They have “anointed” properties. As long as that gun is in one of the four active slots, you get that anointed benefit.
As @Telefrog says, the “Annointed” tag can be useful. I’ve purchased two from Earl’s machine, one of which I am still using. You have to carefully examine the stats and modifiers, but they can be solid buys. Eridium gets much, much more common later on, so while it’s best not to waste it early, once you’re in the 30-40 range I think it’s fine to splurge a little, especially on the deal of the day, which if it is something you can use will usually be affordable.
Yeah, the found loot blows monkey nuts. Green, green, green, crappy blue, gray, green, ooh, a purple!..nope, some crappy grenade mod. Blech. Even boss drops are too often forgettable, though there are occasional exceptions. OTOH, basic blue and green guns can often be super effective. I’ve found the high-damage non-elemental weapons from Dahl and Jakobs in particular to be quite powerful, though Jakobs stuff has low ammo capacities.
One of the things I find confusing is that actual effectiveness of a weapon is hard to discern from just the stats. Some weapons seem to outperform their level and stats, while others underperform. Very hard to make rational decisions.
They work well in conjunction with the skill that gives you a chance to regenerate ammo. Especially if that is also used in conjunction with skills that give you more crits.
Regarding this, here’s a statement from Gearbox:
"Troy is an exceptional talent and we were disappointed that he declined to partner on Borderlands 3 after being offered the part. We wish him the best and hope he knows the offer to collaborate with him still stands. Gearbox is a Texas company and is bound by Texas law - which means that a person cannot be denied employment because of membership or non-membership in a labor union or other labor organisation.
“As a talent-owned and talent-led organisation, Gearbox enthusiastically works to ensure our pay and working conditions meet or exceed union standards. We also believe strongly in hiring local voice actors whenever we can which is why we’re thrilled Troy’s career really took off after working with us.”
Here’s one from SAG-AFTRA:
"We applaud any member who stands up for workplace fairness and the integrity of their creative work. It is a courageous decision to act in the best interests of one’s fellow SAG-AFTRA members and this honors all working people.
"The misguided decision by Gearbox to deny their performers the opportunity to have fair union wages, a safe workplace and the possibility of health care coverage for their families, is unfortunate.
"We attempted to sign Gearbox to a union agreement. They refused and disengaged from those talks.
“We look forward to hearing from any Gearbox performer who is interested in the many protections a union agreement offers actors.”
I think the back and forth about people’s opinions on the writing within the game is best summed up by Rob Zacny on Waypoint Radio. Paraphrasing, he basically said that it’s always rubbed him the wrong way that the Borderlands games spend most of their time telling you over and over how this is most fun you could be having with the wackiest humor ever instead of actually demonstrating it. I see his point, as while I enjoy the games, they are so ridiculously confident that every line written is just an amazing example of humor instead of being campy with a wink and a nod.
People with a better understanding of game design than I may also be able to weigh in on my biggest question with game sequels where the core gameplay doesn’t change much. Would it be that hard to just keep the characters from older games? Instead of showing us Zero, couldn’t we just play Zero? If you’re not worried about balance, wouldn’t having 12 characters instead of 4 substantially increase the replay value? I get how creating new characters from scratch takes a lot of work, but with BL3, there’s already a lot to draw from without any real serious lore issues (and the game doesn’t take its lore that seriously, anyway) preventing prior characters from showing up again.
There’s a ton of voice acting and design work in the skill trees on the BL3 classes. You couldn’t just drop Axton in there and expect him to compete with Zane.
Yeah, presumably because weapons now work differently from BL2, and because action skills have mix & match options, there would be a ton of work needed to bring in old characters.
Until there’s a way to level up new characters without slogging through both the intros and the whole friggin’ campaign, having more characters would not be terribly useful IMO.
Well, not in game, but you can just download a max level save game from the Nexus.
Yeah, that’s a work around of a sort, but what I really want, and I’m sure others do too, is something like D3’s Adventure Mode. Let me level up a new character and learn all of the abilities and stuff in a logical way, but let me do it without the restrictions of the campaign and having to go through the story beats again.
Yes, we discussed that a couple weeks ago in the thread. Didn’t learn from Diablo 3.
Instead the lesson they learned is people aren’t interested in new classes. Boneheads.
The SAG-AFTRA statement reads like they wanted Gearbox to sign a union agreement for all voice actors, whereas Troy said he wasn’t hired because he was a union member?
I read Baker as saying he wouldn’t/couldn’t do a job which wasn’t all union.
This is actually a good explanation of my issue with the writing. The only way a character like Vaughn ends up in your game as written, is if you’re over-confident that your writing is hilarious. Tiny Tina is another character who just… exhausts me… to listen to, the longer she goes on and on, hammering her schtick into the ground until it’s nothing but a stain on the asphalt. When EVERY character does this, it just becomes like nails on a chalkboard.
It’s okay to just let your writing breathe a bit, and not be constantly shouting punchlines at your face with loud noises and wacky voices.
I like Typhon, and Lilith is ok. Tannis is actually kind of kooky-funny. Ellie has grown on me a bit since BL 2, but everyone else…blech.
The only characters that really grate on me are the Calypso twins. And not in a “love to hate them” kind of way, just in a “these are annoying people and I hate having to listen to them” kind of way.
Everyone else I found fine. I like Tannis, which is about the only character I can say that about.
Even Typhon gets to be a little much by the end. Lilith I just found blandly heroic this time. Tannis is alright. Honestly, I think the only character I straight up LIKED, was my own - Fl4k. The deadpan robot thing made for the odd chuckle.
Finished the campaign. Thought the ending was actually pretty solid, though far from epic. Tried one round of Mayhem. Meh. Dunno what I want to do with it at this point. Maybe try another character, or TVH mode. Or not.
Really? Tyreen just dies without saying anything, after once again omnisciently knowing what the heroes are up to on Nekrotafeyo, and showing up to effortlessly shove everyone aside. Her entire motivation was… being stuck on the planet as a kid, and looking at the stars, and deciding she was going to be a star (??)… which apparently led to becoming a murderous sociopath for reasons, and being completely ambivalent to the death of her father.
The entire game talks about how she can’t be allowed to leech the Destroyer, because she’ll effectively become a God… but then she ultimately does anyway, and you take her out in a boss fight I found far easier than Graveward, or that dude who electrifies the floor…
Then Lilith gets her powers back for five seconds, before flying into Pandora’s moon which… stops the Great Vault from opening…? You go back to the ship, loot her bedroom, and no one on Sanctuary acknowledges anything that just happened. The end, haha.