It looks like Gearbox is fixing how you can earn Phosphene weapons in Borderlands 4.
Twitter user itsClapTrapTime raised this inquiry to Gearbox’s associate creative director, Grant Kao:
I’d rather see the phosphene weapons be all synced into one challenge instead of them separated over multiple individual characters please and thank you
Thankfully, Kao gave a positive response:
This is coming, I promise! A lot of moving parts for this one to be done correctly.
What’s The Deal With Phosphenes?
We covered Phosphenes at the start of this month. These are shiny weapon skins, meaning they have a particularly higher rarity than what cosmetics usually have.
But when you do get your hands on a Phosphene, you can kind of keep it forever. When you find a legendary weapon that has a Phosphene, you can apply it to other weapons just like it in the future.
Why Do Phosphenes Need To Change?
As itsClapTrapTime pointed out, there’s something frustrating about how Phosphene collecting works. If you find a Phosphene, you can keep it.
But if you have multiple characters, they don’t get to carry those Phosphenes over. But that’s where it gets frustrating.
Unlike Phosphenes, you can carry over Specializations if you switch between characters when you play. Now, players could get used to carrying over some things but not others.
But this becomes a point about how enjoyable Borderlands 4 is, or could be.
Are Phosphenes That Important To Enjoying The Game?
It’s not so much that Phosphenes are particularly important. We can imagine some fans who don’t really care about shinies at all.
But for the developers at Gearbox, they would be thinking about ways for players to continue to enjoy playing their game.
Gearbox’s Considerations With Game Design
There is something called friction that defines a certain kind of game design. Friction is the common parlance that refers to things that could potentially frustrate the player.
These can include things that make playing harder. But it can also refer to things that make things more tedious.
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild’s breakable weapons is a pretty clear example of this. While a lot of players hate it when their weapons break, there are also fans who understand that this makes the game more enjoyable.
Gearbox may have originally thought making players find Phosphenes for each character could be good friction. But in this case, it looks like they should just reverse that completely.
What ‘Moving Parts’ Need To Move?
We’re not game developers so we don’t know what ‘moving parts’ Gearbox needs to account for. But they could be referring to rebalancing their random generation systems after they make it that much easier to collect Phosphenes.
Phosphenes should be available to find even if you don’t reach Ultimate Vault Hunter mode. We wonder if it’ll be that much easier or harder to find them after this future update.
