Borderlands (catch all)

Yeah my main was Siren, and I did plenty of solo when I couldn't find someone to coop and it was pretty easy. Still don't think I finished all the DLC.

B2 is so close though... hm...

tuffalobuffalo wrote:
fleabagmatt wrote:

Man, I need to go back and start playing this again. I bought it to try playing couch co-op with my wife. She's not a fan of the RPG stuff, though, she just wants to run around and blow stuff up.

Is it tough to get all the way through this solo? I think I'm the only person who bought it for PS3.

It can get a little tedious doing it solo. It's definitely not hard. Just pick whatever quest in your log that's normal. You should always have at least something that is at normal difficulty. By the time you do the normal ones, you level up enough to make hard quests drop to a normal difficulty.

The Siren is the easiest character to solo with because you can go out of phase, recover your shields/health, go back in phase, shoot stuff until you are out of shields, repeat. You can fairly easily solo Crawmerax with the Siren.

Heheh, Crawmerax.

Yea I almost got Crawmerax solo on 2nd play-through with the Siren. I probably could have done it but I got tired of trying and went on to do something else. The main secret to soloing him is to get the weak spot on his back first.

It's sooooo frustrating when you accidentally die (pretty easy to do) after almost killing crawmerax. It takes me about 15 minutes or so. All that time just goes down the drain. There are always a couple close calls with the minions even if you manage to win.

I only just received this during the Steam sale (thanks Greg!), and if you can pry me away from Minecraft or New Vegas, I'd be up for some PC co-op.

I've managed to start chipping away at solo quests, but the hunter is very much a glass cannon and I'm having trouble with boss fights. Co-op sounds like fun, provided the level difference isn't a deal-breaker.

I'm not a fan of the Gamespy matchmaking system, but it turns out I still have my old account from back in the day. (in-game: Itsatrap)

If you don't mind missing some quests, itsatrap, we can power level you up to the early 20s really fast. I'll add you tonight. If you do mind missing the story, I'll try and join in whenever I'm not busy. The Hunter is much more fun with coop. My 20s guy is a berserker, so I can tank for you.

tuffalobuffalo wrote:
Manach wrote:

So we reached New Haven.

And TK is... Is... I can't say it.

Now should be a good point to start the dlcs? Or should we finish the main quests?

It works out well, level-wise, to finish the main quest line once and then go Zombie Island, General Knoxx, Claptrap Revolution. After that, you can start the whole thing over doing the second playthrough in that same order. After all that, you would probably be at level 69.

That was fun last night. I'll try and be on to play a bit every evening this week. It'll probably be 7 PM PST or later.

Ok. I recall finishing the main game at level 32-34.

I guess that could be done quite nicely.

I know I played once with a level 18 in the Dr.Ned, which help me level.

If anyone is still in need of a BL1 GOTY version on Steam in order to pre-purchase BL2 cheaper, friend me up and send me a PM. Got one up for grabs.

One thing that pisses me off without end is that even 3 years after release, GearBox/Steam still haven't patchen the bug that causes the config file to get reset at seemingly random occasions. It's just annoying to sit there, see the intro movies come up in 640x480 and having to sit through them all, just to exit out of the game and fire up the Advanced Config tool again to correct all the BS settings like FOV.

You have to set the properties to read only. It's annoying.

Thanks, I'll try that.

Itsatrap wrote:

I only just received this during the Steam sale (thanks Greg!), and if you can pry me away from Minecraft or New Vegas, I'd be up for some PC co-op.

I've managed to start chipping away at solo quests, but the hunter is very much a glass cannon and I'm having trouble with boss fights. Co-op sounds like fun, provided the level difference isn't a deal-breaker.

I'm not a fan of the Gamespy matchmaking system, but it turns out I still have my old account from back in the day. (in-game: Itsatrap)

I think I'm around level 12 or so. I kind of put the game aside because I was having similar problems with the hunter. I'll add you on gamespy assuming I can remember my log-in info.

Ok, saturday, I'll be able to game a little. 10EST again? 4 players group?

Who is in? Level 20+ needed, as we are in New Haven.

We are saying PM? I can probably join in the fun.

Docjoe wrote:

We are saying PM? I can probably join in the fun.

Yah, 10est PM

I've decided to give this a go, and have a siren up to level 10. Not quite 20, but if I can somehow pull that off, I'd like to join in some coop. Gamespy id is MateoFalcone, plus friend me up in Steam if you haven't yet!

Having just bought this on PC I need to level up a character. I've only played the soldier on PC so far since I never had a chance to play that class on the 360.

I'll be playing this for the next few hours probably. I'm starting a new game today, about level 3 Hunter. [GWJ]Schmutzli on gamespy.

This morning, I finally reached level 30 with my first character ever. I've bought a physical copy of Borderlands at release (first game GWJ ever enabled me on) and bought/gifted many a GOTY versions on Steam, but only now can I put my finger on why I have a love/hate relationship with this game.

The game play simply isn't fun. Just like you have to grind your way through 15h of FF13 or through normal difficulty in Diablo 3, Borderlands takes way too long to excite the player. There's not a lot of entertainment to be had in the first playthrough - it feels like playing WoW on an early generation free shard: barely any quests, the world is mostly empty and there's not a whole lotta point to it. The skill trees don't make much of a difference until you hit 30 as well. Whether you die or not during Skagzilla, Mad Mel or Ring of Death is not decided by the skills at all. Also, every 10 levels the "angel" speaks to you, but that's about as crazy as it gets. Which would be okay if the gun play was any fun. Which it isn't.

If you accidentally picked a Soldier, you will hate the game - period. The chance of finding a passable combat rifles is low and the chance for a good one close to zero. Your action skill is pure garbage, even if fully souped up.
If you are a Hunter, good luck doing the arena quests or anything else where enemies charge you. Better learn how to abuse terrain early, so you too have a chance of killing Moe and Marley while the quest is still green.
But the gun play is systematically flawed, not just with regards to single classes or use cases.
The weapons and items you find while playing "legit" are mostly garbage. The good ones you find have a requirement 5-10 levels below yours, so their damage will be "outdated". This will result in you playing with crappy guns and dungeon clears taking forever since you will have to pump way more bullets into enemies than your level would suggest. In between you'll be hightailing back to the ammo vending machine at the dungeon entrance and back, hoping to be faster than the re-spawn, because ammunition drops aren't even enough when you have a equal level gun.
Weapon skill levels are another unnecessary grievance, because you will only have a second or even third weapon group to really fall back on if the situation demands it (out of ammo, being charged as a Hunter, needing to snipe as a Siren), if you have been alternating between them all game. They did consolidate pistols and revolvers. Why couldn't the same be done for SMGs and combat rifles, sniper rifles and rocket launchers and shotguns/Eridian weapons?
I am not gonna even comment on how screwed you are if you don't find the proper elemental weapon in time.

I personally had given up on Borderlands. In my opinion it can not be enjoyed as a singleplayer game. It wasn't until I decided to give Willowtree a shot and get me some decent weapons that I started having fun with the game again. How does it feel to be cheating? Let's just say I was laughing out loud for a minute when I one-shotted Krom with my x4 explosive sniper from the bottom of his canyon gauntlet. The game is still challenging in certain situations (boss fights, ring of death, Krom etc.), but now I can actually see myself finishing the original game content and try the DLCs to find out if they learned anything at all between the original going gold and them releasing Dr. Ned.

This is the main thing they'll have to fix in BL2 to get more of a "meh, more of the same" out of me.

PS: It saddens me that Diablo 3 is cursed with the same problem, which is only alleviated by digging into theory crafting and having access to either the auction house or friends with slight hoarding issues. Diablo 2 never had that problem imo - you could comfortably play the most popular specs on all classes purely self-found and never felt like you were held back by still wearing that Act 1 belt in Act 5.
Which begs the question: can ARPGs only work without item dependance?

Luggage wrote:

... it can not be enjoyed as a singleplayer game.

Yup.

Worth noting too is that the Hunter ability in my opinion is the worst of the abilities. That's not to say it's not a great class. I had a wonderful time getting revolver bonuses and critical bonuses each time I killed an enemy and even got to the point where I was constantly regaining health faster than I could lose it.

The soldier is quickly becoming my favorite character. I'm building my character purely for support since I'm always playing with one or two other people. It's kept the pacing of the game from slowing down because we almost always get to press forward instead of having to run around scavenging for health and ammo.

Luggage wrote:

If you accidentally picked a Soldier, you will hate the game - period.

Huh? This was my first character, and I loved it. I think you might want to skip Borderlands 2 and save yourself some time and money, because I think most people enjoyed the gameplay of Borderlands, and they hopefully won't change it.

The game isn't meant to be a single-player game, but I think it still works that way just fine. Single-player is like a 7, but multiplayer is around a 9.5.

Atras wrote:
Luggage wrote:

If you accidentally picked a Soldier, you will hate the game - period.

Huh? This was my first character, and I loved it.

I disagree. You have the most useless of all action skills that coincidentally also has the longest cooldown (making it even more useless) and you are locked into the one weapon class the game starves you of. The one time I actually did play with a friend to level 25 I played a soldier to level 20. No matter what I specialized in, my friend was doing 90% of the killing and taunting me about how to use the mouse to aim and left-click to fire.

And I am aware that this game is supposed to be ten times better in coop. But much like Elysium, I have long since given up on coop games, since I don't have that many friends in my timezone and my schedule doesn't permit setting up "playdates" with other GWJers. So the singleplayer part is all I can judge a game by.

Atras wrote:
Luggage wrote:

If you accidentally picked a Soldier, you will hate the game - period.

Huh? This was my first character, and I loved it. I think you might want to skip Borderlands 2 and save yourself some time and money, because I think most people enjoyed the gameplay of Borderlands, and they hopefully won't change it.

The game isn't meant to be a single-player game, but I think it still works that way just fine. Single-player is like a 7, but multiplayer is around a 9.5.

Same here, only even more positive on the single-player. Started with a soldier, went on to play all four classes straight through every quest and to level 69. The only thing that was really missing was an easy way to trade stuff between alts.

Atras wrote:

The game isn't meant to be a single-player game, but I think it still works that way just fine. Single-player is like a 7, but multiplayer is around a 9.5.

I agree with this statement. I had some fun playing myself, but absolutely loved playing with friends.

CheezePavilion wrote:

The only thing that was really missing was an easy way to trade stuff between alts

Well, they sold that as DLC.

Luggage wrote:
Atras wrote:
Luggage wrote:

If you accidentally picked a Soldier, you will hate the game - period.

Huh? This was my first character, and I loved it.

I disagree. You have the most useless of all action skills that coincidentally also has the longest cooldown (making it even more useless) and you are locked into the one weapon class the game starves you of.

I found the turret insanely useful. You put a few points into it, and it can heal you, provide you with ammo, and deal pretty hefty damage. Most of the time when I played my Soldier solo, I could just drop the turret and shoot from behind the shield if the enemies were not super strong, and kite them in front of the gun if they were. I felt that the cool-down was justified to prevent the ability from being over-powered. It also helps to keep groups moving forward rather than turtling up every minute.

Luggage wrote:

So the singleplayer part is all I can judge a game by.

Yeah, I totally get that you can't judge a multiplayer game by playing it single player. I think it is that fact that caused the game to get the metacritic score that it did.

I think I played a different game. That said I only really used the Lilith or Brick for a brief time and they were both way more fun than the little bit I played with the other two for the achievements. Sounds to me like it just isn't your style of game. Guess that is what Halo or CoD or BF3 or whatever is for.

Atras wrote:

I think it is that fact that caused the game to get the metacritic score that it did.

I don't really agree with that. Borderlands is a fun game, but it has a ton of problems. It was more enjoyable than it had a right to be. I think the scores it got were a little generous if anything.

Imo, the most exciting thing about the sequel is that they had so much room to improve and mostly in ways that should be pretty difficult to screw up.

Stele wrote:
CheezePavilion wrote:

The only thing that was really missing was an easy way to trade stuff between alts

Well, they sold that as DLC. ;)

Heh--well, easier than that.

Atras wrote:
Luggage wrote:
Atras wrote:
Luggage wrote:

If you accidentally picked a Soldier, you will hate the game - period.

Huh? This was my first character, and I loved it.

I disagree. You have the most useless of all action skills that coincidentally also has the longest cooldown (making it even more useless) and you are locked into the one weapon class the game starves you of.

I found the turret insanely useful. You put a few points into it, and it can heal you, provide you with ammo, and deal pretty hefty damage. Most of the time when I played my Soldier solo, I could just drop the turret and shoot from behind the shield if the enemies were not super strong, and kite them in front of the gun if they were. I felt that the cool-down was justified to prevent the ability from being over-powered. It also helps to keep groups moving forward rather than turtling up every minute.

In solo, I used to save my turret as a bug-out weapon. Health getting low? Drop a turret and run away! Especially against dumb enemies, where they would all cluster up around it.

Plus, I kinda loved that with the right class mod and build, you could just chuck grenades and fire rockets non-stop as the soldier. IT'S LIKE CHRISTMAS!

Dyni wrote:
Atras wrote:

I think it is that fact that caused the game to get the metacritic score that it did.

I don't really agree with that. Borderlands is a fun game, but it has a ton of problems. It was more enjoyable than it had a right to be. I think the scores it got were a little generous if anything.

Most of the problems I have had with the game have been PC/Console related. It was the first FPS on the PC that ever gave me motion-sickness until I found the Utility tool to change the Field of View and got used to doing it when I switched between vehicle and on-foot modes. The match-making was a nightmare, thanks to Gamespy and the lack of an XBox Live-like system on the PC. Of course, I came to the game pretty late, so I don't know if there were a lot of bugs that were patched before I touched it.

Luggage wrote:
Atras wrote:
Luggage wrote:

If you accidentally picked a Soldier, you will hate the game - period.

Huh? This was my first character, and I loved it.

I disagree. You have the most useless of all action skills that coincidentally also has the longest cooldown (making it even more useless) and you are locked into the one weapon class the game starves you of. The one time I actually did play with a friend to level 25 I played a soldier to level 20. No matter what I specialized in, my friend was doing 90% of the killing and taunting me about how to use the mouse to aim and left-click to fire.

And I am aware that this game is supposed to be ten times better in coop. But much like Elysium, I have long since given up on coop games, since I don't have that many friends in my timezone and my schedule doesn't permit setting up "playdates" with other GWJers. So the singleplayer part is all I can judge a game by.

So strange. I've got a Soldier at 69. I've never played multiplayer at all [full disclosure: I did start a lan game to speed level a hunter]

134+ hrs, according to the Steam Library.

I'm also not using a assault rifle, but a lvl 47 vitriolic crux shotgun. I've been using it since it dropped, since nothing else seems to have the power that this thing does.

I fully respect your dislike of the game, but there's a strong tone here of "Not only are you wrong for enjoying the game, but you clearly don't have any idea what makes a game fun."

Luggage wrote:
Atras wrote:
Luggage wrote:

If you accidentally picked a Soldier, you will hate the game - period.

Huh? This was my first character, and I loved it.

I disagree. You have the most useless of all action skills that coincidentally also has the longest cooldown (making it even more useless) and you are locked into the one weapon class the game starves you of. The one time I actually did play with a friend to level 25 I played a soldier to level 20. No matter what I specialized in, my friend was doing 90% of the killing and taunting me about how to use the mouse to aim and left-click to fire.

And I am aware that this game is supposed to be ten times better in coop. But much like Elysium, I have long since given up on coop games, since I don't have that many friends in my timezone and my schedule doesn't permit setting up "playdates" with other GWJers. So the singleplayer part is all I can judge a game by.

I'm not sure how you can disagree that he loved it, but I think I get what you mean

I only just started, and it's been a slow burn for me. I was so-so about it until I hooked up with a couple of you this weekend, and now I 'get it'. I'm playing a Siren, and after a couple respecs, I've got a build with which I'm having a great time. I'll take your advice and avoid restarting as a soldier, but I definitely feel like I'm playing a different game than you've described.