Be Excellent To Each Other

I'm not even going to be able to trudge through to 1000G on this without falling asleep, why must they keep adding more?

Sorry. Is someone holding a gun to your head and forcing you to play it?

I'm being forced to play the main game out of some desire to get value for money out of it. Not so forced to play the DLC, I'll grant you. But I object to the drip-feeding of DLC at too-close intervals on general principle anyway.

I am struggling to find the will to carry on without any bezzies to play it with.

If you don't mind being dragged along by a level 50 I'm always up for Bordering of the Lands.

You're never online!

I'm nearly always online. Not on Live though. Simply send I an message though hyar.

I never thought I'd hear that said about Dimrill

What level is your d00d Steve? If I can find the will to play enough to level my d00d up enough to make it worthwhile joining your game then I will... but the fact that I'd rather play pretty much any other game I own than Borderlands is an obstacle.

I'm at level 8 or so, but would fancy som coopage.

...

I can't be arsed.

Think I'll chuck this in towards ME2

My Siren is level 32, my Soldier is 12 or so, I think.

If we play off your save the 'sters should be your level, so I'll just jog along side.

I genuinely think playing this co-op has somewhat ruined the game for me, which is vexing.

I'm level 26. All the enemies I'm facing are levels 20-22, so I'm in no danger at all from them, but at the same time I can't just blat through; I have to sit there firing bullets into their stupid faces for some time before they drop, then run around scavenging ammo. I get hardly any XP, as they are under my level, so my character progression has stalled; plus, I picked up loads of l33t weapons when I was co-opping, so the game has stopped dropping anything better than the stuff I'm carrying.

This adds up to a very dull experience. It's been like that for the last hour of play, and looks likely to continue for at least another hour or so, maybe more. So I've lost almost all interest in it.

DON'T PRESS THE BUTTON!

Like I said to you yesterday, Doc, the game is very heavily weighted towards enjoying it with friends as opposed to enjoying it alone. It's just not compelling enough as a singleplayer experience, but as (I controversially believe) Left4Dead has shown us, you can make a lot of fun with a simple co-op game simply because it's co-op.

Alas, Borderlands' weird handling of co-op (unless you're all in the same game with the same people always, not everyone makes 'progress') means it's not as conducive to being a drop-in, drop-out experience as it should be. Not least of all because if you're one of the people not making progress, you'll then return to your own game and be in DrG's situation: a few levels higher than you should be.

I agree with your second point more than your first. I found it a fine single player game and a fine co-op one. It was mixing the two that caused me to come unstuck.

Fair enough. In singleplayer it felt far too 'empty', like an MMORPG but without any other players. Fair enough, other single player games also have pretty simplistic 'go here, kill that' quests but they are also more 'lively'.

Admittedly if I had an attention span longer than a gnat I'd just get through this bit. The game is adjusting itself -- by giving me hardly any XP for kills now, I'll gradually get back to the "right" level and things'll pick back up.

But my attention span isn't longer than a gnat's, you see.

Yep - as a co-op game, it's great. As a single-player game, it's good. As a drop-in/drop-out co-op game, it's fucking shoddy.

I wonder if a better structure for Borderlands 2 would be a more open world, with the level of the foes in each area making going where you shouldn't unwise; as opposed to the original's much more structured 'story'? There'd still be an overall story and plot specific locations to go to, but everything else you could in theory attempt (even if you failed) from the off.

Or it could just let you spawn a lvl whatever character with a basic loadout and amount of cash, whenever you want to join in with your mates.

Yeah, or some sort of 'rollback' thing where you can lower your character's level (but not raise it) to match friends.

Having an unstoppable friend in this game is fun for a few minutes but soon you're just watching them shred all and sundry with their unstoppable weapons. I do feel that the levelling thing is overly harsh, just a level or two out and you get slaughtered. Bonehead is a great example of this, unless you've done pretty much every other quest before facing him, he'll tear you in half. Get to his level, though, and suddenly the same gun is killing him whereas before its bullets were pinging uselessly off his shield.

Woo, dodged a bullet with this one. I'm glad it came out when I was on holiday.

Which to my mind was the best thing about it (the MMORPG with no other players).

This description gets rolled out every time people talk about an RPG levelling issue. When is someone going to actually make the fucking game?

I am also up for coopage on this. I am a level 26ish snipery dude. Quite like the game in both single player and multi, but it just isn't interesting enough to grab me.

Fallout 3?

That wouldn't work either. F3 levelled monsters in a particular area at the point you entered that area. So if you had multiple characters, one higher than the other, how would it handle that?

We weren't talking about co-op there, were we?

Anyway - there's no way of handling having co-op players of disparate levels. Either they get stuff that's too hard or too easy for one of the players.

This being the Borderlands thread, yes. Yes we were.

It seemed to have wandered off the co-op issue and onto a general "monster levelling" issue, due to Gaywood.

Well, it's the problem of having played co-op disrupting the level of difficulty the game is throwing at him.

I think SP levelling is pretty much covered now. There are a few options, and most suit most folks. Co-op still remains the challenge.

The meaty/Bobby exchange seemed to be talkgin about SP, but ANYWAY.

I'm not sure how you can solve the issue of co-op level disparity. Either the monsters will be too tough for the little'uns, or too easy for the grown ups. The only alternative I can think of would be to prevent parties where the lowest to top level character difference is more than [x] levels.

Trade it in.

There are two other options.

1) Allow your character to be 'level-balanced' when you join a game - so you drop down to the level of the host.
2) Use the power of maths. If you're a higher level than your partner, and the monsters are levelled to you, scale your partner's damage up by x% to make it equivalent. At the same time, scale down the damage the monster does to him compared to you.

That'll never work. The monsters will just offshore their damage to an alternative foe who will be exempt from any hit point score reductions.

OBJECTION!

I'm trying to remember how Neocron did it. Because certainly we'd have hunting parties where some players were much higher levels than others, but there wasn't anything nearly this jarring. A cunning low level player could gradually wear down a high level mob, provided they avoid the (often one hit kill) return fire. The game rated stuff with stars, based on your combat effectiveness and how big a threat a target was to you.

The only possible explanation I can think of is buffs. Inspired by these hunts (in which my low level character was able to survive against much stronger enemies) I made one a support class character (called a PPU) and soon had a range of buff spells that let me boost other players' skill with weapons (and hence damage potential), increase the size of their life bars, increase their resistance to damage, etc etc. I also had a very handy resurrection spell.*

What's surprised me about Borderlands is there isn't really a support class like this. The nearest we have is Roland, and it's all based around staying next to his turret to receive the somewhat meagre benefits. I was expecting Lilith to be the healer class, frankly - with her strange phasewalking would, by logic, come other strange powers that couldn't otherwise be explained, like boosting and healing others out of thin air.

Something for our imaginary Borderlands 2? Probably. The more I think about the game, the more I think it's a good first attempt that could be vastly improved by little tweaks and extra options here and there.

*I've made my character in Dragon Arse like this. With the spirit healer subclass, she now hangs back casting paralysis spells at the enemy and keeping the rest of the party alive while they hack the enemy into more management pieces.

A Dave has a healing class mod which is invaluable at the blatting end of the stick.

This being a healing Roland?

A healing Mordecai. (Lvl 50)

What, does his bird of prey thing flap over and drop aspirins in your mouth?

Nah, there's just a constant effect, like the healing shields. Only a bit quicker, and meaning you can use a different, more capable shield

I just pick my most appropriate weapon and shoot them until they die. I quite like the randomness of coming up against noticeably stronger and weaker foes as a result of dipping in and out of multiplayer. Sometimes I cane a boss a bit better than me, and it makes me really enjoy the game. I think a lot of Borderlands players aren't really arsed about what's going on in the beard department.

In the interests of balanced coverage, I got the urge to play this this afternoon and quite enjoyed it. I seemed a lot better at it than I remembered being too, which might have helped things. I do think there are far too many side quests though (which is not something I ever thought I would complain about), I played several hours and still only managed to clear the Dahl headland area stuff, and not even all of that. I suppose I could just ignore them, but then a game which drives you to skipping bits can't be that good, surely. But still, I did enjoy it and it is a pretty easy 1000G, so I'll start chugging away again evenings this week and see how much will to live I have left by next weekend.

Oh, I loved it - it's just that the co-op is fundamentally flawed unless you play end to end with the same group at the same level.

Haven't we got enough management pieces?

I've decided that I'm going to finish this game.