue/green, since good purples have been so hard to find, and level tends to matter more than color.
OK, just checked:
All 4 primary weapons are green. 2 backups are blue.
1 modifier is white, 1 is green, 2 are blue (one blue is L35).
So yeah, that makes life harder.
Edited By TheCatt on 1356815123
I've never farmed. Whatever I get the first time is what I get.
Looted is different because purple is RARE. Not true on keys.
I'm basically doing my TVH in blue/green, since good purples have been so hard to find, and level tends to matter more than color.
OK, just checked:
All 4 primary weapons are green. 2 backups are blue.
1 modifier is white, 1 is green, 2 are blue (one blue is L35).
So yeah, that makes life harder.
Edited By TheCatt on 1356815123
It's not me, it's someone else.
I've never farmed. Whatever I get the first time is what I get.
Including respawns of critters when you walk over areas you've been over before? Containers you've opened before?
Looted is different because purple is RARE. Not true on keys.
A key provides you, at most, with what ... 2 purples? As I've said previously, half of what the gold keys give me seem to be crap and just end up getting sold. If it's not a grenade mod, class mod, or relic you don't want, it's a shitty gun or shield that goes for 10x more than what you usually get for a crappy gun in the white-blue range. Gold keys will also never give you orange loot. If I burn five keys at a goddamn gold chest, I might get ten items, and maybe one will be used regularly. If I spend a couple hours farming raid bosses (we got 1 orange and a few purple off the Warrior last night), I probably get similar results. Was that dude difficult? More than a fucking skag, yes. But a million times easier than the fucking arena fights.
In addition, if you want a purple gun, you're always $40K away. You can keep tipping Moxxi for a guaranteed purple SMG. That's actually only about $8K less than what the level 50 version sells for. Considering most guns are bought for less than half of what you sell them for, that's not a bad deal. That's a built-in game mechanic.
You can level up a varkid to Vermivorous the Invincible and farm him in Caustic Caverns, or the Warrior, or Terramorphus. I've heard of people going a week without getting an orange from any of them. They will drop at least some purple, though. In addition, you can actually hack BL2 and switch the player counter to 4, meaning the spawn engine spews out critters as though it's a full house all the time. I'll say the same shit I said months ago (Posted on: Sep. 13 2012,11:10) about gold keys...
Eh, I was throwing away purples like pennies somewhere near the last third of the original.
They are not special. I can't even call them rare. Oranges weren't rare in BL1. I went through an entire 4-man playthrough in BL2, and I saw two oranges. That's fucking rare. Even taking away the gold key purples, I saw enough of them issue forth from the slots alone to figure they aren't an endangered species. I have yet to see, in person, a slot machine yield an orange weapon.
Diogenes of Sinope: "It is not that I am mad, it is only that my head is different from yours."
Arnold Judas Rimmer, BSC, SSC: "Better dead than smeg."
Arnold Judas Rimmer, BSC, SSC: "Better dead than smeg."
I've been playing solo. Purples are pretty damned rare. Greens/Whites are all over the place, blues on occasion. But I've only got 5 oranges in my entire playthrough (>140 hours, L49), and maybe 15 purples.
They're rare, and the game uses the slots and keys to make a de-facto ease setting.
They're rare, and the game uses the slots and keys to make a de-facto ease setting.
It's not me, it's someone else.
Start here. Word on the street is that there's also a way to hack the level at which enemies spawn.
Edited By Malcolm on 1356902856
Edited By Malcolm on 1356902856
Diogenes of Sinope: "It is not that I am mad, it is only that my head is different from yours."
Arnold Judas Rimmer, BSC, SSC: "Better dead than smeg."
Arnold Judas Rimmer, BSC, SSC: "Better dead than smeg."
Malcolm is just comparing one game 'breaking' mechanic to another. Gold keys = farming raid bosses = slots. All of those things make the game easier, which is all I've been arguing. Not saying they are exploits or cheating or anything like that. They make the game easy. Too easy. And I put breaking in quotes because I know it's not breaking the game. It made a better sentence than game 'easier making'. And to say half of the stuff you pull is crap is no good either considering we all have more keys than we would ever need to ensure drawing a complete solid gold key load out. And you have twice as many keys as I do. It would be one thing if we had just a couple keys and half were crap. But when you only need 10 keys to have a complete gold key load out and you have 30 keys. . . half of the stuff being crap doesn't matter or enter the equation at all. As I've stated, I have 20+ keys right now and haven't played with a looted item since half way through the game. All of my equipment is gold key equipment. And I have enough keys to equip 2 other characters. Half the keys drawing crap is not even close to keeping the game balanced towards a 'normal' difficulty setting.
The game was not broken. Was still fun. But we played it on the easiest setting possible. Not how I normally play games, personally. I wish we'd have kept it on normal.
The game was not broken. Was still fun. But we played it on the easiest setting possible. Not how I normally play games, personally. I wish we'd have kept it on normal.
Right, agree with Cake.
In unrelated news:
In unrelated news:
IGN today reported that Borderlands 2's level cap, currently at 50, will rise sometime in the first three months of next year.
It's not going to come with Sir Hammerlock's Big Game Hunt, announced and previewed today. 2K Games told IGN that Gearbox Software still is considering whether to do it as part of a DLC extension or as a separate download.
Additionally, 2K is said to be thrilled with Borderlands 2's sales performance, and is envisioning a second "season" of DLC after this one concludes. Big Game Hunt will be the third of four promised extensions.
It's not me, it's someone else.