There is a boss in Borderlands 2 so tough you probably won't be able to kill it. But there's a quest to kill it anyway. It's called 'You.Will. Die. (Seriously.)'
The boss is called Terramorphous the Invincible, and he earns his name. This gargantuan thresher serpent thing emerges from the rock with a roar that echoes throughout his cliff-side home, Terramorphous Peak in the Thousand Cuts area. Its knock-back attack sends you flying high into the air, probably to your death. It hits hard enough to kill you outright. Its tentacles, many of which protrude from the ground, nag at your already frayed concentration. And the number of hit points it enjoys... well, let's just say, there are enough of them to make the player feel very, very insignificant.
'If you don't curse the design team at least five times on the way to beating this guy, we haven't done our jobs,' says producer Randy Varnell with a smile.
Feb 09, 2013 'A Level Cap Increase in Borderlands 2 Would Break the Game'. Let alone the raid bosses. Continue this thread. Compare a level 50 gun in BL2 to a level 69 in the original. The former is going to have significantly higher damage statistics in nearly every case. Seeing as there's this burst in scaling that wasn't present before, it's. Damage cap in Borderlands 2 Discussion I have hit 9999K damage multiple times, and was wondering if that is purely visual or if that is the max damage you can deal with only one pellet. Save hide report. This thread is archived. New comments cannot be posted and votes cannot be cast. There are several Maya Guides in the Borderlands 2 - Guides section. Currently playing around with variation on the Legendary Cat theme. Comments on Sky's post. Thoughtlock is quite amusing to watch in crowded spaces like Pete's Bar. It is not woth losing the crowd control of phaselock for this, it really isn't. Points are better spent elsewhere.
Terramorphous was conceived after Borderlands developer Gearbox Software saw how players enjoyed taking on Crawmerax the Invincible (no relation), the crab worm raid boss from the superb The Secret Armory of General Knoxx downloadable add-on. The mission to kill that beast was called 'You.Will.Die.' You see what they're doing here.
Crawmerax was pretty much the hardest challenge the first Borderlands had to offer, and required a group of four maximum-level players all with high-level gear to take it down. Terramorphous is like that, except he's even more of a bastard.
A raid boss comes on the disc this time because Gearbox wants to include enough end-game content to keep players who've hit the level 50 cap playing for years after launch. The developer has already revealed one of the new mechanics designed to do this, the unique Badass system and its infinite levels of profile-wide progression. We're at Gearbox's Dallas headquarters to see the rest.
'If you don't curse the design team at least five times on the way to beating this guy, we haven't done our jobs' - producer Randy Varnell.
'Once you hit that end game, what are you doing? That's what Crawmerax was,' Varnell says.
'You can fight Terramorphous multiple times and he's going to drop different loot every time. Some of the best gear in the game, great legendary items, will drop from this guy. He has specific items that only drop from him in the game. There are some legendaries you'll only find from him.
'A lot of the end-game pull is that four-player co-op challenge at a high level against a really tough-to-fight boss. He is designed to be impossible. I'm not going to say he's not soloable, because I know how well gamers break games, but he really is tuned for that end-game, four-player co-op fight, testing your build and your gear and your equipment and your ability to work together as a team. His rewards are great. So, if you are that end-game player, this is your challenge right here.'
One end-game raid boss, though, won't be enough to keep the hardcore happy. Varnell mentions 'game changers'. Each character class has one: a unique ability deep down at the end of a skill tree, only available at level 50 and designed to, as the name suggests, change the way you play.
Take Axton, Borderlands 2's soldier, for example. His base skill sees him deploy the Longbow Turret. But progress all the way down his skill tree and you'll unlock the Nuclear Detonation ability, which triggers every time you deploy the turret. It looks as over-the-top as it sounds, complete with a modest mushroom cloud effect. Combine this with the Longbow skill, which teleports your turret to wherever your crosshairs are aiming, and you have a pinpoint-precision nuke at your disposal. Combine all that with the skill that lets you pick up the turret after it's been thrown (which reduces the cooldown on your nuke), and you can get into a faster, devastating loop of throw, nuke, pick-up, throw, nuke, pick-up. 'It changes up the dynamic of the soldier quite a bit from just a turret shoot type of class,' Varnell says.
Take Zer0, the Assassin class, as another example. Zer0's hook is that he can disappear - as you'd expect from a rogue type - allowing him to stealth around the battlefield and attack with enormous bonuses to damage. Make your way to the bottom of the Bloodshed tree, though, and you unlock skills that let you stay in this Deception mode potentially indefinitely. From Deception, make a dash kill within five seconds and you reset the countdown. So, you can, if you're good enough, chain kill after kill after kill without decloaking. It's tricky, though. In the Playground, Gearbox's unhindered developer environment used for testing Borderlands' new toys, marketing chief Adam Fletcher does well to chain four kills.
One of Salvador's game-changing skills is quintessentially Borderlands, and quintessentially Gearbox. At the bottom of the Brawn (tanking) tree is the 'Come at me, Bro' skill. Salvador gives the enemy the finger, with both hands, aggroing the lot (you'd be annoyed, too). That sounds like bad news for Salvador, but Come at me, Bro instantly brings him up to full health and reduces damage taken by 90 per cent for a few seconds. Occasionally, Salvador laughs maniacally. He likes the attention.
And finally there's Maya, the Siren class. Work your way to the bottom of her Harmony tree and you'll unlock Scorn. This sees Maya throw out an orb of energy that slowly flies past enemies, covering them in slag, Borderlands' inappropriately-named substance that increases damage taken. The trick is to avoid hitting enemies with the orb - harder than it sounds - and maximising the number of bad guys it flies past - also tricky. Nail it, though, and you can take down even the toughest enemies with just a few shots.
'True Vault Hunter Mode is more than just difficulty. You now need to use all the tools and all of the tricks you learnt in normal mode, and that's how you survive' - lead designer Jon Hemingway.
Powerful skills are nothing without powerful enemies to use them against, of course. While Borderlands 2's normal difficulty will present a decent challenge to players, it's more about teaching the player how the character classes work, how the enemies work and how the guns work in a fun 40-odd hour blast 'em up. It's not until you beat Borderlands 2 on normal that you'll pit your skills against a real test.
Borderlands 2's second play-through is called True Vault Hunter Mode. Like the second play-through on Borderlands, TVHM is harder with tougher enemies. But where the first game simply tasked the player to increase their hit points and do more damage with better guns against enemies with more hit points and better guns, a second play through of Borderlands 2 requires the player to think. The AI works differently using unique behaviours. More enemies use shields. More wear armour. More are Badass class. There are enemies that only appear in TVHM. To defeat them you'll have to put those top-tier abilities to good use. And in co-op, which automatically scales up the challenge depending on how many are in your party, understanding how different classes work together is essential.
Varnell has a couple of examples. A skilled Maya player can use the Scorn ability to fire off an orb so it just misses all the on-screen enemies, slagging them all. Then it's up to the other players to do the damage. Salvador can use Come at me, Bro to taunt all the enemies in the battlefield. Then, just at the right time, Axton deploys his turret with the Nuclear Detonation ability in tow. It's the only way to be sure.
'With all the skill trees, we always have the fun button, as we call it internally, where you do something cool,' Varnell explains. 'But for the core guys, you're seeing all these additional tactics are coming up. We want the guys who are really deep into game to feel reward for having these new, more advanced skills available to them.'
Some Borderlands fans may be sceptical of the challenge offered by True Vault Hunter Mode. Those who rinsed the end-game will know that on the second play-through, the enemy scaling was a little off. In short, eventually, players overpowered the environment.
'That is not a problem this time around!' lead designer Jon Hemingway tells me when I follow this up with him. 'True Vault Hunter Mode is more than just difficulty. You now need to use all the tools and all of the tricks you learnt in normal mode, and that's how you survive.
'We all felt it needed to be more than just turning up the dials. More than just more damage and more health and ta-daa we're done. For example, more enemies have shields. That seems like a really small thing, but it now makes shock more viable. So if you're playing in co-op, get someone with a shock gun and their job is to bring down the shields. Enemies will have more armour on them. So don't shoot them in the armour bit. You're going to have to aim a little bit better and hit the sweet spots.
'We've spent quite a bit of time thinking about it. We've given you a whole chest of tools. Now, if you want to survive, use them all. First game, you don't need them all. Have fun, but learn them all. And now it's time to separate the men from the boys. That's what True Vault Hunter mode is all about. It's much more than difficulty. It's tactics.'
Gearbox ends its show with a futile attempt on Terramorphous' life. First, Fletcher tries to solo him as Axton. A powerful attack sends him flying high into the air and off the map. He's dead. He tries again, this time with a friend. They last a minute or so, the huge tentacles and devastating attacks making short work of their pointless effort. I glance at the beast's life bar. It hasn't changed.
Borderlands 2 First Boss
But Terramorphous can be killed if you're working in a group that knows what it's doing. 'You'll need a Siren in your party that has the ability to heal,' Varnell says, 'and a Gunzerker that has the ability to taunt and take damage from big attacks. Watch for the tells, knock-backs and big attacks. Like all great raid fights, you learn the rhythm of the fight and where he is and develop a strategy against that.'
'We're all huge Diablo fans. You can't make a game like Borderlands without having played Diablo' - lead designer Jon Hemingway.
Gearbox has made no secret of the influence Blizzard's loot-hungry Diablo series has had on Borderlands. The first game was, at its base, Diablo with guns. Four character classes. Four-player co-op. More encounters than you can count. And more guns than any game ever released. 'We're all huge Diablo fans,' Hemingway tells me. 'You can't make a game like Borderlands without having played Diablo.
'Some of the obvious similarities and things we borrowed from were the loot. Kill guys, get better loot. One of the other ones is defining who you are. In Diablo 2, lots of terms started to emerge as people found similar builds. There's the Amazon class. If you used a javelin with her though, you were a Javazon. People came up with a whole language for identifying players. We started to see things like that.
'Around the office right now, one of the names for the common builds for Zer0 the Assassin is shotgun ninja. Grab yourself a good Jacob's shotgun, stealth in behind them and backstab with a shotgun. It's spectacular fun.'
Most of us loved Borderlands for the same reason we loved Diablo: the unending loot, the unending desire to optimise your character, and the fun you had doing it. People are still playing Borderlands some three years after launch. Gearbox hopes Borderlands 2's end game will keep you hooked for closer to a decade. Just expect to die trying.
Update:Randy Pitchford has addressed the controversy and confusion created by the response to this interview on his personal Twitter:
@guggerbunk can you please tell them to calm the fuck down. Take-away: it’s hard and expensive, but we’re committed.
— Randy Pitchford (@DuvalMagic) February 9, 2013
@guggerbunk I’ll say: 100% chance of a level cap increase this year, but 5050 on unforeseen consequences that some people will rage about.
— Randy Pitchford (@DuvalMagic) February 9, 2013
As part of a larger discussion with Gearbox Software president Randy Pitchford, I wanted to get the outspoken and enthusiastic developer’s thoughts on the Borderlands 2 level cap. The original Borderlands received two level cap increases, eventually raising the maximum character level from 50 to 69. But with Borderlands 2, even after three downloadable-content (DLC) expansions, the cap remains at 50, where it started.
Pitchford explains the approach the team is taking to increasing the Borderlands 2 level cap, as well as some very forthcoming and insightful challenges in what raising the cap means for both player and developer. As a bit of context, Pitchford mentioned that as of December, only an estimated 16 percent of Borderlands 2’s player base has obtained at least one level 50 character.
GamesBeat: So, after I hit level 50, I completed one more quest, and I got a bunch of [experience points], but it didn’t go anywhere because I was maxed already. And I thought, “Crap. I don’t want to play anymore!” [Laughs] And I’ve seen a lot of similar comments from people waiting to do the DLC because they’re already at level 50.
Randy Pitchford: You’re one of the guys who’s in this spot where you kind of want to wait until you have an opportunity to get the … . Experience drives toward leveling up. You want that to also be in the loop when you’re experiencing the new campaign content, so you’re holding off on the campaign content until you have that.
GamesBeat: It even says in the Achievement, “Capped out … for now.”
Pitchford: Yeah, for now, right. That’s a good indicator. We did it in Borderlands 1.
GamesBeat: Especially with my Commando, there’s all these skill tree combinations that I want to do that I just need a few more skill points to get to.
Pitchford: That’s by design. Some of those things start to become game-breaking. This has actually created a huge problem for us. We designed the skills really well this time, but we did, for better or for worse, make a lot of the decisions with the knowledge that there will be no more skill points available to put into any trees after you reach level 50. We knew the impossible configurations. Some of the design exploits that. Some of the impossible configurations, if they were possible, would break the game. Sometimes very literally. “Oh, that’s gonna blow memory. Your Xbox will crash.”
So now we’re in a world where … . We, as customers and gamers ourselves, hear the fans. People want to level up more. It makes sense. We totally get it. We did it in Borderlands 1, so we have the precedent. And we’re gonna break our fucking game if we change the math. If we change it up, who knows what the balance will do? People don’t want to just level up. They also want the game to level up with them. If I’m level 55 and everybody else is level 50, it’s a walkover. I want to get level 55 gear if I’m level 55. I want to fight level 55 enemies. Then we have to make the whole game over again.
It becomes this really … “oh, shit, have we painted ourselves into a corner here?” Yes, the Achievement indicates that some of us, somewhere, wrote that Achievement and anticipated it, just as many customers do, because of the last game. But we’re now in this world where we’re confronting the reality of what it means to do that work, and it’s terrifying and challenging. It’s easy to imagine, when we’re playing the game, “We could just change the number, and everything would be fine.” No, dude, there’s a lot … . This is the most fundamental thing about the game. It’s a big deal.
GamesBeat: Are you saying that … you used the word “anticipated.” But you didn’t map it out much ahead of time?
Pitchford: No. When we finished Borderlands 2, everything that we imagined was in Borderlands 2. Once that was finished, OK, now what do we do? We had just started asking ourselves, “OK, do we want to level up some more?” All of us do. A lot of us have level 50s as well. It’s time to tackle that. We dug in, and we were like, “Oh, shit. This is really hard. This is going to take a lot of time. It’s going to be really expensive. Oh, my God.” And we’ve got all these other priorities and all these other things to do. So we’re in the middle of that. That’s the world we’re living in right now. We’re excited about the goal, both as gamers and as creators. But … I mean, I’m not gonna lie. It’s a big challenge. It’s a big undertaking. It’s not going to just turn on. It’s a thing we have to work ourselves through.
Boss Dmg Cap Borderlands 2 Free
GamesBeat: How do you feel about …
Pitchford: By the way, I don’t know where the story ends, either. We’re in the middle of it. There might be things that aren’t going to work the same way. We might have to radically change the game. We have to think, “What’s more important? Do you we maintain these skills, or do we let people level up? What if we have to change skills?” We shipped the game with this shield that was totally broken.
GamesBeat: The Bee?
Pitchford: Yeah, the Bee. A player that’s spec’d right can just melt the hardest boss in the game solo in like four to five seconds. That’s obviously not by design, right? If you go in, and you can melt Terramorphous in five seconds because you’re using a Conference Call and a Bee shield and you’re spec’d with a Gunzerker for throughput, that’s clearly not any designer’s intent. That’s a bug. That’s the one nerf we’ve ever done, and we got so much rage.
GamesBeat: You nerfed Amp Shields in general, right?
Pitchford: It was a number of related things. The way we had divided up certain effects across weapons … . The shotgun, for example, we did the math wrong. Every single pellet was being affected instead of just the shot. Then, when we fixed it, we did the math wrong again. We did it wrong differently. It’s really complicated stuff, so I forgive us. [Laughter] The intent was beautiful. The intent and the commitment to improve was there. That’s really important. But I’m grateful. We were going fast, too. We do this thing, and we know people want it. It looks right, and it feels right, and we test it, and we deliver it. Then suddenly we’ve got 6 million beta testers. “Oh, we found something.” “Oh, shit, we didn’t see that.” We did a lot of testing, thousands of hours. But we didn’t notice that because the fans have done millions of hours in one day.
GamesBeat: I feel like a lot of people expected the DLC to raise the level cap. That was what they were waiting for, and then it would also help them get more out of the DLC and their season pass.
Pitchford: I think that’s a fair expectation because we did offer a level cap increase in Borderlands 1 in line with the third DLC.
GamesBeat: And then another one after that.
Pitchford: Yeah, we did another one that wasn’t … . Actually, that one was just detached. We felt like we made a mistake when we attached the level cap increase to the DLC. The second level cap increase in Borderlands 1 was completely detached. You didn’t have to buy a DLC to get it. That was a different kind of mistake. We learned lessons from that step as well. We did fix the earlier mistake, but there are others.
GamesBeat: It’s a Jenga tower.
Pitchford: You try it differently. “Oh, there’s some things with that too.” So we learn. We don’t want to make … . We are taking risks, and we are in uncharted territory very often, especially with this game. It’s a wild game. We haven’t done it before. No one’s done this kind of game before. We will make big mistakes, and we’ll make them often. But I’ll be damned if we want to make the same mistake twice. Our approach on this one is to try not to repeat mistakes we’ve already been aware of, that we’ve already experienced.
At the same time, we don’t want to make new mistakes. They’re inevitable when you do things you haven’t done before. Sometimes you stumble when you push yourself harder and you’re trying to run faster or whatever. We forgive ourselves, pick ourselves up, and keep running. We don’t cry and stop running because we skinned our knee. We definitely do not want to repeat mistakes we made before. Sometimes we trap ourselves. We get painted into corners on things. It’s tricky. But we’re committed to it. But yeah, I think that’s a fair expectation, given Borderlands 1.
Check back to read the full interview with Mr. Pitchford next week.