Borderlands (catch all)

Looking at the skill calculator linked up above, it looks like Gearbox is going for a more "tongue-in-cheek" type of humor in Borderlands:

-Soldier has a medic skill that allows him to heal others by shooting them (real "friendly fire")
-Brick has a skill that makes the target pop out money each time he punches them.
-Hunter has a flying animal that makes a target drop more loot when attacked by it.
-Siren has a skill called "Diva" that gives her more shields.

...actually that last one is kind of a stretch.

Anyway, not sure if everyone appreciates this kind of humor and hopefully it won't make other core gameplay mechanics too over the top to break immersion much.

PC is the way. Randy said.

Hmm, reading through that skill tree has me worried. I'd missed that you actually have to collect and buy ammo for your weapons. Does that mean that, because of small inventory space as noted in some previews, you'll have to drop your favourite weapon because of lack of ammo.... or will all ammo work in all guns? I can't see the latter being true as it would effectively negate the need for ammo....

You need to read more articles and watch more videos and look at the skill calculator I posted. Does that thing not SCREAM Diablo 2?

Some of it does, but sadly the skill tree doesnt. Looks way too simplistic (e.g. not enough customization).
For example most of the skill choices in each tier seems to come down to 'buff ranged weapons' vs 'buff melee attack'.

Was 1 sec away from jumping on the £20 pre-order deal from an english shop (shopto.net) though... until they made clear that you can only pre-order if you already bought from them before. What the... :S

Shadout wrote:

Was 1 sec away from jumping on the £20 pre-order deal from an english shop (shopto.net) though... until they made clear that you can only pre-order if you already bought from them before. What the... :S

That doesn't sound right. My pre-order seemed to work and I hadn't even heard of shopto until I came across the offer on RPS. You do need to make an account with them, but that's fair enough really. Maybe it's an international order thing...

I'm tempted to get this on the PC, but my copy of Hellgate: London still in shrinkwrap is telling me not to.

Hm, you made me go back to their site to copy paste what they wrote, which made me realize i actually understood it wrong somehow

A previous transaction is required for Pre Orders.

You have not yet had a previous transaction through your ShopTo account.

ShopTo.Net do not charge for pre orders until they are in stock & ready to be dispatched. As a result we require customers to have had a previous transaction with us in order to make pre orders. This enables us to charge your card via our repeat transaction system (click here for more details). To make a transaction click the button below. This will take you to our secure SagePay payment server(iFrame) where a £1 test transaction will be made to your card and then automatically refunded. This will not only allow you to make pre-orders but will also make the checkout much quicker when ordering In Stock items

Somehow I skipped the 'only' in the last sentence

So basically, you can order nothing, get a refund, and then it works. Still a very weird system, never seen that anywhere else, but at least it looks like I can actually pre-order there.
Edit: Got it to work, yeah! Decent deal at least.

Dysplastic wrote:
Gumbie wrote:

What's the GWJ consensus on this one...PC or 360?

Yeah, already covered, and seems to be a pretty even split. No Consensus, but plenty on both platforms. Choose your poison!
(But if you want to play with cool kids like me, you'll choose PC.)

The coolest kids are those that don't care about what the cool kids think, and those kids (like myself) go 360.

kuddles wrote:

I'm tempted to get this on the PC, but my copy of Hellgate: London still in shrinkwrap is telling me not to.

My copy of Hellgate: London NOT in shrinkwrap says that if Borderlands turns out to be bad, it'll be bad on PC and 360.

I'm leaning toward PC.

Shadout wrote:

Some of it does, but sadly the skill tree doesnt. Looks way too simplistic (e.g. not enough customization).

I agree. It's like each character has their "gimmick," and other than that they just get generic buffs. I'd expected Lilith in particular to have a wider array of abilities. Instead, it seems like this "phase walk" ability is the only thing that sets her apart from everyone else.

It also looks like everyone's going to be playing the sniper. Not because snipers are badass, but because he has the only +loot skill and it's a loot game.

Dvowels wrote:

Hmm, reading through that skill tree has me worried. I'd missed that you actually have to collect and buy ammo for your weapons.

I think that ammo is stored by type (rockets, bullets, etc.) and does not take up an inventory slot. Not sure on that.

Shadout wrote:

Still a very weird system, never seen that anywhere else, but at least it looks like I can actually pre-order there.
Edit: Got it to work, yeah! Decent deal at least.

I think it's just to confirm that your bank account is real and that they will actually get paid for the goods. I seem to rmember paypal requiring something similar to set it up...

Regarding the lack of complexity in the skill trees, I think that may be an inevitability of the game being more shooter than RPG. Skills in this kind of system are somewhat limited to how many gameplay mechanics there are for them to tweak, and if the game is mostly shooter (mechanics: shoot, hit, added damage types maybe), you aren't going to have nearly so many mechanics as something like Diablo II.

If they were to add completely new abilities to each character via the skilltrees, I could see the shooter mechanics suffering for it. Something like Fallout 3.

I dunno, maybe I'm just an apologist, but this and MW2 are my shooter fixes for this holiday season, and I don't really expect D2 level character customization from my shooters.

Blind_Evil wrote:

Regarding the lack of complexity in the skill trees, I think that may be an inevitability of the game being more shooter than RPG. Skills in this kind of system are somewhat limited to how many gameplay mechanics there are for them to tweak, and if the game is mostly shooter (mechanics: shoot, hit, added damage types maybe), you aren't going to have nearly so many mechanics as something like Diablo II.

If they were to add completely new abilities to each character via the skilltrees, I could see the shooter mechanics suffering for it. Something like Fallout 3.

I dunno, maybe I'm just an apologist, but this and MW2 are my shooter fixes for this holiday season, and I don't really expect D2 level character customization from my shooters.

Preach it BROTHER!!! Personally I'm in it for the gun porn!

If the shooter part is where the focus is, then yes, the customization has to be somewhat limited.
Just not really what I hoped for. Rather the opposite: 'Diablo with guns'.
I believe they could still keep the shooting intact with a more complex skill tree. The skill tree cant have a lot of different offensive abilities (as your different attacks comes from using different weapons, a bit like in Hellgate for some classes).
But there could be a ton of defensive abilities which wouldnt harm the shooter side of the game imo (crowd controlling in various forms, speed buffs, survival skills and whatever). There are a few of them, but most comes down to +better shield and +better dmg.

In the end, there seem to be a ton of 'shooter fixes' coming out this Fall (and every other part of the year), but oh so few A-RPGs

Hellgate London had a pretty extensive skill tree for its gunner class. While that game isn't the best example of how to do things that don't suck, I don't think its skills were the cause of its downfall.

Just made the pre-order for the 360 version. Tigerbill, Blind Evil and Amoebic added as friends. Any others that are going to be on the 360 feel free to add me on XBL.

LobsterMobster wrote:
Tamren wrote:

I hope they have shotguns with lightning bullets.

Can someone explain to me how a shotgun remains a shotgun once you stop putting shotgun shells in it? It can't just be an unrifled barrel, else everything from muskets to grenade launchers would be shotguns.

If it's a smoothbore, hand-held firearm which can be used from the shoulder without knocking a person down, it's a "shotgun," (blunderbuss is no longer a viable weapon, but it would also be in the shotgun category unless you are excluding muzzle-loading weapons.) You can fire shot, slugs, or special ammo such as grenades from a shotgun, it's still a shotgun as long as it's portable by a single person, and the barrel doesn't get past a certain diameter (at which point it becomes either a non hand-held artillery piece such as a cannon or mortar or howitzer, or a piece of portable support weaponry such as a grenade launcher, which no longer has the ability to fire a usable load of shot or slugs that won't knock down the user but IS still portable by one person.)

Sorry I grew up in the country, and I'm a bit of a weaponry dork, but that is roughly true and a good rule of thumb for weapon classification.

KillerTomato wrote:
Scratched wrote:
skeletonframes wrote:

New borderlands video.

I giggled. A lot.

Me, too. That meme still has some life left in it. :)

Fun fact: the "rant" trailer was done before Christian bale had his on-mic rant, so it's actually unrelated to the meme except by chance. It was just an accident that his thing came to light before they published this.

Hellgate ate my babies!

Just a little note: Nobody who worked on Hellgate is working on Borderlands, so maybe stop dumping it's baggage at gearbox's feet.

coyo7e wrote:

If it's a smoothbore, hand-held firearm which can be used from the shoulder without knocking a person down, it's a "shotgun," (blunderbuss is no longer a viable weapon, but it would also be in the shotgun category unless you are excluding muzzle-loading weapons.)

So what do you classify a rifled slug barreled shotgun as?

Back on topic, I keep hearing Hellgate brought up, is this a game I should check out. How old is it, the name sounds familiar but I haven't been hardcore into PC games in a while.

Tigerbill wrote:
coyo7e wrote:

If it's a smoothbore, hand-held firearm which can be used from the shoulder without knocking a person down, it's a "shotgun," (blunderbuss is no longer a viable weapon, but it would also be in the shotgun category unless you are excluding muzzle-loading weapons.)

So what do you classify a rifled slug barreled shotgun as?

Back on topic, I keep hearing Hellgate brought up, is this a game I should check out. How old is it, the name sounds familiar but I haven't been hardcore into PC games in a while.

NOOOO!!!! And since they shut down the servers i am pretty sure you can not even play the single player anymore.

I want a blunderbuss with lightning bullets.

WiredAsylum wrote:

NOOOO!!!! And since they shut down the servers i am pretty sure you can not even play the single player anymore.

You can. Just not with any of the fixes and new content they implemented after launch.

LobsterMobster wrote:
WiredAsylum wrote:

NOOOO!!!! And since they shut down the servers i am pretty sure you can not even play the single player anymore.

You can. Just not with any of the fixes and new content they implemented after launch.

Isn't DRM awesome?

PS3. Anyone else? Hello?

skeletonframes wrote:

New borderlands video.

Ok, I won't cancel my pre-order. This was funny.

"heyoo!" <- My new favorite thing to say before shooting someone in a game.

Also, censored "strong language" is funnier than uncensored.

Here is Number 2.

PandaEskimo wrote:
skeletonframes wrote:

New borderlands video.

Ok, I won't cancel my pre-order. This was funny.

"heyoo!" <- My new favorite thing to say before shooting someone in a game.

Also, censored "strong language" is funnier than uncensored.

Here is Number 2.

Wait, the enemies are randomly generated too? That's actually pretty cool.

Sinatar wrote:

Just a little note: Nobody who worked on Hellgate is working on Borderlands, so maybe stop dumping it's baggage at gearbox's feet.

QFMFT

LobsterMobster wrote:

I want a blunderbuss with lightning bullets.

This. We need more blunderbusses (blunderbussi? blunderbI?) in games.
We should start a campaign group.

MeatMan wrote:
Sinatar wrote:

Just a little note: Nobody who worked on Hellgate is working on Borderlands, so maybe stop dumping it's baggage at gearbox's feet.

QFMFT

Another little note: They tackle extremely similar problems, so if you see symptoms of the former in the latter, it's not wrong to take note of them.

I'm not really seeing one of the big problems from hellgate in borderlands thought, flagship were banking on HGL being a pseudo MMO stroke battlenet clone with a plan for a subscription paying for monthly content releases and further development. Borderlands (afaik) is a stand alone game, with the potential for optional DLC down the line.

Yeah, and even though people seem to insist that I'm dumping on it for no reason, I really want it to be good. I'm just not sure it is, yet.