Broken 2nd Play and DLC
And then came play through 2. And suddenly, Borderlands stopped being fun. I don't understand what mathematical formula Borderlands uses to determine damage, but on the 2nd playthrough, enemies several levels lower than yours will own you. This only gets worse as the levels rise. By the time you and your enemies hit the 40s, you actually have to enter into every battle expecting to be killed. You take a guy out, the guy next to him takes you out, then you take him out before your screen goes black or before he runs down behind a wall and leaves you with nothing to kill. Then you revive to kill the next guy before his buddy takes you out again. It's ridiculous.
I was able to endure my 2nd play through (without enjoying it) up to level 47 or so before getting sick of the same unfun side quests and rehash of the same enemy cluster spawns and other issues. When General Knoxx came out, I thought it might infuse a little fun that I felt on play through 1 back into the mix. Now Island of Dr. Ned was a pile of awful to play due to the same balance issues (zombie spit travels as fast as a bullet. Almost all zombies spit and run. They always swarm in mass from all directions, and they come in waves. Their spit is always a 1-3 hit kill and slows you down while blinding you at the same time. Oh, and they are immune to most elemental weapons, so expect to do it the old fashioned way unless you got a great fire gun. Broken!). At least the story was fun. Needless to say Knoxx did not fix the game's problems. In fact, Knoxx pretty much guranteed that Borderlands will be going to Gamestop shortly.
Knoxx issues are each game breaking on their own, but together...
Issue 1: All weapons and items stop upgrading and being useable. Did you buy Borderlands for the random gun generation that makes thousands if not millions fo different types of guns? Yeah, that ends between level 30 and 40. Weapons and equipment steadily increase in power in the early game, so you are constantly finding new toys to play with which makes looting and fighting gun battles fun and rewarding. Come level 30 - 40, for some reason, all but a few rare guns completely stop powering up (pray for Orange), and every gun dropped by the enemy will be common, green, or if you are lucky, blue (which might as well be common white). These weapons wouldn't have been useable 10 to 20 levels earlier, and that is all you will find up past level 30.
A level 34 rifle has a damage output not much different than a level 56 rifle. Rifles only do a pinch more damage than smgs in later levels, but they almost all lose full auto and pick up the a slow burst fire and a tiny clip size, making them the worst gun in the game by the middle of the first play through. Rocket launchers are too slow and inaccurate to rely on, but they are the only weapon that has an ever increasing damage value, yet they do less damage than a puny sniper rifle doing a critical hit, but the sniper rifle is unuseable when being killed by enemies in 2 shots or while being rained on by heavy elemental special effects. Point is, growth stops. What this means is, you'll end up using the best of your mid-game guns for the rest of the time you play, and these guns are not suitable for the overclocked enemies you will face. It also means, most weapon classes are unuseable, so your weapon pool of millions falls well the useable weapon pool form the first Doom game. I've been using 3 of the same 4 guns since nearly 10 levels ago, and at level 51 now, better weapons are still not appearing (but will cost you close to 999999999 at shops). I cycle my 4th gun with new ones, but they are all dreadful and get me killed faster than normal. It's ridiculous. It kills the entire random treasure hunting aspect of the game, which leaves behind only a mediocore FPS and problem 2.
Problem 2: You stop upgrading but enemies don't. Or, the enemies upgrade at several times the rate that you do. At level 51, there is no shield that will stop a level 45 enemy bandit from making you dead in a couple of shots. Again, the equipment stops increasing along with everything else. At the same time, you are using weapons 3 times better than the 99.99% crap drop weapons the enemies are using, and you will need several clips poured into each enemy's critical weak point to bring them down. What takes you a clip will take each enemy a single round. That's the broken rule that Borderlands seems to subscribe to on the second play through. Your level advantage stops being relevent, but that is only true for you. At level 51, all Crimson Lance ninja chicks killed me in 3 hits or less. At level 50, those same chicks were killing me in no less than 2 hits. I bought Knoxx at level 47. At level 47, the game is right in saying that the first mission is impossble. Yet back in the Rust Commons, Spiderants in the early to mid 40s instantly shatter my +900 Panacea shield in a single stab, and I am in the critical red by the second pop shot. WTF!?
General Knoxx takes everythinf farther for the worst. Every enemy in General Knoxx will kill you in no less than 2 hits. In most cases, you will get hit by a random bullet (often shock), and you will have no shield. The next shot will kill you. You will drop from 2000 cumulative health and shield to 0 from a single unseen flying enemy's static burst rifle, machine gun turret, drone plasma thing, etc. And still, expect to unload several clips into each enemy you run across, especially those damn flying drone things which have a high capacity shield. Few guns can hit the zippy things (good luck launcher, sniper, and revolver people), and the ones that do hit barely scratch it. This might be excusable, if the game stayed true to its, I kill you, then you kill me, then I kill you formula. It doesn't. You will bleed out three times over before being able to kill most enemies. It's similar to being killed by a boss. You won't kill them before bleeding out. And what happens if you kill one of these enemies? You get a shock combat rifle that has a 12 round clip, 1x elemental, does 110 damage per round or less, and can only fire in staggered 3 round bursts with the accuracy of trying to rapid fire a sniper rifle. FAIL! Every enemy drops these early in Knoxx, and they are slaughtering you in 1 on 1 match ups as if they had the golden gun, while you are raining bullets to no avail. My shotguns fire like an smg that deals out over 1000 damage at point blank range, and I still need to stop and reload to put down 1 enemy, while they 3 shot kill me.
These issues render the game pretty well unplayable, but the game goes above and beyond the call. Knoxx gives you new vehicles. The Runner was unusable from when you first got it to the end of the game. Knoxx vehicles are the same damn vehicle with different speeds and guns. Vehicle shields take several hundred damage per bullet, and it takes so long to dismount a vehicle that if you don't bale before your vehicle shields drops below 30%, the vehicle will explode and kill you instantly. Ramming enemies gets the job done but nets virtually no experience and sheds a couple hundred more off your shields. General Knoxx takes it further! Most enemies fly, so forget ramming.You will get a massive truck with over 2000 shields as your default first vehicle. It has 2 weapons that are absolutely useless (same as all vehicle weapons), and you will be expected to endure enemy vehicles that fire a shock round that deal close to 1000 damage per hit and flying drones that will eat no less than 7 full bursts from the super slow firing and unreliable homing rocket launcher. Oh, and those drones respawn endlessly, so after killing the 2 that come, you can either proceed, retreat for a new car, or wait for your car to stop burning. They will respawn before you can get a new car or before your shields are even half recharged. The shock gun trucks force you to bale most of the time (and if they don't, that respanwed flying drone you ran from will make sure you do), because their guns are godly, and your guns are not. If you bale fast enough and survive, you will be 1 shot killed by the gun or instant killed by being run down. Remember, a respawn costs you more than 10% of your current cash value, so die twice, and you've lost hours worth of earned cash, and a good gun will only come when you don't have the funds to buy it. Broken.