Poll of the Day > My face when Borderlands is a month older than L4D2...

(+) Yeah! (+)

And there hasn't been a great shooter since

Borderlands 2 was better than the original in pretty much every possible way, though.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Borderlands 2 was better than the original in pretty much every possible way, though.

Except, arguably, the loot philosophy. Some people preferred BL1's focus on world drops and incremental upgrades over targeted farming of legendaries that were substantially more powerful than anything else you could find. Personally, I preferred the latter, since I like the idea of specifically working toward build-enabling gear (that concept offering more build diversity than you can get without including gear in build concepts) instead of just hoping for a drop that would let you become properly OP, but I can understand people preferring otherwise.

adjl posted...

Except, arguably, the loot philosophy. Some people preferred BL1's focus on world drops and incremental upgrades over targeted farming of legendaries that were substantially more powerful than anything else you could find. Personally, I preferred the latter, since I like the idea of specifically working toward build-enabling gear (that concept offering more build diversity than you can get without including gear in build concepts) instead of just hoping for a drop that would let you become properly OP, but I can understand people preferring otherwise.

Drop rates and enemies being mega bullet sponges were off putting as well.

dragon504 posted...

Drop rates and enemies being mega bullet sponges were off putting as well.

Dev: Okay, so like the mobs are going to scale up to be like SUPER bullet spongy.
Dev 2: Okayyy, but that might be annoying, is there a way we can alleviate that?
Dev: How about we create a new element that essentially increases the other elements damage and has to be constantly re-applied to make is super annoying?
Dev 2: I LOVE IT!

Make no mistakes, I think BL2, especially modded, is a far better game than BL1, but Sludge was a bad, bad concept.

The_tall_midget posted...

but Sludge was a bad, bad concept.

which further cemented maya as the only viable character (before, like, people found cool glitches and tech) because she could reliably add slag without using the weapon slot

Lokarin posted...

which further cemented maya as the only viable character (before, like, people found cool glitches and tech) because she could reliably add slag without using the weapon slot

It sure was one of the biggest appeal, but gunzerking though.

At least until getting into the higher OP levels (which just didn't scale well, a consequence of trying to tack on extra difficulty scaling beyond what the original formulas were meant to accommodate without adjusting those formulas), I didn't find enemies were really too spongy unless I didn't have a good build for dealing with them. That, in turn, runs into the issue with targeted farming and build-enabling legendaries: If you balance the game around having great builds, builds that aren't great or are missing the legendaries that enable them are going to suck. That means you don't really have a choice but to look up min/maxed builds and devote specific time to farming certain items (sometimes with pretty poor drop rates), which is not everyone's cup of tea.

Slag was also, indeed, a questionable mechanic. It's an interesting concept, but it very strongly favours the idea of having somebody playing support in multiplayer games, and even that isn't really a good fit for the "EXPLOSIONS EVERYWHERE AHAHAHA" sort of theme Borderlands goes for (which means nobody wants to be the slag bitch). For solo play, there aren't nearly enough options for applying slag that don't consist of "switch to a worse weapon for a couple shots," which is pretty boring, thematically. Building skill-based or automatic slag application into each skill tree would have been nice, and some characters did that, but even then, those skills tended to become must-haves (because tripling your damage output for a single point is huge), and must-have skills that don't somehow define the feel of the build (like adding a new ability, or something like Anarchy that changes how you play) just aren't a great concept in a game where customization is supposed to be a major thing.

The_tall_midget posted...

It sure was one of the biggest appeal, but gunzerking though.

And that's where Rubi comes in. Constant slag application, plus lifesteal on whatever other gun you're using at the same time? Win-win (except for not getting to use a second fun gun at the same time).

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Borderlands 2 was better than the original in pretty much every possible way, though.

in a lot of ways (and by a huge margin) but not in every way. mostly that BL2 has very badly balanced gun classes. there's almost not even any variety because the classes themselves are so imbalanced. ARs are almost all terrible. SRs are almost all great. specific kinds of SG are always great and other kinds are always terrible. etc.

there's also less synergy between character classes and gun classes, though there may not be as much in BL1 as I recall there being.