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Gearbox turned down offer to develop COD sequel

Good. Gearbox is one of the few big independent devs left, and I'd much rather see them working on something a bit more interesting and unique than another dumb CoD game.
 

Raptomex

Member
They kind of did, but not really.

It's bigger and better and more Borderlands, but if you don't like the formula in the first place it's still a pretty boring, repetitive game. I was completely bored by Level 20, and I was playing multiplayer with friends over Skype. I can't even imagine what playing that game by yourself is like, and I don't want to. It seems like a dark, depressing, lonely place.
I beat it solo. I enjoyed it. I've only played a little bit with friends but with schedules and everything we could never all agree on a time to play. I may go through again. Never realized how much hate it received on here. My lord.
 

Boerseun

Banned
Pitchford's reply is bullshit. Creative individuals make a difference. That Gearbox don't have those creative individuals on staff is/has become painfully obvious.

Heck, PM me Activision. I'm in Germany. There are loads of super-talented people around here. Give us €10 million. Put me in charge. And we'll built you a more inventive, fun Call of Duty title than Gearbox could ever hope to.
 

antitrop

Member
I beat it solo. I enjoyed it. I've only played a little bit with friends but with schedules and everything we could never all agree on a time to play. I may go through again. Never realized how much hate it received on here. My lord.
I don't hate it, I just think it's boring as shit. In fact, it's one of the most boring "quality" shooters I've ever played.

There was a point in both Borderlands games, right around the 15 hour mark where I just asked myself "Why the hell am I still playing this?" and turned it off.
 

Chairman Yang

if he talks about books, you better damn well listen
More seriously, what's your point here? It doesn't deflect the criticisms I've lobbed against the game and, while people have attempted to take me to task, no one has even touched Snuggler's eloquent breakdown of the problems the game has that I reposted on the last page. I'll drop it again because I'm interested in seeing how some of his complaints are answered:
Snuggler's list isn't eloquent. It's a bunch of bald assertions with virtually no supporting evidence. I'll try to make a few counterarguments here anyways.

1. A game that tries and fails to be humorous and edgy with it's crass and unfunny characters and dialog.

No argument here. Not because I agree, but because this particular point is hard to debate. Either you find the writing funny and engaging or you don't. Personally, I enjoyed it. In a year where video game writing was generally horrible, I'd put it near the top.

2. An open world game with a large, but barren map with no incentive to explore.

There's plenty of incentive to explore, if for no other reason than the existence of quests that take you to many corners of the game world. I'm also not sure why "barren" is a criticism. It's a particular type of world and atmosphere. Finally, it's pretty clear that there's lots of environmental variety, both indoor and outdoor. There might not be a compelling loot reason to explore, but seeing new visuals can be compelling in itself.

3. An RPG with fairly limited and binary character building and predictable, MMO-esque quest design.

There's nothing binary about the character building. I mean, each character has three skill trees; that immediately shuts down the "binary" idea. On top of that, skills aren't simple on/off toggles. You can pump fewer or more points into each one, varying the degree of usefulness of each skill. On top of that, skills interact heavily with which weaponry and items you're using. Your skill choices can be usefully changed whether you're going with close combat vs. long-range combat, or quick-charging shields vs. slow-charging but enemy-damaging shields, or a host of other item choices. Hell, Borderlands 2 has more meaningful character building choices than most straight-up RPGs in the last few years.

The quest design is uneven, sure. If Borderlands 2 was an MMO, with a typical boring MMO combat system, it would be unremarkable. But because the core gameplay of Borderlands 2 is a highly competent FPS, doing ordinary quests is fine. That said, there was definitely some variety in the quest design, in terms of locations (cramped corridors, wide-open plains, vertically-oriented towns, places with lots of cover, etc.) and enemy variety.

4. A first person shooter with monster closets out the ass and brain dead AI. There's no thought put into encounter design and combat often feels like a mindless slog.

The AI was extremely interesting. Borderlands 2 had lots of enemy variety, but more importantly, the enemies had many different behaviours. Some charged you, like typical dumb enemies, but many had alternative approaches. When you fought groups of mixed enemies, all with different AI behaviours, the encounter design was downright excellent, because these emergent combinations of behaviour would lead to a vast range of unique encounters.

I'd also venture to say that if combat was a slog for you, you weren't playing right. Enemies don't have excessive amounts of health.

5. A co-op game that doesn't allow players to work together in any meaningful way.

I never played co-op, so I can't comment on this. That said, the single-player was tactically interesting on its own. I can only imagine co-op would improve things.

6. What is there to like, aside from the loot? And even then, so much of it is junk, aside from the novelty of collecting guns as loot it's not a particularly great loot game.

I can't think of a better loot game (that said, I generally hate loot games). Loot that lets you immediately feel a difference by using it, like Borderlands 2 does with its massive variety of guns, is far superior to loot that merely increments stats.
 

RionaaM

Unconfirmed Member
can't even imagine how boring it would have been to churn out cod sequels each year.
Say what you may, I think it's more fun than developing annual sports games. At least they get to think of a story, script, locations and create the characters.
 

Chairman Yang

if he talks about books, you better damn well listen
If it's anything like the first, it's immensely boring after five minutes. The shooting was unsatisfying and the loot wasn't good. I know they fixed the later, but don't know if they fixed the former.
I hated the first Borderlands and really enjoyed the second. The second is an across-the-board drastic improvement in every way.
 

Chairman Yang

if he talks about books, you better damn well listen
Pitchford's reply is bullshit. Creative individuals make a difference. That Gearbox don't have those creative individuals on staff is/has become painfully obvious.

Heck, PM me Activision. I'm in Germany. There are loads of super-talented people around here. Give us €10 million. Put me in charge. And we'll built you a more inventive, fun Call of Duty title than Gearbox could ever hope to.
Here's the problem: Activision doesn't WANT an inventive Call of Duty game. Or at least, they want the inventiveness to be as safe a bet as possible. They want as much innovation as it takes to keep players interested, but no more.

It's easy to think of ways to improve CoD and take it in radically new directions. The issue is that it'd be hard to do those things in accordance with Activision's risk aversion. Gearbox is absolutely right with their opinions.
 
Activision have so many internal COD studios why would they outsource to gearbox?

I guess this was years ago? Pre COD4?

Doubt it, considering gearbox specifically made the comment about "if it was for the money it would be a no brainer" or something like that. CoD didn't really become the cash cow it is now till MW2. My guess is they were probably approached before Sledgehammer was brought onto MW3 or perhaps even after since Sledgehammer was essentially removed from their CoD spinoff.
 

Glass Rebel

Member
The sad thing is, Gearbox got the chance to make a sequel to Borederlands while Raven is doing grunt map-work.

Fuck this Kotick world.
 

SmokedMeat

Gamer™
I can see why. I mean why develop for a longstanding shooter franchise like CoD when you can keep working on your own Borderlands game or have fun with something like Aliens.

Not to mention if they screw it up their name will really be dragged through the mud.
 

SmokedMeat

Gamer™
I hated the first Borderlands and really enjoyed the second. The second is an across-the-board drastic improvement in every way.

Across the board drastic improvement?

How so when you're still running around doing errands? It's more of the same only bigger and funnier. For some I guess that's enough, but I was bored the second time around.
 

XenoRaven

Member
You know what, your're right. At the end of the day, the guy is being honest. If he feels that CoD is beneath him or he just doesn't like the CoD franchise or whatever, he should be able to say that and I believe that's respectable.

I also agree with the doubts that Activision will give them the freedom they would want.
This is probably the first time this has happened to me on the Internet. In celebration of this glorious occasion I would like to say that I definitely understand your position and appreciate that you considered mine.
 

Stallion Free

Cock Encumbered
I did while playing Borderlands 2. I choked the whole fucking turd down while everyone else was clanging their knives and forks together asking for more.

BL2 made me question how much shit I consumed in BL1. It managed to retroactively ruin a game for me, Mass Effect 3 style.
 

Sinatar

Official GAF Bottom Feeder
I hated the first Borderlands and really enjoyed the second. The second is an across-the-board drastic improvement in every way.

How so? I didn't find anything improved.

- The shooting is every bit as awful as the first.
- The loot is every bit as poorly designed as the first.
- The interface is even worse, if such a thing is even possible.
- The missions are as bland and boring as the first.
- The enemies and AI are as boring as the first.

It's literally Borderlands Too.
 

Brazil

Living in the shadow of Amaz
Respect.

How so? I didn't find anything improved.

- The shooting is every bit as awful as the first.
- The loot is every bit as poorly designed as the first.
- The interface is even worse, if such a thing is even possible.
- The missions are as bland and boring as the first.
- The enemies and AI are as boring as the first.

It's literally Borderlands Too.

And I agree with this post. Borderlands 2 is more like Borderlands Part Two than anything else. (There are some cool missions, though.)

I still enjoyed the game somehow.
 

antitrop

Member
How so? I didn't find anything improved.

- The shooting is every bit as awful as the first.
- The loot is every bit as poorly designed as the first.
- The interface is even worse, if such a thing is even possible.
- The missions are as bland and boring as the first.
- The enemies and AI are as boring as the first.

It's literally Borderlands Too.
This is all true. I can easily see how someone who loved the first Borderlands loves the sequel, but I fail to understand how 2 improved over 1 enough for someone who didn't like 1 to see 2 as a different game.
 

alcide

Banned
I don't understand why they would drop that. Even if they made the worst COD game they could bring in enough money to finance two to three more games from it.

It's an opportunity with a pretty much guaranteed payoff ... why would a company not take that?
 

Brazil

Living in the shadow of Amaz
I don't understand why they would drop that. Even if they made the worst COD game they could bring in enough money to finance two to three more games from it.

It's an opportunity with a pretty much guaranteed payoff ... why would a company not take that?

Affiliating oneself with Activision is usually not a good deal in the long term.
 
How so? I didn't find anything improved.

- The shooting is every bit as awful as the first.
- The loot is every bit as poorly designed as the first.
- The interface is even worse, if such a thing is even possible.
- The missions are as bland and boring as the first.
- The enemies and AI are as boring as the first.

It's literally Borderlands Too.
I... I don't even know where to begin. It's a million refinements and improvements to the formula, not a whole new formula.
 

mileS

Member
Great post Chairman Yang.

I would also like to add a comment to the "MMO styled questing" I don't really understand this. Yes you see ! and you pick up a quest, you go do it and you come back to return it. But there honestly isn't more than one "go kill x amount of these" types of quests. I was really surprised about 20 levels in when I started to look back and realize that almost every single quest (including side-quests) that I've done up to that point, have been different and interesting in its own way. If quests were this varied in an MMO... it would be getting lots of praise. Saying it has boring MMO quests for a single player game seems like such a lazy argument. Yup it has exclamation marks... big deal.
 

Chairman Yang

if he talks about books, you better damn well listen
How so? I didn't find anything improved.

- The shooting is every bit as awful as the first.
- The loot is every bit as poorly designed as the first.
- The interface is even worse, if such a thing is even possible.
- The missions are as bland and boring as the first.
- The enemies and AI are as boring as the first.

It's literally Borderlands Too.
Read my earlier post in reply to morningbus. I've addressed all of these points, except for the interface thing.
 

Sorcerer

Member
How much time do you think they would have given Gearbox to make the game?

Would they be making a game for a year or 2 down the line, or would they have to make the next iteration?

Gearbox doesn't seem to work fast and the pressure to crank these COD games yearly is probably not suitable for them.
 

dreamfall

Member
I applaud Randy's decision- although it does seem like an easy pass at an Activision payday. Developers with some integrity left?!

As far as the Borderlands criticism goes, I'll say this- the shooting feels fantastic. Guns react in so many different ways, and each has a unique feel. It is a loot game- the fetch quests feel repetitive- but the writing is great. I think playing with others helps mask a lot of the issues- casually strolling, killing everything and sharing loot appropriately has a lot of charm.

I think they can make a good Duke game- not some slapdash collection of older designs stitched together like Forever. I think their Aliens games have some amazing multiplayer ideas. It'll be great to see what projects they'll be working on that have nothing to do with COD.
 

Glass Rebel

Member
I applaud Randy's decision- although it does seem like an easy pass at an Activision payday. Developers with some integrity left?!

As far as the Borderlands criticism goes, I'll say this- the shooting feels fantastic. Guns react in so many different ways, and each has a unique feel. It is a loot game- the fetch quests feel repetitive- but the writing is great. I think playing with others helps mask a lot of the issues- casually strolling, killing everything and sharing loot appropriately has a lot of charm.

I think they can make a good Duke game- not some slapdash collection of older designs stitched together like Forever. I think their Aliens games have some amazing multiplayer ideas. It'll be great to see what projects they'll be working on that have nothing to do with COD.

I really must have stepped into another dimension this morning. How anybody who has played a decent shooter can say this is beyond my understanding.
 
I really must have stepped into another dimension this morning. How anybody who has played a decent shooter can say this is beyond my understanding.
Believe me, I feel the same way, but on the other side. Is there a full moon out or something? Did somebody shift the polarity of the stuff?

Back to the topic again, Gearbox has some bonafides when it comes to presenting a more sober take on warfare, even basing many Brothers in Arms scenarios on after action reports, which were viewable in-game. If they were to work on a spin-off, or try to cement some sense of realism or cost into COD I'd be all for it, but I'm pretty sure the core COD audience wants none of that.
 

morningbus

Serious Sam is a wicked gahbidge series for chowdaheads.
1. A game that tries and fails to be humorous and edgy with it's crass and unfunny characters and dialog.

No argument here. Not because I agree, but because this particular point is hard to debate. Either you find the writing funny and engaging or you don't. Personally, I enjoyed it. In a year where video game writing was generally horrible, I'd put it near the top.

Maybe I'm bias because Tiny Tina nearly made me put the game down, but none of the characters were interesting and the story/humor was not compelling on its own to get me to keep playing. It failed on literally every level for me, but I understand this isn't an argument that can be supported or disproven like technical flaws.

2. An open world game with a large, but barren map with no incentive to explore.

There's plenty of incentive to explore, if for no other reason than the existence of quests that take you to many corners of the game world. I'm also not sure why "barren" is a criticism. It's a particular type of world and atmosphere. Finally, it's pretty clear that there's lots of environmental variety, both indoor and outdoor. There might not be a compelling loot reason to explore, but seeing new visuals can be compelling in itself.

The world didn't seem believable or lived in and there was not a single area that was interesting. Compare it to another apocalyptic game, like Fallout New Vegas, which you could argue is just as barren, and how it tells stories just by how a room is arranged. the most interesting thing that happens in the world of Borderlands 2 is that raider car that chases you around outside of that Garage.

I had literally no reason to explore an area outside of trying to complete the fetch quest that had sent me there. The graphics and landscapes are competent, and above average, but why bother running 15 minutes out of my way just to see an edge of a cliff that looks like another cliff, but covered in ice? Google Street View gives me the same thing.

3. An RPG with fairly limited and binary character building and predictable, MMO-esque quest design.

There's nothing binary about the character building. I mean, each character has three skill trees; that immediately shuts down the "binary" idea. On top of that, skills aren't simple on/off toggles. You can pump fewer or more points into each one, varying the degree of usefulness of each skill. On top of that, skills interact heavily with which weaponry and items you're using. Your skill choices can be usefully changed whether you're going with close combat vs. long-range combat, or quick-charging shields vs. slow-charging but enemy-damaging shields, or a host of other item choices. Hell, Borderlands 2 has more meaningful character building choices than most straight-up RPGs in the last few years.

Yet all my badass points did was increase my melee by stupidly low percentages, to the point where it was barely noticeable from where I was. The skill trees appeared to offer choice, but only one route seemed interesting for my character (Assassin), so I focused all my time trying to push up those numbers. The skills they offered me were okay, but none except the one where I could go invisible are memorable (and, ultimately, that one didn't help me too much when it took forever for my team to kill some enemies).

The quest design is uneven, sure. If Borderlands 2 was an MMO, with a typical boring MMO combat system, it would be unremarkable. But because the core gameplay of Borderlands 2 is a highly competent FPS, doing ordinary quests is fine. That said, there was definitely some variety in the quest design, in terms of locations (cramped corridors, wide-open plains, vertically-oriented towns, places with lots of cover, etc.) and enemy variety.

But all of them are literally variations of "Go collect this item/Go kill this person and come back. Then we'll do it a few more times and you'll receive a reward." There was enemy variety in that some enemies took more bullets to down than others (and admittedly, the few characters that transformed during battle were neat, but eventually overused). This is classic, bland MMO design and the FPS construct does nothing to improve those inherent shortcoming. But, hey, I hate Serious Sam, too. So again, I'm probably bias in this area.

As an aside, did you play Rage? I think it does the things you're talking about much better than Borderlands 2.

4. A first person shooter with monster closets out the ass and brain dead AI. There's no thought put into encounter design and combat often feels like a mindless slog.

The AI was extremely interesting. Borderlands 2 had lots of enemy variety, but more importantly, the enemies had many different behaviours. Some charged you, like typical dumb enemies, but many had alternative approaches. When you fought groups of mixed enemies, all with different AI behaviours, the encounter design was downright excellent, because these emergent combinations of behaviour would lead to a vast range of unique encounters.

I'd also venture to say that if combat was a slog for you, you weren't playing right. Enemies don't have excessive amounts of health.

His monster closet criticism is spot on.

I never noticed the enemies doing anything interesting in terms of AI. Sure, smaller enemies jumped around more and were harder to hit, and some enemies had shields, and some enemies were larger and took more bullets to down, but that's basically all the enemy types you encounter throughout the whole game. Those and those fucking flying rats that are really hard to shoot and attack you for the fun of it.

5. A co-op game that doesn't allow players to work together in any meaningful way.

I never played co-op, so I can't comment on this. That said, the single-player was tactically interesting on its own. I can only imagine co-op would improve things.

The game doesn't become worse in co-op, but it doesn't become inherently better, either. All the characters share ammo and non-weapon items drops, so there is no competition or cooperating on those fronts. It's a person to play the game with, but it isn't a revelatory or transformative experience either.

6. What is there to like, aside from the loot? And even then, so much of it is junk, aside from the novelty of collecting guns as loot it's not a particularly great loot game.

I can't think of a better loot game (that said, I generally hate loot games). Loot that lets you immediately feel a difference by using it, like Borderlands 2 does with its massive variety of guns, is far superior to loot that merely increments stats.

I just have to disagree. All the weapons I encountered were absolutely awful, be they discovered in the world or given because of a quest. I used mostly weapons gotten from the golden crate with keys, but even those weren't amazing. I understand that there is an RPG competent to killing an enemy here, with hit points being deducted, but I never felt like I got a gun (besides one that shoots grenades, or rockets, or something) that was drastically better than the guns I was rolling with. Sure, by the end of the game I had better guns than the beginning, but getting there was an absolute trog.

Thanks for responding to those points. I can understand where you're coming from as a few of those points you just didn't have a problem with, but there are just no redeemable gameplay qualities to the game for me.
 

diffusionx

Gold Member
Borderlands has great first person combat, especially solo. The game plays a bit old-school, like SiN or something, which I like.
 

antitrop

Member
I don't know, I don't even really like Borderlands, but I think the shooting mechanics are good enough. I don't know what makes them bad.
 

Glass Rebel

Member
I don't know, I don't even really like Borderlands, but I think the shooting mechanics are good enough. I don't know what makes them bad.

It might be the almost non-existant weapons or enemy feedback but I'd have to stay awake after firing a shot to give you a final verdict.

hYN7e.png
 

Stallion Free

Cock Encumbered
I don't know, I don't even really like Borderlands, but I think the shooting mechanics are good enough. I don't know what makes them bad.

Health bars that make guns feel like they are shooting marshmellows.

The only time they feel good is when you are over-leveled.
 
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