With the state of technology as it is, game developers have plenty of options on what they can decide to do regarding player numbers and “how they can play.” While multiplayer-focused titles are “all the rage” with certain teams, many prefer single-player-focused ones, and many offer options of co-op so that they can do single-player and then have a friend jump in to help them. Borderlands 4 is one such option of being able to play alone or with three friends to fill out a whole squad. However, the recent patch that Gearbox Software made has apparently broken the co-op play for gamers.
This comes from a Redditor who noted the following:
“I play Borderlands 4 with a big group of friends, usually enough for two full squads running at the same time. Since launch, we’ve had no problem running 4-man co-op. After this last patch? The game basically dies the second you try to play with more than one person.
Solo? Totally fine. Bullets hit right away, damage registers instantly, cooldowns behave. But the second someone joins, especially in the overworld, it all falls apart.”
The Redditor then broke down step-by-step all the ways that the co-op has been broken. For example, when you’re playing with two people, damage takes a while to register on enemies, and certain Vault Hunter abilities don’t work as intended, or certain timing elements malfunction with their skills. Once the player went to a 3-person squad, the game became “a brick wall” with impossible-to-beat enemies.
At the 4-person squad level, the game becomes so broken that the team had to straight-up give up and stop playing, which cost them plenty of in-game money despite them not actually losing to the boss in question.
The good news, if you can call it that, is that there were other Redditors who noted that they were having the same problems with co-op:
“I’ve been having the same issues, been playing with my friend and the hit registration is downright atrocious. In general the game seems waaaayyy more buggy in co-op, when I play solo it’s pretty much flawless.”
Another poster donned the “cap” of Gearbox Software and pretended to mock the person for their complaint, much like Randy Pitchford has done to those who criticized the game in its opening days.
While we can’t say for certain how many people have been affected by this, it’s not good that it’s happening to anyone at all.
