What did I miss?

Gamer Stuff: There’s a rumor that I’m doing a voice in Borderlands 3..... 💥💥💥 https://t.co/wBA20gS1Kw

— ICE T (@FINALLEVEL) March 28, 2019

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I've played some of Borderlands 1 & 2 and just it never "clicked". I didn't enjoy the gunplay enough to put up with the mental load of sorting through so much loot. I thought the writing was pretty funny, but I never felt like the story or gameplay was "going anywhere".

I'll try, but honestly it sounds like BL may just not be for you. Finding interesting items is a huge part of it. That being said, if you feel like you COULD enjoy it and just haven't found the groove yet, I'd be happy to play sherpa.

• Loot. Unlike Destiny where you're always trying to grind your power level up by finding items with higher power numbers on them, in Borderlands the items themselves are interesting. When items are created, they're formed from several parts, each of which can imbue different properties and have several possible versions, so while it is possible to get duplicates, most of the time there's at least a small difference vs. what you already have. Think of it like the gun perks in Destiny, but imagine the base stats and even the basic archetype (like being a high RoF or low RoF AR for example) are also randomized. What this leads to in practice is a lot of building your character and gear around a playstyle, or coming up with a playstyle to suit what you find. Combined with highly customizable skill trees, it's a min-maxer's paradise.
  
• Humor. Borderlands has some of the funniest writing and voice acting I've ever come across.
  
• Respecting my time. Even though I put an enormous amount of time into Borderlands 2, sometimes spending hours chasing one item, I never once felt like I was being forced to grind stuff I didn't enjoy just to artificially inflate a number so that I could continue to play current content with my friends. Most of the legendary items (equivalent to Destiny exotics) CAN spawn anywhere but have a higher chance to drop from certain sources, or in a lot of cases are rewards for a specific mission, so if I want a given item I have a decent way to go after it.
  
• Good DLC. You generally get many hours worth of content, and it's fairly typical for DLCs to introduce new item types, or at least items that behave in new ways and enable new playstyles and/or builds. Two of the DLCs for BL2 in particular were so well written that they probably could have been sold as their own games.
  
• Co-op. Borderlands tends to be built with co-op very much in mind. Aside from different class powers working very well together, there's more simple things like being able to trade items. In the early days this just meant dropping things on the ground for teammates, but they added a trading system to BL2 where you could trade currency and items, and even battle for items. There are plenty of powers and items that heal or buff teammates in some way. And no friendly fire damage outside of Krieg (who is awesome).
  
• No real PvP (outside of the battling for items thing). Maybe not everyone views this as a positive, but I do. I don't like competitive shooters anymore, and I don't appreciate the way Destiny constantly tries to get me to play PvP. Nothing against those who do enjoy it, of course. But, for me, it's just less trouble if it doesn't exist. Then it will never occur to the devs to put exotic items in the game which require playing a mode I don't want to play.

Stabbim nailed it.

It gets a lot of flack now, I think, but I genuinely enjoyed the writing in Borderlands 2. The story isn’t great—mostly just a series of events to string the player along—but the dialog and characters and humor are excellent, I think. It’s very whacky and extra and sort of late 2000s internet, but I think it works and a lot of it is genuinely clever.

The gameplay is what it is. I think it’s got really solid shooting, but that’s mostly just a matter of taste. The two things that shine there are the guns, which range from generic normal pistol, to fully auto assault rifles that shoot explosive rounds that explode like pretty powerful grenades (and also literally turn into a grenade as you just throw the gun at enemies to reload, which then explodes). The randomization is such that you end up with a lot of guns that are “bad,” and they do sort of all blend together after a while, but there’s a lot of interesting possibilities there.

The second part of that is the character classes and abilities. Each character has three trees, which typically have some sort of loose theme to them. I’m playing as Gaige right now. Her main ability summons a cool robot to fight with you. You can get an ability to shoot him with an element type to add that element to his attacks. I have an ability called Anarchy. Every kill you get adds to the stack of Anarchy, which increases all weapon damage, but decreases accuracy. If you reload before your magazine is empty, you loose the stack, but if you fully deplete the magazine, you’re fine. It’s a cool trade off. I tend to get it as high as possible (I’ve hit 150is so far, but I’m eager to push it) and wade in with my explosive rounds shotgun and lay waste to mobs of enemies. There are lots of neat abilities that make every class feel really different and really change the way you play.

I'm so ready!

The Handsome Collection is also getting 4K and HDR support in a free update on April 3. Maybe I'll finally buy it and play through the Pre-Sequel for the first time.

I've played some of Borderlands 1 & 2 and just it never "clicked". I didn't enjoy the gunplay enough to put up with the mental load of sorting through so much loot. I thought the writing was pretty funny, but I never felt like the story or gameplay was "going anywhere".

Same here. I've tried several times. If I had world enough and time, I may have dug in far enough to better understand what the fuss was about, but time is always limited. I really did want to play with stabbed, Canecutter, et al.

What a time for my thumb to be out of commission. I bought it on a used disc last weekend and then gave myself a carpal tunnel problem from playing it too much (100% serious). Everyone else, pick it up and play with cheapLEY since I had to abandon him. :P