Arm's Race and new abilities are both terrible

[Fractured]

Note: This is obviously my personal opinion. And the two abilities I actually played with was Amara's Phaseflare, and FL4K's Pet Ion Loader.

Let me say, in this day and age of video games I'm often left disappointed. However in this case, I'm legit frustrated at Gearbox for these DLC's, which is rather rare for me. So let me go over the things that irked me.

Abilities: This is the shorter list, so I'll start with this

Phaseflare - I actually think its a unique ability with some real potential for it. And don't get me wrong, it IS strong, but that isn't the point here. My issue is how insanely jank it is. You have to melee it multiple times before you get it shoot off at an enemy, and this happens while you're in the open getting shot by enemies.

If an enemy is close enough to the orb, you'll actually melee past the orb, and hit the enemy instead. Completely ignoring the orb! I can only imagine how much worse this gets once you get the skill points that increase your melee range.

The orb getting stuck on terrain constantly is also horrid. They should have just made it clip through everything, would have made it a lot more useful during regular gameplay.

And last but not least, when you aren't on some OP as hell build that 1 shots everything, hitting an enemy with the orb and having it only do some damage, while the enemy just kinda....walks away from the orb? It sucks. Orb should slow/immobilize the enemy or something while its in it. Otherwise you're just sitting there bouncing it back and fourth, in the case where just shooting the enemy would probably kill it faster at that point.

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Ion Loader - This thing, oh man. Where to start? Lets start with the fact that its base form has an ability that literally doesn't work....since the launch of the DLC. Not a chance of it not working, it NEVER works, and never has apparently.

Also its AI, accuracy, and speed are all pretty crap. I find it stuck behind something, or so far behind me its not evne funny. It practically requires you to use Gamma Burst just to bring your pet into the fight.

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Arms Race - This is just... so depressing. I feel like this was entirely created by a single dev.

1. The fact that you don't get abilities is extremely lame. The abilities are a huge chunk of what makes Borderlands actually fun. Really saying you can't balance around it? At least give us a vanilla skill, or a build we can pick at the beginning, and it progresses automatically as we kill stuff.

2. This isn't a battle royale, this is just gimping our characters, and giving us a timer. Why don't we have roaming enemies? Why aren't there groups attacking each other? This is so empty, and bland that this is the main thing that frustrates me.

3. We also only get 1 map? Thats it? And from what I hear, a single boss. And that boss isn't even that exciting.

4. Stupid complaint, but the "Murdercane" is also fairly boring lol.

5. You can't even use any of the decent stuff you find too, and that is annoying. What, getting a legendary inbalances the whole thing too much?

[JackBurton]

Arms Race
- Groups do attack each other, eg an Air Drop into a Skag or Spiderant den/area. If dropped near one but not in, a cpl of shots fired at Skag/Ants will invite em to the fight.
- Skag/Ant den inhabitants can be lured into fighting an area's loot guards, creating a distraction while you open chests then flee to next area, saving time.
- That you cannot use exclusive gear is the point: if/when found, extract it. You will occasionally find a base game legendary and if so, destroy everything in your path.

No abilities is VERY lame, as is the timer aspect, but as you learn map it can grow on you.

If your style is laid back, you'll probably hate it: strategy is drop location, storm's starting & end points, plus random location of 3 extraction stations. Check map after drop and loot as many random chest spots as possible (avoiding a fight if necessary) en route to a Loot Room. Go, go, go!

[AnkleBones]

I do find Arms Race really cheesy, just drop in grab the garbage loot go kill a few skags run over to the machines by the boss and sell the trash, drop down to the boss and end it, all to just shut-up Axton on Sanctuary.

[Palumtra]

Both Phaseflare and the Loader can be built to one shot literally any enemy in the game.....
Arms Race is an interesting approach on the battle royale game mode from BL perspective but since you cna just rush in , grab some guns and kill the endboss early it kinda looses its magic.

[Fractured]

Originally posted by JackBurton:

Arms Race
- Groups do attack each other, eg an Air Drop into a Skag or Spiderant den/area. If dropped near one but not in, a cpl of shots fired at Skag/Ants will invite em to the fight.
- Skag/Ant den inhabitants can be lured into fighting an area's loot guards, creating a distraction while you open chests then flee to next area, saving time.
- That you cannot use exclusive gear is the point: if/when found, extract it. You will occasionally find a base game legendary and if so, destroy everything in your path.

No abilities is VERY lame, as is the timer aspect, but as you learn map it can grow on you.

If your style is laid back, you'll probably hate it: strategy is drop location, storm's starting & end points, plus random location of 3 extraction stations. Check map after drop and loot as many random chest spots as possible (avoiding a fight if necessary) en route to a Loot Room. Go, go, go!

To your first point, I didn't see that, so guess I'm partially wrong? But still, I want it to feel like an actual battle royale. Where its more like a warzone, than just you roaming around. Like if everyone was actually competing, and not just your group.

But ya, I wanted an actual fun game mode. Not just a mode that the entire purpose is just to get loot easier.

Originally posted by Palumtra:

Both Phaseflare and the Loader can be built to one shot literally any enemy in the game.....
Arms Race is an interesting approach on the battle royale game mode from BL perspective but since you cna just rush in , grab some guns and kill the endboss early it kinda looses its magic.

I did mention the 1 shot. Doesn't mean they are programmed effectively, or even QA'd. What about the entire rest of the game where your build doesn't one shot?

Also, I have no idea how its an interesting approach? Its not even a battle royale mode, its literally just starting with no gear, on a timer, with no abilities. Hardly qualifies as battle royale.

[Metro]

I think Arms Race is step in the right direction as far as giving players an option aside from having to replay story content again and again. The idea of a death-match style game show fits into the Borderlands universe. However, as others have mentioned, they should build off of it to include something that has a variety of maps, allows ability use, more bosses, etc.

[roug3lement]

Based on what I have read Arms Race is essentially like "Gun Game" for those of you who remember CoD Modern Warfare 3 (PS3), with a twist and the chance of earning Legendary gear including ones exclusive to Arms Race. It's attracted a niche of players who actually like it but as a fan of the series it is odd approach for a game that is nothing like the genre of Overwatch nor Apex Legends. Then again, I haven't played it yet nor seen the gameplay. Avoding them for now until SP2 is worth the money.

[JackBurton]

Originally posted by Fractured:

To your first point, I didn't see that, so guess I'm partially wrong? But still, I want it to feel like an actual battle royale. Where its more like a warzone, than just you roaming around. Like if everyone was actually competing, and not just your group.

But ya, I wanted an actual fun game mode. Not just a mode that the entire purpose is just to get loot easier.

Arms Race is not an instant gratification experience: you must learn the map before it has a chance to be "fun" to play. At first, I absolutely HATED it but as I learned all the possible random spawn locations for Chests, VMs and Extraction Stations it began to grow on me.

Final Boss arena (and it's 2 VMs) plus the locations of 8 Loot Rooms (each with a higher than avg chance to spawn specific items) are static. Chests and 3 VMs + 3 Extraction Stations are randomly generated for each round.

AR's objective is not getting to Final Boss asap, but covering as much ground as possible inside the Storm's "safe zone", while looting chests en route to a Loot Room near an extraction station.

If the 3 extraction stations spawn outside of Storm's safe zone at the start of a round, or there's no chance to make it to a Loot Room of choice before storm engulfs area, restart - the round will be a short one and you'll be wasting your time.

edit: If you're outside of the storm's final safe zone as the final timer ticks-down, the storm will spawn the Revenant twins: 2 bullet-sponge goons, with Stalker-like invisibility/cloaking, who will track you all the way to Final Boss if not killed before entering arena (you do not want them as boss fight foes in addition to Harker). https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2433525802

[Holografix]

I disagree.
I tried Arms Race for the first time with my lvl 25 FL4K and it was very fun. It is challenging as you don't have use of your Action Skill or, in my case, pet. But the OSP (ala Metal Gear Solid's On-Site-Procurement mechanic) aspect is really refreshing in a game saturated with guns.

The rounds are short as the Murdercane shrinks the habitable zone during gameplay but the challenge makes Arms Race a nice change of pace.

And the music: Wow! I really enjoyed the music. The sound designer really did some great work with the ambient Aphex-Twin type electronica soundtrack for Arms Race.