By the same token, if someone ever turns on God Mode to get a perfect game of Doom, they are trivializing your own Doom scores? Or more pertinently to this board: if I cheat and make a Shadowrun character with 5000 karma and 20 million nuyen that I didn't earn, am I trivializing all of the effort you've made in your game to get 50 karma and 100,000 nuyen? Only if I play at your table. If I tried that at your table, you'd kick me out and not play with me again, because I've broken the social pact of the game. But the problem would be solved - you wouldn't agonize over the fact that there are other power gamers out there, playing Shadowrun with ill-gotten gains. I hope.

Which brings me to point number 2...



Then really, don't play with PUGs. That's the answer, right there. I play with PUGs largely because I sometimes need to research matchmaking systems or how games work with random players, but I wouldn't choose to play with randoms for fun.
If you play with someone once who is kinda cool, and you get a sense they don't suck? Friend them and continue to play with them. Or play with people you talk to on Dumpshock, or other forums.


...That you only have to engage in if you feel like it, and which provides no reward other than Badass ranks for *engaging* in it. That's not competetive, that's a choice. The game is not predicated on duelling.

Really, here's the thing: it is extremely difficult to harden a game against cheating. Next to impossible. To harden Borderlands 2 in the way people are clamoring for would have taken them - I estimate - at least 6-8 months just to get the game ready for launch, and would have required constant patching after that to stay current. It's not economically feasible unless the game is predicated on competetive play balance or ranked play of some kind, which BL2 is not. It is cheaper, easier, and generally more rewarding to have your answer not lie in code, but the statement "Don't play with assholes you don't like". Why more rewarding? Because all of those man-hours that once may have been spent on security features can now be spent on expansions and DLC for the game.



And yet there is no one on Dumpshock you'd sling guns with? For shame! There are dozens of us here who will shoot people in the face with others, without cheating.

Well, probably without cheating friends and buddies at least . .
After all:"if you are in a fair fight, you have done something wrong"

Of the three? One hates shooters, one doesn't have a computer able to run BL2, and one lives in Greece (so his schedule's a wee bit "off" compared to mine).

*shrug*

How? Because their gun is a little more powerful than yours? Because they can carry all the ammos because they gave themselves all the Eridium they'd ever need and bought all the Storage Deck Upgrades the moment the Black Market opened? Because they gave themselves a ridiculous shitton of Badass points and have a lot of small bonuses compared to you?

I was in an open game this morning, all Mecromancers. Of them, the first person who joined my game (in Liar's Berg) was fascinated when I explained how I intended to "cheat my ass off with this character," but ultimately decided not to cheat for himself - which was cool.

The second, third, and fourth, were happy to reap the rewards. We spent like an hour in Moxxi's, with me supplying the cash and all of us just gambling the night away, joking about drops (and how I was the unluckiest bastard there, since I never got anything better than a green when all of them had had two greens and a purple from the slot machines,) then someone else joined who had figured out the secret to infinite gold keys, and we all piled into the transit station and MADE IT RAIN.

Does that "trivialize" any legit drops you get, or legit work you put in? No, because you put in legit shit, and we're clowning around for fun, profit, and the amusement of being loaded down with more purple gear than God and still killing badass psychos with a claw-hammer charge of four teenaged girls and their deathbots.

We tore that bastard apart. Granted, I was killed in the process and one of the others was dying when he went down, but it was fucking hilarious.


This isn't Counter-Strike. Cheaters aren't out to ballistically skullfuck you with impossible prescience and aim. Chances are we're just clowning around because it's how we have fun, which is kind of the point of the game. If you get some cheater who's being a grumpy old sourpuss and waving his cheating e-peenor in your face and saying he's better than you because he has all the goods, block him and ignore him; not because he's a cheater, but because he's a flame-spewing volcanic asshole.

But don't shit down on people just because they like to have fun differently. They're not trivializing your work, not at all, and they're not bad people. Hell, if you showed up with a 10-something character in my game, I'd probably ask if you wanted to sift through the loot and take your pick.





Yeah! They should stop having fun their way and be forced to play the game the way you decree it should be played! No, wait, that's not what I meant to say at all. Pretty much take what I just said there and turn it around to mean, like, the exact opposite.




Big freaking deal. Don't accept duel invites and you're golden. It's not like someone can come onto your server with all the purple gear ever, run right up to you wherever you happen to be, murder you and spawncamp you 'till you're broke or something.

If they do it in Single-player? Or only in games where everyone consents to their using Godmode? Bully for them; have lots of fun, I say.

If they do it in a game where I am playing - and where I haven't consented to anyone using cheats? Then yes, it's a problem.


If both characters are in the same game? Yes. (NOTE: that includes the whole of Missions.)


Great. So you're saying that public co-op - a major selling point of the entire franchise - is something I shouldn't be able to do, because I elect to play the game as intended ...?

No. Absolutely, totally fuckin' no. I reject that premise with every fiber of my being.


It's not the game that is the problem.

It's lowlife scum who cheat in multiplayer and don't first find out "hey, everyone here is okay with my cheating, yeah?" ... those're the problems.


What part of "I am not a social butterfly" did you not get? I have a diagnosed condition of social anxiety. Making friends, meeting new people - even over the internet - is especially difficult for me. (One of the reasons I resent being, in essence, locked out of PUGs in order to avoid cheaters; PUGs give me just enough arms-length anonymity to be comfortable meeting complete strangers without huge chasers of adrenaline-fuelled anxiety.)

To put it simply: making friends does not come easily to me. Any more than stairs come easily to someone in a wheelchair, which is to say, "nigh on impossible".

"A little" ...? Yeah,right.

And it's not just guns. Classmods, relics, shields, and grenades count, too.


Wasn't someone suggesting 100%'s across the board, a little upthread? And, since all the challenges can be repeated ... yeah, I can believe at least +50%. To everything.


Yes, if you take it into a game with me.


As long as their fun doesn't step onmine, I don't and won't. But when it does ...? I have every god-damned RIGHT to complain.

Cheating is fine, as long as everyone in the game has consented to it. I cheat with both hands, in single-player games. I would never cheat in WoW, nor would I cheat with a character in BL2 who I ever expected to go multiplayer with (and I would have to keep track of how many badass tokens it earned, and NEVER SPEND THEM). Cheating should never touch the gamespaces of those who don't want to cheat.


If their cheating is going to affect my game? Damned friggin' straight, they should be forced to play "my way"!!


... and an entire part of the game is taken away from me, because some people don't know how to play games by the same rules they've chosen to play by.


... onto my server? Public games are just that, public. And because of rampant cheaters, I am essentially locked out of that entire aspect of Borderlands.

No, what I'm saying is that you are being impossible about this. In any multiplayer game, you have two choices:
1) Play in public, and deal with cheaters either by accepting it, or kick/banning them and not playing with them;
2) Don't play in public.

You are asking to play in public where you do not have to deal with cheaters, and yet at the same time say:



These statements are mutually exclusive. You cannot solve human desire to cheat, so in order to solve the problem of cheating, the game must be treated as the problem. Treating the game as the problem, developers have only two solutions, again:
1) Rely on players kicking and banning on a personal level to solve the problem - cheap, easy, intelligent (in the sense that it is adaptive).
2) Harden the game so that cheating is not possible - expensive, difficult, "dumb" (in a linear and non-adaptive sense).

They encrypted their save files, which is about all you can do without it being crazy expensive to block cheating of the type that you are annoyed by. The only other solution is to get Diablo 3 on the problem: you have to be online, all the time, always, in order to play the game. And I think if you look at the Diablo 3 thread, you can see how THAT goes.



I would suggest that there is a SIGNIFICANT spectrum of introversion between "not a social butterfly" and "diagnosed with severe social anxiety".
I'm sorry you have this problem, however. It must suck, hardcore! But Borderlands 2 can also be played solo. If you are unhappy playing the game solo, and you are unable to make social attachments, and you are unwilling to deal with the wilds of the internet and all of the cheating, swearing, jackassery that goes with it, you may just have stumbled into the perfect storm of a game that is almost what you want but hard to play in the way that you want.

The only method of truly preventing cheating in PUGs is by investing huge amounts of man-hours into security & security infrastructure, including invasive Diablo 3 type "always on" connections. Even VAC type solutions aren't good enough by themselves, because of semi RPG-ish nature of the game - witness how much cheating still occurs in TF2, despite VAC-Secure servers and years of development.

Kick/ban + friends only play is the only economical solution for Gearbox to pursue. And while that sucks for you, personally, it is the statistically superior method of error handling for their customer base at large.

I think there's an important aspect being lost here... you have to allow it to bother you. Just don't let it get under your skin and you're gold.

It goes remarkably well actually. I notice that a lot of the pro-cheats are also people that complained more about D3.

Sure, but you and I - I don't mind either - are in the silent faction. Lots of people everywhere are very vocal about their butthurt over the always-on portion of the game. Like I said in the D3 thread: Blizzard's already won, because the game has sold crazy well. But it doesn't mean that there aren't a LOT of angry players.

While the fact it's a co-op rather than competitive game does cut down on the impact of cheaters, for sure, I think it's silly to say that it completely removes that impact.

Just because you're cooperating with your fellow players in, say, Shadowrun or D&D, does that mean it's fun to sit down at a convention with someone -- and I've got to say a con game is about like playing on-line, in that maybe you've got a mix of friends and strangers in a one-shot -- that's a rampant cheater? If someone sat down to play a Missions game with you and their every die roll just happened to be twenty dice, all coming up 6s, and they had a 10 Edge? If they were a Technosamuraisummonermancerfaceadept that did everything from casting overcast spells to summon spirits (of Man, with no drain, of course), to shooting and stabbing, to tearing up the Matrix?

Yeah, maybe you get to reap the rewards when they rampage all over every single NPC and you get your share of the pay, but...would you feel like it was fun? You, with your character that was meticulously made according to the Missions FAQ and rules, with your stack of experience point/advancement sheets, tracking your legal progress from game to game, making it work within the letter of the rules...only to have one guy do everything better than you, and make you at best redundant and at worst absolutely worthless?

Just because it's co-op, doesn't mean playing with a cheater is fun.

Crit:

The difference is that there's a few magnitudes of order more investment in a tabletop RPG than in Borderlands.

If someone is dual-wielding uberguns and invincibly stomping all over everything to the point it's not fun for you, you have two easy options:

1 (If not host): Leave that game, find new game.
2 (If host): Ask the guy to come back with a less gamebreaking character, and if he won't, kick him from your computer.

I recently tried to run a game (didn't end well, and at least 60% my fault). I had six players.

I owned every SR4 PDF with crunch in it, plus Herolab and every Shadowrun supplement for it, and an extra single license.

Another player owned most or all of the books, but no software.

A second player owned the Core book, arsenal, and Augmentation.

The other four didn't own a single two-dolalr PDF between them. And three were only learning the rules and setting as we played, too. Not everyone invests a lot into an RPG.


Fixed that for you.

Oh, also, in both cases add: "YAYY, confrontation! Stress is FUN!! *sigh*

Cheating is fine in single player. And it's fine in groups where everyone consents to it.

But not anywhere else.

No one's saying it's an impossible situation with no way out, and you'll find yourself forever locked in a video game you don't want to play, lashed to someone you don't want to play it with. We're just explaining that maybe it's not fun, and maybe it sucks that someone else cheats and ruins our fun. You're insisting that hacking is harmless and a good time and everyone else should just lighten up about it, and if that's your personal opinion (or the opinion of the people you play with), then fine. But don't say so specifically to belittle the opinion and try to handwave away the concerns of folks that don't want to play that way.

Because there's a third option that you forget to list, and that's "3: Wish for a world where other people hacking doesn't mean I have to find new games."

Woot woot, first campaign DLC in 4 days.

Dang, they're not wasting any time, are they?

Investment in terms of time, hard thought and emotion, not money. Financially speaking, I've invested more in Borderlands 2 than I did in the Saga Edition of Star Wars, but Borderlands 2 can't hold a candle to how much time and energy and effort I've put into Star Wars gaming.



1: How hard is it to see that someone's carrying all purples/golds/pinks? They tend to be visually distinctive, and, if they're pink, they have very noticeable firing methods. The more insidious form of cheating would be if they gave themselves like, 5,000 badass points and have like, +50-100% to all their badass-affected stats, but otherwise use regular crap guns.

The first case, you'll notice right around the first time they unload in combat, assuming you didn't think it was odd that someone was carrying around a truckload of beautiful uberguns in town. Total amount of time "written off" - five to ten minutes, twenty at the outside.

In the second case, you may never notice - so what's the problem? What you don't know won't hurt you, so shut the fuck up and shoot something.

2: If you skip the "ask him to leave" and go straight to "kicking him," then it takes you approximately twelve seconds, IF you're completely unfamiliar with the interface. YAY, twelve seconds out of your shooting time. I have a rocket launcher that takes almost that much time to reload.


And in both cases: WHAT confrontation, jackass? You just leave his game, or remove him from your own. Either way, it's no skin off you.

I value my twenty minutes more than you do, that much is clear.


Except I will know it - just not as quickly, and, just not as provably (which would make an accusation paint ME as the dick, rather than them). If they've got 100% to everything, then with the same gear, they are literally twice as good as I am. For every enemy I kill, they'll get 2. For every 10 I kill, they'll take down 20.


Makes me an asshole. Full stop.


That. That right there.

See, now you're saying I am a jackass just for wishing people wouldn't cheat. To which I respond with a hearty fuck you; I'm shy of confrontations voice-to-voice, but not on a forum. Jackass.

Children, play nice before the Mods lock this down.

...Or move the cheaters vs non-exploiters thread elsewhere?

Yeah, the patch was a bit..interesting. I miss Michael (I haven't seen him, not once, since the patch) and apparently a lot of the exploits were removed in order to facilitate a more balanced games play. I seriously miss that guy.

And yes, the Mechanomancer is a fun character but the robot is a rape-machine. God, that thing took down a level 16 GOD-lith (I was level 12 and not really boosting the robot skillz) while I hid behind a wall and tossed grenades and harsh language at it.

At level 50....yeah. Maya is so damn valuable in a party (The insta-res got another 100 badass rank in like 10 minutes of playing co-op) but at the moment, I'm like 5 skill-points from being an absolute hurt machine that can heal. The 150+/sec party healing is a nice bonus as well, but the slagball of stupendious hurt in addition with cohesion makes for some hilarious combat situations. I just wish the people I played with would take the hint and toss a turret or grenades into the clusterfuck suspended in the sky there...

The gunzerker can be hilarious in the wrong ways ("I charge and shoot everyone! Rez me, plz!") while z3ro players at least seem to think before charging in and dying. TheAxton guys seem to be smarter as well in the face of overwhelming odds - GF goes in first:)

Playing with a level 50 Mechanomancer was eddifying - it's not the character, it's the player that makes the game enjoyable. After the 6th group wipe because they insisted on shooting the big-ass electroball while we were in the middle of a group we asked them if they'd any other friends playing and then kicked them.

Anyhow, I'd really like to see the new DLC realsoonnow...trying to fight Tenticulasticular solo didn't exactly pan out how I wanted. (If the Bee and the conference call drops though, yeah, hurt time until the next patch)

-Tir.

Find me under Darshivadancer on X-box live. Jack must die...again.



And someone finish Shadowrun Returns soon. Dammit.

Yeah, I forsee a big ol' Nerf-stick treatment on that robot in the very, very near future. My own Mechanomancer is still under level 10, but ... damn, that robot is like having THREE other higher-level players show up to rape the NPC mobs, while I calmly skip along, humming to myself, looking for boxes of shinies to open up. Seriously. O_O


I think it's because the different class abilities lend themselves to different playstyles to begin with.

Gunzerking will appeal to people that already WANT to run out into the middle of a big group of enemies, and proceed to lay down the smack in unprecedented quantities.

Z3r0's stealth is well-suited for loners, who don't really coordinate well with the rest of a team.

Whereas Axton's turret promotes a more "I need to put the turret THERE, then go over HERE, so I can get these bastards in a crossfire" plan-then-act playstyle. Even if the plan is a simple as "I should put my turret there, befor runnign around shooting stuff".

Maya ... haven't tried her abilities yet, but I'd say she's a bit more crowd-control/support than the other classes, which also lends itself to the playstyle of thinkers/planners more than get-out-there-and-DO-STUFF players.

... and Gaige, well ...yeah. Just ... yeah. O_O


"Friendly fire ... isn't!"

He was broken on Sanctuary 1 for the console versions. His spawn rate was set to 100% for Sanctuary 1 but would return back to 10% on Sanctuary 2. The PC was never broken.

--



Zer0 is well.... odd. Mostly due to Deception but also due to some of his class mods and skill trees. You either give him a sniper rifle or you give him a pistol and go WTFBBQSAUCE on bandits through Deception and melee. The reason you don't see many charge in and die Zer0s is because most play sniping.

Skills that Improve Melee Damage [I ignore +Critical Hit Damage]. Skills with a * in front of them are increased by either of the two legendary class mods.
Zero:
*C0unter Strike (Tier 1 Cunning, 5 levels) - After getting hit, your next melee attack has a chance to deal +50% damage per level.
Ambush (Tier 2 Cunning, 5 Levels) - +4% damage per level when attacking enemies from behind or when attacking an enemy who is targeting someone other than you.
Rising Sh0t (Tier 3 Cunning, 5 Levels) - Each successful ranged or melee attack gives you +2% Gun Damage and +1.8% Melee Damage per level for a short time.
Unf0rseen (Tier 3 Cunning, 5 Levels) - Your decoy explodes when you become visible causing shock damage to nearby levels. (Included since a melee Zer0 is almost always going to be exiting Deception around enemies than a sniping Zer0)
Deathmark (Tier 3 Cunning, 1 Level) - Dealing melee damage marks a target for 8 seconds. Marked targets take 20% additional damage from all sources.
*Killing Bl0w (Tier 1 Bloodshed, 5 Levels) - +100% Melee Damage per level against enemies with low health (% unknown).
*Ir0n Hand (Tier 1 Bloodshed, 5 Levels) - +3% Melee Damage and Maximum Health per level.
Be Like Water (Tier 2 Bloodshed, 5 Levels) - Shooting an enemy gives +6% damage per level to your next melee attack. Melee Attacks give +4% damage per level to your next gun attack.
F0ll0wthr0ugh (Tier 3 Bloodshed, 5 Levels) - Killing an enemy gives +8% Movement Speed, +6% Gun Damage, and +8% Melee Damage per level for a few seconds.
Backstab (Tier 3 Bloodshed, 5 Levels) - Your melee attacks deal +8% damage per level when hitting an enemy in the back.
Execute (Tier 3 Bloodshed, 1 Level) - While Decepti0n is active and a target is under your crosshairs, melee to dash forward a short distance and perform a special melee attack, dealing massive damage. 3 meter range.
Resurgence (Tier 4 Bloodshed, 5 Levels) - Killing an enemy with a melee attack restores up to 4% of your health per level depending on how low your health is.
Like the Wind (Tier 5 Bloodshed, 5 Levels) - +3% Gun and Melee Damage per level when moving.
Many Must Fall (Tier 6 Bloodshed, 1 Level) - Killing an enemy with a Melee Attack during Decepti0n deploys an additional holographic decoy and extends the duration of Decepti0n instead of ending it.

Salvador:
Divergent Likeness (Tier 3 Gun Lust, 5 Levels) - +6% Damage when Gunzerking with two of the same type of guns. [Assuming you can melee while gunzerking]
Keep It Piping Hot (Tier 5 Gun Lust, 5 Levels) - While Gunzerking is in the process of cooling down you gain +5% Gun Damage, +6% Melee Damage, and +5% Grenade Damage per level.
All in the Reflexes (Tier 2 Rampage, 5 Levels) - +6% Reload Speed and +4% Melee Damage per level.
Fistful of Hurt (Tier 3 Brawn, 1 Level) - Throw a heavy punch dealing massive damage and knockback. Has a cooldown of 15 seconds.

Axton:
Crisis Management (Tier 5 Guerilla, 5 Levels) - +7% Gun Damage and +6% Melee Damage per level when shields are depleted.
*Impact (Tier 1 Gunpowder, 5 Levels) - +4% Gun Damage and +3% Melee Damage per level.
Battlefront (Tier 3 Gunpowder, 5 Levels) - +6% Gun, Melee, and Grenade damage per level when turret is deployed.

Maya: Cataclysm
*Mind's Eye (Tier 1 Harmony, 5 Levels) - +5% Critical Hit Damage and +6% Melee Damage per level.
Backdraft (Tier 3 Cataclysm, 5 Levels) - Your melee attacks deal additiona Fire Damage. Also, when your shields become depleted you create a fiery explosion, damaging nearby enemies. Your shields must recharge between explosions.
Blight Phoenix (Tier 5 Cataclysm, 5 Levels) - Killing an enemy causes you to deal constant Fire and Corrosive Damage to nearby enemies for a short time. The damage is based on your level and the level of Blight Phoenix.

Gaige: I don't know Gaige's bonuses specifically, but it looks like she has 3 melee oriented skill options.

So yeah... not knowing how these stack, I'm going to post both the additive and multiplicative stacking methods.

Axton gets +87% or +114%.
Maya gets +54%.
Salvador gets 80% or +102%.
Zer0, well Zer0 has a lot more contigent bonuses but none of them are mutually exclusive and some stack... +1551% or +32125%. For the sake of disclosure, I'm adding in the +4 ranks you can get from a specific class mod. A lot of this damage bonus is caused by two abilities. Counter Strike (+450%) and Killing Bl0w (+900%) which require that you have recently been hit and that you're attacking a low health enemy (<33%). I also haven't checked if every ability can be gained.

Now if you add a bladed Weapon, +50% damage and have a 5.2% BADASS bonus to melee damage....
Axton gets +142 or +338%
Maya gets +109% or +243%
Salvador gets +135% or +320%
Zer0 gets +1606% or +50694%

More hilarity with Zero's melee, I've read that 500k is a low ball number for Zer0's melee with 7500k damage being attainable. You can also melee Bunker with Zer0, something that can't be done with other characters.

I haven't noticed DT being that good at killing the enemies, but that might be because i have been tricking the game to think there are 4 people in my solo game.

Yeah, and that makes all enemies much, much tougher.

But, just single-player, by yourself? DT steals the show. In a big way.

Honestly, I can kill so much stuff with a sniping Zer0 so fast. My problem is when I try or bother with multiplayer games the lag makes it brutal to score the headshots and criticals that are necessary to make him brutal at sniping. That's part of the reason I've been considering migrating and respeccing to the melee build for him. Now that I'm reading about it, it looks like that's really the only way to play Zer0 in MP or even in SP PT2.

I felt like BL2 rewarded and punished the wrong things.

It seems off that in a game where guns are supposed to be over the top fun, they punish the gunzerker and make certain areas of play near impossible, and his specialty of wielding two guns nearly always gets him killed. Meanwhile, they decide to reward cowardly 'Dur-hur, can't find me gilbert!' zer0 play, which doesn't use guns at all.

The game doesn't let me get out my aggression like the first one did, and with XCOM and Dishonored out, I just don't find myself even wanting to play this failure of a game anymore. Shame, too, the first one was so fun.

It's obviously only a failure to you.

I admit, I haven't experienced this at all with my Gunzerker. If anything, I find him more survivable than any other class except possibly Gaige, since I haven't gotten her high enough to see yet. I wonder if this is because I am just more cautious than the average "BLAHURRR! KILL!" type person, tho.

I know Zer0's survivability is horrible when playing in the Sniping tree. It almost requires you use the Survivalist (I think) class mod. That's the one that grants health regen and a health boost. You really need a high capacity high recharge rate shield

I have to play with his melee tree, but I suspect his survivability is significantly better in close combat since you have abilities that grant HP on melee hits. I really want to try him with Love Thumper equipped (Roid Damage shield that has a 3 minute recharge timer).

It seems like the Gunzerker has tons of tank options, so I wonder what kinds of builds we're looking at.

Playing as Axton while Mrs. Crit plays as Gaige is...I almost feel lazy. Like I can just find cover and pitch my turret out over the top of it and hunker down, she can send out Deathtrap and then go get a soda or something, almost. Our mechanical murder machines do so much of the work for us, it's pretty hilarious.

"And that's why we build our own friends."

Respec'd my Zer0 to melee. Found him doing around 3k hits at level 38 which is comparable to the ~4k damage I am dealing with non-crit sniper rifle shots. Didn't really mess around too much with trying to get various modifiers to apply.

Law and Order. Makes a melee zer0 crazy.

Hoi kids - Tiralee again.

Okay, killed the warrior (Level 52) yesterday on true vault hunter mode with a level 32 mechanomancer and a level 42 Commando (I was a level 50 Maya). Jack dropped some nice thing which were ninja'd by the commando, but that's another story...

Interestingly, the robot consistantly did a lot of damage to the warrior, especially once I cracked open a few chestplates and it could use the lazzzors-O-death. The Chrylisks were hugely annoying (and responsible for the other players levelling up x2) the turrets, when properly placed (and not shooting down those volcanic raks whick I needed to kill for my near-constant second winds) were also a constant supply of pain, as were any seeking grenades.

I also died, a lot. As in I started with 2 million in funds and ended up with $3200. The treasure got me close to 200k again though, which was nice, (before the sell off)

Some more thoughts on killing bosses for fun and shinys -

King Mong is the easiest and simplest to farm: Equip your 5% bonus drop artifact, go to the Eridum blight, Catch a Riiiiiiide! and then drive to his spawn sites, waste in the MG-equipped vehicle, grab a few easy chests, quit and save, wash, rinse, repeat. Tends to drop an artifact (still looking for an ability cool-down faster than my blue level 36 (24% Reduction)) and a grenade, and at least one purple gun.

Saturn (and we all know who he is, right?) has been nerfed, hard, since the patch. No longer is he the pinata of treasure but he does drop a purple class mod and a purple grenade mod each time he goes down. Which, face it, is often as the rabid scags are a lot tougher. (Saturn is the "mech-loader" in Firestone, that spawns on the elevated road and then jumps down to spew death at you. Often gets caught on the overpass infrastructure and can be finished off with rubber-band on your controller and a corrosive pistol if you've blown the lazer cannons off of him first.) Also: a 17-19 x high-level corrosive shotgun can take 5-10% health off of him per shot due to the critical areas. Bandit makes them, but they take forever to reload and I chew through ammo a LOT.

Tried farming Hunter Helquist, drops crap after the patch (used to have a 1% chance of dropping oranges, was the source for the Bee and that orange sniper, apparently.)

Bonehead 2.0 now (also post-patch) drops absolutely nothing. As in ~ $1000 total after farming him 6 times. Pre-patch I managed to snag a corrosive lead-wind and a shock lead wind (Forgot the name) which made the 1.0 warrior fight very, very easy.

Good news! Moxy's guns (tip her at level 50 for the best weapons) still obliterate (Good touch and bad touch, fire and corrosive, respectively) and make the loaders cry like little....robots.



Annnnnnnnnnnnnnnd DLC! (Captain's scarlets' Pirate booty, Arrrgh!)

It's level 30+ so get your "I just tea-bagged the warrior" asses out there. It's also got a nice, unsettling creepy vibe happening as well.
At level 50, my shield was killling everyone so I'm going to have to level out another character (Probabily mechanomancer:)) and get them to wander about. Loot isn't half bad (some nice guns, the named ones are pretty awesome.) and again, great story.

It's really feeling like "Pirates of Fallout: New Vegas" - the Hunter S. Thompson character is a standout for "what the fuck's on the TV" from the lovely.

Also - Loving Gaige's dialogue.



-Tir

See, games like Diablo III make it so that the loot that drops, is YOUR LOOT; only ou can see it. Thus, zero Ninja-looting.

Why don't ALL games do that?!?


Awesome fun, though I dislike the weapons setup on the skimmers.

BORED! BORED! BORED! BORED! BORED!
BORED! BORED! BORED! BORED! BORED! BORED! BORED!
I am really bored!

Ha, Tiralee, nice summary. My internet's been out at home since before the patch, so maybe I should just leave it off for farming. … Nah.

Hi kids - back again as life's got a great way of tearing off your manly parts and shoving them into the blender...

Okay - The Pirate booty DLC is INSANE if you've defeated the warrior on true vault mode, yes, everything's level 50+ but they are so...friggin...tough...

But...The drops are also scaled up! Scoring that acid-glob rifle drop by Beardless can dissolve Saturn or pretty much any loader or constructor in a magazine. Shields are...frankly useless as the OF tend to hit you for 5-12k per glancing shot.

Places to avoid post-warrior vh2 mode: Anywhere that you don't have a clear escape route that allows you time to sprint and take on stragglers. The Caustic caverns are an indescrible death-hole, the Highland Stalker-blinds are horrible and the non-stop madness of Opportunity is just foul. So, yeah, if the Foreman drops a shiney unique, chances are, you're better off doing it before trying to kill the warrior, again..

Also - the +5% rare drop artifact doesn't seem to really work much in the last two stages of the Main Quest, but the drops come thick and fast during the DLC. I don't know if this is an intentional nerf, pure bad luck on our parts or some in-game balance I'm missing, but I get better drops from Skags than from the constructors at Hero's pass.

Note: Gearbox ARE going to nerf the fuck out of the Bee, so your "let's go farm tenticulastor" summer days are over. (The Bee is a unique shield that is like the amplify shields (your next shot is amped, but drains the shield a lot) that amps a ton, and drains none. Note: shotgun damage is calculated per pellet, so on true-hunter mode, you're talking ~ 5-8k extra, per pellet...makes a helluva mess) Saw a gunzerker using it to take down a level 52 VH2 mode Warrior in ~ 2 minutes (the cryalisks kept him damaged)

Stream-of-conciousness continues, but wends it's way back to the DLC:
What else? Oh, the 2 "post story" bosses are stupidly, stupidly hard to kill. And no, I've not met a team dedicated enough to kill either one, and I've simply not got the time to slowly whittle down the "HP in the billions" easy-peasy melee one (Saying that only shows you've not damaged him enough - his tomahawks do ~ 100k damage when he's actually hurt)

Killing them will give you shiny new currency, which can be used to buy artifact-level weapons from some guy in Oasis. And seriously, that place is still creepy as hell. Said weapons are very, very high-end, but a bit poorly-thought out, due to the inherent problems of balance within a randomly-generated weapon system.


My lovely and I are now on seperate gamer tags, so if you're on Xbox live and looking for a hand, just drop Retooled Looter a message. (Seperate tags now as we're playing 4-man get-togethers with longtime friends in Sydney. It's basically Snipe, Robot Rape, Gunzerk, Healz all around and rez the gunzerker, rinse, repeat.)


And lootin's:
KingMong is still an easy farm, even at level 52. Just whittle him the fuck down in that MG-equipped ride, ride forward when he leaps so you don't get pounded for 12k a hit, and then finish him off on foot with a suitably-monsterous weapon. Dropped the Bandit lev 50 multiple-launch MissileLauncher tonight, a few nice guns for a level 50 'Zerker and yet more +36% health artifacts. After that, warp to Oasis for the chests, Back to Claptrap's place for still-level-50 Knuckldragger (drops a Dahl rare acid pistol) and then to the Southern Shelf to see if Boom-Bewm is going to drop that insane grenade mod again (Each Mirv splits again. Equipping it on a gunzerker with the "double grenade" skill means there's 36 or do of the mirvs in carpet-bomb mode per grenade, hilarious from a distance, not so good up close)

Skags are a bane of my existance atm - the Rabid scags are stupidly-tough and aggro from a mile off, much to the concern of passer's-by and the odd jet loader (watched in amazement as a skag leapt and caught a jet-loader chasing me, and then I carpeted the area in hellfire)

Anyhoo,

Good huntin'
-Tir

So. Players who hack Borderlands 2 to cheat for better guns and ammo by enabled the unenablable badass hardcore mode are now causing serious griefing issues on the 360 version.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20136922

Badass mode was a removed feature (removed in the sense that players didn't have access to it) that caused permadeath but you have much better item drops. However simply joining a game with someone that has cheated for badass mode causes a character to be put into it and a character who has it and joins another game infects all the other players in it.

See? SEE?!?!?

THAT kind of mother-f*cking sh!te is why I resent cheaters who can't keep it in their own pants (which is to say, keep it only to games wher EVERYONE consents to cheat before any cheating happens).

NOW DO PEOPLE FECKING UNDERSTAND?!?!?!?

This crap is costing people their whole, entire character - and the characters of anyone they play with after "just leaving". How's that for "your" cheats, having consequences on "my" gameplay ...?! Eh? Eh??

Whoa, hold up there. Order of magnitude of difference.

The first cheat is an exploit used to boost oneself.

The second is a legitimately game-breaking bug used to grief others.

Don't put words in our mouth: nobody said THIS kind of asshattery is okay.

It might have started as a way to boost themselves, as the article said that it did give increased drops. The first people to use it probably did not know that it would spread. By now it probably spreads unintentionally, from people who don't yet know they got it.

People used it to try and boost themselves, only this time it directly hurt others. No difference, except that the outcome was direct instead of indirect.

Jesus christ, Pax, take a couple of handfuls of chill pills.

I seriously doubt that anyone is intentionally using this to griff (well, now that it's known and published, they will,) but it was probably accidental in the first place.

I'm sure the devs are working triple-time to institute a patch that strips the badass tag from everybody's save files.

No.


From the linked article (emphasis mine):

Gearbox warned about the problem on 22 October saying some gamers were using it to "maliciously disrupt the experience and sabotage characters of legitimate Borderlands 2 players".

And: it's cheating, that has had a direct negative (and catastrophic) effect on players, at least some of whom had no interest in cheating themselves.

And I'm pretty sure you'd go absolutely ballistic yourself, if YOU lost a level 45+ character to something like this. Just because you haven't felt the negative impact, doesn't mean there is no negative impact at all.

Even if this is the case, that's kind of the problem. Hacking their own setup hurt others. Oh no, they could never have foreseen this… but it's still all their fault.

MISTER TORGUE!

Q: What's your favourite type of explosion?

A: YES


Enough Said.

-TORGUE's DLC out today, if the fucking interwebs aren't still clogged with BlackShadowOpsIIStabULite players wondering why their games aren't working.

Re: the recent "hack" (enabling of the UltraIronman Mode - that was a bit dangerous to have in the final build yeah.) the patch seems to be working, according to the Russian's with whom I've been farming Levithian. And yep, they get the pop-culture references as well.

Oh, item duping still works as does the skag-sucking Meatsick slaughterfarm XP grind. Frankly, I'm in two minds over this, as I've had the Bee (Level 49, oddly enough as it's on true vault mode and AFTER I've killed the Warrior again) drop after my 134th Hunter Helquist slaughter and it makes level 50 enemies die...not easy, but without using 200 rounds or 25 headshots.

Even with the various Siren shield refresh and boost abilities (The Bee only gives you a ~ 20k shield, 30k with all the trimmings as opposed to ~70k with purple level 50 shields) I have to play a LOT smarter though, using cover, etc, rather than relying on the shield to take a few hit for you.

Oh, and Tetramorphus the Invincible, I went hunting after his ass ASAP after getting used to the bee (and farming the Levithian 4 times, god) and dropped him to 5% before an errant tentacle ended that attempt, so I tried again.

23 times.
Without success.

So, skill also supplies success:)

RE: farming: Ming-mong has dropped multiple Bandit unique rocket launchers now, much to the delight of my Gunzerker buddy who just unleashes electric hell on...well, everything.

Classes:

It seems the Commando has a big-ass decline in survivability from 37-48, everything was eating me and I was reasonably tricked-out. At level 50 though, the mods and shields and artifacts just combine to make Axton a hurt machine. Speeding up redeployment is a big priority.

Siren: I am kicking myself I've not played about with the Motion tree more (apart from convergence, which is sheer fun-in-a-ball-with-gunzerking-rockets-inbound) after I finally had a go with Sub Sequence (When an enemy dies under the effects of Phaselock, there is a chance for your Phaselock to seek out and affect another target (20% chance per level). Basically, it means that the phaselock rubberbands from enemy to enemy, dragging and hoovering up multiple enemies as each inbound grenade/AOE blast kills the rest in the ball. Stupid amounts of fun and damage if you've got Helios as well.

But for sheer surprise, it was finally specing out of the Best-Friends-Forever tree (Ie: GF-mode) into the "Little-Big Trouble" tree (The Anarchy tree, meh) for the Mechanomancer. Suddenly, the robot's not just anally-fisting bandits (Hilarious and so satisfying), but everything's on fire and being electrocuted....EVERYTHING. Also, telling people to avoid shooting the big electro-ball until it hits a bandit is a smarter way to play. Robofisting is also maintained.
Although I DO greatly miss being able to stack an extra 4% melee damage each kill and extending the Robot's residency time to some stupidly-long time (163 stacks...that's like 652% extra melee damage) I am disappointed that they've still not fixed the Mechanomancer melee damage weirdness. (FYI: it seems that unless wielding a +% melee damage weapon, Gaige's normal melee is ~ 1/10 of what it should be. Eh, like I care, that's what a robot's for.)

Gunzerker, I've not played extensively yet but it seems that adjusting your play to suit your style is the biggest advantage. The health regen is mild (especially considering the Siren's insta-heal via bullets) but the bullet regen is a great way to make friends.

Zero: Eh...as people have said, trying to headshot during lag-happy sessions is troublesome. However, using a shotgun (especially a stupidly-offensive one) with the Sniper tree is an easy way to get out of that, as well as noscoping the big-uns up close from stealth. Melee is..ok, frankly. Although you can really stack the damage with a 'Roid shield and a lot Bloodshed unlocked) Cunning was pretty meh, although Deathmark is so tasty as is counterstrike (see the roid shield reference for why)

Anyhow, time to restart and see if they've unleashed MOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAR EEEEEEEEEEXPLOSIOOOOOOOOOOOONS


-Tir

Question: HOW MUCH WOOD COULD A WOOD CHUCK CHUCK IF A WOOD CHUCK COULD WIELD TORGUE?
Answer: THE WOODCHUCK WOULD BLOW UP THE FOREST BECAUSE WOODCHUCKS GIVE ZERO F*CKS
[–]MISTERTORGUE[S]

MISTER TORGUE ANSWERS EXPLOSION RELATED QUESTIONS ON REDDIT

Yesssssssssssssssss-

According to Randy Pritchard, 6th playable class character incoming.

Torgue's little playtime was fun...and god, wasn't Piston lampshaded? But it was quite fast (Someone tell me how to get the damn explosive sniper, please?) once you finished the main quests and just sat and re-slaughtered the level 52 badasses for enough torgue tokens for those sweet, sweet uniques.

(Note: level 50 Bonus package is instakill. That shit be wrong.)

Still not found a good way to farm tokens yet - but a level 50 commando with the Bee and enough grenades will clean out that bar pretty fast, but those rat-bastards, oh holy shit, I shot one and found he'd stolen ~ 67 million from me. (Much to the delight of the povo buddies I was playing with.)

Anyhoo, time to go - need to level a Mechanomancer enough so that Death-trap Robo-fisting makes bandits explode without me having to shoot them.

-Tir.

Brain bleach, please.