Borderlands 3 online issues

[Dark Angel]

Has anyone worked out how to play this in online co-op? I've tried repeatedly to play with my son in law (remote) and my daughter (LAN) and have had zero joy with it. Stupid thing seems to shut off it's own network connection when I try to connect to another game, times out, then goes back to normal after announcing the error. Forums and reddit have been no help at all.

[Grogan]

I've never played Borderland 3 online so I can't say if it's working, but is it the same if they try to connect to your game? I'm assuming it's a Steam hookup (shouldn't run afoul of firewalling rules?)

[Dark Angel]

I made sure any firewalls were disabled completely, all internet access is direct the whole bit.
Stupid thing goes from telling me which friends are playing, their online availability status, even what map they're on, but as soon as I try to join them mine goes offline, times out, gives me an errors, and just to rub it in it them reconnects and goes back online.
Reading around it seems it does it when it's run directly (no steam), on Windows under steam, and of course on Linux running under steam with Proton.

[Zema Bus]

I found this post:

Probably bad connection are you joining through menu? I found it works better if u load in the game first then join or him

Either way it does sound like a common issue on their part, I'm seeing lots of similar complaints.

[Dark Angel]

Very annoying. They make such a big deal about online co-op and then it's broken across all platforms. I was really hoping to play with my son in law, too.

[Grogan]

So this is a wide spread problem and isn't on your end. It probably used to work.

Know what cunts like this do? When they have a successful game that just won't die and people are still playing that 8 years later instead of buying new games, they degrade the servers and make it shitty so people will drop it.

They made sure they designed Tiny Tina's Wonderlands so people wouldn't be playing it 5 years from now. The completely nuked the desire to replay it, there's no second playthrough for your character and the game isn't interesting or entertaining enough (mostly just constant bullet sponge enemies) to want to start from scratch with a new character. They completely broke their successful dopamine reward formula. The one that sucked me in for literally thousands of hours in previous games.

They can all eat an environmentally unfriendly plastic bag of dicks.

[Dark Angel]

The other one I tend to go back to is Team Fortress 2. It's old now, but they keep pushing updates and events within the framework. Of course there's also microtransactions lurking there as well though it's mostly cosmetics. The really shitty part though is the sheer number of bots playing rather than people. Why? Because you can sell the loot you collect (more related to levelling up your character, not like on Borderlands) the Steam Marketplace for actual money. I've logged into servers that had 24 players that were all bots. Try to kick a bot and they slam you, too. The bots are programmed to instantly protect themselves. It's banned in the game TOS of course, but it's bad enough to make servers completely un-fun.

[Grogan]

So server operators must be running the bots then, by the sound of it.

[Dark Angel]

In some cases they might be. Nobody sticks around when they find a server full of bots though, and the bots don't attack each other even when they're on the other team, so without actual players there's no xp to be had and thus no items to acquire. You can usually report the bots directly to Valve as cheats though but it's a pain having to go through that every match until they're all banned from the system entirely.

[Grogan]

You'd be relying on VAC for global bans, but server admins should be kicking and banning those bots. That's why I say it must be them running them. Those are malicious bots, the way they take over the server and ruin everyone else's game. They just kill players and take their loot, not add fun to the game (e.g. multiplayer bots that give you something to do while waiting for your friends)

Dedicated Windows and Linux server binaries, so there is recourse.

[Dark Angel]

Taking out other players doesn't drop loot in TF2 though, it's a different system. Most matches you can get a dozen kills or more and get nothing but xp. Even then when you do get something it's usually a "cosmetic case" that you then have to buy a key to open.
I take great delight in reporting them so they get tagged as cheats by the VAC system. Screw those guys, they take all the fun out of the game.

[Grogan]

Ahh, sounds stupid then (the loot I mean). Something to be ignored, because it's a waste of money buying a key just to see what you get. It'll be a moustache, for a female character or something

I tried that once briefly in practice mode, but I knew that wasn't going anywhere if I wasn't going to play multiplayer as that's all there is to this game.

[Dark Angel]

The cosmetics you get are things like different clothes for the various classes, weapon skins, hats, and occasionally weapons. There are a few weapons that you can only get through the loot chest drops, but you still need to buy a key for them. None of the special set weapons are anything better than the free ones, they're just themed to go with certain sets. If you have an entire set, weapons, items, and cosmetics, apparently you get stat bonuses of varying sorts if you equip them all at once.
Then there's the crafting portion where you can melt down class items to make different things and build you own weapons. The stats still aren't massively different, but you can rename things, change the appearance, and sometimes add additional effects to the weapons. I think there are certain high level rare weapons you can only get if you craft them yourself. Then there's the trading mechanic where you can buy, sell, and trade all those raw materials as well as what you make. There's a ton more to it than what the tutorial tells you about.