BL1: Playthrough-3?

[Dale]

Okay, we have all gone to the trouble to level up (max), battle bosses and take the time to upgrade and acquire awesome weapons. Now what – we can’t use them? I love the game but hate being manipulated by the game designers – we should be able to playthrough as many times as we want without having to create a new character and start all over. Yeah, the badguys respawn, but I’m talking about REPLAYING THE MISSIONS. Are the game designers as nutty as the lunatics in this game? All I’ve read on the web is Playthrough-2 is it (including 2.5). There’s been other talk about “unlocking” PT3 but it doesn’t work (shooting a secret claptrap near where you met Zed the first time). If this is what I have to look forward to in BL2, then I’ll spend my money elsewhere. Simple question (not theory or guesswork): has anyone REALLY DONE IT? PT3+?

[Kargor]

No; 2.5 is "the end".

It's a "problem" shared by many games; you get better and better gear, but the better the gear the closer you are to the end of the game so you can't use it that much anymore.

But then, why do you want to replay quests? There's no difference, whether there's an official counter for the kills or not. At Lvl 69, most quests are already pointless because they only give you exp and money, both of which is completely meaningless. And item rewards are usuallly trash -- they just roll one random item of the type that they want to give you; what are the chances that you get a good item that way?

I'd much rather have them fix the design-screwup with the PT2 claptraps, especially Lumbermill and Tartarus Station where they even punish you for being in 2.5 by not giving you the actual reward. Anything that requires people to edit savefiles or jump through other hoops is much worse than not having yet another playthrough through the same quests you've already played twice.
[ I have actually not touched my playchar with a savefile editor at all, but I've had to writeprotect it, and I've had create OTHER chars with the savefile editor to get my claptrap rescue rewards ]

But whatever people "want" is of no concern; "Borderlands 2" is out, which means "Borderlands" is dead. They want you to buy Borderlands 2 instead of playing another playthrough that doesn't give them any money.

[Dale]

Kargor,

Thank you for thoughtful answers and comments. I appreciate the time you took. After leveling up to maximum, "goodies" are no longer a priority for me. What is meaningful to me is how well can I do PT3 with the skills & levels that took me so long to acquire. From a marketing perspective, you are quite right about them wanting the player to leave BL1 & purchase BL2.

With big bucks at stake, it is smart not to be antagonistic to their customers (us). For example, 2 great game series that sold like crazy – then went to he## are Tomb Raider & Splinter Cell. After #4 (of each), the series went down the toilet. I appreciate a good challenge but I will not be taken for a fool. Games like Deadspace-1, Bioshock-1, & others take the player for a fool – who in the end is betrayed by the people he trusts (another stupid Judas betrayal story line). So I will NOT purchase Deadspace-2 or Bioshock-2 for that reason.

Though money is not an issue for me in buying a game – the gameplay and re-playability is especially for non-linear games where you can replay every time DIFFERENTLY & more cleverly. That’s why I spent 9 months playing Fallout-3 and 4 months Fallout New Vegas and 6 months Oblivion. I instantly spotted a “bad trend” of developer contempt in BL1 when, after spending an hour to reach the armory, to only give us 2.5 minutes to loot. This is gum-chewing teenybopper thinking.

Psychology-101: for significant effort, you reward handsomely. I work in the corporate world. One “truism” that is seldom followed goes like this: “you don’t reward someone with something that you yourself consider to be worthless”. Example: you save the company a measured $1million over a 2 year period – so they “reward” you with a $1.50 coffee mug – while some other jerk gets a $100K kickback for doing nothing. Instead, how about an expense paid trip to Hawaii for you & your wife? Any adult-thinking game designer would have rewarded the player with looting the armory at their leisure – then blow it up. Yes, I’m aware of the so-called “glitch” so I looted the entire armory about 15-20 times. Likely they were under pressure to produce the “glitch” (patch).

I think it was 2011 where the gaming industry made more bucks than the movie industry. With megabucks at stake, the investors positively cannot make such blunders. To recover their investment, they MUST produce a fantastic game that is challenging, rewarding, interesting, and finishing with a great sense of accomplishment – not with their finger in your face.

For this reason, game investors are acquiring Hollywood’s talent of the Writer’s Guild in creating compelling games with great storylines. Not computer geeks who play on skateboards on the weekends. Economics-101: be NICE to your customers and they might continue doing $$$$$ business with you (dang, isn’t that brilliant!)

[Rocket2049]

you can mod your savefile and reset all the missions if you really want to play through it again.

borderlands 2 has three playthroughs now, and you can new game+ the third infinitely, and they put some kinda overlevelling thing where you can get weapons past your level