Borderlands - Difficulty: Tough is Tough.

I was playing some late night co-op with T on the weekend, and we reached the Dahl Headlands with a L16 and L17 Mordecai character. It was a bit tough getting to Lucky but doable. However, when we got to the mission where we had to take down 8 opposing runner cars, it became sort of a zergfest where we would get blown up, respawn, and try again a number of times over. Eventually we cleared the required 8 runners, and ended for the night, but it was after quite a lot of respawns. T lost a ton of credits he was saving up. I didnt fare as badly cause I was broke from buying ammo upgrades.

It was only next morning when I realized why the runners were so tough to beat. They must have been +2 levels or higher to us. Checking the Mad Mel mission that was next in the chain, sure enough it said L20, Difficulty: Tough. (My Mord was L18 at the end of the night.)

This has happened on a number of occassions - a +2 Bonehead and a +2 Badass Fire Skag in my early levels, and later on with +2 Lancers and +2 BadMutha Elemental Spiderlings. (btw you cant even run those over with a runner car, your car blows up and they are okay)

Most RPG/levelled games get tougher when you fight stuff that is a couple levels higher than you, but there is a much less steep slope to climb than in Borderlands. Usually you can get by with a bit of skill and/or luck fighting up to +4 or +5, with colours and con levels like yellow, orange, purple, red etc, to denote how much higher they are. In Borderlands, however, even-level is easy, +1 is a nice challenge, and +2 is suddenly a barrier when you face off against a "tough" version of a foe, like a Badass or a Badmutha variant. Generally that's the point where I give up on fighting in the area with the +2, and I go do an easier level that is Normal or Trivial, until I get a level or two to even me up with the tough foe. Being late at night and running a bit on autopilot, I'd forgotten to check the mission level, and we just zerged it out. Doh!

Its a bit funny and a bit of a headsmacker really. If you are following the main storyline exclusively, soon the difficulty level of the missions outpace your character level. Then you have to go back and do some of the side quests, or get enough fight xp somewhere to keep up with the main quest.

Also, 2 Hunters don't stack very well compared to 2 Soldiers. (probably little else stacks as well, to be honest)

Upsen.

P.s. Borderlands vehicle combat is just asinine in general, terrible physics and driving AIs, also accuracy and firing arc limitations. Couple it with how slowly bullets travel in the game, and it makes enemy cars hard to beat unless they have stupidly run up against a wall or post, and are still driving into it.