Borderlands: What Grinds Your Gears?

[Ferryt]

The Oblivion thread like this was so popular I thought I'd try it out, here, for Borderlands. This is a very specialized thread. Basically, what about Borderlands do you not like? This isn't for general disparaging remarks like "Borderlands sucks and so does anyone who plays it". Actually, that comment would probably get you banned as trolling, but I'm just saying ...

 

Remember that one person's pain may well be another person's pleasure so there will likely be disagreement within this thread. It's OK, and it's OK if you defend your point of view, too. Let's just keep it civil. The Oblivion thread produced some very interesting and in-depth discussions of some of the failings of that game. I hope this one does, too, so just because someone has mentioned something in his post doesn't mean you can't, also.

 

This thread includes the main game (let's call it "Borderlands"), DLC1 (let's call it "Zombie"), DLC2 (let's call it "Underdome"), DLC3 (let's call it "Knoxx"), and DLC4 (let's call it "Robolution"), just so everyone is on the same page and we don't confuse anyone who hasn't played those add-ons, yet. I recommend using the quote marks and/or italicizing and capitalizing those terms so we can tell you're talking about that specific release and not about Borderlands in general, the Underdome as a specific place set in DLC2, zombies as creatures, or General Knoxx the character. Feel free to introduce yourself in your first post. It sometimes helps to know a little of your gaming expertise, interests, and your rig to better understand why there are some things that annoy you in Borderlands.

 

Warning -- there will be spoilers in this thread. If you don't like spoilers then don't read any more.

 

 

I'll start.

 

About me

 

• 
  I'm not new to the world. I'm a semi-retired housewife in my thirties, so I've been around the block a few times. I am relatively new to gaming. I think Neverwinter Nights, my first video RPG, was a couple years old when I started playing it. I came to Borderlands from Half-Life 2, after first falling in love with Portal, so my initial opinions of the game were very much influenced by those two games, which I liked (and still like) a great deal, although it's been quite a while since I played Portal, Half-Life or its predecessor Half-Life (after I got Half-Life 2, but go figure). My computer was a state-of-the-art multimedia laptop a few years ago (it's a Dell Studio 1735). Sadly, it's not only showing its age, but it never did run the mid-range games that I play very well, and there are places in Borderlands, including all its DLCs, which are only marginally playable for me because of this. I'm working on this issue, though. It just takes time to save up enough money for a real gaming rig.
   
  Oh ... I don't cheat, at least hardly ever. I will, when a game allows it, disable collision to escape situations where it glitches and traps me somewhere. I've also played around with modded weapons in Borderlands with my second Siren character, but that was just for fun. When I'm playing a game "for blood" the only time I'll ever go to the console is to correct a glitch. Of course, with Borderlands, we don't even that that. Except for modded gear the developers pretty much locked us out of cheating in any direct fashion. Yes, I know ... you can modify some of the values in WillowGame.ini to duplicate some of the cheat codes for other games, but modifying game files like that can also break the game if you don't know what you're doing. It really doesn't help when you're in-game, anyway.
  

 

Minor annoyances (in no particular order)

 

• 
  
  • 
    Graphics: I think one of things that initially turned me away from Borderlands was the cell-shaded graphics. I had become so accustomed to the very nice graphics of Portal and HL2, and I really don't much like cartoonish-style artwork, that I put off trying Borderlands for a long time after someone recommended it to me. I still don't like it, but after playing the game for awhile it's quit bothering me to the extent that it initially did.
    

• 
  Area transitions: I have to admit that I much prefer the way Half-Life 2 handles going from one game area to the next. You can't even tell there's going to be a transition until you get the (usually) short notice that a new area is loading. In contrast, in Borderlands we have "transition points" where you have to interact with a button. This completely ruins the immersiveness of the game for me.
  

• 
  Save Game Poles: I don't remember what they're called, but those poles with the red/green lights that are all over the place really bother me. It's another immersion-breaking feature of the game that constantly reminds me that I'm playing in a contrived environment. The icon that flashes on-screen is sufficient to let me know that my progress has been saved. While it's nice to know where such locations are I think that something a little less visually invasive could have been done -- perhaps a random object that could be in that particular place, whether it's a rock or drinking cup, that glows a particular color (other than the red/green that signals lootable objects) could have been used. Colors like orange/blue, instead could have been used.
  

• 
  Collectathons:
  
  • 
    I'm not talking about finding Patricia Tannis' journals. Those were at least interesting (and funny) to listen to, and were usually located in areas where you had something else to do. I'm talking about the missions where you have to go collect a gazillion of the same kind of object for someone.
     
    Zombie really started it all, by injecting that mission with steroids and then dumbing it down so that the devs didn't have to get particularly creative with it. There you get to collect zombie brains for T.K. Baha. And it's not just one mission. That's where collectathons simply go over the edge. It's one mission after another, where you have to collect more and more each time, starting with 10 for the first one, 25 for the second one, 50 for the third one, 100 for the fourth one, and ending with 250 for the last one -- five missions in all. Just tell me at the outset how many he needs, I'll go get all 435, and then bring them back all at once. It doesn't help that T.K. is about as remote as it's possible to get in Zombie, and that you've already done everything you can do in that map by the time you've completed the fourth mission for him. The crowning blow of underachievement by Gearbox in this whole fiasco is the fact that your material reward for this is that T.K. vomits up (really -- it's disgusting) what is usually a piece-of-garbage weapon that is only worth selling back in town for a couple thousand bucks.
     
    To be fair, I vowed, once, never to do this mission again, but I went back into the DLC with my latest Hunter character to try to get a level-up prior to taking on Baron Flint in Borderlands. I figured that completing the first two missions for T.K., which could be done quickly right in his area, would give me the XP needed for this, and I was right. On the other hand, I learned some things about zombie-killing with this character, since he was actually not well-suited to the job, and figured I'd play around for a little longer with it, and on the fourth mission T.K. coughed up a level 4 shock artifact! In the three times I've completed all of his missions, this is the first time I ever got anything worth keeping from T.K., and this one was sweet. Sadly, I got a cheap-ass repeator suitable only for killing the pup skags outside of Firestone as my reward for turning in the 250. I still think it's more work than it's worth in the long run. It's much easier to just fry zombies and not worry about trying to get 435 head shots. On the flip side of the coin I did manage to get an achievement in the critical kill category by doing this mission.
     
    Also in Zombie you get a mini-collectathon for Marcus, but this one isn't quite as annoying, except that you have to intentionally deal with the DLC's major minor annoyance, the Corpse Eater (the major major annoyance is the Defiler). This mission is more of an inconvenience than an annoyance, though, since the bloodwing eggs (yes, Corpse Eaters are Bloodwings, described in the wiki as "undead Trash Feeders" -- some people don't seem to have figured that out, yet), can be easily collected right outside of town in one trip. However, this emerged in Knoxx as another fully-blown collectathon for our favorite pot-bellied scoundrel when Marcus wants you to collect a gazillion power cores (OK, only 175, but differing amounts of the three different kinds). At least you only get one mission so you don't have to keep going back to him. And, the power cores are useful in their own right. By the way, if you want to keep being able to use the power cores for your own benefit, don't turn in this mission and the Crimson Lance soldiers will keep dropping them throughout the game. Once you turn in the mission they quit dropping them.
     
    Unfortunately, the brain collection stupidity is back in force in Robolution when dear, sweet Patricia Tannis has you doing the same thing for her, except that instead of zombie brains you're collecting claptrap parts in escalating numbers for each of her missions. Hey, Gearbox! You listening? We said we didn't like in Zombie. Why the heck did you ignore us and do it all over again in Robolution? On the up-side, though, you can also collect other things such as claptrap bobble heads, pink panties, pizza (and a few other items) while this mission is active and gain a few extra achievements.
    

• 
  The "use key": It's "E" on the PC and there's a major glitch in the game with it. It's just a minor annoyance, but if you try to pick up something and your aim is a bit off, you reload your weapon instead of nothing happening. Why? "E" on the PC is supposed to be a dedicated key for triggering interactive elements in the game. The "R" key is for reloading. There shouldn't even be a routine that ties the two together because they are in no way related except for being side-by-side on a standard keyboard. And, no, I'm not accidentally hitting the "R" key. This is a known issue with Borderlands, but was never patched.
  

 

What annoys the fluff out of me (in no particular order)

 

• 
  SecuROM protection: I won't go on my usual "tldr rant" about this. Suffice it to say that SecuROM is a hazard to your gaming and your computer. There's sufficient information on the Internet, accessible with a simple Google search, to convince anyone that Gearbox could have chosen a better and less OS-invasive piracy protection scheme -- not that it wasn't broken by hackers within days of the release of the game, but that's a different issue, anyway.
  

• 
  Lack of modding resources: One of the things that I adore about Oblivion is the fact that Bethsoft chose to release the very tool that they used (or at least a resonable facsimile of it) to the modding community, allowing modders the ability to change anything within the game that wasn't hard-coded into the game engine. It took the hard work of one dedicated programmer to create a modding tool for Borderlands (WillowTree), and even that is only capable of modifying/creating weapons, shields, class mods, and changing basic attributes of a character. To my knowledge, nobody has ever been able to create a true "mod" for Borderlands that actually introduces new content or new game spaces.
  

• 
  Unnecessary travel:
  
  • 
    This plagues all the releases except for Underdome. It's not as pervasive in Borderlands except in the various multi-element missions where you have to roam all over the place either collecting stuff or turning things on. This is still annoying to no end, at least for me, because Gearbox intentionally flags each new element for you in an order that usually has you criss-crossing and backtracking for no discernable reason. Wouldn't it have been better just to mark each mission goal on the map and allow the player the luxury of deciding on the order of completion?
     
    In Zombie and Knoxx things just get completely out of hand with this, and it was, in fact Knoxx that convinced me that Gearbox did this just to make it seem like their DLCs were bigger than they really are. In that DLC there are minutes upon minutes of pointless driving. Yes, we get the message. That part of the world is pretty spread out, but in both these DLCs there is no fast-travel. People complained about this from Zombie on, but Gearbox refused to listen to us and then did exactly the same thing in Robolution. Wake up and smell the coffee, devs! Most of us absolutely hate this feature of the game. We told you, time and time again, that we hate it, and yet you persist. Are you doing this just to tick us off? If so, you've managed to meet that goal in spades.
    

• 
  Super Mario: If I wanted to play that game I'd buy it. I didn't like the platforming in HL/HL2. It was part of Portal by design, but at least you have a Hand-Held Portal Device to help you out. Platforming does not belong in a role-playing game or a first-person shooter. Period. That's my opinion, but I'm never going to budge from it. I don't mind hiding special chests and other things like that where you have to jump around like a maniac, but no mission objective should require this. Some people simply don't have the gaming skills, for whatever reason, to do this. In my case, I can figure out what to do, but because some of the crucial objectives (like the Claptrap repair kit in the Tetanus Warrens) are in areas that lag my computer so much that they become very nearly impossible to accomplish because of the jumping that is involved. To me, platforming in RPG/FPS games is very nearly a deal-breaker, and a game has to have something very special to offer in trade for that feature if I'm going to buy it.
  

• 
  Automatic gear swapping: This may be one of the most annoying "features" of Borderlands. Some people may find it handy to automatically trade some object they pick up for the currently equipped item of that kind (whether it's a weapon, shield, or class mod), but I know a lot of people have complained about this, and many of us have inadvertently lost valuable gear because we held the use-key down just a little too long. It happened to my current Hunter character, where I accidentally dropped his primary shock-based shotgun and didn't realize it because it had been replaced with another (and quite inferior) shock-based shotgun that looked almost identical to it. By the time I realized the switch it was too late to go back and retrieve it (when I got there the area had reset, so a really nice weapon was lost forever). There should be a dedicated "swap-out" key for this purpose. I know I'd probably never use it, but perhaps some people would find it handy.
  

• 
  Scavenger hunts: You know ... where you have to search a given area for the pieces and parts of a gun. Then you turn in the mission and your material reward is almost always some crappy version of a weapon you already have. I've had only one good weapon (a slightly better than average combat rifle) out of this with all my characters. Other than the experience points none of these are, in my opinion, worth doing. What's worse, some of the parts are in insanely difficult to get to places -- more of the Super Mario inanity that pervades Borderlands.
  

 

Well, I think this will do for starters. I think I'm going to go see if I can kick Baron Flint's butt, now that I got my level-up, as well obtaining as a new weapon that might be the Baron-Crusher I've been looking for -- a Surkov which I actually had to buy. Don't ask how much it cost. You don't want to know and I don't remember but it was well over a hundred grand. Unlike a lot of people who play Borderlands I don't hoard money, at least not usually. I don't like to pay for ammo, and with my very first character I didn't buy anything at all (except for the requisite shield and grenade as per the early missions) until 12th level, but since then I've learned that if there's something you like spend the money to get it. What good is having a billion dollars if you don't use it?

[Vindekarr]

I have become somewhat known for vitriol, for once I shall enforce a stereotype, My hatreds of Borderlands, in no particular order:

 

Bland, unimaginative, stereotypical, and in many places downright annoying characters: Derp, Derp, Derp, and Derp are all well and good as packaged skill sets, but they are also blank eyed stereotypes for one thing, and irritating pains in the neck for another.

 

Collect-a-thons: these make up an disapointing portion of previous DLCs, hovever, in roboloution, they make up 97.1 of all gameplay time. This is not impressive.

 

Elite players not given their due: Certainly, those who can persue a truly worthy weapon shall have it, but any worthless grunt can get lucky and find an excellent gun. A true master player should be rewarded with a degree of power, and a visibly superior equipment load out. Halo Reach and Tranformers: War For Cybertron do this idealy, making available significant aesthetic improvements to those who earn them, in the former, more advanced armour, in the latter, superior more entertaining forms.

 

But in Borderlands you look like hired help, some worthless street thug with a gharishly painted gun, despite your ability and experience ranking you a god among mere mortals. A top leveled beta-veteran is a god of war, they should be treated as such.

 

You cannot even view your how much money you have:

 

Weapon design uninspired, repeatful: You heard me, once you've seen the basic one-hundred or so patterns of design, you'll see new equipment once in a blue return. 6 million guns? A pity then that 99% are unusable garbage unfit even for killing vermin.

 

Absolutely no aesthetic customisation available, base characters are repulsive gangers: Self explainatory, if I wanted to play as a brain dead lump of trash with a gun, a gang, and a deathwish, I'd bloody well play Saint's Row. It's unwise to force a player into a role they are uncomfortable with without giving them any way to escape it or reforge it into a workable form.

 

And my most deep set grudge:

 

Utterly insuficient customer service, insufficient quality, frequent glitches, obvious failures to playtest: When I firts downloaded the DLCs for this game, they arrived as corrupted data and rendered my game unplayable. I was able to trace the fault not to any computer or internet problem, but to the DLC's source: it was corrupt long before it reached me.

 

When I phoned them to complain, and to search for solutions, I was sworn at, called a retard, called several racial insult's I'll not repeat, and told to "get the f*** off the line retard, if you cant run the game, it's your fault"

 

When I made a formal complaint against them, backed them against a proverbial wall, and made my demands, they showed an utter lack of spine, and caved immediately. I like this even less than their disrespectful maggot of a CS man.

 

The game itself is exceptionaly unreliable. It glitches frequently, with both exploitable game fault such as a <snip> that allows certain players to, at certain times, teleport between <snip> and <snip>, instantly, without penalty. Another exploit allows <snip> to instantly return to the begining of a zone without penalty. A third causes top of the range purple grade items to spawn in crates rather than ammuniton. Many other glitches exist however that are simply game destroying.

 

For example attempting to run the game in HD causes it to CTD on the PC version, frequently in the knoxx and robolution DLCs, characters will simply die for no reason, both AI and player, due to clipping errors. Or that the items required for the side quests in robolution dont even spawn in proper numbers. A single turret crate spawns, and that is it. The "garbage" does not spawn at all-it's just a glowing outline.

 

The game also, on the whole, feels like it was not fully playtested, many off limits areas can be accessed with only a tiny amount of effort, there are endless exploits, billions of ways to cheat, and thousands and thousands of glitches that simply wouldnt be there if someone had tested this.

 

Because a literal holes in the clipping, enemies falling over dead, disapearing money, and occasional failuires to spawn and even literal holes in the terrain are obvious enough that you cannot miss them. And if a player can notice them, then why the hell did a devtester NOT?

 

This game fails on many levels. It's overall an excellent game, but on many levels fails in terms of quality, balance, and design.

[Ferryt]

I certainly can't argue with most of what you said, Vindekarr, because I've never experienced most of those problems, and just because I haven't seen something doesn't mean it doesn't exist. I couldn't say how many hours I have in this game, but it's quite a lot -- five Siren characters (one in PT2), three Hunter characters (one in PT2), and one Soldier character. I tend to explore everywhere and when I read about a glitch I try to duplicate it usually without success, but a lot of those require Super Mario BS, and I really suck at that.

 

Let me address your points, though, since I think some of them are pretty much in line with my thoughts, as well.

 

Characters

 

• 
  I'm a Second Life veteran. One of the things I most loved about that online world, before I got disenchanted with the leadership and where they were taking it, was the ability to create a character who looked pretty much like anything you might want, within (mostly) human specs. I even played one that looked probably 90% like me, without using any custom textures. The system was that flexible. One of my first comments to the person who described Borderlands to me and suggested I might like to play it was "Four character types? And what if I don't like any of those?" I still feel like that. I haven't played a Brick, yet, but I really don't like that particular class, anyway. I think I know most of the "secrets" to a successful Siren, and I'm still exploring the Hunter. There's a lot, yet, to keep my interest, but, seriously, while the Siren is my favorite class, there's a reason my last two characters have both been Hunters. Once you have the class figured out it becomes almost boring.
   
  I really think Gearbox could have done better by giving a broader class of character types to play, or, even better, not even having character classes. Just build a custom class from scratch by choosing various skills, attributes, and abilities.
  

 

Collectathons

 

• 
  You already know how I feel about that. I wasn't aware that much of "Robolution" is tied up in those. I thought the only collectathon in that DLC was the one for Tannis.
  

 

Elite Players

 

• 
  I honestly don't know what you're trying to suggest, here. There are games that reward players, as opposed to their characters? I did not know that (Johnny Carson, The Tonight Show). Seriously, though, there's an element of truth in this. The game chalks up various achievements. I think these should unlock more than just experience points, which really don't amount to that much later in the game when you can actually do those things. I think additional missions, difficult and demanding, should have been available for any player who thinks he can complete them, and that there should be rewards for those that don't appear anywhere else. Sure, the devs gave all the bosses (except for the "monster" bosses) unique weapons, but who really uses those, anyway? OK, the Clipper and Boneshredder are good at their levels, but who really wants to use zero-accuracy weapons like Sledge's Shotgun, the Boomstick, or the Chopper? Other than Nine-Toes and Bonehead not a single boss in the game really drops a weapon that I feel is useful, and shields like Wee Wee's are just a joke.
  

 

Money

 

• 
  I can see very clearly how much money I have. Once you have it maxed out (at least for the number of decimal places available to display it in-game) does it really matter? That's more money than you'll ever spend, anyway, because you're obviously not buying stuff. That's how I maxed out mine and found out, later, in WillowTree, that the game actually tracks the amount you have -- it just can't display it. I only did that with my second character. Now I never have to worry about that, because I buy stuff. There's a tree of achievements for that, too, you know.
   
  Anyway, your comments about "money" really didn't have anything to do with money, but applied to weapons, instead. I have to both agree and disagree with you. I think the random weapon creation system in Borderlands is one of the things that makes it so addictive for me -- it's the eternal quest for the perfect gun. It took my current Hunter 41 levels to get his first Hellfire, and a very nice Hellfire it was. Interestingly, it was in the red chest in Jakob's Cove, today. Where was that blasted thing when I went up against Undead Dr. Ned? All the earlier times I've fought him it was with Hellfires and they take him down quite nicely, although the Hellfire lags my computer horribly for some reason. I meticulously compare weapons, trading them out when I find one that is even marginally better than a similar one I already have. I know some people don't bother to do this. To me, it's part of the fun of the game. "Uninspired"? I don't see that in Borderlands gear. "Repeatful"? Well, yes. So are weapons in Real Life, too. Borderlands goes one-up on real life weapons in, apparently, making them almost infinitely moddable, and that's my explanation of why there are so many variants -- people just modify them for their own use after buying the basic unit, or, perhaps, the manufacturers do custom designs, based upon their standard line of equipment.
  

 

Lack of aesthetic customization

 

• 
  Isn't this pretty much the same as your first complaint?
  

 

Customer Service

 

• 
  I've never had to deal directly with Gearbox, and I'm sorry your experience was a bit less than stellar, but did it occur to you that you might be arguing from the specific to the general, here (the logical fallacy known as "Hasty Generalization")?. Just because you tangled with one CS person who probably should never have had that job, doesn't mean all of them are like that. As for caving in to your demands without a fight, you'd have been complaining, here, about them refusing to deal with you had they done that. What you experienced in the aftermath was precisely what is common practice when a company has been caught with its pants down. It's not going to be much different anywhere else.
  

 

Game problems

 

• 
  Don't all games suffer from various bugs and glitches? Oblivion, which is one of my favorite games may well be the buggiest game ever to be released commercially to the public. I've had far fewer difficulties of the sort which test my patience with Borderlands. Yes, just today, I got stuck in the scenery just outside of the hospital in the Zombie island DLC, but it was my fault for trying to jump into an area where I was pretty sure I couldn't jump, anyway. No biggie, since my job, there, was finished (I was getting Bloodwing some exercise) so I just quit and restarted. I've gotten trapped like this in the main game, though, and it was quite frustrating, although not nearly as much as when it happened in "Knoxx" and I had to restart (which means entering the game all the way back in town, since there is no fast travel network). Is it even possible to foresee all the ways that a player might test the environment? I'm not sure it is.
   
  Your "<snip>" doesn't help much. Maybe we should just assume that a thread like this is going to have spoilers? There's hardly nothing I mentioned in my introduction that wouldn't be a spoiler for someone who had never played the game. Right? Regarding those "top-of-the-grade purple weapons" spawning in crates, are you talking about ammo crates? I've never heard of that glitch, before.
   
  I've only experienced the dying for no reason in one place (the elevator that goes up to Sledge) and it happens virtually every time I use that elevator, regardless of the character I'm playing. Yet, I've seen a walkthrough of that mission where it didn't happen to the person making the video. It's one of my biggest frustrations with that mission (other than the lag when actually fighting Sledge).
   
  I think you're exaggerating just a bit with the "billions of ways to cheat". Yes, there are various exploits, but I don't know of a game that doesn't have them. Devs can't think of everything. On the other hand, you're right. The game doesn't feel to me like it was thoroughly playtested. Developers should not playtest the games they design. Companies should let gamers like you and me do their playtesting, because, quite frankly, we're used to looking for exploits and we're going to find them. The developers already know how the game is supposed to be played and that's what they're going to playtest -- just to make sure that their plotline is intact.
  

[Vindekarr]

You are not as experienced at this game as I am, you have not seen as much as I have seen. All my characters all level capped. All four of them.

 

At the level cap, you will frequently buy items that are valued at "9,999,999.99". these are blind leaps due to lazy design. A 9,999,999.99 could mean exactly that amount, or every cent you have. But since virtualy ALL, and I repeat ALL, good level 65+ items are worth 9,999,999.99, gearbox's lazyness in not adding a proper moneycounter will cost you. Literaly, as every purchase is a shot in the dark.

 

When it comes to finding items in boxes, in the robolution DLC, lockers and clossets appear as one of the most common decorations. Each contains, due to a glitch, a level 55+ purple item, almost always of supreme quality.

 

And once you reach the level cap, you feel crippled. I am one of the most experienced players in the game and one of the richest. So why am restricted to playing as a weak, un desinguished runt when I am a proveribal god of the game? A master player who has been playing since launch deserves and demands respect. To force them to look, move, sound, and act like the rabble is a major insult to the last people they want to insult.

[Ferryt]

No, Vindekarr, I'm not as experienced as you are. I've never level capped a character and it will probably be a long time before I do. Fortunately, that means the game is still a challenge for me. I sincerely doubt it was designed for 65+ level characters -- not when a level 48 character can run roughshod over most of the bosses in the game, including the DLCs. Raising the level cap without raising the real danger level was, in my opinion, a serious mistake, because it gives players the illusion of a bigger game than Borderlands really is. The whole idea of playthrough 2 is just too contrived as a way to extend the game. PT2 should have been an entirely different game, perhaps with the same setting, of course, but specifically with the intent of leveling up characters to 60 and over by facing tougher (and different) opposition. I would have been happy with it being Borderlands 2 and paying extra money to get it.

 

Let's face it. You have four maxed-out characters. You've met all the challenges. Anyone who sticks with the game long enough will be there with you, and probably will be feeling just as discouraged that you don't have a real challenge any more. Maybe that means it's time for you to move on to a different game if this one is no longer any fun for you. I did that a long time ago with checkers ... and discovered chess. Or, you could set personal challenges in the game and start over with new characters. You've been playing this game since it came out and you only have four characters? What's the fun of playing a level 70 character when the game isn't designed to give it a challenge? I've been playing less than a year and I've already gone through twice that many characters, although I'll admit several of them were simply abandoned along the way as unsalvageable. My level 48 Siren isn't challenged by anything in the game, so far, except for the Destroyer, and she beat that boss in PT1 through a non-replicatable glitch (she was thrown into a nook right up next to the Destroyer where he couldn't get at her). My Hunter who beat the Destroyer did so by accidentally finding that there's a certain spot right behind the pole in front of the door where most of the Destroyer's attacks can't reach him. Both of those characters were played on a laptop where the fps dropped to around 5, so it was virtually impossible to dodge in and out of cover, aim, and fire. I have a new computer and just ran my latest Hunter through Lockdown Palace, which is another area that severely lagged my laptop. Everything is silky smooth in the game, now, even with graphics on high. I was looking forward to sending him up against the Destroyer -- until General Knoxx and his cronies beat his butt really badly about a half hour ago. Like I said ... for me this game still offers a challenge and is still fun.

 

Can we look forward to a Borderlands 2 with new and better enemies and the ability to import our old characters to test their mettle against them? I hope so, but I'm not counting on it, in spite of the rumors of "Borderworlds" that are running around. In the meantime, I'm going to keep playing this game with characters who have levels appropriate for their missions and that will probably keep me happy for awhile longer. You're right, though. In nearly any game that exists if you reach your level cap the game ceases to be a challenge. Oblivion attempts to counter this by leveling enemies up with you, but that's just a cop-out in my opinion. You don't see that in Borderlands, although I really think it would work in that game. It wouldn't make any more "sense" than it does in Oblivion, but at least it would maintain a challenging level of play.

 

As for that glitch in Robolution, are you sure it's a glitch and not just part of the Monty Haul mentality that seems to be prevalent in Borderlands? The devs intentionally made Crawmerax respawning, even though they knew he drops the best stuff in the game. The Armory exploit was discovered very soon after the release of the DLC, and you know Gearbox is aware of it, but they never patched it although they did remove all the red chests from New Haven. What? They figured people wouldn't "farm" New Haven, when they were inviting people to farm Crawmerax and the Armory? And what about the "Developers Chest"? You see a little square that appears to be off-map and you're going to investigate it, right? They knew that would happen, and they also knew that you could get to it virtually uncontested -- easy high-quality loot, especially since you can make the Dev Chest "run" in about three minutes and get some Spider Ant road kills to boot. The game is full of free give-aways, and it seems to me very improbable that the devs made exactly the same mistake with every single instance of two different lootable containers.