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Let me preface this by saying that I really love Borderlands PC. I pre-ordered it as soon as it was available on Steam. I’ve beaten it 3 times now, and I even bought the zombie DLC and plan to buy the Underdome one as well. In terms of the presentation and the gameplay I find Borderlands to be a lot of fun and addicting. I know you guys put a lot of work into it, and a lot of the little things make me laugh (like Brick’s berserker laugh for example). I think it’s great that you guys even bothered to port it for the PC, as that is becoming a rarity these days it seems.
I wanted to make it clear that I’m not trying to shit your guys and all the work they’ve done because I do love it. However, by your comments it seems clear that your frame of reference is skewing your understanding of what you’ve done here. You say that there have been several updates for Borderlands released. As far as I’m aware you have released two patches for Borderlands PC, and one of them was basically just to make the DLC pack work with the game. That hardly qualifies as several in my opinion, and I dare to say most of the people like me who play PC games. Again, I’m not trying to insult you guys because I know that game development is a tough business to be in, but with the number of problems this game has, it’s a wonder the gold release made it out of quality control. You’re now facing a situation similar to that of GSC Game World did when they released S.T.A.L.K.E.R. There are a lot of problems and the people who have bought your game are not even getting much in the way of feedback that you’re working on the problems.For a game that you claimed was being worked on very hard for the PC it’s stunning how much of a bad console port Borderlands PC is. The game menus are a crap shoot whether you have to use the keyboard or mouse to navigate, and whether you can use the mouse wheel or not. Configuring options like video resolution and key binds are far more complicated than they should be. Even little things like the indications about which weapon slot is which still uses D-pad icons, when you select them with the 1-4 number keys. Rocket launchers don’t seem to have any splash damage at all unless they hit solid ground in the game, walls and walkways don’t seem to work at all. There are items that just don’t work at all, like a class mod for Brick which is supposed to generate rockets. I have spent more than 3 hours trying to configure everything so I can host a multiplayer game and it still does not work. I find it difficult to believe that no one played through the game and spotted these things before you released the game, especially in light of the claims that you guys were working hard on the PC version and that it would be great and the best version of the game. It feels dishonest.
Now I know games and indeed all software have bugs in them. It’s inevitable, and as a computer science major who’s had to do numerous programming projects, I know it can be a difficult process to track down and fix these bugs. What I do think you (meaning Gearbox as a whole) have pretty thoroughly failed at is communicating with the community of people who’ve bought your game. I have not heard anything about what bugs your team knows about, if you guys are working on bug fixes, or which bugs you’re working to fix. All we’ve heard from you guys is the DLC packs that you’re going to sell us. If you do not see what kind of message that sends then I am at a loss. It looks as if you guys are content putting together a poorly done port and tossing it out the door, then trying to ding us for more money for new content instead of fixing up this game that I know you guys put a lot of work into. I don’t really believe you’re not working on patches, but when you don’t say anything about problems that people talk about then we only have our imaginations to go off of. Really, all I would like from you guys is just a quick message telling us that you guys know there are problems and that you’re working on them and that a patch is on its way, regardless of how long it will take. Knowing that you guys are working to fix everything would ease a lot of tensions that you are having with us PC folk.
As a PC gamer, I’ve come to terms with the fact that game development is speedily moving away from the PC, at least in terms of the main focus for big name titles like Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto, and yes Borderlands. I understand that you guys won’t make nearly as much money making a PC as you would making a console game. Because of this, I accept that many of the games being released on PC will be ported from consoles. I am glad that developers like you guys will make the effort to even port your games so that I can play them on my PC. I really do want you guys to do well and recognize that the PC is still a good place to release games. All I am asking is that you improve communications with us about things besides your DLC packs, and take a step back and look at it from our side. We’re not your enemy, we’re just feeling neglected.
Sincerely,
deject
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