Meh, that's pretty normal. Unless your build is one that is supposed to make Bloodwing more effective, it will become nigh-ineffective with time, and for most people it's funnier to just take boosting skills instead and go on a sniping rampage. Either way, if you chose Mordekai, then you probably wanted to play a sniper, and something like Bloodwing feels unnatural for people to use for that. If you learn how to play with the bird, on the other hand, it is a useful addition to the arsenal, but most people don't care to learn that. Which is why I like (as of now) the classes in BL2. A cloaking ability instead of a bird? Thank you, I'll take that, you can have the bird. Bloodwing is only good for that if you actually spent any points on increasing its abilities. Personally I had a great time with an exploding sniper rifle (two of them, one auto and one normal, depending on what I was fighting, and only one of them was equipped at a time), caustic revolver (good for armoured stuff), some random shotgun (either exploding or incendiary or just something that had good stats), and a caustic tri-shot rocket launcher (for, kind of, sniping things hard to target, but it was good against some larger targets). I think I had an electrical artefact on Bloodwing in case I encountered something that had a shield too robust to crack, but I seldom used it for anything else. Yeah, and they were pretty useless...
I played a bit of this earlier and tried joining other people's games. I was disconnected in seconds each time. So I host another one and wound up playing for hours with several people. We used the in game voice chat and it worked well enough. We co-ordinated and actually had lots of fun. Skagzilla did not manage to kill any of us. But fucking midgets and cake-walk runs slaughtered us like nothing you would believe. There is a certain balance issue at play here.
It's just that you need either players used to fighting those things, or weapons appropriate for ridding world of them. I never really had any problems with midgets, and the ones I had problems against were (I think) armoured skags.
I haven't played long enough to notice anything balance-wise (I haven't even unlocked cars yet) but midgets are really easy for Snipers, because they make a beeline for you and are therefore laughably easy to get headshots on. Skags are pricks though, because you can't get crits on them unless they're roaring.
Wait a sec..... Where do I have all the DLC from? Did I really buy the full pack back then? Because, in Steam, under View DLC, it says "You got these DLCs" and lists all. Nice!
If you bought GOTY edition it includes all the DLC's. About balance; While bandits and regular skags can be killed with any sort of weapon, its not far into the game before you start running into enemies that are either incredibly well armored or immune/highly resistant to one or more damage types. Try to have a half decent weapon of each damage type with you at all times! Corrosive against the nastier skags and lance corp, shock against guardians, fire against most humanoids. To the best of my knowledge there are no enemies immune to explosive damage, so that's something to consider bringing along as well.
It's a time-limited "play for free" thing, to encourage people to buy it before the special offer (-whatever percent of price when you buy it) expires (you have 2 or 3 days).
Yeah, play the DLC and see if you think it is worth investing the $7.49 USD it currently costs to get either the DLC pack, or the GOTY version of the game that comes with all the DLC. (No idea why you would go for the DLC alone for the same price as the game and DLC.)
So set it to not update automatically and hope you managed to cheat them! So enjoy it while it lasts. I think the keys expire after the weekend. But then again, they may want to draw people to Borderlands to draw interest in Borderlands 2. They may just decide to let people keep the game and DLC. (Unlikely, but it would be a nice gesture.)
I just played for hours with Hybelkanin and Frelus. I have played Wazhack with Frelus before and knew him to be easy to get along with. But this was probably the most fun I ever had in a Co-Operative game. We each started a new character and went out of our way to help one-another, and we each did very well. I played a Sniper. I wanted to confirm or learn the mistakes of my presumption that they suck as a class. Hybelkanin played "Brick". And Frelus played a Soldier. He was kind enough to take my advise and spec firstly for healing on shooting another. And used this to great effect. At the end of our little play we were all level 15-16. It was pretty clear the Soldier was the best of us for most situations. Frelus is a good player, but I think the bulk of the reason the soldier is better is simply the skills. The turret can serve any number of goals. It can be speced to provide health and ammo to us, and can also be speced to do major damage. Fighting is pretty damned hectic, so I left my microphone on and tried to be quiet. No-one complained about too much ambient noise or anything, so I presume it sounded alright. We resisted the urge to cheese farm loot by reloading the game everytime we grab the easy stuff and then doing it again and again. But if things get too hard, that may be a fallback tactic to get better gear and enough money to restock ammo and have enough cash on hand to pay for being revived when things do not go well.
Oh yes, that was fun. Basically, whenever there was something with the prefix "Badass", we died. A lot. Then I got rezzed, shot Omni and Hybel, died again, got rezzed again, etc, and somehow, in the end, we won. On another note, a thing I never thought I might say, shotguns are really good for healing other people... Especially the 12 fragment ones. The last thing Omni and I did after Hybel left (we played for 1 1/2 or so hours on after that) was killing Sledge. After both respawning 5 times or so. It was like "Run in, hit him, die, run in again, hit him, die, repeat. And it was fun. And Fun. Both definitions. Edit: Also, Steam says, when I try to buy the expansion pack (All in one), that I already own it. So either it makes fun of me so I cannot buy it with reduced price, or I really bought them back last summer sale. Hope the last is true.
If you get decent weapons it typically doesnt get all that hard (though that likely depends on your FPS skillset too), as it feels more aimed at the casual fun crowd than the FPS elite. The big reason Soldiers are better is they realy dont have any weaknesses, between Combat rifles and Shotguns, it covers just about everything you need (sniping, rapid fire and close combat). Lilith is reasonable too as SMGs are much the same as combat rifles, but good for close range too. Though that said I found weapons make the big difference in how hard or easy the game is, if you have good ones it's allot easier than a more rounded character with worse weapons. Hell I've played Mordekai with shotguns and he was quite effective still Yes, you can only crit a skag by shooting it in the mouth, luckly they roar quite often. I found you can actually just get away with a reasonable physical and corrosive weapon, as for the most part shields die off fast and fleshy guys take good damage from physycal and corrosive weapons too while the armoured guys take little damage from physical, shock or fire. Though a good explsive weapon or grenade is good against just about anything as I dont recall anything having immunity either, though if I recall right most things take some additional damage too.
You know the thing in the Steam overlay next to your avatar that says "[username]'s account"? Click those words. It takes you to a page that tells you exactly what is on your Steam account. Oh, yeah, badass things aren't fun. Well, I mean, they are but...you know what I mean. I assume they're worse in co-op than singleplayer? Because mostly I've been able to handle them just fine. I've died, like, twice so far; once was me being invisible-wall-fragged due to "oh hey, that drop is shorter than several others I've made that dealt no damage, I wonder what will happen". The other death was due either to a random explosion out of nowhere, or the incredibly stupid enemy respawn timers in this game making things run up at me from an area I'd cleared literally two minutes ago and was still in line of sight with. I quit for the day just after beating the safehouse boss, and I have to say that if that's the standard for how bosses in this game work I'm not impressed. It's like everything that was wrong with Torchlight 2, except in a game that I really, really love playing. I don't think I actually got hit at all during that fight, it was just really annoying because I had to run in circles around the boss for five minutes noscoping him with my sniper rifle at random locations sort of near his head. I'm having incredible fun speccing maximum melee upgrade. (I'm doing this mostly because this is the best way to spam Bloodwing and I'm going to have Blood take care of any self-heals I need to do instead of the chaotic regeneration option.) I am literally having no problem with anything that runs up to me that isn't a badass (or an alpha skag, seriously, I hate skags, they never roar when you have a chance to aim at them and they never stop coming). I just press V once or twice, hear a satisfying schlick and they're dead. Also this game has the best vehicles of any game ever, and this is including Rugrats Royal Ransom and its moonjump buggy and catapult. Though I would like it if I didn't get out of the side of the car directly opposite wherever I wanted to go every single time I get out of the car. Overall, this game really is very fun, I am thoroughly glad I bought it and am looking forward to playing with you guys later on (not during the free weekend though, my DLC keys bugged out so I only have half of them). I think once I beat the game with Mordekai I might make a Siren, I seriously love elemental effects. My 4x Fire sniper rifle, for example, causes huge burny explosions half the time I hit things that aren't bosses. It does make me wonder a bit exactly what the purpose of explosive mods are, though.
Cheers for the session last night, Omni and Frelus! Had a grand time playing with you guys. I'll fire up the game and play my berserker up to Sledge to catch up. Hope we can continue this game. Oh and Banjo it'd be cool to have you in with us too, man! I wouldn't worry too much about the DLC problems for now since we're just playing the main story.
@Banjo: Thanks! Borderlands GOTY LV What does the LV stand for? And, as Hyperbunny says, it would be really nice to have you with us, too!
Status update: Brick in his limited wisdom went straight for Sledge's hideout in the mines after our session last night and proceeded to get killed like 10 times trying to defeat that one damn badass raider with a ! mark on its nameplate. Despite still being convinced this sign means he musta got some awesome gunz to loot, he left the mines and cleared all sidequests available before Sledge instead. And picked up a freaking awesome shotgun from the arena events. It has 81 accuracy and high damage slugs, does wonders both close range and "sniping", it even has a scope for it. Hyperion guns for the win! A couple levels higher from the sidetracking he met zero resistance on his return to Headstone Mine, merrily sniping bandits and midgets with his newfound love, the shotgun, as well as his trusty harpoon rocket launcher. Good times. Sledge himself was cakewalk as well. Returning triumphant to Fyrestone, the awestruck inhabitants (Dr. Zed) showered him in praise and treasure. That is to say, Dr. Zed mused that he's not one for compliments but he thought Brick'd done allright, and handed him a centurion class mod he had no doubt looted from one of his mutilated patients beforehand.
Funny thing, [!] symbols seem to be thoroughly dynamic. Like, one time some raiders were around my level but had that symbol...and then it turned out I was being swarmed by those bat things, all of which also had [!] symbols. So large numbers can raise the encounter rating of even normal enemies. Also, how exactly are you guys figuring out how to meet up?
We are always staying together, actually. I also do not think any one of us is really playing that one char apart from the group play (Except when there were two left last time, then Omni and I played on a little) So, no real problem yet.
