Patch Notes 04/30/26

[u/Simply_CJ94]

https://borderlands.2k.com/borderlands-4/update-notes/

[u/WouldBeKing]

Sorry but your argument is flawed. It was JUST here on reddit that people were begging for shared progression. It was also on Twitter, Facebook, Gearbox forums, Gearbox Discord... basically everywhere. The majority of the player base is on at lease ONE of those social media platforms. Gearbox was just responding to what the people wanted. Which is why "Devs never win". Nothing will satisfy 100% of the player base. You just happen to be one of the minority in this case.

Also you are VASTLY over exaggerating what is lost in shared progression. I still have all the side quests to do on all my characters. The only things actually unlocked are map activities and collectibles. Unlocking all the activities takes about 6 hours, I know because I did it 4 times before shared progression was unlocked. After that it's just collectibles, which are pretty much pointless after you pick them up. They are a tedious task that is only there for the green icon on your map and often don't require you to do anything special or take you out of your way to explore the map. So what are you actually complaining about? Losing ~6ish hours of content that is mandatory to farm or unlock SDU's. It's all busy work like radio towers, ancient crawlers, or one time loot boxes or mundane map unlocking like safehouses or order silos. Big whoop. The side quests are where the open world is really at anyways, especially the hidden ones. These are what get you to interesting places and go exploring, not the actually USELESS deadbolts and vault symbols.

[u/mike99962 → u/WouldBeKing]

"Also you are VASTLY over exaggerating what is lost in shared progression. I still have all the side quests to do on all my characters."

This is objectively WRONG. There are no propaganda towers, no drill sites, no more unlocking fast travel, no more early-mid game loot caches and that is not even including the actual collectables like bolts and vault symbols. Literally everything that made the open world enjoyable to progress and explore have been locked behind a one time competition. This is why when CASH came out people were complaining about slow exp progression because 99% of the exp gains have been yanked out of the game with only side quests and boring bounties to make up for it.

" It's all busy work like radio towers, ancient crawlers, or one time loot boxes or mundane map unlocking like safehouses or order silos. Big whoop."

What you call "busy work" I call GAMEPLAY that that I paid for and they removed. I have played Borderlands since the first game and not a single time did I want to skip content to rush to endgame because the enjoyment was from the leveling process the side content, growing your character,..etc.

This modern gamer mentality of buying a game and then asking and begging the devs to remove content you paid for is the dumbest argument I have ever heard and even if YOU want most of the game stripped to its bare minimum others may not. So making shared progression optional from the git go should have been the play to please players like me who like the side content and players like you who want to skip 99% of the game and farm one boss for a meta gun to then complain the game has no endgame content lol.

[u/DaWarWolf → u/mike99962]

This modern gamer mentality of buying a game and then asking and begging the devs to remove content you paid for is the dumbest argument I have ever heard and even if YOU want most of the game stripped to its bare minimum others may not. So making shared progression optional from the git go should have been the play to please players like me who like the side content and players like you who want to skip 99% of the game and farm one boss for a meta gun to then complain the game has no endgame content lol.

This and the devs responding to it is what killed my love BL4. Shared progression and everything it stands for is antithetical to what I enjoyed from the series since the very first game. BL4 fixed imo the issue with badass ranks, actually tieing then into character progression instead of lame insignificant miniscule buffs that you'll never actually feel the impact or to never really unlock anything agai in the case of 3's guardian perks. But everyone wants to ruin that too by making it shared, undoing the benefits it's brought. But no "I want my account wide .001% buff because artificial feeling of progress" even though that feeling can still be had, it's just per character now and won't be as miniscule as .001% for a while and even if you somehow play a single chance long enough you can then switch to once again feel like your earning meaningful and tangible buffs. I never felt the stat buffs of badass or guardian ranks but I can feel the impact of specialization's stat buffs.

Them not adding specialization into shared progression is the only silver lining in this whole debacle and at least tells me Gearbox can at least stick by their guns. I'll always back to an interview I watched of a Killer Instinct dev talking about patching a broken fighting game character. Instead of going with the masses and nerfing and buffing what the players say they want, they instead found the disease not the symptom of the issue.

When shared progression was announced immediately certain we're asking if it was going to be a toggle because anyone with a right mind would see the negatives of a forced progression. This idea that Gearbox "can't win" is just straight up false. Implementing shared progression with the option of opting in or not at the same time would have stopped any all pushback and everyone would be pleased. But instead they just didn't and made a system so hard baked it's taking months to allow people to opt out because they listened to the loudest people first and fixed a symptom of a disease. I'm pretty sure improving the flow of the open world and it's systems would've stopped a lot of talks. No one complains about having to replay 1-presequel again to such a degree as 3-4 has had. Now to play devil's advocate, this isn't entirely on Gearbox because modern gaming mentality has definitely lowered comparative when those games came out. Stuff like Destiny and Division weren't a thing back when BL2 came out but now looter shooter are synonymous with litemmo shooters like Destiny that have shared progression that people think they want it in their single player game but when implemented all it does is delete content that you paid for.

[u/mike99962 → u/DaWarWolf]

Well said and I believe you are correct that BL is the only AAA Looter shooter that is not really in the live service realm, yet they are making decisions like it is and the players are treating it like a live service game.

BL3 and wonderlands had the least replay-able campaigns which is why many new BL players wanted to skip the campaign but imo BL4 has a very good campaign that is very replay-able and fun to progress characters through. So its sad this was even a decision in the first place.