The More You Know (Week 1) - There's Only So Much You Can Do

Welcome to The More You Know, Andrew Nino's column in which he takes his gaming experience for the day and looks for a lesson behind his daily experiences to benefit you and him both. We’ll see how this goes, and who knows. Maybe we’ll learn a thing or two along the way. This week Andrew covers Borderlands and how sometimes, there is only so much you can do to help.

So let's get started with a bit of personal background. Thanks to the student deal Microsoft is offering I was fortunate to receive a new 360 with my purchase of a laptop for college. With an extra system lying around, I thought it would be a great idea to give the spare xbox to my girlfriend who is an avid gamer of the last gen with only a Wii to show for the current generation.

Without hesitation we got her the essentials for any new 360 player, Fable 2, Assassins Creed, Fallout 3(<3) and my non-GOTY edition of Borderlands. Well at last the time came where she purchased a month of xbox live and we got to playing together. What followed was one of the most important lessons I’ve learned. There is always only so much you can do to help.

I entered the wasteland that is Pandora hopping to make the experience as noob-friendly and enjoyable as possible. After all, despite being an avid gamer she had hardly dabbled in any first-person shooter experiences asides from Fallout 3.

As we began to hunt the lowly bandits during the tutorial, I watched as they massacred her Siren. Here I am, a level 69 death machine Hunter watching a level 2 bandit slaughtering my woman. In an attempt to let her figure out the game for herself I still sat back and watched trying to let her figure out the game for herself, suppressing my rage.

Eventually it came to the point that I realized I needed to help her. Once I decimated the local bandit population with my flaming BloodWing I quickly ran to the local vendor and purchased the most effective weapons and shields for her to have a sort of handicap against the local population.

Fully equipped and ready to take on the dangers of Pandora we exited Fyrestone in search of some simple Skags’ to kill. As I watched her train and struggle significantly against the Skags’ honing her skills as a Pistols expert I took the time to get the “My Brother is an Italian Plumber” achievement. Eventually however, the Skags’ seemed too difficult to defeat and my patience was growing thin. Having become accustomed to the “expert” players of Black Ops, I wasn’t used to having someone on my team who was having trouble aiming down their sights.

I eventually lost patience; I determined that the best way for her to enjoy the game was for me to make her a killing machine so she could go back and slaughter anything and everything. I packed my bags and dragged her to my second playthrough at the Eridian Promontory. After securing her safely behind a rock, I entered the battle guns blazing slaughtering the level 69 Guardians. Instantly her levels began shooting up, most of the time two levels at a time. Level 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, 20. I saw her turn from noob to novice before my eyes. As the final Guardian in the Promontory fell to a well-placed sniper shot I turned around, corpses littering the ground and saw and heard the rewards of my mission, “Wow Nino that was like nothing for you!” she excited exclaimed at level 32 as she followed the track of now motionless Guardians carefully looting any money, ammo, and guns she could find. “These guns are amazing!” she shouted as she picked up a level 60+ gun and noted that it was worth several thousand of her lowly beginner weapons.

That’s a painful end if I’ve ever seen one

We stopped playing then, but since then I’ve been thinking about the impact on what I had done. Perhaps I shouldn’t have helped her that much. What if by getting her so many levels so fast and all the riches she gets bored when she goes back?

Imagine, a level 32 progressing through the game fighting off level 1-5 enemies which can’t even leave a dent in her armor. Or what if I’ve effectively ruined the game entirely for her? At this point she might expect the leveling to be just as easy as it had been with my help. The fact that her enemies are now six times weaker than she is will probably be a dampener as well. Any experience she would get would now be miniscule at best. I’ve also ruined looting for her; despite it being her favorite part of the game so far (she’s a Fallout pack-rat) she would be crazy to pick up weak guns worth $50 when she has over $500,000.

So what I learned is that you have to find a balance between helping someone, despite the easy path being to make them a god amongst their NPC peers this most likely will just provide a short euphoria high. Which given time, would give way to non-fulfilling victories against foes that couldn’t stand a chance against you. Extra Creditz explained it best in their “Sharing Our Medium” episode in which they cover the most effective ways for us as veteran players to provide an easy way for others to get to play and love games with us.

I’m curious however, what do you think? Is providing someone with everything they could possibly need a good way to help a novice? Or rather is the struggle for survival the prime reason for excitement and more importantly fun? Let me know what you guys think in the comment section below!

One More Time

In the meantime, I think I’m going to begin anew on Pandora one more time at level 1 with my partner the level 1 Siren on a whole new quest to find the Vault and all the treasures within.

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