The final boss was annoying if you didn't know the trick - but the Rakk Hive has pretty much *defined* "disappointing" and "overhyped" every time I've been through it.
I've got a Hunter and a Soldier at the very top of the level scale (61 and 59), I've got a 40ish Brick, and I've got an 18 Siren. I've been playing them all, with different groups of people.
Have you got the DLC? Some of it is just excellent.
The "trick" to the end boss that I used was "hiding behind something, jumping out and shooting it and hiding again". Did you fight the Rakk Hive solo or with a group?
I own and have played through all of the DLC. Levels didn't scope well for me, so I ended up fighting a General Knoxx who was about five levels below me. His minions were higher. My favorite by far was the Zombie Island of Dr. Ned.
Oh and when I played through the Underdome with two friends, the enemies scoped to his level (which was something like 10 below me) so I was blazing right through them. Being that I haven't played much multi player, is the level scoping thing something that you're seeing too?
The Underdome is the only place where the levels change, and they match up to the average of the group - so you really kind of all want to be the same level.
On the plus side, if you're all L61 the loot drops at the end of each round are L61, too.
All that being said: Underdome's an okay-at-best DLC, mostly awesome because of the addition of the Bank. Secret Armory and Zombie Island are better.
Everywhere else in the game, the monsters don't scale, up OR down, to match the party. They're determined by which Playthrough (1/2/2.5[*]) the Host is on.
[*]: When you open the Vault[**] in Playthrough 2, everything in the game jumps 5-10 levels up. Permanently. So you've got L50 Armored Alpha Skags in Skag Gully, that kind of thing. The same thing happens AGAIN for Secret Armory when you kill Knoxx. This is commonly called "playthrough 2.5"
That sounds about right. I think the host was lower and the other guy and I were within two levels of each other. Host kept getting killed while we were mostly killing everything that moved.
Agree totally on Underdome.
I was on my first playthrough and the Knoxx DLC badguys were 3-4 levels below me.
3-4 levels below you for most monsters is actually fairly normal and reasonable. Of-level baddies are tough and remarkable, and higher-level ones tend to just be mean.
The rakk hive was a total joke if you play a siren. I just pointed my Here are fire dots SMG at it with an elemental/smg build for a minute or so and it was dead.
Yeah, that's not my build. I ended up hiding behind the rock at the entrance, shooting at it and healing up invisibly between Rakk Attacks (yes, I had to capitalize that second word).
Borderlands is showing up as $27.19 USD for me, and the three DLCs for $13.23 USD. Is that the prices you were getting, or am I missing something cheaper?
I'm at the same URL. 66% off, $27.19 down from $79.99. DLCs as a package are $4.41 each, down from $12.99 each.
I'm not in North America, though, so perhaps they're engaged in some kind of screwed-up regional pricing bullshit. Because, y'know, downloads take longer to travel over to New Zealand and the bits need to be specially insulated or something.
I got frustrated and quit playing because of the horrible hitboxing and whole clips randomly not hitting the massive doggy-thing boss three feet from me.
Sounds like you had a terribly inaccurate gun (which do exist in the game!).
I find the hitboxes to be huge on most monsters. For the birds, you don't actually have to be anywhere close to 'em. The CRITICAL boxes, well, those are of verying size to begin with, and get bigger, or smaller, or nonexistent, depending on the monster and what it's doing.
Nope, I had a 98-some-% sniper rifle that would miss the guy's head about half the time if his legs were behind a rock, and for the wasted clips I had high a accuracy SMG and assault rifle with full ammo before going into the dog boss in that arena, and was out before he hit 75%. I would wait for him to charge his lazur, move off to the side to shoot his open mouth, and none of my shots would hit. Even if they were missing his mouth they should have done small amounts of damage on his hide, but none would hit at all, over and over. I can't find the forum threads I was checking at the time, but other people were having the same problems.
My biggest problem has been that a "private" game is actually "invite-only", not "Friends-only" as it advertises. So I can't go "online, friends-only game" and have Ben join me if he sees me online. Instead, I have to see him and invite him.
(He can totally join me in a Public game, no problem - but so can anyone else)
The multiplayer convinced me to get it on the 360 and play there instead. More friends had it for that, and the Live multiplayer seemed less problematic at launch.
I found it simultaneously great fun and strongly frustrating. The general setting, the missions, fun. The invisibile alien forcefields, and the fact that I hit max level about halfway through the second playthough with my Siren.
Am grabbing this though – I haven't tried any of the DLC due to getting the game bought for me physically, rather than through Steam.
The 'we don't want you to go this way' enforcers. There are a lot of places, often on slopes, where the slope itself is not steep enough to prevent you climbing it, so instead of making it such, they stick down a line of 'You can't cross here".
It's not a problem if it's very occasional – I was replaying Psychonaughts at the same time as I was playing Borderlands and there's one or two forcefields in that, but mostly they just make stuff big enough to not get over.
Borderlands was full of it though, they just kept on not bothering to make stuff steep or sheer, and just stuck what I ended up calling 'invisible alien forcefields' as I needed a way of describing them. And it's just... lazy. I was doing the racetrack where you have to kill 200 odd bugs, and I saw a really awesome jump that I thought might get me to somewhere interesting... and there was a forcefield in the way. So many times that sort of thing happened – it's a sandbox world with hidden interesting bits, so you go exploring, to have what looks like a way to new places be blocked off is rather frustrating.
That, combined with a few other niggles (including the mentioned hitting max level above), just made it feel like the game developers had been lazy, hadn't spent quite enough time making the game right.
I think I know the jump you're referring to, and it's not blocked, it's just REALLY easy to hit the posts.
I really didn't find that many walls like that - or, rather, if something was unclimbable, it *looked* it to me, and I could find a way around. The edges of the map are kind of like that, but I actually prefer Borderlands' "you fall off a cliff and die" or "the giant cannons annihilate you after giving you several polite warnings" along with the standard "infinitely high cliffs" to something like Oblivion's "all walls, all the time" thing. I found it kind of refreshing.
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How long will this last?
Date: 2010-08-18 01:37 am (UTC)Re: How long will this last?
Date: 2010-08-18 02:22 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-18 01:46 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-18 02:21 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-18 02:41 am (UTC)What character are you playing?
(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-18 03:03 am (UTC)I've got a Hunter and a Soldier at the very top of the level scale (61 and 59), I've got a 40ish Brick, and I've got an 18 Siren. I've been playing them all, with different groups of people.
Have you got the DLC? Some of it is just excellent.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-18 11:18 am (UTC)I own and have played through all of the DLC. Levels didn't scope well for me, so I ended up fighting a General Knoxx who was about five levels below me. His minions were higher. My favorite by far was the Zombie Island of Dr. Ned.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-18 02:00 pm (UTC)And the Rakk Hive: Both, on different occasions. Fundamentally it never did nearly enough damage to be a threat.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-18 10:47 pm (UTC)I dunno then. Every other boss character in the game I've done pretty well on. That thing took forever.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-18 11:23 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-18 01:59 pm (UTC)On the plus side, if you're all L61 the loot drops at the end of each round are L61, too.
All that being said: Underdome's an okay-at-best DLC, mostly awesome because of the addition of the Bank. Secret Armory and Zombie Island are better.
Everywhere else in the game, the monsters don't scale, up OR down, to match the party. They're determined by which Playthrough (1/2/2.5[*]) the Host is on.
[*]: When you open the Vault[**] in Playthrough 2, everything in the game jumps 5-10 levels up. Permanently. So you've got L50 Armored Alpha Skags in Skag Gully, that kind of thing. The same thing happens AGAIN for Secret Armory when you kill Knoxx. This is commonly called "playthrough 2.5"
[**}: Whether you beat the game right then or not
(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-18 10:45 pm (UTC)Agree totally on Underdome.
I was on my first playthrough and the Knoxx DLC badguys were 3-4 levels below me.
I'm assuming you already saw this, right?
(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-18 11:22 pm (UTC)(See also: Crawmerax The Invincible, Holy Shit)
(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-18 08:42 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-18 11:21 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-18 02:03 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-18 02:21 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-18 03:14 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-18 03:32 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-18 03:51 am (UTC)That's current on http://store.steampowered.com/app/8980/
(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-18 04:18 am (UTC)66% off, $27.19 down from $79.99.
DLCs as a package are $4.41 each, down from $12.99 each.
I'm not in North America, though, so perhaps they're engaged in some kind of screwed-up regional pricing bullshit. Because, y'know, downloads take longer to travel over to New Zealand and the bits need to be specially insulated or something.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-18 04:28 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-18 04:31 am (UTC)I'm also getting a friend in Seattle to gift it to me, and sending him money via PayPal.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-18 04:32 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-18 04:25 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-18 04:31 am (UTC)I find the hitboxes to be huge on most monsters. For the birds, you don't actually have to be anywhere close to 'em. The CRITICAL boxes, well, those are of verying size to begin with, and get bigger, or smaller, or nonexistent, depending on the monster and what it's doing.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-18 05:02 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-18 05:08 am (UTC)I've never seen that problem. Could it have been a bug fixed since release? I've only been playing since July 2010.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-18 05:14 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-18 05:03 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-18 08:46 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-18 02:14 pm (UTC)My biggest problem has been that a "private" game is actually "invite-only", not "Friends-only" as it advertises. So I can't go "online, friends-only game" and have Ben join me if he sees me online. Instead, I have to see him and invite him.
(He can totally join me in a Public game, no problem - but so can anyone else)
(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-18 09:39 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-18 10:33 am (UTC)Am grabbing this though – I haven't tried any of the DLC due to getting the game bought for me physically, rather than through Steam.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-18 03:51 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-18 11:05 pm (UTC)It's not a problem if it's very occasional – I was replaying Psychonaughts at the same time as I was playing Borderlands and there's one or two forcefields in that, but mostly they just make stuff big enough to not get over.
Borderlands was full of it though, they just kept on not bothering to make stuff steep or sheer, and just stuck what I ended up calling 'invisible alien forcefields' as I needed a way of describing them. And it's just... lazy. I was doing the racetrack where you have to kill 200 odd bugs, and I saw a really awesome jump that I thought might get me to somewhere interesting... and there was a forcefield in the way. So many times that sort of thing happened – it's a sandbox world with hidden interesting bits, so you go exploring, to have what looks like a way to new places be blocked off is rather frustrating.
That, combined with a few other niggles (including the mentioned hitting max level above), just made it feel like the game developers had been lazy, hadn't spent quite enough time making the game right.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-18 11:40 pm (UTC)I really didn't find that many walls like that - or, rather, if something was unclimbable, it *looked* it to me, and I could find a way around. The edges of the map are kind of like that, but I actually prefer Borderlands' "you fall off a cliff and die" or "the giant cannons annihilate you after giving you several polite warnings" along with the standard "infinitely high cliffs" to something like Oblivion's "all walls, all the time" thing. I found it kind of refreshing.
But, hey, that's not quite the same thing.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-18 10:56 am (UTC)