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One of Borderlands 4’s developers has shared his thoughts on where the game’s balance is now.
Gearbox associate creative director Grant Kao responded to community member Moxsy, who asked this exact question.
Kao said this:
I like proc damage and the synergy with all the enhancing passives/augments. I know we had to tone down some interactions with Harlowe and fast tick rates from stuff like the katagawa.
Watching those builds made me write a note for future dmg formulas and using some ppm formula.
Order also gets a bad rap due to the charge behavior needing to scale (which is something I may revisit soon). But honestly if you go all in with order enhancements and gun dmg, some of the order legendaries absolutely blast.
Another community member, Katenn, then had this follow-up question:
Out of curiosity what was the decision to make the 2 new manufacturers both have the charge behaviour when it was so widely disliked in 3 with maliwan?
Kao’s reply here is worth talking about. He said this:
Ripper is an evolution of the wind-up/spin up of CotV manufacturer and Order was a riff on the charge mechanic. I think they have their place in a shooter loop.
Order weapons are statistically very strong but may require too much to feel great. Will be looking at this soon.
What Are The Ripper And Order Weapon Manufacturers?
If you hadn’t played Borderlands 4, you may not have realized this yet. But these are actually the two factions who play the main antagonists in the game.
The Order is the faction formed by the Timekeeper. As dictator of Kairos, the Timekeeper has directed his forces to build their own weapons to quell rebellion, while they use bolts to control the general population.
The Rippers are the biggest opposition to the Timekeeper and the Order in Kairos. As is the nature of war, the enemy of your enemy is not necessarily your friend. Led by the Ripper Queen Callis, the Rippers have ambitions to take over the universe after defeating the Timekeeper.
Borderlands 4’s Weapon Iteration
When Kao alluded to CotV, he was referring to Children of the Vault. This is another villainous faction making their own weapons, led by the infamous Calypso Twins of Borderlands 3.
We won’t delve into the meta here, which may become irrelevant in months or even weeks. But we can see that Gearbox put a lot of thought in iterating on Borderlands’ mechanics as well as its layered lore.
