Some very small corrections- the Legendary COMs for the base game Vault Hunters in BL2 also had special effects. The Legendary Hunter, for example, restored 10% of Zer0's health when entering Decepti0n. For Axton, though, as well as Krieg and Gaige, got 6 skills boosted instead of 5, for not getting special effects. The UVHM COMs had no effects and only boosted 5 skills. Another thing about BL2/TPS normal COMs is that blue was sometimes better than purple, since they'd go 6/5 instead of 5/4/4. This was useful for COMs/builds that had a skill that didn't need to be boosted, or if you really wanted 11/5 in, for example, Chain Reaction with a Blurred Trickster. I don't need all the colors of the rainbow in a build, but it did make blue COMs worth looking at if they dropped. I'd be fine if we reverted to the BL2/TPS system, but with maybe 3 skills instead of 5 boosted on a legendary with an effect. Though, that could be broken if the skill doesn't need to be invested in still, so keeping BL3's skill system is a fair trade. I also would like the more focused passives of previous COMs, combined with the "ring" system (which I wouldn't mind if they were rings, still. Maybe Eridian Talismans or something). Anyways, great vid and I've been enjoying everything since I discovered the channel the other day! Weird question, how's The Duc nowadays?
My biggest gripe about class mods (especially in borderlands 2) is when a legendary class mod drops but it's not for your character and is instead for a different character.
I wouldn’t mind seeing a combo of BL2/PS class mods working like BL3 ones. The no passives (aside from the classmod passive like in BL2/PS) and provide you skill points to said skills like BL3 (no need to put points in order to use the skill) sounds perfect and I could easily see how a ring/relic system can be used solely for passives. I love that idea so much. I’d also love to see more uses for classmods at different rarity’s as well. Give me a reason to farm more if the odds are lower overall.
Great analysis! Personally I hated rings in TTW - they affected your build too much so you had to get good rolls, while not affecting it so much you wanted to spend time farming them, and keeping variations of rings in your vault just in case they would be useful later was a huge pain in terms of inventory management. Reduce them number of possible rolls on COMs and add them to gear that easily farmable and don't impact your build unless you're looking to min/max for endgame players. Maybe a platinum COM rarity that only drops at endgame and has more rolls?
Yeah, I fully agree that due to how Wonderlands was, rings were really fucking annoying as a system. I think that was mostly just because of them being in Wonderlands, though. Assuming the VHs in BL4 aren't just a pile of stats like WL classes and more along the lines of BL3, I think rings would be alright. They'd still be impactful, but not absolutely necessary to have a good roll of as they were in Wonderlands. It would just be like the COM passives currently are. They're incredibly nice to have and make a build feel a lot better to have a good roll, but most builds function perfectly fine without them.
Getting an amalgam armor with a decent set of passives is actually a lot easier than it seems thanks to the "cluster system" since with 5 rows at play, you're more likely to always get something that will benefit your build in some way, and it's why this is the most well rounded armor to play with in all of TTW. The armor also gives you the correct "clothing" for the primary class it's boosting.
In all honesty Bl4 needs to finally introduce a crafting system of sorts, which for a cost should allow the freedom to change passive rolls on class mods at a price; and same with weapons.
Just having the same amount of rolls as seen in BL3, but being able to extract the rolls of a class mod, then throw them into one singular class mod would actually make farming for some form of God Roll in some capacity actually viable. Because the odds to farm for three desired passive rolls on a CoM is 1/70 * 1/69 * 1/68. Having it be that you just need one class mod of each that has one of your desired rolls means you only have to contend with a 1/70 drop chance for each of the three skill rolls, which can still be exhausting but it's actually somewhat of an obtainable goal.
I'm probably gonna make a whole video about my thoughts on crafting as I think there's a lot to say on the subject, but I absolutely agree. Crafting could both fix and cause a lot of problems, but as long as it's done right and in a way that doesn't completely negate the grind, it could definitely be overall beneficial to the series.
Unless its like an Ultimate Vault Hunter endgame feature where min-maxing is an absolute necessity I strongly disagree with weapon crafting. The thing that makes borderlands gameplay loop so addicting is adapting to the randomized drops the game gives you, its what makes no two playthroughs alike. You see a gun, maybe its from your favorite manufacturer, maybe its your favorite type, or it has an elemental utility your lacking, or its really high rarity. You test it out, it will be with you for a good 2-3 levels, then you find something different and adapt to that, but you always keep that gun type you liked in the back of your mind, so when you see it drop, the sensation you feel is that much more rewarding. example of why gun crafting and weapon scaling is a BAD idea... I think the WORST thing borderlands 2 ever did was introduce the *_contraband sky rocket._* It was one of a kind, overpowered, and scaled off your level... it essentially invalidated grenade loot drops all the way up to the end of the game. If you gave players a gun crafting system, all their gonna do is craft the SAME guns over and over again, never experimenting, never leaving their comfort zone, never broadening their horizons. It will absolutely ruin the experience.
The first thing to change is prevent multiple manufacturer bonus on a com/relic, you either buff one specific manufacturer or you boost none. Also some of the buffs are whack and of dubious use, weapon charge time or handling, grenade & splash bonuses being distinct now, specific elemental resistance...
Grenade and splash are actually multiplicative with each other. I need to try having both on a class mod one day and see if any grenades become vaguely useful for damage.
I think the skill points are okish either way. The really bug in the pizza is the amount of useless random passive rolls all class mods can roll with. Not only does it rob them of their unique identity but it also make it crazy hard to get a good roll. Same with anointments. Too much randomness.
I like the idea of separating secondary stats onto other items but I still think they would need to reduce the total (and possibly allow for rerolling). For example, they could: - Combine manufacturer stats into "[manufacturer] specialist/allegiance" boosting a bunch of stats, perhaps to a lesser extent. - Fire rate + reload speed. - Grenade damage + grenade capacity + grenade radius. - X-element resistance into "elemental resistance." I'm not sure anybody ever goes for these stats. Maybe they'd get some use if it wasn't too specific. - Max health + health regen. - Shield recharge + recharge delay. - Max shield + damage reduction. - Accuracy + handling. It would still be a big list but at least there would be less RNG and that stats would be more useful in general, a bit like when they reduced the total number of anointments or spread out loot pools.
BL2 blue class mod are a guaranted drop from one quest of DLC1. So if you needed a +6 for a build a little bit out of this world (like an infinite shield of the firehawk nova with the orphan breaker), you can farm for them easily. BL1 might seems lower chanceto drop with 1% since there's blue and green one BUT BL1 awesome level drop system made that you'd mostly got only purple shield at max level. It also meant that i personaly was able to farm godroll of every class mod in that game (apart from dedicated drop). Because even without dedicated loot source, stuff freaking drop in this game. 'cause foes drop their gun, their grenade and their CM when they died. Not necessarely all at the some time all the time, but 2 drops where pretty common so you do get stuff pretty often. They touched how droped and gun where generated in the sequels and they never got back to that perfection feeling of BL1. Worth than that, they even made blogpost on the forum back in the early days of BL2 explaining that "yes, while BL1 loot was absolutely orgasmic to experience as a player, it didn't allow game designer to precisily control how their player would spend their time and how many hours they had to spend on each and every boss of the game like your crazy ass control freak exgirlfriend trying to plan every single second of your life to her convenience". Man, slap that restraining order on your game i'm gibbing max roll in BL2 from now on, i wan't to play the game however i want, not like a goddam slot machine you've carefuly calibrated so that the house wins all the time !. OP system made that even more hideous as some playstyle *cough* melee Zero *cough* REQUIRES some godroll for dedicated loot drop found on raidboss...that you need to kill the raid boss to farm. Yup, there ain't a single OP level Zero outhere that didn't gib his savefile for a Hide of Terra or a Grogozzle. Also, having foe droping their guns means more variety in humanoid foes. And badass would always have you on your toes and mobbing was enjoyable since you could find a super badass with a god roll legendary to kick your ass every now on then. This really need to come back. Anyway oddly enough, CM do change the way you play your class drasticaly in BL1. Putting a Bombardier CM on a brick and suddenly, you can use RL forever. A truxican wrestler on Mord and you have a cool "swing" sound effect while doing max damage with every proc of lethal strike. Seeing a 99 999 damage in BL1 is wild. Some CM sadly are only craw drop and that's sad, as the eridian warrior one allowed lilith to only have eridian weapons on. And 4 god roll thunder storm (really just one you dupe 3 time) makes for a bonker playstyle.
I think the idea was "no matter what, no two builds will be identical". That's a dumb approach as there's a large portion of the base that frankly aren't adept enough at math to be good at buildcrafting. They're instead just chasing gear that mimics someone else's build in hopes of it being identical. I can imagine a lot of people said 'f this' when they were trying to farm a class mod for some build they saw on RUclips. FYI Amara has decent purple class mods. You can tear shit up with a Stormbringer if you know what you're doing.
i personally love the passive system in bl3 its in a way a long time grind to always tap into just incase you got something better while also not affecting your build that hard to be mandatory, i can understand if it was too important for your build or you want to min-max but currently i think they're fine borderlands is the RNG game of all RNGs and that what makes it special to me, having a dedicated drop to specific farm for one item is ideal but any form of crafting would massively reduce grind that farming it would be pointless as any long term player would have all classmods setting ready to be use at any moment
I agree to an extent. I love long grinds, and on a class mod like Zane's Executor, passives (and skills, really) are very secondary to the actual effect. It's a really nice boost to your power if you do get solid passives with it, but it's not at all mandatory and a completely optional grind. The issue is that not every class mod is the Executor, Driver, Stackbot, etc. and some class mods have an effect that can compound to be incredibly strong but only if you get a specific roll. While they could go the route of making every class mod effect strong, I think that would take away potential for having the current variance in class mods. The current rolls aren't the exactly the worst system ever on paper, but in practice the level of importance of good passives and skills isn't equal across all mods and it makes some COMs that are viable far harder to opt into than others since the barrier to entry is a lot higher. The Phasezerker will always be more popular than the Golden Rule despite having a similar overall power because it's just easier to roll a Phasezerker with decent passives than it is to get a +3 Laid Bare Golden Rule that also has decent passives.
Rarely comment, loving your channel past couple weeks. Agree 100% with this. Seeing the numbers really put into picture why I hate BL3's mod farming. I knew it was bad but just never this bad. Seeing borderlands youtubers with gun damage and other related stats on their pieces made me think "oh my god i need to get that too" so many times and after insane farming, i just keep thinking i'm unlucky. It's good to know it's more unrealistic than unlucky! Your point about having BL2 stat boosts on purples like Amara Sniper DMG is really goddamn good, can't believe I forgot about that from BL2. Love these deep dives, love the forgotten series, keep it up dude.
I clicked on this video just wanting to understand how to acquire and make a class mod I do not have any baseline of information for anything else other than understanding that drop rates suck
I’m so sick of accuracy bonus rolls on my class mods. I’m also sick of the manufacturer specific rolls, since they just bloat the pool so much. If they really want to put those passives on class mods again, they really need to shrink the pool or make them much more universally applicable. I really like the idea of just introducing a new gear type for those passives, that’d do a lot to those insane odds for a god roll.
Personally I think legendary gear should be unique (I.E. Every Mind Sweeper would be identical), but harder to get. This would make the farming about getting the gear instead of getting the "God Roll" on the gear. They should also only appear as world drops before beating the first play-through. This would make any legendary gear you get in story mode special and farming enemy drops should be an end-game activity anyway. It never made sense to me that something could be "Legendary" but have like one billion different versions of it. Purple is where things should get random, with different parts being mixed and matched for a more varied selection. Also "God Role" purple should be as 'strong' as any legendary gear but allow for a more niche or divergent builds. Of course, that's only if they keep things as is. What I'd like more then anything is the ability to disassemble and reassemble gear. Legendary gear would still be unique but you could make purple gear whatever you wanted. Get a good handle on a shotgun but but bad everything else? Take that handle and put it on your better gear. Of course you'd still need to get properly leveled gear so this is still a late/end game activity. I love all the different parts weapons, shields, and mods can come with but without a form of crafting they are pretty pointless for casual playing (to the point I didn't even notice they looked different the first time I played the games). It be fun to mix and match my own gear in a future game.
"JESUS CHRIST WHY DO SO MANY OF YOU HAVE GUNS!?" Well this IS borderlands. I do think all legendary class mods special affect should at least have good synergy with the skills its spec in to. And the higher rarity should have perfect synergy with is skills. Thank you for the hilarious and insightful video Arachnica. You Made my day that much brighter.
I don't think that 5 points total is enough for a legendary class mod, even with the bonus, and I'm not just saying that because I remember BL2's class mods. It just doesn't feel impactful even with a good roll of skills. 30 is evidently too much, but 10 with some minimal rolls to eliminate excessive grinding seems appropriate.
What i would like to get Purple/blue mods give stats and points in skills that arent featured zogether for simple yet effective strategies Example Salvadors mink classmor for moneyshot and special vonus stats Or zeros ranger mod for critical ascension stacking Legendary mods should as you said have less shit on them, BUT they should 100% give me a wider array of points They should do seraph and pearl mods... Seraph mods could give some rly strange effects that affect how the action skill works altogether While a pearl mod could legit give me bl1 style stat voosts and 1-2 skills with up massiv point increases Say you can get 10 points on 1 skill Imagine in bl2 having a classmod that gives 100% mag size or whatever and 10points split in moneyshot or or another skill So you violently overstat in like 2 things and thats it
I really enjoy the way non-unique class mods feel in bl2 and TPS, especially the blue ones. For most of them, you can feel the impact of both the stat boosts AND the crazy +6 skill points while playing. Putting on a Blood Blister will immediately provide two very powerful bonuses AND boost your most relevant skill to the build. Some of these bonuses are more interesting than others, but i generally like the balance of having a specific passive and a list of skills it can boost tied to each class mod variant. I also like bl3s legendary class mods, but i wish they wouldn't overshadow the non-uniques. Bringing back the class mod specific passives for non-uniques seems awesome, i hope they do it. Also i hope they increase the total number of skill points granted by class mods, at endgame a legendary class mod should provide at least 9 skill points split between three skills, or at least 15 if we go back to bl2s 5 skills.
Bl3 class mods are just infuriating dude, I always HATED that about the game. Bl2 class mods were absolutely perfect, but damn bl3 messed those up so bad.
Since we have our "echo devices" in game why not make rings echo cartridges. And they could even use it as inworld lore if you have extra slots locked at the start of the game as you need to upgrade your echo.
I feel like the concept of of effects like bl3 is the best system as you don’t need a god roll for it to be functional but the simplicity of bl2 should be grafted on to it or even bl1 just so there isn’t millions of variations between god roll and shit roll at higher difficulties
I think in general, there’s too many stats on all items. Skill points and VH specific traits and play styles are devalued as a result. I think having fixed parts, or limited parts on all items would be an improvement. Knowing where to go to get what you need is very helpful for creating builds and gearing up. Knowing what an item will boost is more useful/fun imo than primarily looking for items with good rolls. When I go to get a pearl, sheriff’s badge, or legendary BL2 comm, I know in general what I’m getting. Thoughtful placement of valuable mission rewards makes the games various areas more important to revisit later as well.
I have over 30 days of game time invested in BL3 , just recently I started playing Amara, I have all her purple class mods in a fairly decent roll. I barely use the legendary class mods because some of the purples just outshine some of the legendarys I happen to get while playing. She’s now my favorite vault Hunter to play as , sorry moze 😢 you’re still fun af but Amara is just kicking more arse.
Very good analysis of the class mod system throughout the franchise. I disagree that passives should be fully split from CoMs however. But like many others said some sort of basic crafting mechanic where you can reroll passives sounds great. Somewhat related Im looking forward ti gerting the BL2 crafting mod installed assuming I can fet it to work on the steam deck.
I think there should some reliability for certain class mods,like other than the passive to the mods,it should be given that it has one or two Garenteed stats,like in bl2,giving it something like a class mods having a certain amount of gun damage or reload. I do agree the bl3 system is good but, I think the legendary mods should be a little better. Give them like two more skill points,and make them specific to certain builds. That,however would more depend on how the next borderlands game goes about their skills,than anything else. And we should get Allegance class mods with heightened bonuses that work for a specific brand of weapon,along with a Allegiance relic,I really do enjoy themed sets like these concepts and I want more of them.
And that's my main problem with BL3 and Wonderlands, not the story! You simply can't legitimately farm god rolls anymore... This means these things are less of a looter shooter than they once were. Random stats (Secondary stats / Random variables), Anointments/Enchantments (Luneshine), the Loot Luck System and the Meta Rarities (Chaotic, Volatile, Primordial, Ascended) are garbage that absolutely has to go.
Wonderlands is such a pain when it comes to getting classmods,I tried so hard to get that one water classmods that came out with dlc 1. The only thing I cared for was a stabbo spellshot roll, I got everything but that.
Hello yes it's me the guy who loves gameplay and story integration. The Borderlands equivalent of rings could be "chips" or "drives" or "cards" of data that plug into your character's storage deck. Which, btw, is where you canonically store all your loot in the form of digital data. These items would be explained as plugging into it and modifying the gun data juuuust a little bit before they appear in your hands, giving extra crit damage or reload speed or whatever else. (I know class mods can also give HP buffs and stuff not tied to guns, but that could be explained as it modifying your equipped shield)
I think this would be perfect. Simple solution while keeping it canon. If they really wanted to get crazy with it too, it could work like the gear mods in The Division 2 where it's a single stat per but you can add one to each individual piece of gear.
If digg long enough, you'll find that Bl3's systems are not superior, as certain crowd want you to believe, than Bl2. In some way better, in some way worse. But not superior.
Idk, seems the issue here is too much rng, not necessarily that the system is bad. BL2 had better rng but the drop rates were substantially lower, so getting that god roll was similarly frustrating. Not to mention the level scaling was so rough that a majority of your gear became ineffectual after like 2 OP levels. Let’s keep it real: the legendary class mods in BL3 have the potential to be more interesting than the ones in BL2, because they give your character unique abilities (at least, if enough effort was put behind making them unique, they would). To be frank, I kinda think people hold BL2 in weirdly high regard. Gearbox left it in a comparable state to BL3: both need work done to make them fully enjoyable. But I’m not gonna pretend like min-maxing Zero or Krieg was particularly fun compared to Moze or Fl4k, and thinking that shouldn’t automatically invalidate your opinion in the hardcore community.
@@TheNwr1 Yes, the potential for Bl3 class mods was higher but it's unrealized potential. Overall how we got it - I preferred Bl2's system. The builds were much cleaner. The other issue is the skill trees themselves. They are flashier in Bl3 but on mechanics level not better - different. For different taste. And diversity alone, imho, doesn't make build system superior. I prefer build depth every time. I haven't look into it enough to say definitively - what game have most engaging and thought-out class system overall - my guess both games would be surprisingly close in this department. Definitely not Wonderlands tho. The OP/mayhem/chaos system is another topic all together. In short I never liked them all. Every time it's a DPS slog that leaves behind most weapons, punishing you for using something cool but underperforming (yes, I know there are ways around it but still). Bl3-specific issue was Gearbox's policies - first one being power creep as a sales strategy among others. As for your preferences in playstyles - no need to defend them as they are preferences. Also, Bl2 may be in worse shape than Bl3. That Lilith dlc made late game so much less enjoyable. Lvl 72 OP8 still the goat. Scummy companies and their scummy practices. Also, hardcore players always invalidate someones opinions. It's in their nature.
Some very small corrections- the Legendary COMs for the base game Vault Hunters in BL2 also had special effects. The Legendary Hunter, for example, restored 10% of Zer0's health when entering Decepti0n. For Axton, though, as well as Krieg and Gaige, got 6 skills boosted instead of 5, for not getting special effects. The UVHM COMs had no effects and only boosted 5 skills.
Another thing about BL2/TPS normal COMs is that blue was sometimes better than purple, since they'd go 6/5 instead of 5/4/4. This was useful for COMs/builds that had a skill that didn't need to be boosted, or if you really wanted 11/5 in, for example, Chain Reaction with a Blurred Trickster. I don't need all the colors of the rainbow in a build, but it did make blue COMs worth looking at if they dropped.
I'd be fine if we reverted to the BL2/TPS system, but with maybe 3 skills instead of 5 boosted on a legendary with an effect. Though, that could be broken if the skill doesn't need to be invested in still, so keeping BL3's skill system is a fair trade. I also would like the more focused passives of previous COMs, combined with the "ring" system (which I wouldn't mind if they were rings, still. Maybe Eridian Talismans or something).
Anyways, great vid and I've been enjoying everything since I discovered the channel the other day! Weird question, how's The Duc nowadays?
My biggest gripe about class mods (especially in borderlands 2) is when a legendary class mod drops but it's not for your character and is instead for a different character.
That's literally the worst, especially when the secondary stats are the exact ones you would want on your character class 😂😂 such a let down
I wouldn’t mind seeing a combo of BL2/PS class mods working like BL3 ones. The no passives (aside from the classmod passive like in BL2/PS) and provide you skill points to said skills like BL3 (no need to put points in order to use the skill) sounds perfect and I could easily see how a ring/relic system can be used solely for passives. I love that idea so much.
I’d also love to see more uses for classmods at different rarity’s as well. Give me a reason to farm more if the odds are lower overall.
I hate Borderlands 3 class mods so much. How tf are you only going to give me 5 extra points, assault rifle damage, and Hyperion shotgun fire rate?
I want it like BL2 where you can see what COM you're using and what your coop partners are using
Great analysis! Personally I hated rings in TTW - they affected your build too much so you had to get good rolls, while not affecting it so much you wanted to spend time farming them, and keeping variations of rings in your vault just in case they would be useful later was a huge pain in terms of inventory management. Reduce them number of possible rolls on COMs and add them to gear that easily farmable and don't impact your build unless you're looking to min/max for endgame players. Maybe a platinum COM rarity that only drops at endgame and has more rolls?
Yeah, I fully agree that due to how Wonderlands was, rings were really fucking annoying as a system. I think that was mostly just because of them being in Wonderlands, though. Assuming the VHs in BL4 aren't just a pile of stats like WL classes and more along the lines of BL3, I think rings would be alright. They'd still be impactful, but not absolutely necessary to have a good roll of as they were in Wonderlands. It would just be like the COM passives currently are. They're incredibly nice to have and make a build feel a lot better to have a good roll, but most builds function perfectly fine without them.
Getting an amalgam armor with a decent set of passives is actually a lot easier than it seems thanks to the "cluster system" since with 5 rows at play, you're more likely to always get something that will benefit your build in some way, and it's why this is the most well rounded armor to play with in all of TTW. The armor also gives you the correct "clothing" for the primary class it's boosting.
In all honesty Bl4 needs to finally introduce a crafting system of sorts, which for a cost should allow the freedom to change passive rolls on class mods at a price; and same with weapons.
Just having the same amount of rolls as seen in BL3, but being able to extract the rolls of a class mod, then throw them into one singular class mod would actually make farming for some form of God Roll in some capacity actually viable. Because the odds to farm for three desired passive rolls on a CoM is 1/70 * 1/69 * 1/68. Having it be that you just need one class mod of each that has one of your desired rolls means you only have to contend with a 1/70 drop chance for each of the three skill rolls, which can still be exhausting but it's actually somewhat of an obtainable goal.
I disagree about weapons, but COMs are fair game.
I'm probably gonna make a whole video about my thoughts on crafting as I think there's a lot to say on the subject, but I absolutely agree. Crafting could both fix and cause a lot of problems, but as long as it's done right and in a way that doesn't completely negate the grind, it could definitely be overall beneficial to the series.
@@B_Skizzle and artefacts.
Unless its like an Ultimate Vault Hunter endgame feature where min-maxing is an absolute necessity I strongly disagree with weapon crafting.
The thing that makes borderlands gameplay loop so addicting is adapting to the randomized drops the game gives you, its what makes no two playthroughs alike.
You see a gun, maybe its from your favorite manufacturer, maybe its your favorite type, or it has an elemental utility your lacking, or its really high rarity. You test it out, it will be with you for a good 2-3 levels, then you find something different and adapt to that, but you always keep that gun type you liked in the back of your mind, so when you see it drop, the sensation you feel is that much more rewarding.
example of why gun crafting and weapon scaling is a BAD idea... I think the WORST thing borderlands 2 ever did was introduce the *_contraband sky rocket._*
It was one of a kind, overpowered, and scaled off your level... it essentially invalidated grenade loot drops all the way up to the end of the game.
If you gave players a gun crafting system, all their gonna do is craft the SAME guns over and over again, never experimenting, never leaving their comfort zone, never broadening their horizons. It will absolutely ruin the experience.
The first thing to change is prevent multiple manufacturer bonus on a com/relic, you either buff one specific manufacturer or you boost none. Also some of the buffs are whack and of dubious use, weapon charge time or handling, grenade & splash bonuses being distinct now, specific elemental resistance...
Grenade and splash are actually multiplicative with each other. I need to try having both on a class mod one day and see if any grenades become vaguely useful for damage.
I think the skill points are okish either way. The really bug in the pizza is the amount of useless random passive rolls all class mods can roll with. Not only does it rob them of their unique identity but it also make it crazy hard to get a good roll. Same with anointments. Too much randomness.
overcomplicated and not enough impact - bl3 classmods
I like the idea of separating secondary stats onto other items but I still think they would need to reduce the total (and possibly allow for rerolling). For example, they could:
- Combine manufacturer stats into "[manufacturer] specialist/allegiance" boosting a bunch of stats, perhaps to a lesser extent.
- Fire rate + reload speed.
- Grenade damage + grenade capacity + grenade radius.
- X-element resistance into "elemental resistance." I'm not sure anybody ever goes for these stats. Maybe they'd get some use if it wasn't too specific.
- Max health + health regen.
- Shield recharge + recharge delay.
- Max shield + damage reduction.
- Accuracy + handling.
It would still be a big list but at least there would be less RNG and that stats would be more useful in general, a bit like when they reduced the total number of anointments or spread out loot pools.
BL2 blue class mod are a guaranted drop from one quest of DLC1. So if you needed a +6 for a build a little bit out of this world (like an infinite shield of the firehawk nova with the orphan breaker), you can farm for them easily.
BL1 might seems lower chanceto drop with 1% since there's blue and green one BUT BL1 awesome level drop system made that you'd mostly got only purple shield at max level. It also meant that i personaly was able to farm godroll of every class mod in that game (apart from dedicated drop).
Because even without dedicated loot source, stuff freaking drop in this game. 'cause foes drop their gun, their grenade and their CM when they died. Not necessarely all at the some time all the time, but 2 drops where pretty common so you do get stuff pretty often.
They touched how droped and gun where generated in the sequels and they never got back to that perfection feeling of BL1. Worth than that, they even made blogpost on the forum back in the early days of BL2 explaining that "yes, while BL1 loot was absolutely orgasmic to experience as a player, it didn't allow game designer to precisily control how their player would spend their time and how many hours they had to spend on each and every boss of the game like your crazy ass control freak exgirlfriend trying to plan every single second of your life to her convenience". Man, slap that restraining order on your game i'm gibbing max roll in BL2 from now on, i wan't to play the game however i want, not like a goddam slot machine you've carefuly calibrated so that the house wins all the time !.
OP system made that even more hideous as some playstyle *cough* melee Zero *cough* REQUIRES some godroll for dedicated loot drop found on raidboss...that you need to kill the raid boss to farm. Yup, there ain't a single OP level Zero outhere that didn't gib his savefile for a Hide of Terra or a Grogozzle.
Also, having foe droping their guns means more variety in humanoid foes. And badass would always have you on your toes and mobbing was enjoyable since you could find a super badass with a god roll legendary to kick your ass every now on then. This really need to come back.
Anyway oddly enough, CM do change the way you play your class drasticaly in BL1. Putting a Bombardier CM on a brick and suddenly, you can use RL forever. A truxican wrestler on Mord and you have a cool "swing" sound effect while doing max damage with every proc of lethal strike. Seeing a 99 999 damage in BL1 is wild. Some CM sadly are only craw drop and that's sad, as the eridian warrior one allowed lilith to only have eridian weapons on. And 4 god roll thunder storm (really just one you dupe 3 time) makes for a bonker playstyle.
I think the idea was "no matter what, no two builds will be identical". That's a dumb approach as there's a large portion of the base that frankly aren't adept enough at math to be good at buildcrafting. They're instead just chasing gear that mimics someone else's build in hopes of it being identical. I can imagine a lot of people said 'f this' when they were trying to farm a class mod for some build they saw on RUclips.
FYI Amara has decent purple class mods. You can tear shit up with a Stormbringer if you know what you're doing.
i personally love the passive system in bl3 its in a way a long time grind to always tap into just incase you got something better while also not affecting your build that hard to be mandatory, i can understand if it was too important for your build or you want to min-max but currently i think they're fine
borderlands is the RNG game of all RNGs and that what makes it special to me, having a dedicated drop to specific farm for one item is ideal but any form of crafting would massively reduce grind that farming it would be pointless as any long term player would have all classmods setting ready to be use at any moment
I agree to an extent. I love long grinds, and on a class mod like Zane's Executor, passives (and skills, really) are very secondary to the actual effect. It's a really nice boost to your power if you do get solid passives with it, but it's not at all mandatory and a completely optional grind. The issue is that not every class mod is the Executor, Driver, Stackbot, etc. and some class mods have an effect that can compound to be incredibly strong but only if you get a specific roll. While they could go the route of making every class mod effect strong, I think that would take away potential for having the current variance in class mods.
The current rolls aren't the exactly the worst system ever on paper, but in practice the level of importance of good passives and skills isn't equal across all mods and it makes some COMs that are viable far harder to opt into than others since the barrier to entry is a lot higher. The Phasezerker will always be more popular than the Golden Rule despite having a similar overall power because it's just easier to roll a Phasezerker with decent passives than it is to get a +3 Laid Bare Golden Rule that also has decent passives.
Bl2 got class mods right in the sense they had the matching skills to what the mod was for passives it's an alright idea if all are good
How about class mods that help your allies, like in the first few games?
I agree with the skill points. 5 points or 6 points in certain skills is too many and makes it so those skills have to be boring or basic for balance
Rarely comment, loving your channel past couple weeks. Agree 100% with this. Seeing the numbers really put into picture why I hate BL3's mod farming. I knew it was bad but just never this bad. Seeing borderlands youtubers with gun damage and other related stats on their pieces made me think "oh my god i need to get that too" so many times and after insane farming, i just keep thinking i'm unlucky. It's good to know it's more unrealistic than unlucky!
Your point about having BL2 stat boosts on purples like Amara Sniper DMG is really goddamn good, can't believe I forgot about that from BL2.
Love these deep dives, love the forgotten series, keep it up dude.
Hey I appreciate the support and I'm glad you're liking the videos!
Not to mention the level cap being raised multiple times.
I clicked on this video just wanting to understand how to acquire and make a class mod I do not have any baseline of information for anything else other than understanding that drop rates suck
I’m so sick of accuracy bonus rolls on my class mods. I’m also sick of the manufacturer specific rolls, since they just bloat the pool so much. If they really want to put those passives on class mods again, they really need to shrink the pool or make them much more universally applicable.
I really like the idea of just introducing a new gear type for those passives, that’d do a lot to those insane odds for a god roll.
Personally I think legendary gear should be unique (I.E. Every Mind Sweeper would be identical), but harder to get. This would make the farming about getting the gear instead of getting the "God Roll" on the gear. They should also only appear as world drops before beating the first play-through. This would make any legendary gear you get in story mode special and farming enemy drops should be an end-game activity anyway. It never made sense to me that something could be "Legendary" but have like one billion different versions of it. Purple is where things should get random, with different parts being mixed and matched for a more varied selection. Also "God Role" purple should be as 'strong' as any legendary gear but allow for a more niche or divergent builds.
Of course, that's only if they keep things as is. What I'd like more then anything is the ability to disassemble and reassemble gear. Legendary gear would still be unique but you could make purple gear whatever you wanted. Get a good handle on a shotgun but but bad everything else? Take that handle and put it on your better gear. Of course you'd still need to get properly leveled gear so this is still a late/end game activity. I love all the different parts weapons, shields, and mods can come with but without a form of crafting they are pretty pointless for casual playing (to the point I didn't even notice they looked different the first time I played the games). It be fun to mix and match my own gear in a future game.
"JESUS CHRIST WHY DO SO MANY OF YOU HAVE GUNS!?" Well this IS borderlands.
I do think all legendary class mods special affect should at least have good synergy with the skills its spec in to.
And the higher rarity should have perfect synergy with is skills.
Thank you for the hilarious and insightful video Arachnica. You Made my day that much brighter.
I don't think that 5 points total is enough for a legendary class mod, even with the bonus, and I'm not just saying that because I remember BL2's class mods. It just doesn't feel impactful even with a good roll of skills.
30 is evidently too much, but 10 with some minimal rolls to eliminate excessive grinding seems appropriate.
What i would like to get
Purple/blue mods give stats and points in skills that arent featured zogether for simple yet effective strategies
Example
Salvadors mink classmor for moneyshot and special vonus stats
Or zeros ranger mod for critical ascension stacking
Legendary mods should as you said have less shit on them, BUT they should 100% give me a wider array of points
They should do seraph and pearl mods...
Seraph mods could give some rly strange effects that affect how the action skill works altogether
While a pearl mod could legit give me bl1 style stat voosts and 1-2 skills with up massiv point increases
Say you can get 10 points on 1 skill
Imagine in bl2 having a classmod that gives 100% mag size or whatever and 10points split in moneyshot or or another skill
So you violently overstat in like 2 things and thats it
I really enjoy the way non-unique class mods feel in bl2 and TPS, especially the blue ones. For most of them, you can feel the impact of both the stat boosts AND the crazy +6 skill points while playing. Putting on a Blood Blister will immediately provide two very powerful bonuses AND boost your most relevant skill to the build. Some of these bonuses are more interesting than others, but i generally like the balance of having a specific passive and a list of skills it can boost tied to each class mod variant.
I also like bl3s legendary class mods, but i wish they wouldn't overshadow the non-uniques. Bringing back the class mod specific passives for non-uniques seems awesome, i hope they do it.
Also i hope they increase the total number of skill points granted by class mods, at endgame a legendary class mod should provide at least 9 skill points split between three skills, or at least 15 if we go back to bl2s 5 skills.
Bl3 class mods are just infuriating dude, I always HATED that about the game. Bl2 class mods were absolutely perfect, but damn bl3 messed those up so bad.
Yeah....a good classmod to farm impossible....I got 2 ALLMOST god rolls in thousends of hours playing bl3
Since we have our "echo devices" in game why not make rings echo cartridges. And they could even use it as inworld lore if you have extra slots locked at the start of the game as you need to upgrade your echo.
How did you know I love listening to white dudes talk about numbers and probability 😂
In Arizona everybody is strapped. It's like having shoes. Don't be surprised. o7
7:05 Nice topical boeing joke, although if one of those planes are gonna loop d loop it's gonna be a mechanical issue.
I play borderlands, it be a shock if I didn’t have 6 guns
Rip pre sequel not even a mention
As it should be
Borderlands 3 is where I get lost
I feel like the concept of of effects like bl3 is the best system as you don’t need a god roll for it to be functional but the simplicity of bl2 should be grafted on to it or even bl1 just so there isn’t millions of variations between god roll and shit roll at higher difficulties
I think in general, there’s too many stats on all items. Skill points and VH specific traits and play styles are devalued as a result. I think having fixed parts, or limited parts on all items would be an improvement. Knowing where to go to get what you need is very helpful for creating builds and gearing up. Knowing what an item will boost is more useful/fun imo than primarily looking for items with good rolls. When I go to get a pearl, sheriff’s badge, or legendary BL2 comm, I know in general what I’m getting. Thoughtful placement of valuable mission rewards makes the games various areas more important to revisit later as well.
12:28 "Over a billion guns" community, duuuh
I have over 30 days of game time invested in BL3 , just recently I started playing Amara, I have all her purple class mods in a fairly decent roll. I barely use the legendary class mods because some of the purples just outshine some of the legendarys I happen to get while playing. She’s now my favorite vault Hunter to play as , sorry moze 😢 you’re still fun af but Amara is just kicking more arse.
Very good analysis of the class mod system throughout the franchise. I disagree that passives should be fully split from CoMs however. But like many others said some sort of basic crafting mechanic where you can reroll passives sounds great.
Somewhat related Im looking forward ti gerting the BL2 crafting mod installed assuming I can fet it to work on the steam deck.
I think there should some reliability for certain class mods,like other than the passive to the mods,it should be given that it has one or two Garenteed stats,like in bl2,giving it something like a class mods having a certain amount of gun damage or reload. I do agree the bl3 system is good but, I think the legendary mods should be a little better. Give them like two more skill points,and make them specific to certain builds. That,however would more depend on how the next borderlands game goes about their skills,than anything else. And we should get Allegance class mods with heightened bonuses that work for a specific brand of weapon,along with a Allegiance relic,I really do enjoy themed sets like these concepts and I want more of them.
And that's my main problem with BL3 and Wonderlands, not the story!
You simply can't legitimately farm god rolls anymore...
This means these things are less of a looter shooter than they once were.
Random stats (Secondary stats / Random variables), Anointments/Enchantments (Luneshine),
the Loot Luck System and the Meta Rarities (Chaotic, Volatile, Primordial, Ascended) are garbage that absolutely has to go.
Wonderlands is such a pain when it comes to getting classmods,I tried so hard to get that one water classmods that came out with dlc 1. The only thing I cared for was a stabbo spellshot roll, I got everything but that.
Bullets, Fingers, or psycho masks those could replace rings.
Hello yes it's me the guy who loves gameplay and story integration.
The Borderlands equivalent of rings could be "chips" or "drives" or "cards" of data that plug into your character's storage deck. Which, btw, is where you canonically store all your loot in the form of digital data. These items would be explained as plugging into it and modifying the gun data juuuust a little bit before they appear in your hands, giving extra crit damage or reload speed or whatever else. (I know class mods can also give HP buffs and stuff not tied to guns, but that could be explained as it modifying your equipped shield)
I think this would be perfect. Simple solution while keeping it canon. If they really wanted to get crazy with it too, it could work like the gear mods in The Division 2 where it's a single stat per but you can add one to each individual piece of gear.
If digg long enough, you'll find that Bl3's systems are not superior, as certain crowd want you to believe, than Bl2. In some way better, in some way worse. But not superior.
Idk, seems the issue here is too much rng, not necessarily that the system is bad. BL2 had better rng but the drop rates were substantially lower, so getting that god roll was similarly frustrating. Not to mention the level scaling was so rough that a majority of your gear became ineffectual after like 2 OP levels.
Let’s keep it real: the legendary class mods in BL3 have the potential to be more interesting than the ones in BL2, because they give your character unique abilities (at least, if enough effort was put behind making them unique, they would).
To be frank, I kinda think people hold BL2 in weirdly high regard. Gearbox left it in a comparable state to BL3: both need work done to make them fully enjoyable. But I’m not gonna pretend like min-maxing Zero or Krieg was particularly fun compared to Moze or Fl4k, and thinking that shouldn’t automatically invalidate your opinion in the hardcore community.
@@TheNwr1 Yes, the potential for Bl3 class mods was higher but it's unrealized potential. Overall how we got it - I preferred Bl2's system. The builds were much cleaner. The other issue is the skill trees themselves. They are flashier in Bl3 but on mechanics level not better - different. For different taste. And diversity alone, imho, doesn't make build system superior. I prefer build depth every time. I haven't look into it enough to say definitively - what game have most engaging and thought-out class system overall - my guess both games would be surprisingly close in this department. Definitely not Wonderlands tho.
The OP/mayhem/chaos system is another topic all together. In short I never liked them all. Every time it's a DPS slog that leaves behind most weapons, punishing you for using something cool but underperforming (yes, I know there are ways around it but still). Bl3-specific issue was Gearbox's policies - first one being power creep as a sales strategy among others.
As for your preferences in playstyles - no need to defend them as they are preferences.
Also, Bl2 may be in worse shape than Bl3. That Lilith dlc made late game so much less enjoyable. Lvl 72 OP8 still the goat. Scummy companies and their scummy practices.
Also, hardcore players always invalidate someones opinions. It's in their nature.