Borderlands 4

[Zema Bus]

Borderlands 4 is scheduled to release Sept 12th "on all platforms simultaneously".

The official video showing the game play is age-restricted requiring you to be signed into YouTube to see it so I found a reupload of it from a 3rd party channel without that requirement.



Borderlands 4 Steam page.

I'm pretty sure I'll end up buying it

[Grogan]

I refuse. After that Tiny Tina's Wonderland, it's a never again. I have enough Borderlands games anyway. I might play BL3 for half an hour to test that it still works.

That actually looks like shit. I thought I heard they were doing away with the comic book graphics this time, but it seems that isn't true.

[Grogan]

I am weak.

I was sticking to my guns, with all the asshole things I've been hearing (about those gearboxes blaming the problems on gamers etc.) but I've been tempted because I need a new game. Nope, nope, nope, nope... until I saw you playing it and that was it for me

The bad reviews citing regressions after updates and crashing, were last month I think.

Ah well, I spent a Canadian Shit Tonne of money on this, $138 CAD for the "Super Deluxe". I'll be quick on the trigger if it doesn't suck me off for the whole 2 hours.

[Zema Bus]

I'm having a lot of fun with it, it just works out of the box. I held off initially after hearing about those issues, but then I was talking to Flopps on FB after he posted there how much he likes it. He said he likes it as much as he did BL2 and had none of the issues. I checked the games update history and they had had a number of patches since the release, and since I was in the mood for some more Borderlands I went ahead and picked it up, I also went with the Super Deluxe edition. I read that UVHM in BL4 is similar to how it was in BL3 but supposed to have been refined for BL4. I'm playing as Vex the Siren this time around, she has a companion tiger like creature that helps out in battles. Yeah the CEO Randy Pitchford isn't a great PR person for Gearbox but he responds to fans directly on social media with his big mouth lol!

[Grogan]

This has crashed 4 fucking times on me in less than an hour. I think it's probably going back. I'll try it with a Valve proton build tomorrow and if it crashes, it's going back. (It's probably not my proton)

It's pretty bloated for such ugly graphics, too. Unreal 5 is not a good engine.

P.S. Holy shit, what cunts these people are. You're not even allowed to post in the Borderlands 4 Steam forum, it's "group moderators and officers only" so there are no posts by users. They don't even care what you think, it's just for them to announce things.

If I have something to say, I'll be saying it in the form of a negative review then, I guess.

[Zema Bus]

Sorry to hear that, I've played 7 hours so far without a single crash. I'm currently using Proton 9.0-4.

Are you sure you were in the right place in the game's forum? I saw regular members posting https://steamcommunity.com/app/1285190/discussions/0/ I just did a test post to one thread in the BL4 forum without any issue.

Graphics settings - because of the initial performance complaints at release I had the game do a benchmark to determine the settings, I turned up a few things but for the most part went with the settings set after the benchmark, figuring I'd experiment with turning some things up later.

[Grogan]

When I go to Community and Discussions and under "Forums of your recent games" I click on Borderlands® 4, and this is the forum it leads to, a staff only forum.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/1285190/discussions/

I shouldn't have to figure out that I have to add a "0" to the path.

Not only that, this game has both Denuvo and Symbiote anti-tampering shitware. I'll bet that's why it crashes.

Borderlands game, with anti-cheat. It means there will be no editors and mods and if you tamper with your databases, they'll refuse to load. I don't even play co-op, I'm using "Stay Offline". They intend to monetize every aspect of this. Microtransactions for gear/loot unlocks etc. That's the only reason for anti-tamper in a Borderlands game.

I don't completely "cheat" (like increase player levels without playing) but I do use level editors and tricks like what we do with things like golden keys.

[Zema Bus]

That's the "Read Me First" subforum, look in the subforums menu on the lower right and you'll find "General Discussions". Also note the difference in the link I posted above vs the one you posted, just the /0/ on the end.

Oops, missed your edit.

Yeah, Denovo and Symbiote. Looks like there are still mods for it though. Not sure about the type of editing we used to do, likely Symbiote would prevent that.

[Grogan]

With no "force compatibility tool" checked, Valve uses proton-8.0-5d for this game (WTF?). It results in keyboard not working in menus (have to click "F to Apply" and stuff).

With Proton 9.0-4 and Auto Detect settings, it seems better but still crashed once on me in about 30 minutes. I shouldn't have to play a game with "Medium" settings and FSR anyway (even if it did fix the crashing), so I'm not happy about that.

Also, the game is fucking ugly. The trees and stuff look so bad it turns me off. The game isn't fun, the weapons suck, the characters are stupid (terrible dialog) and I can't even open a vending machine to sell the junk I've been picking up yet, it's just "press E to refill ammo".

Could they think of anything else to get me to refund their game?

[Grogan]

There are editors, but this time what they have to do is decrypt the databases and convert to plain text (YAML) for editing and then convert/encrypt them back again. It's more limited, but the editors would be able to do what I want, simply leveling up gear so I don't have to farm for new ones.

This one looks the most promising:

Borderlands 4 Save Editor
https://www.nexusmods.com/borderlands4/ ... escription

Inventory & Gear

Items

Parses, displays, and edits weapons, shields, grenades, relics, class mods.
Can decode item serials (including advanced Maliwan shotgun, Maliwan weapon
traits).
Preserves unknown/unused fields so items don’t get corrupted.

I'm still undecided on whether I'm keeping it or not. I'm at 60m play time and I'm going to make a decision before I launch the game again.

[Zema Bus]

That's good to know!

The guns do get better, I picked up an interesting one before I quite last night, the type where one shot yields multiple hits.

If you do decide on a refund I'll let you know how my journey goes

[Grogan]

I had to register at nexusmods (I think I'm registered as both Grogan and TheRealGrogan but I used forum email addresses I don't have anymore lol). I already have a lutris prefix set up for save editors, so I just dropped this one in there.

This Editor isn't very user friendly, but it looks like it will do what I want. You first have to enter your Steam ID string (even though you're browsing for a save). Then load a save file. Then click Decrypt and the fields will be populated. At first it looks like "WTF good is this, I don't know what all those ugabooga codes are" but if you double click them, you can change properties like weapon level

Then, you have to click Encrypt at the top, and then it saves your changes (to 1.sav in my case)

bl4editor.jpg

P.S. Duh, I thought of why you have to enter the Steam (or Epic Store) player ID... the encryption key will be based on it. That makes it easy to decrypt at least. With this company seeming to turn more hostile towards its customers, I wonder if this is going to be a cat and mouse game... they could easily prevent this by using better secrets (their own) and converting everyone's data during an update.

[Grogan]

I built a new Proton (Valve Bleeding Edge, Proton 10.0 based on Wine 10.0) and it has been running better and hasn't crashed. At least mine has the latest vkd3d-proton and everything. It could have been wine's new ntsync (inproc-sync) with my Wine 10.16 proton, or the graphics settings. Valve builds still use fsync.

At this point I'd try turning up the graphics settings again, but I'm not really enjoying the game... 95 minutes played now and I don't want to proceed past my refund point without thinking about it some more. So far, this has been about as much fun as scooping up liquishit with a pail, and I can't get past how awful it looks.

[Grogan]

I decided to commit myself to it and I'm now past the point of no return, 2.4 hours.

It's working well with my new proton-tkg valve build, and I have turned the graphics up to the High preset with a few things increased/enabled and it's still not crashing. It could have been FSR Quality, whereas by default it's only doing antialiasing and using no scaling (I had changed that in my first config along with "badass" preset). It's odd for it to be the wine build, usually a game that's not going to like ntsync simply won't run. I have yet to see anything run correctly but repeatedly crash. I'm not going to fuck around anymore now though, as turning the graphics up more just harms performance (and likely stability) and still looks about the same (shitty, but with more shitty effects).

Once I find some gear I actually like (it's been a real chore with crappy gear) I'll start upgrading it with the editor. At least I'm at vending machines now and I have a fast travel station.

[Zema Bus]

Glad to hear it I've been doing some side quests on my way to the next campaign quest, just short of level 10.

[Grogan]

I've been doing some blue exclamation mark side quests. I just picked one up where I have to go and find undetonated missiles before they detonate and kill people (or something like that). I'm at level 8 now. I'm playing that big galoot, Amon

Unfortunately that editor didn't seem to work. I knew something was wrong when it was showing all my gear at level 1. I tried changing it to 7, and it seemed to work as far as the editor was concerned, and I encrypted/saved my file and used it, but the weapons were still at their original levels. It seems that it cannot actually decode those item hashes correctly. I have no idea what, or if it actually wrote anything, none of the stats have changed.

I have a pretty good Jakobs sniper rifle, it's white level but it does the ricochet etc. and its critical hits are very good. It's level 5, and I haven't found another one since. All lesser sniper rifles (and gimmicky Order ones that charge multiple shots).

[Grogan]

They reused my favourite Moxxi portrait (from Borderlands 3, Handsome Jack Casino DLC) in a stupid Claptrap side quest. I had to go find his mementos from Pandora. It was a quest where I had to go fight a lot of enemies to collect the shit. At the end, he didn't want them anymore so they got a Viking funeral in a raft. Grrr... he's not even funny in this game. They have shitty writers now, the humour seems to be gone from the franchise.

This is the coolest picture of Moxxi, they made her all witchy looking with a sour expression.

moxxishrine.jpg

[Zema Bus]

I like that one as well. Yeah I miss the humor, I also miss the old familiar characters, and the Borderlands style music. The ambient sounds are nice at least.

[Grogan]

The little musical passages in the various areas of Borderlands 2 were the best. I especially like the main music in the frozen Three Horns areas, especially the more subtle version of it that trails off on a mysterious note.

So those editors aren't decoding those item strings correctly, they must have changed the way they work. I tried another one that's simply a decoder for those, it's just a python script, and it's getting them wrong too. You get the string from the yaml dump (which that other program does correctly) and paste it and your steamid into fields and it will generate a dialog for you to edit them.

They've even locked down Golden Keys now, they are a stat that's tracked server side now when logging into SHIFT. So no more copying back your profile.sav because if you still have keys you've redeemed in your profile, it will revert the balance to what the server has. The same for using an editor to grant yourself keys.

Enjoying your game is not allowed anymore. I was expecting the editors to work when I made my decision. Then I got to thinking ah well, I can go get some golden keys and still have a means of getting some good level fresh gear until the editing scene catches up. Even that is a nope. I'd spend all 2 of the still working ones and get dick. They all expire quickly, from what I can see.

I'm not very happy with the gear I'm getting in game, in loot drops and chests and stuff. If it wasn't for Jakobs rifles and revolvers, I wouldn't be having a very good time with this game.

[Zema Bus]

Figures they'd do that. It's such a tiny percentage of players who would even do any of those things, I wonder why they bother going out of their way to prevent it. I think it was in BL2 where they took away a chest in the back of Moxxi's because it was possible to farm it after the initial reward. Hopefully the editors will be sorted out soon, and hopefully someone will figure out other loopholes.

I read that they have an option to re-fight bosses to farm for legendary gear, I'll see if I can find out which ones aren't a pain to fight repeatedly.

[Grogan]

I saw those on the map, they are some sort of Moxxi challenge where you re-fight bosses. In previous Borderlands games you just went back and... fought bosses, they'd just respawn. However, you'd have to fight your way TO the bosses.

[Grogan]

I tried that BL4 Save Editor in a Windows VM, just to rule out math issues, in case it was getting different constants or something. It's the very same, so the editor was working correctly in Wine. It just doesn't work correctly (anymore, I presume, at least not for gear).

[Grogan]

FINALLY, I got a wicked Jakob's sniper rifle that I've been looking for, all game. It was in one of those portable toilets, of all places. These stats aren't listed anymore, but it's got good handling and zoom, and a nice scope reticule, unlike my last green one.

jakobs_xiuhcoatl.jpg

These "Xiuhcoatl" ones are the best. Only 4 shots, but it becomes 5 with the Enhancement I have equipped (+38% sniper magazine size is one of the bonuses and it's enough to give me one more shot)

[Zema Bus]

Nice! I had to sell my Jakobs last night because it had gotten too under leveled. I got some level fresh gear from a vending machine but they turned out to be mediocre, so I'll be checking everywhere, including the toilets lol!

[Grogan]

3 new golden keys here that expire on Oct. 26! (Presumably good through, as I was able to redeem them at 1:00 AM Oct. 26)

https://www.gamesradar.com/games/border ... lden-keys/

Maybe you haven't gotten any of these... there are 5 that expire at the end of October. I've already spent them (two of them by accident... wasn't paying attention and didn't realize that a chest was one of the golden chests in various bases. I realized it when I went back there and... the chest respawned? I opened it and then I noticed it consumed a golden key )

[Zema Bus]

Thanks Grogan

[Grogan]

Three new keys at that same site, expiring Oct. 28. I've redeemed them and I'm going to spend them as soon as I get to my next level (27) so that whatever I get will be fresh for a whole level at least. I spent the last three at level 24, I was close, so went and fought some enemies and then fast traveled to the chest as soon as I leveled

I can't hang onto these things, I need new gear constantly.

[Grogan]

Three new golden keys expiring Nov. 1, so start up the game and redeem them. These are precious now.

https://www.gamesradar.com/games/border ... lden-keys/

Also one new one that doesn't state any expiry.

[Zema Bus]

I'm on it

[Zema Bus]

Got all of them from that list, I was able to copy & paste from my other screen since in Mate when I'm in the main BL4 menu my mouse isn't captured, not until I'm actually in the game.