What Borderlands can learn from Dead Island

It’s a game about zombie survival. So, what can Borderlands developer Gearbox learn from Dead Island?

Sometimes the small things can make a gaming experience that much better. While Borderlands was one of the better experiences I’ve had in recent years, the sequel can be a chance to take it to the next level.

The bare bones of these two titles are the same. Adventure, explore, pillage and kill. While the latter is an obvious difference, the way CPU enemies are presented takes co-op gaming to a new level. For anyone who’s played Borderlands you’ll know what I’m talking about when I say the enemies are pretty easy. And not Lindsey Lohan easy either.

While it’s normal to see the difficulty remain low in early parts of any game, Dead Island takes a different approach. The concept is rather simple, as you level-up so do the zombies. It’s such a simplistic idea, but it works and works well. The reasoning behind this method is due in part to where you quest. Up until act four, zombies remain generally the same. If the difficulty didn’t change it would be too easy for players.

Now the way this is determined depends on the host. In order for the game to progress properly hosting duties normally rely on the lowest progressed player. This is because players can only play with others their own level or lower. So, with the lower player comes an easier difficulty. Generally speaking, I found difficulty levels for enemies ranged between four levels of your own.

A nice touch to Dead Island was the Achievement/ Trophy meter. Now I know, not everyone is into collecting these points, but that might because of previous tracking systems. This in most cases is none existent. Once again the idea is simple, as you progress through Achievements or even challenges a meter tracks the progress and depicts notable milestones. Something like this could be incorporated into any game and may give incentive to those who would normally not care about those points.

While these two changes aren’t drastic, they can improve on a great game. While Gearbox remains in the developmental stage of Borderlands 2 a progressive outlook is a must.

With gaming conferences still on the agenda for 2011, it wouldn’t be surprising if more details surface in the months to come.

Tags: Borderlands, Gearbox, Trophies, CPU, developer, Dead Island, enemies, Achievements, what borderlands can learn from dead island, meter

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Ed Grabowski

September 19, 2011

A lot of people, including me, think leveling enemies are horrible. We hate them because it completely ruins the immersion. Oblivion is most guilty of this, and the loudest complaint I hear from most people about games like it are the leveling enemies. We want to feel powerful. We want to work hard and by the end of the game be super powerful.

Leveling enemies don't allow that. There is no progression. The better you get, the better they get. The more powerful you are, the more powerful they are. There is no feeling of progression when I am still having trouble defeating certain enemies even though I am level 30 and am much more powerful than I was at the start of the game.

I couldn't stand the thought of leveling enemies in any game. Just as an example, I will make up a scenario. I may be level one and doing, say, 10 hit points per fire ball. The undead enemies will die after two hits. This means they have 20 hit points. I level up, and upgrade my fire ball to deal 20 hit points. Uh oh, the enemies leveled up as well, so it still takes two hits to kill them when it should have taken just one.

This makes the game feel pointless. If i can't become more powerful than the enemies, what's the point?

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dd nn

July 20, 2012

I was singing the same tune for some time but after years of playing RPG's and i mean 25+ years i finally realized that actually levelling up is pointless.

Let me explain.

When you start dead island you have no skills, you can only swing an oar to bash those zombies heads and you can handle two or three easily even at level 1.

When you are level 50 you almost have all the skills available and even though zombies leveled up with you in term of HP and attack power, you now have automatic rifles with elemental damage a fury bar that will fill up in only few kils so you can decimate 10-12 zombies in seconds. Shotguns or melee weapons that you created which can kill anything(other than specials) in one shot. And many more abilities depending on your class and decisions.

It doesnt matter if you play an old AD&D game or a modern RPG game, level is nothing more than your pointless e-peen because when you are level gazillion you wont go and kill level 1 mobs, no sir you will go and kill mobs closer to your level so you can have decent xp and loot better items than you already have.

So tell me again what is the point of mobs to stay at same level when they wont have anything valuable in terms of item or xp to a high level player?

Jordan Albano

September 20, 2011

Good points Adam. I feel that if the mechanic of leveling enemies was tweaked so that not EVERY new combat encounter would be on par with your rank and instead, every now and then send lower level fodder at you allowing you to reign down bloody slaughter. Even sending higher ones at various points could be good to prove your power. But for me though, speaking solely of Dead Island, on my solo play through as Xian, I didn't have a single problem feeling weak, many of the sharp weapons she can use are incredibly powerful and dismembering is the most effective way to deal with the zombies. On my other playthroughs with the other characters I did however, feel much less effective in combat.