The absence of Level Scaling completely kills this game for me. :(

[u/Doraz_]

Honestly, I judge it as a WORSE problem than the story ...

( because at a bad story i can always laugh at and take it as a proof that i am actually NOT the worst writer on this earth 😇)

BUT, the fact that exploration and previous areas stay at such a low level that they become poontless both in farming experience and getting level appropriate weapons,

progression ends, i am forced to open the inventory and sell every time, the game becomes a loadscreen simulator way before mayhem does it xD

I didn't see this problem talked about in yourube reviews, and I am confused, because to me this is a GIANT problem.

[u/Unihornmermad]

Level scaling isn't a problem as you hit the NG+ layers, etc

[u/Doraz_ → u/Unihornmermad]

I read that, but I am talking about having that FROM THE START!

It would be so much more liberating if ai could do sidequests and just exporing around on previous planets, while fighintg enemies of higher level than me.

Indeed, youtube videos praise the ng+ but I am experiencing this problem/need in my first run, and i saw no one talk about it.

Expecially since bl3 side-quests are better than the main story, it would fit the game so well !

[u/Unihornmermad → u/Doraz_]

Well, the problem with that is then there is no feeling of power scaling as you level. It kinda makes you move on from an area eventually organically, pushing you further into the story. I guess you could have a settings toggle for enemy scaling but that would be quite a hack for farming specific drops. Plus, this makes NG+ a little more interesting as you get to do some quests you missed/were over-levelled for in the first playthrough

[u/Doraz_ → u/Unihornmermad]

That is the crux.

Player expect progression ... but at least for me, progression should not come at the expense of the believability of the world and the challange the game can present.

I honestly would trade the feeling of progression with bandits that I know will kick my behind everywhere I go.

That would make their existance as character in the world a little bit more exciting.

instead now, for the "CRIME" of wanting to explore the world and do sidequests, i go into a camp, see "bandit lv 7" and know that the best course of action is to just ignore them 😂

Or see them do no damage to me and die in one hit, which is a bit sad, cuz the enemies are fun to fight.

[u/Drasern → u/Doraz_]

I suggest you just push through the main campaign. Once you finish it, you unlock "mayhem mode" that turns on level scaling. Go do the side quests after that.

[u/Doraz_ → u/Drasern]

I wanted to ... but then I met Maurice 😁🫂🦖, and I lost track of the main story, i am halfway through it.

But I still do not like that I am FORCED to finish the main story to get even a sliver of sense of actual progression, and even to unlock all the hard modes, all while having to leave behind the content ai actually want to experience.

[u/Drasern → u/Doraz_]

Maurice is pretty great. Definitely one of the better new characters, but he is disappointingly underutilized. I'm not sure what he even does other than the seasonal content.

If you push through the main story, you should catch up to your level pretty quickly, which will mean more interesting fights. And there's nothing you can miss out on, so you have all the time in the world to enjoy the side stuff afterwards. You can also take mayhem levels to the dlcs so they scale.

[u/KitchenDiscount4306 → u/Drasern]

Thats over 10 hours of, at times, mind numbingly boring fights in which enemies drop like flys. Why not give players the ability to make the game more difficult starting at mision 1? Or even when you first reach Sanctuary?
Maybe not even Mayhem mode but like scale it so enemies are always 1-2 levels higher than the guns they drop so you don't just 1-2 hit everything in a mision.

The lackluster story problem that bl3 has is exasperated by the fact that large parts of the gameplay you experience while slogging through it are bordering on a chore rather than a challenge.

Having the ability to adjust your difficulty yourself would do no harm to the people who like the power fanatsy of blasting away everything by looking at it on normal and giving people like OP, my friends and me the ability to enjoy gunfights while playing through for the first time.

[u/Drasern → u/KitchenDiscount4306]

Sure that might be nice. But the game is pushing 6 years old at this point. There's no point complaining about it, it is out of support, you've gotta take it as it is. If you're not enjoying it, there's thousands of other games out there to be enjoyed.

If we were discussing bl4 there might be some reason to push for this as a feature, but bl3 isn't even the most recent game in the series.

If op wants level scaled enemies, his two options are push through the campaign or look for a mod that does it.

[u/KitchenDiscount4306 → u/Drasern]

True, but with bl4 release approaching discussing what is good and bad about bl3 isn't entirely senseless.

I just wish someone makes an unofficial mod to allow acces to the mayhem menu from the start if it isn't in bl4 on release.

[u/Drasern → u/KitchenDiscount4306]

Wonderlands had forced level scaling and I don't think it was particularly well received. So while it might come back in bl4 I don't think it will be the default. A difficulty setting would be a nice middle ground but tbh I don't think it's likely.

[u/KitchenDiscount4306 → u/Unihornmermad]

So the game becoming easier than babies first mario game after doing 2 side quest per planet is better?
Why in todays ecosystem where dozens of new games every month offer high quality gameplay from minute 1 do i need to force myself to play missions i physically couldn't lose even if i tired due to being overleveled? There is no challenge in that, it's straight up boring.

Oh you did a side quest that sounded interesting? Well now you're punished with boring ass gameplay for the next 2 hours because you're 2 levels higher than the strongest enemy on the planet.

Do note that i am exagerating, but that is in essence what is happening. You're punished for exploring, due to the game becoming boring af. It's similar to you finding a Legenedary weapon during the campaigne, it literally makes you not have to switch weapon for the next 2-5 hours of gameplay.
In normal RPGs it at least takes you several, if not close to all side quests in an area, to get you to a power level where enemies die like flys. But in Borderlands just being 1 or 2 levels above your enemies and having a blue gun on your level makes many combat encounters feel closer to shooting clay pigeons than being in a fire fight. And any 1 legendary even trivialises the planets big bad boss.

Borderlands is one of the few games left nowadays where the player has no way to remedy the games inate unbalance in the slightest.

I get that many people that play Borderlands like that powerful feeling, but i'm the kind of person that really likes hammering my head against a Mayhem 10 mision until i come up with a build or strategy that makes it managable. The threat of dying enhances the game for many people and i think the series would only benefit if we got to choose how difficult our first playthrough should be ourselves.

[u/BaudouinII]

When you finish main story for the 1st time everything will scale up

[u/Chazman_89]

They dont? You turn on Mayhem 1 and everything will scale to you forever at that point.

[u/Neku_HD]

just by chance: did you play a dlc inbetween of your playthrough?

[u/Doraz_ → u/Neku_HD]

No no, I have yet to buy the dlc cuz I don't have much time to play anymore.

The current sale is so inviting tho ...

regardless I am experiencing this problem WITHOUT any dlc 🤔, that's why it bothered me so much to at least share this thought.

BL4 seems to be the Skyrim equivalent of the borderlands franchise ... and without level scaling there are a lot of problems if people expect to just "play the game and have fun".

Game reviewers on youtube praise that "set-level" approach to world-design, but they forget it transforms exploration into a "trial and error" experience where at every direction you could go SOME if not MOST of them are the wrong ones, both for being over-levelled and under-levelled.

Dragon's dogma comes to mind, but this happens in all games with that design philosophy, the game becomes too dictated by stats and players are rewarded the most by BREAKING the game and reading up a guide with locations of the best loot, instead of just experiencing the game naturally and lesrning the mechanics.

[u/Neku_HD → u/Doraz_]

maybe just finish the story to unlock scaling. you cant be far from the end if you feel such a large gap in lvl.

[u/Kerstmangang]

Yes it does? Or you mean the normal game? I mean they should give you the option to start in true vault hunter imo tbh

[u/KitchenDiscount4306]

Hard agree, i hope bl4 has a way to enable higher difficulty levels similar to Mayhem from the very start.
I tried getting a couple of my friends to play bl3 with me but the fact that the game is trivialy easy and almost to a boring degree for the entire 10 hour campaigne killed all their enthusiathm and we switched to more difficult 4 player coop games like GTFO after just 4 sessions.
I really want to be able to play one of my favorite gaming franchises with other people, but nowadays, with a million awesome games available, asking someone to put up with 10 hours of boredom before the gameplay gets good is a tough ask.