Last week I was: levelling up alternate characters in Borderlands 4 and contemplating a no-reload run...for some reason.
This week I've been: getting stuck into Battlefield 6 while juggling Borderlands 4 grinding.
Borderlands has always had an odd relationship with endgame systems and has experimented a bunch over the years, and Gearbox's latest, Borderlands 4, doesn't buck the trend. This time, the endgame largely boils down to farming bosses in the open world (one of which will be the weekly Big Encore boss) and completing weekly Wildcard missions, which give you a chance at a specific legendary item.
More specifically, weekly Wildcard missions are just replaying a specific campaign mission in its entirety, but with three modifiers active to make it 'harder'. Although you can find enemies with modifiers here and there during your first run of the campaign, for some absurd reason, every single enemy in the Wildcard mission comes with that week's modifier.
Plus, because these are simply campaign missions, you'll have to sit through dialogue and complete all the quest steps you've done at least once before—it's not just an abridged version focusing on the combat encounters.
While this is only really half an endgame—there are more ways to earn loot than there are to actually put your builds to the test—my issue is that Wildcard missions simply aren't fun or worth doing. They're an absolute slog to complete thanks to modifiers that are more annoying than engaging, and if the featured reward isn't good, it's quite literally a waste of time grinding. Frankly, I don't want to repeat out-of-context story missions slower than before reaching the endgame, despite having an endgame build.
It's frustrating that this system would be all well and good in a specialised endgame activity with a loadout system.
These issues become apparent as soon as your first Wildcard mission during the Ultimate Vault Hunter Mode tutorial, where you'll be subjected to the centripetal modifier on the Unpaid Tab mission.
The tutorial starts with mundane maintenance tasks in Carcadia, and (once you finally reach combat) boils down to you killing an enemy and them immediately turning into a blackhole that rips control away from you and can one-hit kill you. This is a horrible experience no matter your build, but it's gruelling for melee builds.
Since then, we've had:
- September 18-24: Healthy, chain master, and leaking, so enemies create elemental links between them and pools on death, which isn't too bad, to be fair.
- September 25-October 8: Shielded, fortified, and strong, which encourages shock damage and thereby causes certain elemental builds to struggle.
- October 9-October 16: Invisible, leaking, and chromatic, meaning enemies can become invisible, swap elemental affinities, and create pools on death.
I'm assuming these modifiers were designed with the intention of encouraging more build diversity, but replaying story missions ad nauseam (which already have dialogue and interactive parts to slow you down) is a big, resounding no. Funnily enough, before launch, I'd hoped that Wildcard missions would challenge you to make creative builds and encourage diversity.
It's frustrating that this system would be all well and good in a specialised endgame activity with a loadout system. It wouldn't be so bad that a melee build wasn't good for a certain week's Wildcard if I could conveniently swap to an alternative, but storing gear and swapping skills and specialisations is anything but convenient.
The concept of Wildcards is so close to being a great addition to the endgame, but somehow falls short. My hope is that we'll see an endgame activity akin to Takedowns or Proving Grounds from Borderlands 3, but with a loadout system to enable modifiers to actually fulfil their intended purpose in Wildcards. Until then, I'll reluctantly complete a run or two of the Wildcard each week before I inevitably decide it's not worth it.
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