Borlands 2 Hoopla Explained with a Star Wars Analogy

I caught a little flak at home and online yesterday for my Borderlands 2 rant.  Not too much, but I really don't think people in general, outside of the Borderlands 2 players themselves (and then not even all those gamers) completely get my point.  If you want to skip to the end, there is a TLDR section that hopefully will put it into perspective for you.


The idea of the Bee shield nerf wasn't a surprise ..half of it was a minor change that applied to all similar (though not as awesome) amp shield.  The problem is with Gearbox, most important it's President, mandating a user experience after the fact and then treating the majority of the customer fan-base rather poorly.  There is also the not-so-thinly-veiled threats that this is the beginning.  Acts are in fact underway to essentially discredit the majority of end-game play that a lot of Borderlands 2 players have experienced.  In a loot-based game where it is already extremely difficult to get certain items, making it more difficult on an order of magnitude and then devaluing the results of hundreds of hours of game-play does not bode well for the hard-core gamers.

A lot of people farm for the legendary equipment.  It takes a lot of time and effort to get a single level 50 legendary item.  The thing is, if you don't want to farm for equipment, trade for it, or even play with it you do not need to.  Some of the bosses are extremely difficult with the right combination of legendary gear, and impossible without some glitch and/or an extreme amount of luck.

I know that  some will still not quite "get it", so hopefully this analogy will help:

TLDR Analogy (which might be TLDR)
You've seen Star Wars, right? More than likely a few times.  Imagine you watched Star Wars over and over again in order to experience every little detail of the movie.  You've seen it with different subtitles, soundtracks, & every DVD extra you can imagine.  You have the dialogue memorized and you really like watching Star Wars.

Now picture that George Lucas decides to change up the characters.  It could be something as subtle as making Greedo shoot first or adding in Jabba the Hut (Of course both of these have happened).  George's artistic license is to go back and force you into a new user experience.

No problem......that stuff if just on the new DVD release.

Now imagine that George had the ability to go in and actually alter your already purchased DVD and change those scenes, forcing you to watch the newer version when you popped it into your DVD player.  He's also stated that he is going to add Jar-Jar to the first episode and then make Mark Hamil and Harrison Ford switch roles because this is how he wants you to enjoy Star Wars.

Maybe You'd Rather Watch This?

Did I forget to mention that sometimes your audio track gets lost and for some reason when Luke drops the photon torpedo down the exhaust chute the movie freezes and you have to start the whole thing over?

Wouldn't you rather get the bugs fixed and let you enjoy the movie like you used to?