For a while, it wasn’t clear what the second year of Borderlands 3‘s life would look like. Now that Gearbox has come forward to talk about the game’s future at PAX Online, things are much clearer, and it looks like fans have a lot to be excited about. Although not everything has been revealed, Gearbox shared plans to expand on its playable Vault Hunters. They’ll be getting new skill trees to give players more ways to play the game, meaning lots of players are likely to spend time re-speccing them. It’s not quite a new set of Vault Hunters like many players hoped for, but it’s definitely in a similar spirit.
However, one of the most intriguing Borderlands 3 announcements at PAX was also the most mysterious. Apparently, the game is going to get a totally new game mode, a pretty bold change for a game well into its life. Details are scarce for now, but it looks like the team at Gearbox is excited about it. CEO Randy Pitchford is even tweeting about it, implying it’ll be a much bigger deal than players expect. A new game mode is surprising, but it’s a great opportunity. Borderlands isn’t a franchise known for many gam emodes, but if this addition means Borderlands 3 gets some sort of competitive multiplayer gameplay, it’ll be huge.
Technically, players have been able to fight each other in plenty of Borderlands games. It’s simply a matter of hitting another player with a melee attack and initiating a duel. However, it’s a far cry from a dedicated game mode where players can climb leaderboards, earn rewards, and compete in arenas dedicated to PvP. A proper game mode that lets players use their equipment would encourage hunting for items to assemble the perfect competitive build. In contrast, a mode that limits what weapons players can use would also be a compelling challenge.
It’s hard to say for now what exactly the mode will look like. If it’s a competitive multiplayer mode, one might assume that it’s a simple PvP deathmatch. However, something that simple doesn’t seem likely if Pitchford’s claims that it’s a whole new game are to be believed. It might be a more complicated affair involving AI enemies and side objectives, perhaps forming some type of PvEvP scenario where teams of Vault Hunters compete to score epic loot. There’s also the possibility that Gearbox has decided to put a battle royale mode in Borderlands 3, as it’s a genre that’s alive and well and could probably be justified in the setting of Pandora. At the same time, that would be a lot of Iron Bears running around and a lot of balance issues, so this seems like the least plausible, even if a PvP element isn’t.
There’s a few significant mechanics of Borderlands that would need balancing in a dedicated PvP game mode. For instance, Gearbox would have to do something about elemental damage. Corrosive weapons wouldn’t be particularly good in a game of all or mostly player characters, whereas Incendiary weapons might be excessively powerful. The game mode might have to do some inherent tweaks to player abilities too. Even if they work in duels, there isn’t any precedent for how Vault Hunters’ skills work in huge PvP battles. Competitive multiplayer could easily be ruined if one Vault Hunter is much better than the others in player combat.
As long as Gearbox is able to handle and balance those factors, competitive multiplayer would be a great get for Borderlands 3. Of course, players don’t know for sure right now if that’s actually what the game mode will be like. However, considering how important jumping in and out of games with friends is to the Borderlands experience, it does seem like a highly possible scenario. Pitchford promises something much more than a new game mode, but something closer to a new kind of game. If the team at Gearbox can deliver an arena for players to test their Borderlands skills against one another, it’ll really be something entirely new.
Borderlands 3 is available for PC, PS4, Xbox One, and Stadia. PS5 and Xbox One X versions are in development.
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