A recent Borderlands 3 loot hotfix has been deployed, changing the way that players can earn items in the game. Unfortunately, it appears that this hotfix hasn’t exactly made things better, and boy howdy are fans not happy with the changes.
A submission on the /r/Borderlands subreddit explains their complaints and details exactly why the hotfix is so bad. Previously, bosses could drop Legendary items at a rate that was probably higher than what was intended by Gearbox. A fix was pushed to correct this, but it also changed up the loot tables elsewhere. Now, some players feel like the whole game is out of whack and that boss fights are the only rewarding way to get good gear.
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In addition to the higher boss item drop rate, you could expect to get the occasional good item off of regular enemies. While the poster of the /r/Borderlands submission happily concedes that the adjustment to boss drop rates is fair, he is much less happy about the fact that the drop rate for mobs was also nerfed. It wasn’t that great before, and now it’s more or less nonexistent. To put it simply, the only practical way to grind for Borderlands 3 loot is to repeatedly fight bosses and nothing but.
Furthermore, this patch will likely have put a downer on co-op endgame play. Again, fighting against mobs isn’t really as efficient as soloing bosses. While you can certainly play with your friends for fun, you’re going to be doing it with the knowledge that your chances of getting a good item aren’t as great as if you were just boss-rushing by yourself. This, in effect, disincentivizes co-op play, whereas Gearbox ought to be encouraging the opposite.
The loot table adjustments wasn’t the only thing that /u/TwevOWNED took issue with; Torque Shotguns were hit with what some in the industry would call a “sledgehammer nerf.” Strangely, these particular guns weren’t reckoned to be particularly overpowered by the OP or anyone else, so the nerf seems to have come out of left field.
Borderlands 3 loot changes were inevitable, but the way that Gearbox went about it probably wasn’t ideal. One hopes that they’ll re-evaluate their fixes to make other forms of gameplay more practical for getting your hands on some great new gear.
