Gearbox had always intended for Mayhem Mode to be a more challenging way for players to test their skills, along with their best character builds, while at the same time making sure everyone was having a good time with the end game. There’s also always been plans to roll out new content, gear and levels as time wore on, to continue to provide an enjoyable experience to players
Mayhem got a patch on April 30th, and since then the BL3 community has offered a lot of feedback. The most often mentioned concerns were those regarding gear balancing, build diversity, scaled damage resources and the overall difficulty of the mode. The plan is to address all of these concerns and more over the next two patches, as the devs want to make sure that the updates match their testing before being experienced by players.
In the phase one patch both gear and stat scaling will be addressed simultaneously. This is so that both series of changes can complement each other. In addition to adjusting under and over-performing gear, the armor, shield and health stat bonuses of enemies at higher Mayhem levels will also be tweaked. Perhaps the most useful change though is an entry on the item card for all gear that indicates which level of Mayhem the player acquired the gear.
Phase two will deal with build diversity and character balancing. All non-weapon sources of damage will now be scaled with Mayhem levels. This includes Action Skill, Melee, and Vehicle damage, and there will also be grenade mod drops with scaled damage, similar to Mayhem weapons. Skill damage is also going to be added to Class Mods at phase two as well. All of this is to help player create more useful character builds for Mayhem Mode.
Another issue that the feedback revealed was that chests and vending machines don’t currently spawn gear of the appropriate Mayhem level. This problem will also be dealt with in Phase Two, as the devs don’t currently have the ability to fix it quickly.
A number of Mayhem Modifiers that caused significant problems during gameplay were previously removed with hotfixes. The changes being rolled out in both phases will address optimization and restore at least some of these disabled mods.
Unrelated to Mayhem mode at all are a few changes to improve the overall quality of life within Borderlands 3. Fight for your life is receiving a few good updates, like all teammates being able to work together to revive a downed teammate much more swiftly. The loot pool is also being increased, so that all named enemies will have their own, dedicated drops. Finally, the usefulness of Eridian will be being addressed with the Veteran Rewards Machine getting a refill of mission specific rewards that can be claimed at the end of a match. The devs are also working on a way to increase the chance that the Eridian Fabricator shoots out Legendary guns.
As always, the folks over at Gearbox are grateful and receptive to all player feedback, so if you see something you think needs improvement, let em’ know.
