Why Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands Co-Op Retains Nerfing Weapons

The players of the new loot shooter from Gearbox were not long in coming. Tiny Tina’s Wonderland determine the “best gun”. About a week after launch, fans settled on the liquid-cooled, legendary tiered pistol that can technically fire forever without reloading, as long as you can land critical hits reliably. This, plus its staggering damage, puts it head and shoulders above any other weapon in its layers. Then Gearbox nerfed.

Liquid cooling is still an extremely effective weapon. (Any weapon that fires forever is pretty damn good.) But it’s not the boss melting machine it used to be, as some players have reported. damage reduction to two-thirds. All this raises one question: what the hell? Tiny Tina’s Wonderland is a cooperative game. Why make a funny weapon less fun?

“Even though this is not PvP, we want to make sure that the harder you make the game, [the harder it] gets you what we want to keep the choice between a wide variety of weapons.” — Matt Cox, Creative Director Wonderlandsaid Kotaku in a recent video interview. “And so when we find a certain weapon that can get a little out of hand, we want to make sure we rein it in so that choosing between a lot of different playstyles becomes viable.”

Like Borderlandsthe looting series he grew out of, Tiny Tina’s Wonderland has a setting that allows you to significantly increase the level of difficulty. As you progress through Chaos Chamber, a roguelite endgame mode, you can unlock different levels of “chaos”, each of which increases enemies’ health and damage in exchange for increasing your chances of finding top-notch loot.

Once upon a time, liquid cooling cut through those higher levels like butter. As well as other legendary pistols such as Queen’s Cry and Masterwork Handbow which were noticeably nerfed in the same update which was liquid cooled.

As part yesterday’s big Wonderland patchGearbox has added 15 more unlockable chaos levels, up to a maximum of 35. The weapon has not undergone any changes, but the update has increased efficiency already powerful AF Clawbringer class.

All of this, according to Cox, is partly in pursuit of the north star of balance, of course, but mostly to ensure that players take full advantage of the tools at their disposal. Wonderland is the first game in the series to feature six classes at launch and the ability to mix and match two classes. He removed grenades in favor of spells, which Cox says are being used more by players than grenades have ever been. (Grenades were limited by ammo, while spells that work similarly were tied to short cooldowns.) He also said that players tend to use more melee attacks than in previous games. (Wonderland introduces an equippable melee weapon for the first time in the series.) tons methods of fine-tuning the class for maximum damage, many of which are more interesting than the old tactic of finding the best weapon in the game and using it at the expense of everything else.

“Player choice is always what we want people to have choice,” Cox said. “For example, they really have to choose between certain weapons, gameplay types, spell types, or whatever.”

Of course, there’s a school of thought that if a weapon – or a spell, or whatever, really – is ridiculously, comically suppressed, you can just… not use it. You would probably hear a lot less about this school if it had any direct competitive PvP. Wonderland. Previous Borderlands For example, the games had a feature where you could battle members of your co-op group. Sure, it was fun, but it was also an effective way to settle disputes about who would walk away with the loot. This is completely missing from Tiny Tina’s Wonderland.

When asked why duels weren’t part of the game and if they would be in a future update, Cox countered.

“We have a certain amount of time to focus on certain things,” Cox said. “And so we wanted to focus all of our resources on things that we knew we were going to do, you know, Wonderland very different from Borderlands experience and make sure we meet them.”