Gearbox Software's Borderlands series is known for many things. It is known for its wacky writing which includes many current and outdated Internet memes while occasionally providing some deep characterization to its cast. It is known for popularizing the looter shooter genre: a PVE category that combines the urgency and tactical nature of first-person shooters with the number-crunching precision of role-playing games. Most of all, Borderlands is known for its absurd number of guns that range from impractical to downright overpowered.
What Borderlands is not known for, however, is its PVP elements. Ever since the first Borderlands was released back in 2009, the series has struggled to find a place for PVP in its world. Since the premise of Borderlands lies heavily on how ludicrously strong its guns can be, PVP has become something of a joke in the series. While it has experimented with fully dedicated arenas to half-baked duels, the Borderlands series should follow in Tiny Tina's Wonderlands footsteps and do away with PVP entirely.
PVP Was At Its Biggest In Borderlands 1
PVP in the first Borderlands was as fleshed-out as it had ever been (or will ever be) in the series. If players had a bone to pick with one of their companions, they could settle their differences in one of two ways. The first method of PVP requires players to go to one of three arenas: the Fyrestone Coliseum located in the Arid Badlands, the Cesspool in Rust Commons West, or the Devil's Footstool in Salt Flats. These arenas are dedicated solely for PVP, as the host of the game can adjust the parameters such as the amount of time each round lasts to make some pretty basic custom PVP games. Once in a match, players would begin shooting each other until only one side is left standing.
The quicker method of launching PVP in Borderlands is to simply melee a companion. If both parties have PVP turned on, they would be enclosed in a small dome and a duel would ensue. Reducing the opponent's health to zero or having them step out of the ring would result in victory. Apart from receiving a few Borderlands achievements and releasing some stress, there was no real incentive for players to partake in PVP.
Borderlands 2 Brought About Dueling And Duplicating For Loot
To remedy the lack of interest in PVP, Borderlands 2 duels had one big introduction that nearly broke the game: dueling for loot. Players could still initiate duels by meleeing each other, but now they could do so with loot on the line. By interacting with another player, players could put a set amount of guns, shield mods, class mods, grenade mods, and even skins into the loot pool. Then, instead of hitting the "trade" button, players would opt for the "duel" button just below it to start a duel.
The two Vault Hunters would then fight each other, and whoever won would have the loot immediately stuffed in their backpack. Since loot in Borderlands 2 doesn't follow the more recent games' cooperation loot system (a system where unique loot drops for each player in their world), arguing over who would get a strong piece of loot was commonplace. The idea behind loot duels was to provide players with a way to settle who would receive a rare drop.
There was just one big problem behind loot duels, and that was the ability for players to duplicate items. After setting the desired loot into the loot duel pool and dropping the gear from their person once the duel began, players could duplicate items en masse by losing the duel on purpose. There are no repercussions or costs to item duplication, and the bug remains in Borderlands 2 to this day. Players still exploit this bug to share some of the game's rarest and strongest items, making farming for gear less of a chore and letting them indulge in the content they actually want to play.
Borderlands 3 Dials Item Duplication Back While Upping The Player Duel Count
Needless to say, Gearbox Software caught wind of the duplication bug and removed loot duels from Borderlands 3. Players can still fight for loot using the game's duel function, but they now have to rely on the old honesty system and hope that the player with the desired loot gives it to the winner once they have emerged victorious. To compensate for the removal of loot duels, free-for-all duels were introduced in the game. Just as its namesake implies, up to four players can partake in a single, free-for-all match that pits everyone against each other. This is a great way to start some on-the-fly chaos, as having four players with guns and abilities shooting at each other never becomes uninteresting.
It should be noted that thanks to the new cooperation loot system, dueling for loot in Borderlands 3 is extremely rare. At this point, Gearbox had already removed PVP arenas from Borderlands 2 and 3 to focus more on Borderlands' PVE aspects of the series. As Borderlands moved toward the future, PVP had become less of a priority.
Tiny Tina's Wonderlands Has No PVP Whatsoever (And That's A Good Thing)
Tiny Tina's Wonderlands, a Borderlands spin-off that was released a few weeks ago, does away with PVP entirely. Players can still trade loot with one another, but the joy of blasting each other into fine paste through duels is long gone. While some players will lament its loss, PVP in the Borderlands series could benefit from being removed altogether.
Duels in the Borderlands series have never been the series' strong suit for a single reason: balance. Most of the guns, abilities, and gear players acquire in the games are balanced solely for battling foes in PVE. As the players' levels and gear increase in strength, so too must the adversaries that they face. By Gearbox Software's standards, this involves disproportionately increasing the damage the opponents do while massively increasing their health pool. More enemy health requires gear that does more damage, while players' shields and health don't scale as high since the enemies shouldn't kill them in a few shots.
When these elements are translated into PVE, players come face to face with the same weapons, gear, and abilities they use against these buffed-up enemies. This usually ends up with duels lasting mere seconds, as players one-shot each other with their overpowered builds. No one likes the idea of losing their loot, but losing loot without so much as a fight is just downright unfair. Moving forward, it might be best for the Borderlands series to scrap the idea of PVP altogether. Doing so would allow Gearbox Software to focus on the series' strengths, such as making compelling PVE content and writing funny Borderlands dialogue.
Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands is available now on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.
