Gearbox says it will 'fix' end-game enemies in Borderlands 3 because they are too easy

[Cal Jeffrey]

In a nutshell: If you are a Borderlands 3 player and have found the end-game levels annoyingly easy, Gearbox is about to make it more difficult for you. It is raising the levels of enemies on these later areas. If you have found them too hard or just right… well, too bad. Players on PC will get the update tomorrow, but consoles and other platforms will have to wait until later this month.

Borderlands 3 has turned out to be a decent new entry to the franchise, but developer Gearbox Software has discovered one flaw it intends to fix with the next update. According to the studio's analytics, late-game areas and side missions are too easy and need to be rebalanced.

"We found that new players were consistently entering certain areas over-leveled for the content they were playing," said developers in Thursday's hotfix update. "This occasionally trivialized those areas, as enemies were sometimes much weaker than intended for that point in the game. We also found that some side missions later in the game were largely ignored because of these balance irregularities."

The rebalancing will focus primarily on areas and side missions on Nekotafeyo, which is one of the last planets you encounter. It will also boost the enemies in the Eden-6 prison, The Anvil. Gearbox will raise the level of enemies in these areas to the average that players have been reaching them, but the changes will only affect new characters created after the patch is installed.

This problem is not new for the series. It was quite easy to become overpowered in the original Borderlands while trying to complete all the side missions and juicy DLC. It was just a part of the way the game was structured. Missions had a set difficulty. If it was too hard, it just meant you needed to do some easier quests first to increase your level. I always looked at it as a way to keep players from rushing through the game and encourage exploration. But it was far from perfect and often ended up with your character being overpowered on some areas and missions.

Regardless, Gearbox sees this as a problem that needs attention and will address it in a hotfix that goes live on Friday for PC users through Steam (Day One patch) and Epic. The fix for PS4, XB1, Stadia, and Mac should arrive later this month.

There are several other bug fixes and changes coming with the patch as well. You can check them all out in the patch notes.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/84380-gearbox-fix-end-game-enemies-because-they-easy.html

 

[pcnthuziast]

Solo on mayhem level 4 is where the fun begins. Got all 4 characters to level 53, unlocked all guardian perks, have all 200 vault slots unlocked and filled with level 53 legendary gear. I should be fine.

 

[Nobina]

From what I heard and saw this game is badly optimised. That's why you should always delay your purchase by at least a few months.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

Hey look, Gearbox finally PLAYED on of their own games and figured out they couldnt balance a toothpick!

Every borderlands game has this problem, not just 3. Borderlands 2, at level 37, is a friggin breeze, every quest was marked trivial, the final boss didnt hit me once. Not because of LEET SKILLZ, but because the final boss hides when you take off X amount of health, then reappears to continue fighting. A single rocket launch is capable of providing this level of damage, and at level 37, I just hit him with 1 rocket every time he poked his head out.

End result? 19 rockets and 1 round of rifle ammo and the boss was dead. Such a simple fight. The smaller enemies spawned to fight you are slow moving rock monsters that a single explosive weapon can wipe with the greatest of ease, especially as they were 6 levels lower. Booooring. None of the DLC could be enjoyed because I was OP as hell by that time.

True vault hunter is proving more difficult, but I can already tell my character is leveling up faster thent he enemies are, and the harshness of the first stage is wearing off. By the end I'll be OP again and the quests utterly boring, I'm ALREADY getting "trivial" level quests and I'm only 1/4th of the way through the game!

They suck, absolutely suck, at balancing their own titles.

 

[Namtrooper]

Hey look, Gearbox finally PLAYED on of their own games and figured out they couldnt balance a toothpick!

Every borderlands game has this problem, not just 3. Borderlands 2, at level 37, is a friggin breeze, every quest was marked trivial, the final boss didnt hit me once. Not because of LEET SKILLZ, but because the final boss hides when you take off X amount of health, then reappears to continue fighting. A single rocket launch is capable of providing this level of damage, and at level 37, I just hit him with 1 rocket every time he poked his head out.

End result? 19 rockets and 1 round of rifle ammo and the boss was dead. Such a simple fight. The smaller enemies spawned to fight you are slow moving rock monsters that a single explosive weapon can wipe with the greatest of ease, especially as they were 6 levels lower. Booooring. None of the DLC could be enjoyed because I was OP as hell by that time.

True vault hunter is proving more difficult, but I can already tell my character is leveling up faster thent he enemies are, and the harshness of the first stage is wearing off. By the end I'll be OP again and the quests utterly boring, I'm ALREADY getting "trivial" level quests and I'm only 1/4th of the way through the game!

They suck, absolutely suck, at balancing their own titles.

Balancing a toothpick does sounds like it requires a lot of fine tuning.

 

[Namtrooper]

Balancing a toothpick does sounds like it requires a lot of fine tuning.

I guess at least by the time I eventually purchase the GOTY version of the game with all dlc included, It should be in a better state.

 

[Gezzer]

I just wish they'd rebalance the Agonizer 9000. Playing a Beastmaster and I just couldn't get past him to the point where another game came along and I started playing it instead.

My pet was next to useless for rezzing, he was dying every time I turned around. Then that circling blade would take me or both of us out and they'd be no NPCs to shoot to rezz myself. To make matters worse it seemed that when I jumped back in after dying the thing was still at the weapon stage it was at when I died.

I tried grouping up and it wasn't much better. So, yeah I suck and what not, but when you can't beat a boss that you're 10 levels higher then and have set the game on the easiest setting, it's more than just general suckage. Sorry for the rant and all.