Normally I would have pre-ordered this as soon as it hit the store. Thank you EGS for making me not do that as I would have regretted the purchase.
Been watching streams and I'm left horribly disappointed in the game so far. The antagonists are cringe worthy and character models seem to be degraded over Borderlands 2. The faces for many of them look downright weird. Ellie got the worst treatment in the process. She just looks like someone smashed her face in now. In Borderlands 2, she was cute in a big and cuddly kind of way. Overall the character models in BL2 are just way better than the ones in BL3, IMO.
The lighting while technically better clashes with the cell shaded graphics, IMO. It feels out of place and contrived to me. It's like they tried to make the cartoony cell shade graphics look more realistic, but in the process just made the whole thing look worse, IMO.
Also, Moxxie is the only character with "soft body physics."
The guns look interesting, but everything else leaves me feeling disinterested in the game. Usually when watching a game I like, I feel the urge to play it. Like watching people play Control makes me really want to play it. Watching Borderlands 3 just makes me think how Borderlands 2 is the better game. Or at least the one with an actual good story.
Borderlands was always about a bit more crude and adolescent type of humor, but BL3 just takes it down to a horny 13 year old level it seems.
Maybe it gets better later in the game, but so far
Up through the vault boss fight in Meridian and a bit into Eden 6.
I'm not feeling it for this iteration of the franchise. Then again, how do you top Handsome Jack as a charming, yet sociopathic antagonist? The answer in BL3 is that you don't.
Eh, haven't gotten that far yet. Just started playing, didn't get to get on last night. So far, I'll say whoever does the intro and picks the song is amazing. It's totally Borderlands, but different yet the same. It's great. The HDR is in your face, when there's flares its really incredibly bright.. being in the desert it really feels like the sun is beating down on you.
Can't speak to any of Buddha's complaints because I haven't gotten that far yet.
Then again, it might just be the difference between experiencing it yourself and watching/reading other people's experiences. So far for me, and I've just barely started, it's just more Borderlands. A Huge improvement over the Pre-Sequel which I just couldn't get into at all because it didn't feel like Borderlands.
So far, this seems just like Borderlands. If you're playing, don't forget to search the starting areas before you follow Claptrap, there's lots of ammo and money to be found (although, I didn't find any weapons).
So I got to level 4, again, just pretty much the intro stuff and then I quit last night because that's about the time where I decided this game isn't much fun playing by yourself. The Co-Op feature is what I loved about Borderlands. Also, changing back and forth is more difficult in this game you have to change your settings before you can do match making - so you can't just have your game set up for only friends and then try to join random's, you have to change your game settings or at least that's how it seems.
Either way, really fun, but certainly more fun with others. When I did get into some random's game none of them had mic's which defeated the purpose. Maybe I'll have better luck today.
I am very disappointed in what they did with all the character models. They really fracked up Ellie and they messed up Moxxie too. Something just isn't right with all the characters, it's like they're too short or something, it very much feels like a world of midgets. The gunplay doesn't feel much like a genuine Borderlands game either. There's just something off with this newer engine.
And this isn't from playing BL:The Pre-Sequel or BL2 before hand, as the past two months I've played through BL2 and then through original Borderlands - Game of the Year edition on One X. I went all the way from Level 1 to Level 55 on BL:GOTY. All three of the first games have nearly identical feel (BL/BL2/BL:TPS). This BL3 doesn't feel the same.
The mechanics are the same, but it just feels off, maybe from having all character models being wrong, maybe the proportions are wrong in how much screen space they take up. Like Moxxie should take up X% of the screen Height and Width but she only takes up Y% where Y is significantly less than X.
I also much prefer the old inventory and equipment layout screens.
I was doing some reading the other night, and I might be a victim of FOV changes, so I need to try out various FOVs to see if any of them get the visuals to feel the same as I'm used to as I've played in on consoles far more than on PC.
If I remember correctly, BL 1 has a Vert- FOV with a rough equivalent of 70 Horz-, and I think my BL3 was set to 100 or 110.
On the OneX, I just fired up BL1:GOTY and BL3. BL1 has default FOV setting of 75. BL3 has default FOV setting of 90 for both player and vehicles.
I set BL3 down to 75 for both and going to give it a quick try. The movement speed seems slower at 75 than 90, but it looks and feels more like the other games.
Here's screen captures, hopefully @AlBran approved, that show how vastly different the various FOVs feel. I think they fucked this up. It seems wrong that you can't get any closer at the higher FOVs to see the same amount of detail, thus making everyone seem much shorter and having wrong proportions.
@BRiT That's pretty much how fov works. If you watch Apex players on PC the game looks incredibly fast, but it actually isn't. They tend to play with 120 horizontal fov, so you see more of the ground close to you, which makes it look like you're moving much faster. If you lower the fov the game actually seems relatively normal, or even slowish at walking speed. The tradeoff for lower fovs is you get a more zoomed image that makes it easier to aim.
90 is a pretty nice choice for gameplay. You don't really see the fish-eye effect, it's high enough to give you a reasonable peripheral vision, it's not too zoomed out and it should help reduce motion sickness for people who are sensitive to that in fps games. I prefer an fov around 100-110 for shooters, but 90 should be a very happy medium. 75 fov is basically just garbage from a gameplay perspective. It's really just a way to gain performance at the expense of basically everything else.
@Scott_Arm There should be the ability to get up close to people. I was standing directly next to Moxxi in all shots so why should she not be taking up the same portion of the screen? Other games don't force you to look like you're standing 5 or 10 feet away (FOV 90 and FOV 110).
Moxxi looks skinnier and the face looks more masculine in BL3.
With the higher than 75 FOV, everyone looks shorter because you're never seeing them eye to eye, you're always seeing extra areas above them. If I move back to actual distance of 10 feet (typical distance in the game) everyone looks like the height of midgets and the midgets look like height of poodles.
HA! I was just screwing around on Sanctuary, I'm only level 10 and don't want to advance too far ahead of Azbat that I'm playing with, and just in the map and looking for the euridium sales guy and the game froze and then crashed my XB1X. I've never had a game crash my system outside of Sea of Thieves Beta before it was released. I've never had a released game lock up my system and then give me an annoying buzzzzzzzz and crash before.
Hey, BL3 - Youi're setting all kinds of records up in here!
I had BL3 "crash" the other night during the first load. It had the music and sound playing but only a pure black screen displayed. I had to force quit the game and reload. About 4 days back I had a pure lockup too, couldn't dashboard or anything, had to force power cycle it.
BL3 has bad pacing and resume points. In previous games you at least had more fast travel points that would let you skip through a lot of fighting again.
I am enjoying the game, but I'm finding I'm under-leveled. I was in quest to get the second vault piece and had mobs level 17 or 18 when I was 15. I detoured and completed all the side quests which only got me to level 17.5. That helped a lot, but I found myself under-leveled again when finishing the quest.
At the end of the quest progression that had no additional fast travel or resume points I just finished a long fight process with normal mobs and barely had any ammo left. And I have all my ammo capacity up to the $9000 to expand again level. Then the quest spawned in the boss mob
Katagawa Ball
. Talk about shitty pacing and resume points. I died a couple times, but kept trying to go back in because I didn't want to have to go through the entire map again if I didn't finish it then and there. The boss was 2 levels higher than me and his armor and attacks were insane.
I finished that quest then proceeded on with the main story because no additional side quests were available. At the end of the mission Atlas At Last, I was fighting a Boss that was again 2 levels above me, they were 21 and I was only 19.
That's no good, were you solo? Perhaps you were in another players game instance that made the levels out of whack? Which character are you playing? As Zane I feel pretty underpowered most of the time let alone being under leveled!
I'm going through it solo first. Never played co-op or loaded into anyone else's game for BL3.
I'm playing as the Siren, and haven't really figured out a great skill-tree combo -- too many options and combination to try out at low levels. I'm just going to try leveling up as quickly as possibly and worry about skill-tree when I hit the wall around 30ish (if its anything like previous Borderlands).
I spent most of last night playing through side-quests around Lectra-City. Most mobs were level 13 to 14 when I was level 19. I made it up to level 20 going through there and killed the area boss. No new equipment to be had there to replace most of my level 16 gear.
I then proceeded back to the main story quest Beneath the Meredian. The mobs were mostly level 21 with some level 22. I leveled up to 21 there. I found plenty of new weapons that were substantial upgrades over what I was using. Weapons are finally doubling the damage of the previous ones, which they should comparing Level 16 to Level 21.
Now the random equipment being found in containers is level 22 or level 23. I can't find any more quests to complete outside of the main quest. I guess I'll have to go back through all the earlier levels scouring for more to do for Experience.
The following weapons both made good differences in my killing power.
The first is the Redistributor SMG by Hyperion. It's obtained during The Impending Storm mission. "Every 7th shot is amped and chains to nearby enemies." During this mission is where I encountered the 0-HP Invulnerable MOB bug. In order to get past that bugged MOB, I had to use a Shotgun to blast them over the edge of the map!
A few hours later I found the Shark Tsunami SMG by Maliwan. Sadly I don't recall exactly where or when. It's only level 16 (I think), but it's specials are still proving to be useful against level 22 mobs. I wish I had a level 22 of it. The only annoying bit is the precharge delay before it gets to doing damage and firing. "Periodically fires additional rounds of shock or corrosive. Bullets ricochet once." It's a fun gun. (understatement)
My other weapons are nothing legendary -- Pistols normal and CoV with Radiation, Assault Riffle Dahl or Vladdof with Fire elements, Shotguns normal Dahl (I think). I'm still trying to find great sniper rifles, some with high damage have obscene zoom levels of 8 or 16 which is too close for most encounters.
