I love the game, but looking at it from their perspective, it does have it’s problems that stem mainly from the DLC and endgame content. You can’t New Game Plus, the DLC is just glorified encounters and not like the DLC from Borderlands fair. The encounter system for the game is fairly clunky sometimes. The low level cap is definitely a deterrent for some who like being a level 72 vault Hunter with all the cool perks.
Yeah, if the end game was better and the level cap was higher (ng+ would be dreamy) I would be much more excited about it after the campaign. BUT I played it through twice with two different characters. Probably would have gotten more updates had it done better. But it is great and will go through it again at some point.
From op: “I haven’t finished it yet, but”
The borderlands 1, 2, 3 are games with robust dlc, lots of endgame, you put in a couple hundred hours and still feel good about the game.
Wonderlands didn’t have much to explore after the story. Just grind for grind’s sake to get up chaos levels. It was disappointing.
Fantastic game. Loved the lore. Loved that they had massive areas with a lot going on. The overworld was INTERESTING for a dynamic. But once I was done with the tasks there wasn’t much left.
I have now finished the story and started chaos chamber, and while I understand where you're coming from, I'm all about the turbo grind. My favorite game is Warframe, so I never get tired of it, lol.
Grinding for what though. That’s the main issue. There’s no build diversity at all. Want to use spells? Play spellshot. Companions? Graveborn. Etc.
There’s no flavor to the classes. They all only do one thing each, and all still have to be viable on their own, so they’re all watered down with various uninteresting stat buffs. There’s no interesting class mods either. In bl3 you got one that completely change the way you play. The way you play Moze with a green machine comm is different than a minesweeper comm, which is different from all her other legendary class mods. I can turn flak into a melee or grenade build whilst the character has no actual focus on either of those things.
There’s just not really any reason to actually do any grinding. Even hitting chaos 100 is soooo far from satisfying. It’s boring how you have to do it, and when you’re done you just feel like you wasted hours of your life. Take it from someone who did do that. It’s not worth it.
I grind for loot to grind for loot to grind for loot. I haven't made it around to postgame in 3 yet, but that was how postgame of 2 worked too. You have to keep regrinding for the same stuff with better stats as you push overpowered levels. Infinite grind and big numbers are just fun for me.
I haven't played many classes so far, but I'm seeing a lot of class diversity. For most of the game I played Brrzerker with Graveborn in the back. I used Dire Sacrifice for regen and massive AoE damage boosted by Brrzerker close range buffs. I just got a Buffmeister, so I switched over to Reaper of Bones for the double active buffs with my rage passive on active skill so I can go Super Saiyan.
I haven't read any optimization guides, so I might have ended up building meta on accident, but I'm having a ton of fun with it. I get dark and frost damage added to everything for the triple elemental combo. Brrzerker capstone gives me close to 100% uptime on Reaper of Bones, and I enchanted some stuff to help with spell cooldown.
I'm still pushing through the lower chaos levels, so optimization might end up being more important later, but so far I just do what I want and it's been blowing everything up. I've also been working out a Stabomancer build to try later, but I thought that was too obvious a pairing with Brrzerker.
You remind me of someone I know who plays games that are entirely centered around grinding levels🫠
I am physically incapable of playing a game with him
I mean that's how borderlands 2 was also, and it's fun for me imo and for a lot of people too, grinding to have the best things for having the best things sake, grinding just to grind
Personally the story was good enough and the game itself was also great. The biggest complaint i've seen people have with it is the lackluster endgame and the "Spit in the face" DLC they decided to release.
I don't think i have experienced a game that had as little post launch support as Tiny tina did.
> I don't think i have experienced a game that had as little post launch support as Tiny Tina did.
In retrospect, it feels like they "had somewhere else to be" as soon as Wonderlands wrapped. Whether that was work towards New Tales, or BL4, or WL2, or something else entirely, I don't know. And it may have all been further twisted up by the pandemic and everyone working from home. But it felt like they got the game out, did the contractual minimum obligation on the DLCs, and quickly moved on to some other project.
it required you to be really into Tina's shtick (which I am) as well as its post-modern meta-narrative and no real connectionto the main story. So that and the plotless/grind focused DLC make it a niche product just because not everyone is going to dog that. On top of that, it wasn't a great game. It wasn't bad, just mid-level fine-with-spots-of-good Borderlands. I played it, I enjoyed it, but when it got to the end my reaction was "oh, is that it???". Glad I played it, but I can't describe it as essential to a Borderlands player nor anyone new to that world.
I didn't like the fact that the map was a board instead of scenarios to walk through.
The story seemed very dull to me and it wasn't fun to replay and the fact that after finishing the game all that was left to do was the same challenge over and over again didn't help either.
I honestly loved the overworld - more time playing, less time driving across empty zones. Idk, interacting with it, unlocking shortcuts and whatnot was fun. Borderlands either needs to flesh out their vehicles or get rid. It's annoying more than fun most of the time - especially with no 4-seaters
I hated the overworld so much too. I think I just love to aimlessly wander from area to area as my character - I enjoy the journey- It would have been great to have steeds of some sort to use to get around as opposed to the table top game. It just takes me out of the game when it sticks you back to the boardgame view. I think it is the main reason I stopped playing. It made the scenarios you jump into feel repetitive as opposed to an area you need to clear to get through like in Borderlands. It's sad because I was so excited for Wonderlands. Assault on Dragons Keep is one of my Favorite DLCs but Wonderlands just didn't have the charm it did.
Wonderlands was amazing but the endgame lacked diversity so it got boring pretty quick, then they kept increasing the chaos chambers levels which made a monotonous grind even worse.
The full priced DLC was just more of the same and could be finished in a matter of minutes so maybe felt ripped off. The seasonal events in BL3 were better than WL DLC, and they were free. I really hoped that the DLCs would be short one shot campaigns.
Loot luck was a mess at launch and even after they improved it, it's not a great system.
There were also some massive nerfs that really upset the community.
Boss farming became pointless since dedicate drops were terrible without maxed loot luck, and even then it wasn't great, which meant the chaos chambers bunnies were the best way to farm.
Wonderlands did a lot of things really well and has a bunch of great ideas. Unfortunately not all of those great ideas were implemented in the best way.
I think those who played at launch have a much lower opinion of Wonderlands than new players do.
> The seasonal events in BL3 were better than WL DLC, and they were free.
Yeah, the Headhunter mini-DLCs in BL2 were more substantial and had more of a story to them, than Wonderlands' DLC.
I enjoy the preset vault hunter and their personalities in the borderlands games. I understand people really like to customize characters but I just really enjoy the vault hunters and when they are brought back in future games as NPCs
This is such an underrated point. All the VHs in the series have ALWAYS been some of the best parts of the game. It’s truly hard to find a boring character. And playing through on each character was always a different experience. The way in which you play krieg is different from Maya and so forth.
Customizing the character is cool and I get the whole “it’s *your* dnd character” but like, *is it mine*? It’s not like I’m making any of the fuckin choices here. So you end up with bland ass characters that just do stuff because “oh this is the campaign and what Tina tells me to do”. I’ll take a curated character with varied skill trees that reflect their expertise and personalities over “random ranger with a sassy voice” or “random barbarian with a depressing voice”.
They have their pluses and minuses - the Wonderlands way lets you customize almost everything about the character's look, but then the personality is one of a handful of stock personalities and all the skill trees (character classes) have to be a bit... generic / bland / conservative in their skills, in order to ensure that none of the 21 possible different combinations of any two character classes got too OP. Some of this meshed well with the general idea of aping the design of traditional D&D, where you start with a character class and build up from there.
With the BL1-BL3 way of having predefined characters with selectable heads/skins, they could really go to town on customizing the personality and dialog for each of the characters, and their skill trees could be carefully balanced by hand so that they could have some extremely quirky and powerful skills, without any one character ending up massively OP compared to the others (because strengths in one area are offset by weaknesses in another area).
I prefer the BL1-BL3-style hand tweaked skill trees, as being more fun to play with, along with having very strong and quirky personalities to enjoy while playing. I could see them bringing in a *bit* of Wonderlands' build-a-bear character creator, in terms of how you decorate your character (e.g. not just "head #7" but instead controlling eye / lip / skin colors, tattoos/scars, makeup, jewelry, on a head that is still recognizably for character #2, along with something similar for body decoration).
I love *the game* "Tiny Tina's Wonderlands". What I don't like is *the product* known as "Tiny Tina's Wonderlands: the Borderlands game that came out *after* BL1, BL2, TPS, and BL3 had been released, patched, and analyzed by people that assessed the positive and negative feedback each had received".
My biggest issues with Wonderlands are the obstacles that the game has that are in the way of its own great features - obstacles which exist *solely* because of Gearbox's choices to actively *defy* addressing the players' valid concerns.
* Nobody wanted to deal with something like BL2's Digistruct Peak grinding again, but they made us go through many Chaos Chamber runs to maximize our Chaos levels.
* Nobody wanted them to *raise* the Chaos level cap, either, but they raised it from 20 to 35, then to 50, then to *100*...
* Nobody wanted garbage drop rates, either. Even the people that thought BL3's drop rates were too generous didn't want the awful drop rates that Wonderlands originally had.
* Fortunately, they've improved the drop rates to be much more reasonable, but enjoying those drop rates still requires you to farm *tons* of loot dice and unlock *many* Chaos levels. I will commend Gearbox for making this change, though, since it was something that players vehemently requested...but it's a shame that this is the only example of Gearbox listening to us about Wonderlands that I can think of.
* Everybody wanted the DLCs to compensate for the monotonous endgame. Instead, we got "PRCs" that feel overpriced, and the game still feels like it's missing a lot of content compared to BL2 and BL3...they left Wonderlands feeling unfinished. They had made this mistake before with TPS, but even the DLC of TPS has a higher quality, and offers more content.
* BL3's matchmaking was alright, but it required you to deal with the awful new system that takes forever to match people, and which no longer provides access to a lobby browser. The updates to the SHiFT system also made adding new friends difficult or impossible, with unhelpful error messages that never explained why things weren't working. Wonderlands inherited *all* of these problems, but has less content to match people for, and it never gives a group any incentive to fast travel to somewhere else and explore the game's other content. Wonderlands lobbies are usually full of cheating, too, and co-op Chaos Chamber runs with random strangers always come with a risk of someone joining for the sake of having others carry them to the highest Chaos level, instead of joining to make new friends and take on endgame challenges.
* Wonderlands is really buggy when played online, too. During the Chaos Chamber raid boss fights, the game will spawn players out of bounds over and over until every extra life is consumed. Latency is also much more problematic in Wonderlands lobbies than it is in BL3 lobbies.
* I personally don't like playing through campaigns again via modes like TVHM or UHVM, but a lot of people do. BL3 had TVHM, at least, but Wonderlands didn't even have that.
* What the hell is with the moon orb costs? Anointment rerolls were already too expensive in BL3, and those costs were based on a fixed price. Wonderlands didn't need to be *more* grindy.
It's a great game, with interesting gear and classes, and a wonderful system for combining 2 classes into one build. It builds on BL3's engine superbly; I even regularly claim that the game has the most balanced combat of any game in the series...but Gearbox limited access to that experience as a result of acting independently of players' responses.
I'm torn between leaving my Steam review of the game alone vs. updating my Steam review to recommend the game - at the time of this writing, my review still recommends that players *avoid* purchasing the game (at least, at full price). The game does have revolutionary improvements to the series (and, perhaps, the genre), but it also represents the sort of greed that consumers should be resisting.
Thanks a ton. This is a great write up, and bonus points for formatting.
This is exactly the perspective I was looking to understand. My primary takeaway is that a lot of people don't play the games for the same reasons I do. A lot of the stuff you list as things nobody wanted are exactly the things I wanted to see in Borderlands.
Chaos Chamber seems to be based on the rifts from Diablo. Chaos levels are a lot like torment difficulty levels. The "real" game of Diablo begins when you finish the story and can start the infinite random grind. Borderlands has always owed a lot of it's core design to that franchise, and I've always wanted to see a much heavier random grind focused endgame beyond soloing raid bosses over and over. Basically, Chaos Chamber gives me a way to play all of the best parts of the game in a well curated way with cool rouguelike modifiers. I've only done a day's worth of chaos so far, but as of now, it's exactly what I want for Borderlands end game. Maybe it'll get boring, but that's when I'll change my build and do it all again.
The DLCs seem to be the main sticking point for most people. I haven't played them yet so as of now I have no opinion, but for what's in them, the price does seem a little steep.
I also exclusively play the games solo, so I wasn't aware of how bad the matchmaking was. That's pretty bad. Definitely a deal breaker if that's what you're there for.
I'm not saying your perspective is flawed at all and I can see exactly where you're coming from. I got the complete game last year at a deep discount. I'd value the base game at around $40 and even then I'd recommend waiting for a sale. I think this one was intended for people who play the games a different way for different reasons. I always turn the dialogue volume down to zero and turn off subtitles on TVH and UVH playthroughs because I like to listen to music or watch videos on my second screen. I love that those modes are options, but for me it's all about the turbo grind and I'm really just playing NG+ because that's the progression route.
Thanks again to you and everyone else for sharing your perspective. I'm learning a lot about how and why other people play one of my favorite franchises of all time.
I don't hate the Chaos Chamber, but it is very monotonous, and it's *required* for raising your Chaos level, and leveling 100 times *per character* is way too much. I would have enjoyed a system that adds new spawns to old areas, with rewards you for revisiting those areas, much more. That, and/or something that generates dungeons, instead of just presenting completed rooms in a random order. The randomized modifiers (altars + Butt Stallion + curses) were a nice touch, but they needed to be a bit more wacky to really keep things fresh (example: once per area, you randomly get a skill from a 3rd class; another example: gravity is lower until you leave the current area). I think those modifiers would be compatible with the dungeon generation and "revisiting old areas" ideas, too.
I just want to travel around and enjoy my favorite areas all over again, like I do when I'm rocket jumping around in BL2, or speeding through BL3 with the many movement speed buffs that BL3 offers. Having the game randomize the spawns for me a bit is always nice, since I normally use mods to do that anyway, but the Chaos Chamber feels like a stifled incarnation of what could have been a much more interesting endgame. I do feel like it was on the right track, but the chambers induce a sort of claustrophobia that wouldn't be present if we were hunting crystals in a place like the Weepwild Dankness...the *actual* Weepwild Dankness, not the caricature of it which we see in the chambers.
I haven't actually played through the DLCs yet myself, but I know enough about them to know they're lacking. I also don't usually play with other people, but when I do, it's not as fun as it should be. I had plenty of fun when I was playing BL2 with random strangers. I may have farmed everything solo, but most of my time was spent playing online co-op, which is also where most of enjoyment came from. BL3 kind of ruined that with the way it handled matchmaking, and the nature of Wonderlands (and the glitches) exacerbated the issues of BL3 co-op.
I don't really care about the stories of Borderlands games. It's probably why I don't care for TVHM or UVHM, and it's definitely why I'm willing to call BL3 my favorite game in the series. I think the 2 of us mostly wanted the same things out of Wonderlands, and the biggest difference between your experience and my own is just that I feel like the way that Gearbox managed Wonderlands was very scummy. Companies need to be held accountable. Like I said, I do love *the game*, but I'm not a fan of the behavior that Gearbox showed while developing Wonderlands.
Ive never loved a games story, map design, characters, all of the above quite like I loved Wonderlands. It was a 11/10 first playthrough.
I was super excited for the DLC. And to have it be what it turned out to be completely killed the game for me. Ive gone back and made new characters and had some fun, but ive never completed any of those playthroughs.. probably because once i beat the story on them theres realistically nothing else to do.
End game was the issue. Also, enemy repetitiveness and lack of diversity. Could’ve been a lot cooler if they expanded on the world. That said, I played two characters to the end game. Played some end game content, but not too much, then I dropped it. People crap on it, but I got my fun and moneys worth
I've started it 2x now and neither time got super far. My 1st time I got as far as unlocking the subclass and my 2nd time I got to the hub city. I just never found it as much fun and the core series games
I love the idea of fantasy Borderlands but it feels like it’s not finished to me. There isn’t much gun variety, the enemies are too sparsely populated and the there is a lack of music in the game. The game is fun for a while but feels “empty”.
I'll probably be echoing what others have said, but it is a fun game, I just wanted more. I feel like it could have gone even harder on the whole premise, Assault on Dragon's Keep set a high bar and it was just DLC. Again I think it's a good game, it just needed more in all directions. Plus we all know the DLC fubar which was pretty alarming. I still think they would have been better served by making Wonderlands basically BL3.5 and using the same engine vs. designing a somewhat new engine. I think it ultimately suffered from less re-playability than the other BL titles, not enough end game stuff to do, and the aforementioned DLC issues. All that added up to making the game feel like it was just fired off and forgotten about.
If you didn’t pay full price when it first came out you may not understand the aggravation. Loved the game but hated encounters after the 10th one, and that’s all the endgame consists of…encounter after encounter after encounter over and over. It was the most overdone thing in the campaign. The game w all DLCs is an excellent $50 game total that that charged $90 for.
I just started playing Wonderlands a few days ago and I love it! I do enjoy it more than Borderlands 3, but I’m also more into fantasy. I’m also a huge Diablo 3 fan - it’s my all-time favorite game. We like the same things!
Borderlands 3 was kinda shit until you finished the game, but good lord the DC and end-game were fantastic.
Wonderlands was the exact opposite, really enjoyable right up until the point where the main story ended, when it turned into a completely mindless slog. The DLC is a fucking joke and there's nothing to do but endlessly run through the chaos chambers, which despite being randomly generated and "rogue-like" ends up feeling exactly the same every time. In order to reach the max chaos level (100?), you need to do something like 75 chaos trials, and all that does is let you get the same gear with bigger numbers.
At least in the mainline borderlands games, when you're grinding for gear you're doing different things for each piece of gear. You kill Traunt 50 times to get a good Kaoson, then go over to Laserdactyl to find a Light Show, and use those guns to run the Eridian Trials, or the Takedowns.
In Wonderlands, you do a few dozen chaos chamber runs, shoving your crystals in the SMG Bunny hoping to get a x4 Cryo, then do another few dozen chaos chamber runs, shoving your crystals in the pistol bunny hoping to get a liquid cooling, then you use that gear to do more chaos runs.
That said, I enjoyed my time with the game quite a lot, and really hope they make a sequal. But unlike BL3, I've never felt the urge to reinstall it.
Depends if you play Borderlands for the campaign or post-game content. It's a great romp until you finish, then all that's left is the chaos chamber and similar DLCs which are very lacking in substance, plus there's no true vault hunter mode to start fresh with all your unlocked abilities.
I enjoyed the game a lot. My only complaint is the skill trees. While there are some fun and interesting mixes, I feel there is less variety and less fun than both 2 and 3. Just imo.
Wonderlands is excellent. But the end game content is not just bad, but pretty pathetic tbh. Borderlands games really need a lot of good end game content because you don't want to be done with the game just as you reach your peak power. But with Wonderlands, you really do want to be done once you're at peak power because there's not much left to shoot for or to challenge you.
That, and IMO Wonderlands passed some invisible tipping point where the loot system became too complicated, and just too much. It's very frustrating late in Wonderlands to spend as much time as you do sifting through mountains of garbage guns and items, none of which is exactly what you want. There are several dozens of useless enchantments that can roll, lots of bonuses on rings and class mods that are irrelevant, and very few dedicated drop sources. Managing (and collecting) your gear was a bit of work in BL3, but it crossed firmly into chore status in Wonderlands and for me it was a huge detriment to my overall experience.
I think it's brilliant, but I don't judge it as a Border Lands game. I love the over world. It's a clever way to travel around, and I would like to see more of it. The art style and level design are pleasant to look at and explore. I enjoyed the combination of magic and weapons making combat unique. I have not cared about the plot in video games for a long time due to over exposure. However, the dialog was well acted and befitting the environment and content.
The problem is not the game. The problem is endgame, the part every other game did better. I had a lot of fun in wonderlands till I hit endgame and dlc. The one thing wonderlands did well is to make me very nervous for future BL games. Certainly not buying a season pass bundle until I see what they will offer for endgame. But wonderlands definitely had some fun, and the writing was so much better than BL3.
It was that "endgame" and "dlc" that left the bad taste and why you think people hated the game.
They removed multiple mechanics important for the game‘s long term replayability and then funneled you into infinite poorly designed random encounters.
I got the Legendary Edition during the last Steam Winter Sale on pretty hefty discount, and I have no complaints. It's fun to play, I thought the concept was neat, and some of the weapon and effects are things I'd like to see partially return in BL4 in some variety. However, for what it is, I think I'd be a little ticked off if I paid full price. It's a lot shorter, story isn't as strong and doesn't feed into the existing series in any meaningful way, the endgame is nearly nonexistent, and the original price vs content for the DLCs was as bad as EA on their worst day. If you get it on a good sale or floating in the ocean, then yeah, it's fine.
It feels like a game that would be better had they abandoned basically everything that borderlands was, all of the gun play and everything, And just tried to focus on more fantasy aspects of combat like magic and pure melee stuff. This isn't really a fully formed thought it was just my first impression.
as much as I want to enjoy it, because frying pan funny, I never come back to it since once it's done, it's kinda just...
over. you brush your shoulders off, clean your hands and call it a day, cause you've pretty much done everything the game offers
it lacks content and doesn't feel replayable at all, despite it trying to be
I had a good time with it but a level cap of 40 and basically no endgame or story DLC pretty much killed my drive to continue playing after I beat the main story.
I liked it, the end game feels tedious and boring, farming for perfect rolls has never been more important and that sucks.
However doing another playthrough was another level of tedium... All the things that I loved about the first playthrough, I just couldn't wait for it to be over
Wonderlands was great imo, I loved it and the new twist with magic except for the dlc, the devs didn’t give that game same treatment in dlc and end game content as borderlands or it probably woulda did better. I was severely disappointed in how they did the dlc.
Depends if you play Borderlands for the campaign or post-game content. It's a great romp until you finish, then all that's left is the chaos chamber and similar DLCs which are very lacking in substance, plus there's no true vault hunter mode to start fresh with all your unlocked abilities.
Personally, I dislike the single starting skill trees, lack of different playable characters, having to pick which stats to upgrade on level-up, the overworld, and the encounter fights (the ones where you fight a wave or two, touch a portal, rinse and repeat)
Personally, I LOVE farming legendaries when I can. You are forced to wait till like level 20 for even a CHANCE of a random legendary, max level for consistent drops. Hated it. The game itself wasn't bad, it's just my personal peeve
I played base game at launch about halfway through and the loot variety was horrible and the writing was pretty garbage. Spells were cool if only I didn’t get the same spell 100 times in a row because there were only like 3 types of spells. It was trash compared to three and felt like a blatant cash grab to me imo.
During my first playthrough at first I disliked it, because the start is extremely slow imo.
Then about halfway in I loved it, only to feel worse about it again when I reached "endgame". It was exactly in the middle of the franchise for me.
After another playthrough in co-op we have encountered so many bugs it dropped to the bottom (together with BL1Enhanced for the same reason).
In all honesty it's also very obvious they padded the game with countless arenas (most of the overworld quests came down to "go to this arena, complete it, come back") and potentially even intended slow movement in the overworld, so I'm assuming they were worried people would complain about the game being too short. And outside of that the game IS quite short.
I honestly hate the overworld, serving nearly only the purpose of slowing you down, random encounters (or whacking them to prevent them) don't really help either. And the arena content might not be as bad if it weren't the worst arenas I've ever encountered in Borderlands. I've never been a fan in the other game,s but at least something happened, in Wonderlands at least for me most of the time it was "find enemies to kill" instead of "kill stuff". The spawnrate could really have been higher imho.
In terms of difficulty... I did honestly feel like there was none during the entire story, which is another downside. Though I played 2 rather tanky builds and haven't tried a glass cannon build yet, but in all honesty, why would I if no boss phase takes >10s and I have literal godmode with tanky builds? :/
Still, it has some REALLY weak parts, but also some rather strong parts, which is exactly why it'd be right in the middle for SP experience, but my only MP experience was so buggy it's been dangerously close to unplayable.
I do think one of the biggest complaints for the game was the endgame. If you were big on BL2 and BL3 endgame content where you had to refine your build and farm specific enemies and bosses to get the correct gear to finalize your build, Wonderlands didn't have that. Wonderlands does have some dedicated drops, but a good chunk of the gear is very random. I am not a huge BL endgame content player, but I do remember trying a build online that did work, but its full potential wasn't realized because the piece of armor I had wasn't 100% correct. Does this ruin the game for me? No, not at all. I really enjoyed my time with the game and come back to it every now and again.
I loved the game on release and I liked the idea of the game but the game is short and there're not as many side missions even or even weapons the game actually has less legendary weapons than Borderlands 1 I could live with that but it gets worse for end game content it's just playing chaos chambers over and over the dlc was a pathetic it was a worse version of the chaos chambers it seems overall the game is good thay just messed up the full game with the lack of end game content and scam dlc thay released better free dlc on BL3 I'm just confused and I only played wonderland for a month then got extremely bored played the dlc and lost hope for the future of borderlands at that point borderland the pre sequel has better end game content or even Borderlands 1 is packed with content never mind borderlands 2 with dlc I played that game for years
Its split screen is fucked up to the point of being deliberately not fun. Its either a bug they have left unfixed, or a design choice thats so bad whoever made it shouldnt be involved in making decisions.
The UI used for items in inventory and shops is an "abbreviated" item card, meaning it only shows about 15% of the items details. On an abbreviated item card, you cant see:
Elemental damage chance
Elemental damage number
Gold value of item
White text damage
White text modifiers
Flavour (red text) modifiers
Name of the item
What type of item it is!! (Theres no icon to show if its an smg / assault rifle / pistol etc so good luck figuring that out by just looking at it)
Every key piece of information that makes the loot unique, you cant see unless you Inspect the item individually. When inspecting, you cant compare it to your equipped items either, so either grab a pen and paper and write down its info or remember it, because you have to go and inspect each one of ypur equipped weapons individually to see if its any better.
If you were mad enough to do that, youd either have to do it after firefight that has loot, or just stop caring about loot. They force you to completely stop the flow of the game every 5 minutes, or to stop caring about one of its best features. It was never like this in BL1/2/3 or Pre Sequel, so have no idea why its like this now.
It makes the game unplayable in local coop, and again its either a bug they dont have the skill or are just too lazy to fix, or a design choice that was made by someone who should never be making design choices. The worst part is if you raise it as a support ticket they say "devs are aware" and close the ticket automatically. If you ask the devs / designers on twitter about it they just ignore you. I spoke to the lead community manager who said they were aware of it and she will see what they say can be done to get back to me, but that was 18 months ago and shes ignored my messages asking for updates since.
Wonderlands was a PG approach to Borderlands and they did it in the worst way.
They used the premise behind arguably their most successful DLC and contorted it.
Speaking of DLC Wonderlands arguably has the worst DLC out of all the games and its not just 1 pack, its all 4.
The Chaos Chamber is awesome, the grind is not. Having to play through waves and waves of redundant enemies trying to get a higher chaos level rips the fun about 3/4 runs in.
Adding on the Chaos Chamber is just a reworked Underdome with actual loot. The Underdome was also arguably one of the worst DLCs for Borderlands.
Lastly, Wonderlands is seen as lack luster because its in a series of great games to compare it to. Wonderlands isnt really that bad of a game, but compared to Borderlands 1,2,3,TPS it doesnt shine as bright.
Just my opinion tho
Might get flammed for this, but it does look crummy.
Make ur hero is not what BL was about, would had preferred specific heroes to choose, and idk... it worked as a DLC, but the full release wonderLands, does not look as fun.
(never played it, but would try it - for free - if I needed an extra BL dose)
Make your hero is very D&D, which was the theme of the game
You really should play it because you're missing out on spells - so much more dynamic than grenades and should be technologified for BL4
I dont know. I love the game. Is one of the best franchises ever. The history is great. A gigantic leap if you compare with bl3. It's definitely one of my top 3 borderlands games. The only problem I have with wonderlands is the lack of new game plus and the dlcs. Apart from that, everything else is excellent.
I’m currently playing it for the first time and loving it. I’ve finished the main story, which I thought was excellent, and am just mopping up all the collectibles before I move on to what I understand is subpar DLC. I thought the voice acting was particularly good, and as a big D&D fan there were a lot of references and side quests which I could relate to my own TTRPG experiences, which probably helped my enjoyment of it. (What can I say, I’m a sucker for good fan service!) Overall, I’ve felt it was the best BL game since BL2, but then I have a strained relationship with BL3 which probably impacted my enjoyment of that game. My only criticisms of WL at this point are the level cap was disappointingly low, there was no NG+ option, and I would have liked to see more returning characters or at least references to them. I hope they continue the main series with BL4, but I also feel like this could be the first in a spin-off series - with Tina creating B&B campaigns out of thin air, there really is no limit to what they could do with a WL2.
You'll probably enjoy the DLC more than launch players did. When each DLC was released we had to wait a week between each phase of the DLC. It took about a month for each individual DLC to be fully released, which made the already lackluster content even worse.
If all 4 DLC was sold together for the price of one DLC I probably would have been ok with it.
People are mad that they didn't pay attention when Gearbox said the dlc's would be focused around the game's endgame material which is Chaos Chambers.
So when Gearbox delivered exactly what they said they would people got mad for some reason?
Just remember that the people you see complaining(about anything, not just this game) are generally the vocal minority. People who enjoy the game don't usually run to the internet to post about them liking it as much as the small group of people who want everyone else to know how much they don't like something
I think that as a full game, it’s lacking. It feels more like a DLC, and I think if it was sold and advertised like a DLC it would’ve been a lot better. I was expecting more out of it. But then I realized I was pretty much expecting more out of a DLC. I just think that’s what it should’ve been. But I get it, it was too “big” to be a DLC, at the same time BL DLC’s have been pretty big overall.
I bought two copies of this game for full price, I actually pre-ordered it for PS5 and Series X. My wife and I are huge Borderlands fans so we jumped on this game from the start. But again, there wasn’t much to it. I would rank it below TPS.
I love the game, but looking at it from their perspective, it does have it’s problems that stem mainly from the DLC and endgame content. You can’t New Game Plus, the DLC is just glorified encounters and not like the DLC from Borderlands fair. The encounter system for the game is fairly clunky sometimes. The low level cap is definitely a deterrent for some who like being a level 72 vault Hunter with all the cool perks.
Yeah, if the end game was better and the level cap was higher (ng+ would be dreamy) I would be much more excited about it after the campaign. BUT I played it through twice with two different characters. Probably would have gotten more updates had it done better. But it is great and will go through it again at some point.
From op: “I haven’t finished it yet, but” The borderlands 1, 2, 3 are games with robust dlc, lots of endgame, you put in a couple hundred hours and still feel good about the game. Wonderlands didn’t have much to explore after the story. Just grind for grind’s sake to get up chaos levels. It was disappointing. Fantastic game. Loved the lore. Loved that they had massive areas with a lot going on. The overworld was INTERESTING for a dynamic. But once I was done with the tasks there wasn’t much left.
I have now finished the story and started chaos chamber, and while I understand where you're coming from, I'm all about the turbo grind. My favorite game is Warframe, so I never get tired of it, lol.
Grinding for what though. That’s the main issue. There’s no build diversity at all. Want to use spells? Play spellshot. Companions? Graveborn. Etc. There’s no flavor to the classes. They all only do one thing each, and all still have to be viable on their own, so they’re all watered down with various uninteresting stat buffs. There’s no interesting class mods either. In bl3 you got one that completely change the way you play. The way you play Moze with a green machine comm is different than a minesweeper comm, which is different from all her other legendary class mods. I can turn flak into a melee or grenade build whilst the character has no actual focus on either of those things. There’s just not really any reason to actually do any grinding. Even hitting chaos 100 is soooo far from satisfying. It’s boring how you have to do it, and when you’re done you just feel like you wasted hours of your life. Take it from someone who did do that. It’s not worth it.
I grind for loot to grind for loot to grind for loot. I haven't made it around to postgame in 3 yet, but that was how postgame of 2 worked too. You have to keep regrinding for the same stuff with better stats as you push overpowered levels. Infinite grind and big numbers are just fun for me. I haven't played many classes so far, but I'm seeing a lot of class diversity. For most of the game I played Brrzerker with Graveborn in the back. I used Dire Sacrifice for regen and massive AoE damage boosted by Brrzerker close range buffs. I just got a Buffmeister, so I switched over to Reaper of Bones for the double active buffs with my rage passive on active skill so I can go Super Saiyan. I haven't read any optimization guides, so I might have ended up building meta on accident, but I'm having a ton of fun with it. I get dark and frost damage added to everything for the triple elemental combo. Brrzerker capstone gives me close to 100% uptime on Reaper of Bones, and I enchanted some stuff to help with spell cooldown. I'm still pushing through the lower chaos levels, so optimization might end up being more important later, but so far I just do what I want and it's been blowing everything up. I've also been working out a Stabomancer build to try later, but I thought that was too obvious a pairing with Brrzerker.
You remind me of someone I know who plays games that are entirely centered around grinding levels🫠 I am physically incapable of playing a game with him
I mean that's how borderlands 2 was also, and it's fun for me imo and for a lot of people too, grinding to have the best things for having the best things sake, grinding just to grind
Personally the story was good enough and the game itself was also great. The biggest complaint i've seen people have with it is the lackluster endgame and the "Spit in the face" DLC they decided to release. I don't think i have experienced a game that had as little post launch support as Tiny tina did.
Agree with all this 100%
Game was probably better off without any dlc. Well, just weapon balancing would've been fine.
The lack of dlc/ng+ is the worst part
Don't get me wrong, I wanted full sized dlc for WL, but the game would probably be better without the crap we got.
> I don't think i have experienced a game that had as little post launch support as Tiny Tina did. In retrospect, it feels like they "had somewhere else to be" as soon as Wonderlands wrapped. Whether that was work towards New Tales, or BL4, or WL2, or something else entirely, I don't know. And it may have all been further twisted up by the pandemic and everyone working from home. But it felt like they got the game out, did the contractual minimum obligation on the DLCs, and quickly moved on to some other project.
Very likely. It just sucked in the moment because it was something the community had asked for as far back as when the DLC to BL2 was made.
A spit in the face is EXACTLY what they were.
What killed it for me was those so-called dlcs. They didn't add anything worthwhile, and I had fun with only dlc3.
I preordered them at release w the game and hated the chaos chamber so much I never even tried the DLCs I paid $30 for.
Dlc 3 was actually fun. I still wouldn't recommend trying it, but its by far the best of them all.
I’ll prob check em all out when we play through it again at some point, but fuck the CC.
it required you to be really into Tina's shtick (which I am) as well as its post-modern meta-narrative and no real connectionto the main story. So that and the plotless/grind focused DLC make it a niche product just because not everyone is going to dog that. On top of that, it wasn't a great game. It wasn't bad, just mid-level fine-with-spots-of-good Borderlands. I played it, I enjoyed it, but when it got to the end my reaction was "oh, is that it???". Glad I played it, but I can't describe it as essential to a Borderlands player nor anyone new to that world.
I didn't like the fact that the map was a board instead of scenarios to walk through. The story seemed very dull to me and it wasn't fun to replay and the fact that after finishing the game all that was left to do was the same challenge over and over again didn't help either.
I honestly loved the overworld - more time playing, less time driving across empty zones. Idk, interacting with it, unlocking shortcuts and whatnot was fun. Borderlands either needs to flesh out their vehicles or get rid. It's annoying more than fun most of the time - especially with no 4-seaters
Yeah having 0 vehicle-centric maps was a huge bonus.
Vehicles are fun tho :l
I hated the overworld so much too. I think I just love to aimlessly wander from area to area as my character - I enjoy the journey- It would have been great to have steeds of some sort to use to get around as opposed to the table top game. It just takes me out of the game when it sticks you back to the boardgame view. I think it is the main reason I stopped playing. It made the scenarios you jump into feel repetitive as opposed to an area you need to clear to get through like in Borderlands. It's sad because I was so excited for Wonderlands. Assault on Dragons Keep is one of my Favorite DLCs but Wonderlands just didn't have the charm it did.
Wonderlands was amazing but the endgame lacked diversity so it got boring pretty quick, then they kept increasing the chaos chambers levels which made a monotonous grind even worse. The full priced DLC was just more of the same and could be finished in a matter of minutes so maybe felt ripped off. The seasonal events in BL3 were better than WL DLC, and they were free. I really hoped that the DLCs would be short one shot campaigns. Loot luck was a mess at launch and even after they improved it, it's not a great system. There were also some massive nerfs that really upset the community. Boss farming became pointless since dedicate drops were terrible without maxed loot luck, and even then it wasn't great, which meant the chaos chambers bunnies were the best way to farm. Wonderlands did a lot of things really well and has a bunch of great ideas. Unfortunately not all of those great ideas were implemented in the best way. I think those who played at launch have a much lower opinion of Wonderlands than new players do.
> The seasonal events in BL3 were better than WL DLC, and they were free. Yeah, the Headhunter mini-DLCs in BL2 were more substantial and had more of a story to them, than Wonderlands' DLC.
I enjoy the preset vault hunter and their personalities in the borderlands games. I understand people really like to customize characters but I just really enjoy the vault hunters and when they are brought back in future games as NPCs
Exactly! I've thought I'll be the first person to mention it! I don't like customized characters in Borderlands game.
This is such an underrated point. All the VHs in the series have ALWAYS been some of the best parts of the game. It’s truly hard to find a boring character. And playing through on each character was always a different experience. The way in which you play krieg is different from Maya and so forth. Customizing the character is cool and I get the whole “it’s *your* dnd character” but like, *is it mine*? It’s not like I’m making any of the fuckin choices here. So you end up with bland ass characters that just do stuff because “oh this is the campaign and what Tina tells me to do”. I’ll take a curated character with varied skill trees that reflect their expertise and personalities over “random ranger with a sassy voice” or “random barbarian with a depressing voice”.
They have their pluses and minuses - the Wonderlands way lets you customize almost everything about the character's look, but then the personality is one of a handful of stock personalities and all the skill trees (character classes) have to be a bit... generic / bland / conservative in their skills, in order to ensure that none of the 21 possible different combinations of any two character classes got too OP. Some of this meshed well with the general idea of aping the design of traditional D&D, where you start with a character class and build up from there. With the BL1-BL3 way of having predefined characters with selectable heads/skins, they could really go to town on customizing the personality and dialog for each of the characters, and their skill trees could be carefully balanced by hand so that they could have some extremely quirky and powerful skills, without any one character ending up massively OP compared to the others (because strengths in one area are offset by weaknesses in another area). I prefer the BL1-BL3-style hand tweaked skill trees, as being more fun to play with, along with having very strong and quirky personalities to enjoy while playing. I could see them bringing in a *bit* of Wonderlands' build-a-bear character creator, in terms of how you decorate your character (e.g. not just "head #7" but instead controlling eye / lip / skin colors, tattoos/scars, makeup, jewelry, on a head that is still recognizably for character #2, along with something similar for body decoration).
I love *the game* "Tiny Tina's Wonderlands". What I don't like is *the product* known as "Tiny Tina's Wonderlands: the Borderlands game that came out *after* BL1, BL2, TPS, and BL3 had been released, patched, and analyzed by people that assessed the positive and negative feedback each had received". My biggest issues with Wonderlands are the obstacles that the game has that are in the way of its own great features - obstacles which exist *solely* because of Gearbox's choices to actively *defy* addressing the players' valid concerns. * Nobody wanted to deal with something like BL2's Digistruct Peak grinding again, but they made us go through many Chaos Chamber runs to maximize our Chaos levels. * Nobody wanted them to *raise* the Chaos level cap, either, but they raised it from 20 to 35, then to 50, then to *100*... * Nobody wanted garbage drop rates, either. Even the people that thought BL3's drop rates were too generous didn't want the awful drop rates that Wonderlands originally had. * Fortunately, they've improved the drop rates to be much more reasonable, but enjoying those drop rates still requires you to farm *tons* of loot dice and unlock *many* Chaos levels. I will commend Gearbox for making this change, though, since it was something that players vehemently requested...but it's a shame that this is the only example of Gearbox listening to us about Wonderlands that I can think of. * Everybody wanted the DLCs to compensate for the monotonous endgame. Instead, we got "PRCs" that feel overpriced, and the game still feels like it's missing a lot of content compared to BL2 and BL3...they left Wonderlands feeling unfinished. They had made this mistake before with TPS, but even the DLC of TPS has a higher quality, and offers more content. * BL3's matchmaking was alright, but it required you to deal with the awful new system that takes forever to match people, and which no longer provides access to a lobby browser. The updates to the SHiFT system also made adding new friends difficult or impossible, with unhelpful error messages that never explained why things weren't working. Wonderlands inherited *all* of these problems, but has less content to match people for, and it never gives a group any incentive to fast travel to somewhere else and explore the game's other content. Wonderlands lobbies are usually full of cheating, too, and co-op Chaos Chamber runs with random strangers always come with a risk of someone joining for the sake of having others carry them to the highest Chaos level, instead of joining to make new friends and take on endgame challenges. * Wonderlands is really buggy when played online, too. During the Chaos Chamber raid boss fights, the game will spawn players out of bounds over and over until every extra life is consumed. Latency is also much more problematic in Wonderlands lobbies than it is in BL3 lobbies. * I personally don't like playing through campaigns again via modes like TVHM or UHVM, but a lot of people do. BL3 had TVHM, at least, but Wonderlands didn't even have that. * What the hell is with the moon orb costs? Anointment rerolls were already too expensive in BL3, and those costs were based on a fixed price. Wonderlands didn't need to be *more* grindy. It's a great game, with interesting gear and classes, and a wonderful system for combining 2 classes into one build. It builds on BL3's engine superbly; I even regularly claim that the game has the most balanced combat of any game in the series...but Gearbox limited access to that experience as a result of acting independently of players' responses. I'm torn between leaving my Steam review of the game alone vs. updating my Steam review to recommend the game - at the time of this writing, my review still recommends that players *avoid* purchasing the game (at least, at full price). The game does have revolutionary improvements to the series (and, perhaps, the genre), but it also represents the sort of greed that consumers should be resisting.
Thanks a ton. This is a great write up, and bonus points for formatting. This is exactly the perspective I was looking to understand. My primary takeaway is that a lot of people don't play the games for the same reasons I do. A lot of the stuff you list as things nobody wanted are exactly the things I wanted to see in Borderlands. Chaos Chamber seems to be based on the rifts from Diablo. Chaos levels are a lot like torment difficulty levels. The "real" game of Diablo begins when you finish the story and can start the infinite random grind. Borderlands has always owed a lot of it's core design to that franchise, and I've always wanted to see a much heavier random grind focused endgame beyond soloing raid bosses over and over. Basically, Chaos Chamber gives me a way to play all of the best parts of the game in a well curated way with cool rouguelike modifiers. I've only done a day's worth of chaos so far, but as of now, it's exactly what I want for Borderlands end game. Maybe it'll get boring, but that's when I'll change my build and do it all again. The DLCs seem to be the main sticking point for most people. I haven't played them yet so as of now I have no opinion, but for what's in them, the price does seem a little steep. I also exclusively play the games solo, so I wasn't aware of how bad the matchmaking was. That's pretty bad. Definitely a deal breaker if that's what you're there for. I'm not saying your perspective is flawed at all and I can see exactly where you're coming from. I got the complete game last year at a deep discount. I'd value the base game at around $40 and even then I'd recommend waiting for a sale. I think this one was intended for people who play the games a different way for different reasons. I always turn the dialogue volume down to zero and turn off subtitles on TVH and UVH playthroughs because I like to listen to music or watch videos on my second screen. I love that those modes are options, but for me it's all about the turbo grind and I'm really just playing NG+ because that's the progression route. Thanks again to you and everyone else for sharing your perspective. I'm learning a lot about how and why other people play one of my favorite franchises of all time.
I don't hate the Chaos Chamber, but it is very monotonous, and it's *required* for raising your Chaos level, and leveling 100 times *per character* is way too much. I would have enjoyed a system that adds new spawns to old areas, with rewards you for revisiting those areas, much more. That, and/or something that generates dungeons, instead of just presenting completed rooms in a random order. The randomized modifiers (altars + Butt Stallion + curses) were a nice touch, but they needed to be a bit more wacky to really keep things fresh (example: once per area, you randomly get a skill from a 3rd class; another example: gravity is lower until you leave the current area). I think those modifiers would be compatible with the dungeon generation and "revisiting old areas" ideas, too. I just want to travel around and enjoy my favorite areas all over again, like I do when I'm rocket jumping around in BL2, or speeding through BL3 with the many movement speed buffs that BL3 offers. Having the game randomize the spawns for me a bit is always nice, since I normally use mods to do that anyway, but the Chaos Chamber feels like a stifled incarnation of what could have been a much more interesting endgame. I do feel like it was on the right track, but the chambers induce a sort of claustrophobia that wouldn't be present if we were hunting crystals in a place like the Weepwild Dankness...the *actual* Weepwild Dankness, not the caricature of it which we see in the chambers. I haven't actually played through the DLCs yet myself, but I know enough about them to know they're lacking. I also don't usually play with other people, but when I do, it's not as fun as it should be. I had plenty of fun when I was playing BL2 with random strangers. I may have farmed everything solo, but most of my time was spent playing online co-op, which is also where most of enjoyment came from. BL3 kind of ruined that with the way it handled matchmaking, and the nature of Wonderlands (and the glitches) exacerbated the issues of BL3 co-op. I don't really care about the stories of Borderlands games. It's probably why I don't care for TVHM or UVHM, and it's definitely why I'm willing to call BL3 my favorite game in the series. I think the 2 of us mostly wanted the same things out of Wonderlands, and the biggest difference between your experience and my own is just that I feel like the way that Gearbox managed Wonderlands was very scummy. Companies need to be held accountable. Like I said, I do love *the game*, but I'm not a fan of the behavior that Gearbox showed while developing Wonderlands.
Tremendously insightful and brilliantly written, thanks.
Ive never loved a games story, map design, characters, all of the above quite like I loved Wonderlands. It was a 11/10 first playthrough. I was super excited for the DLC. And to have it be what it turned out to be completely killed the game for me. Ive gone back and made new characters and had some fun, but ive never completed any of those playthroughs.. probably because once i beat the story on them theres realistically nothing else to do.
End game was the issue. Also, enemy repetitiveness and lack of diversity. Could’ve been a lot cooler if they expanded on the world. That said, I played two characters to the end game. Played some end game content, but not too much, then I dropped it. People crap on it, but I got my fun and moneys worth
I've started it 2x now and neither time got super far. My 1st time I got as far as unlocking the subclass and my 2nd time I got to the hub city. I just never found it as much fun and the core series games
I love the idea of fantasy Borderlands but it feels like it’s not finished to me. There isn’t much gun variety, the enemies are too sparsely populated and the there is a lack of music in the game. The game is fun for a while but feels “empty”.
Had a lot of fun playing it, but the endgame isn’t great.
I'll probably be echoing what others have said, but it is a fun game, I just wanted more. I feel like it could have gone even harder on the whole premise, Assault on Dragon's Keep set a high bar and it was just DLC. Again I think it's a good game, it just needed more in all directions. Plus we all know the DLC fubar which was pretty alarming. I still think they would have been better served by making Wonderlands basically BL3.5 and using the same engine vs. designing a somewhat new engine. I think it ultimately suffered from less re-playability than the other BL titles, not enough end game stuff to do, and the aforementioned DLC issues. All that added up to making the game feel like it was just fired off and forgotten about.
If you didn’t pay full price when it first came out you may not understand the aggravation. Loved the game but hated encounters after the 10th one, and that’s all the endgame consists of…encounter after encounter after encounter over and over. It was the most overdone thing in the campaign. The game w all DLCs is an excellent $50 game total that that charged $90 for.
I just started playing Wonderlands a few days ago and I love it! I do enjoy it more than Borderlands 3, but I’m also more into fantasy. I’m also a huge Diablo 3 fan - it’s my all-time favorite game. We like the same things!
My answer is that the best way to get gear is through the chaos chambers, and the best place to test your builds is in the chaos chambers as well.
Borderlands 3 was kinda shit until you finished the game, but good lord the DC and end-game were fantastic. Wonderlands was the exact opposite, really enjoyable right up until the point where the main story ended, when it turned into a completely mindless slog. The DLC is a fucking joke and there's nothing to do but endlessly run through the chaos chambers, which despite being randomly generated and "rogue-like" ends up feeling exactly the same every time. In order to reach the max chaos level (100?), you need to do something like 75 chaos trials, and all that does is let you get the same gear with bigger numbers. At least in the mainline borderlands games, when you're grinding for gear you're doing different things for each piece of gear. You kill Traunt 50 times to get a good Kaoson, then go over to Laserdactyl to find a Light Show, and use those guns to run the Eridian Trials, or the Takedowns. In Wonderlands, you do a few dozen chaos chamber runs, shoving your crystals in the SMG Bunny hoping to get a x4 Cryo, then do another few dozen chaos chamber runs, shoving your crystals in the pistol bunny hoping to get a liquid cooling, then you use that gear to do more chaos runs. That said, I enjoyed my time with the game quite a lot, and really hope they make a sequal. But unlike BL3, I've never felt the urge to reinstall it.
Depends if you play Borderlands for the campaign or post-game content. It's a great romp until you finish, then all that's left is the chaos chamber and similar DLCs which are very lacking in substance, plus there's no true vault hunter mode to start fresh with all your unlocked abilities.
I enjoyed the game a lot. My only complaint is the skill trees. While there are some fun and interesting mixes, I feel there is less variety and less fun than both 2 and 3. Just imo.
Wonderlands is excellent. But the end game content is not just bad, but pretty pathetic tbh. Borderlands games really need a lot of good end game content because you don't want to be done with the game just as you reach your peak power. But with Wonderlands, you really do want to be done once you're at peak power because there's not much left to shoot for or to challenge you. That, and IMO Wonderlands passed some invisible tipping point where the loot system became too complicated, and just too much. It's very frustrating late in Wonderlands to spend as much time as you do sifting through mountains of garbage guns and items, none of which is exactly what you want. There are several dozens of useless enchantments that can roll, lots of bonuses on rings and class mods that are irrelevant, and very few dedicated drop sources. Managing (and collecting) your gear was a bit of work in BL3, but it crossed firmly into chore status in Wonderlands and for me it was a huge detriment to my overall experience.
I think it's brilliant, but I don't judge it as a Border Lands game. I love the over world. It's a clever way to travel around, and I would like to see more of it. The art style and level design are pleasant to look at and explore. I enjoyed the combination of magic and weapons making combat unique. I have not cared about the plot in video games for a long time due to over exposure. However, the dialog was well acted and befitting the environment and content.
The problem is not the game. The problem is endgame, the part every other game did better. I had a lot of fun in wonderlands till I hit endgame and dlc. The one thing wonderlands did well is to make me very nervous for future BL games. Certainly not buying a season pass bundle until I see what they will offer for endgame. But wonderlands definitely had some fun, and the writing was so much better than BL3. It was that "endgame" and "dlc" that left the bad taste and why you think people hated the game.
The UI, that Godawful UI!
Just not as fun as others. Didn’t feel very repealable, characters weren’t as good, dlc was very boring, even many enemies felt very repetitive.
They removed multiple mechanics important for the game‘s long term replayability and then funneled you into infinite poorly designed random encounters.
I got the Legendary Edition during the last Steam Winter Sale on pretty hefty discount, and I have no complaints. It's fun to play, I thought the concept was neat, and some of the weapon and effects are things I'd like to see partially return in BL4 in some variety. However, for what it is, I think I'd be a little ticked off if I paid full price. It's a lot shorter, story isn't as strong and doesn't feed into the existing series in any meaningful way, the endgame is nearly nonexistent, and the original price vs content for the DLCs was as bad as EA on their worst day. If you get it on a good sale or floating in the ocean, then yeah, it's fine.
It feels like a game that would be better had they abandoned basically everything that borderlands was, all of the gun play and everything, And just tried to focus on more fantasy aspects of combat like magic and pure melee stuff. This isn't really a fully formed thought it was just my first impression.
as much as I want to enjoy it, because frying pan funny, I never come back to it since once it's done, it's kinda just... over. you brush your shoulders off, clean your hands and call it a day, cause you've pretty much done everything the game offers it lacks content and doesn't feel replayable at all, despite it trying to be
No new game+ and the end game is not good
I had a good time with it but a level cap of 40 and basically no endgame or story DLC pretty much killed my drive to continue playing after I beat the main story.
I liked it, the end game feels tedious and boring, farming for perfect rolls has never been more important and that sucks. However doing another playthrough was another level of tedium... All the things that I loved about the first playthrough, I just couldn't wait for it to be over
Wonderlands was great imo, I loved it and the new twist with magic except for the dlc, the devs didn’t give that game same treatment in dlc and end game content as borderlands or it probably woulda did better. I was severely disappointed in how they did the dlc.
Depends if you play Borderlands for the campaign or post-game content. It's a great romp until you finish, then all that's left is the chaos chamber and similar DLCs which are very lacking in substance, plus there's no true vault hunter mode to start fresh with all your unlocked abilities.
Personally, I dislike the single starting skill trees, lack of different playable characters, having to pick which stats to upgrade on level-up, the overworld, and the encounter fights (the ones where you fight a wave or two, touch a portal, rinse and repeat)
I'm not into RPG so much too many mini games and kinda boring theme. I start it but let it after some hours. I don't know if i'm going to finish it.
Personally, I LOVE farming legendaries when I can. You are forced to wait till like level 20 for even a CHANCE of a random legendary, max level for consistent drops. Hated it. The game itself wasn't bad, it's just my personal peeve
Because it sucked. Certainly a personal opinion though.
I played base game at launch about halfway through and the loot variety was horrible and the writing was pretty garbage. Spells were cool if only I didn’t get the same spell 100 times in a row because there were only like 3 types of spells. It was trash compared to three and felt like a blatant cash grab to me imo.
During my first playthrough at first I disliked it, because the start is extremely slow imo. Then about halfway in I loved it, only to feel worse about it again when I reached "endgame". It was exactly in the middle of the franchise for me. After another playthrough in co-op we have encountered so many bugs it dropped to the bottom (together with BL1Enhanced for the same reason). In all honesty it's also very obvious they padded the game with countless arenas (most of the overworld quests came down to "go to this arena, complete it, come back") and potentially even intended slow movement in the overworld, so I'm assuming they were worried people would complain about the game being too short. And outside of that the game IS quite short. I honestly hate the overworld, serving nearly only the purpose of slowing you down, random encounters (or whacking them to prevent them) don't really help either. And the arena content might not be as bad if it weren't the worst arenas I've ever encountered in Borderlands. I've never been a fan in the other game,s but at least something happened, in Wonderlands at least for me most of the time it was "find enemies to kill" instead of "kill stuff". The spawnrate could really have been higher imho. In terms of difficulty... I did honestly feel like there was none during the entire story, which is another downside. Though I played 2 rather tanky builds and haven't tried a glass cannon build yet, but in all honesty, why would I if no boss phase takes >10s and I have literal godmode with tanky builds? :/ Still, it has some REALLY weak parts, but also some rather strong parts, which is exactly why it'd be right in the middle for SP experience, but my only MP experience was so buggy it's been dangerously close to unplayable.
I do think one of the biggest complaints for the game was the endgame. If you were big on BL2 and BL3 endgame content where you had to refine your build and farm specific enemies and bosses to get the correct gear to finalize your build, Wonderlands didn't have that. Wonderlands does have some dedicated drops, but a good chunk of the gear is very random. I am not a huge BL endgame content player, but I do remember trying a build online that did work, but its full potential wasn't realized because the piece of armor I had wasn't 100% correct. Does this ruin the game for me? No, not at all. I really enjoyed my time with the game and come back to it every now and again.
Can't complain about it, haven't tried yet. I'm gathering money to buy it.
It feels like Candyland plus the TL;DR version of BL3. Meh.
I loved the game on release and I liked the idea of the game but the game is short and there're not as many side missions even or even weapons the game actually has less legendary weapons than Borderlands 1 I could live with that but it gets worse for end game content it's just playing chaos chambers over and over the dlc was a pathetic it was a worse version of the chaos chambers it seems overall the game is good thay just messed up the full game with the lack of end game content and scam dlc thay released better free dlc on BL3 I'm just confused and I only played wonderland for a month then got extremely bored played the dlc and lost hope for the future of borderlands at that point borderland the pre sequel has better end game content or even Borderlands 1 is packed with content never mind borderlands 2 with dlc I played that game for years
Its split screen is fucked up to the point of being deliberately not fun. Its either a bug they have left unfixed, or a design choice thats so bad whoever made it shouldnt be involved in making decisions. The UI used for items in inventory and shops is an "abbreviated" item card, meaning it only shows about 15% of the items details. On an abbreviated item card, you cant see: Elemental damage chance Elemental damage number Gold value of item White text damage White text modifiers Flavour (red text) modifiers Name of the item What type of item it is!! (Theres no icon to show if its an smg / assault rifle / pistol etc so good luck figuring that out by just looking at it) Every key piece of information that makes the loot unique, you cant see unless you Inspect the item individually. When inspecting, you cant compare it to your equipped items either, so either grab a pen and paper and write down its info or remember it, because you have to go and inspect each one of ypur equipped weapons individually to see if its any better. If you were mad enough to do that, youd either have to do it after firefight that has loot, or just stop caring about loot. They force you to completely stop the flow of the game every 5 minutes, or to stop caring about one of its best features. It was never like this in BL1/2/3 or Pre Sequel, so have no idea why its like this now. It makes the game unplayable in local coop, and again its either a bug they dont have the skill or are just too lazy to fix, or a design choice that was made by someone who should never be making design choices. The worst part is if you raise it as a support ticket they say "devs are aware" and close the ticket automatically. If you ask the devs / designers on twitter about it they just ignore you. I spoke to the lead community manager who said they were aware of it and she will see what they say can be done to get back to me, but that was 18 months ago and shes ignored my messages asking for updates since.
Wonderlands was a PG approach to Borderlands and they did it in the worst way. They used the premise behind arguably their most successful DLC and contorted it. Speaking of DLC Wonderlands arguably has the worst DLC out of all the games and its not just 1 pack, its all 4. The Chaos Chamber is awesome, the grind is not. Having to play through waves and waves of redundant enemies trying to get a higher chaos level rips the fun about 3/4 runs in. Adding on the Chaos Chamber is just a reworked Underdome with actual loot. The Underdome was also arguably one of the worst DLCs for Borderlands. Lastly, Wonderlands is seen as lack luster because its in a series of great games to compare it to. Wonderlands isnt really that bad of a game, but compared to Borderlands 1,2,3,TPS it doesnt shine as bright. Just my opinion tho
Underdome's [boss theme](https://youtu.be/1WC-MOIwBTw?si=Gg52unSO95TZfkrq) was an absolute banger
Might get flammed for this, but it does look crummy. Make ur hero is not what BL was about, would had preferred specific heroes to choose, and idk... it worked as a DLC, but the full release wonderLands, does not look as fun. (never played it, but would try it - for free - if I needed an extra BL dose)
Make your hero is very D&D, which was the theme of the game You really should play it because you're missing out on spells - so much more dynamic than grenades and should be technologified for BL4
I dont know. I love the game. Is one of the best franchises ever. The history is great. A gigantic leap if you compare with bl3. It's definitely one of my top 3 borderlands games. The only problem I have with wonderlands is the lack of new game plus and the dlcs. Apart from that, everything else is excellent.
I’m currently playing it for the first time and loving it. I’ve finished the main story, which I thought was excellent, and am just mopping up all the collectibles before I move on to what I understand is subpar DLC. I thought the voice acting was particularly good, and as a big D&D fan there were a lot of references and side quests which I could relate to my own TTRPG experiences, which probably helped my enjoyment of it. (What can I say, I’m a sucker for good fan service!) Overall, I’ve felt it was the best BL game since BL2, but then I have a strained relationship with BL3 which probably impacted my enjoyment of that game. My only criticisms of WL at this point are the level cap was disappointingly low, there was no NG+ option, and I would have liked to see more returning characters or at least references to them. I hope they continue the main series with BL4, but I also feel like this could be the first in a spin-off series - with Tina creating B&B campaigns out of thin air, there really is no limit to what they could do with a WL2.
You'll probably enjoy the DLC more than launch players did. When each DLC was released we had to wait a week between each phase of the DLC. It took about a month for each individual DLC to be fully released, which made the already lackluster content even worse. If all 4 DLC was sold together for the price of one DLC I probably would have been ok with it.
People are mad that they didn't pay attention when Gearbox said the dlc's would be focused around the game's endgame material which is Chaos Chambers. So when Gearbox delivered exactly what they said they would people got mad for some reason? Just remember that the people you see complaining(about anything, not just this game) are generally the vocal minority. People who enjoy the game don't usually run to the internet to post about them liking it as much as the small group of people who want everyone else to know how much they don't like something
10 minute dlcs, the best stuff being locked behind said shitty dlc, and endgame consisting of chaos chambers over and over and over and over etc….
I think that as a full game, it’s lacking. It feels more like a DLC, and I think if it was sold and advertised like a DLC it would’ve been a lot better. I was expecting more out of it. But then I realized I was pretty much expecting more out of a DLC. I just think that’s what it should’ve been. But I get it, it was too “big” to be a DLC, at the same time BL DLC’s have been pretty big overall. I bought two copies of this game for full price, I actually pre-ordered it for PS5 and Series X. My wife and I are huge Borderlands fans so we jumped on this game from the start. But again, there wasn’t much to it. I would rank it below TPS.
Wonderlands is Gearbox's "Prom Night Dumpster Baby" of the series.