Borderlands 2, The Respawn Ecology of Bandits

No, new bandits don't just rock up five minutes latter to the ruins you cleared out. Why would they do that? "Hey, let's go live where everyone else was just killed!"

No, what happens is that the bandits have their own respawn system! Albiet not as neat and efficient as a Hyperion respawn unit!

Bandit Masks
This is why bandits wear masks - so as to (attempt to) protect their brains. Because they have cybernetic oxygen cells and a flash hybernation system implanted in them to keep their brain alive in case of their body shutting down.

Regrowth Units, Midgets and You!
This is why you get so many midgets! Because they are regrowing their body, obviously you get alot of bandits in the early, formative stages of growing a new body!

Psycho Melee Guys
And this is also why you get psycho's who just use melee weapons - all the chemicals and hormones from growing a new body are swirling around in them, driving them fairly insane! Like a teenager...just multiplied by ten! They just can't get it together enough to obtain and look after a gun. Sadly this can be a vicious cycle, where since an individual can't complete their growing cycle, they are time and again 'killed', repeating the psychotic hormone cycle. Eventually these long bouts of madness engrave their way into the bandits synapses, creating

Psycho Grenade Guy
Utterly mad and full of growth drugs, these guys can be conned by other bandits into simply weilding a grenade and running at you. Bandits both fear falling into this tragic situation, yet also glibbly exploit those who do. It's said it's possible to return from being a grenade guy, but most examples seem to be from word of mouth.

Crazy Bandit Attitude
Overall the bandits are affected by the hormones, even once they have completed the growth of an adult body. This, in conjunction with a sense that they can't die, makes their methods somewhat eratic and insane. Some may even suffer from dementia, as even though one might assume one is fighting bandits who are in their early twenties, some of them are actually seventy or eighty years old!

Growth Systems aren't just for People!
This is why you find so many guns in bandit toilets - the components are actually being grown by special bacteria! They gather and fuse molecules of metals in various ground up scrap fed to them. The toilet actually makes an ideal growing spot, being moist and...fed a continual supply of nutrients! Oh, sorry, if you were grateful to hear that the toilets aren't actually used in their traditional sense anymore, sorry! Indeed, quite the opposite!



As to why Hyperion, as run by Handsome Jack, the Handsome Jack who wants to kill you - as to why THAT Hyperion will keep respawning you????

I got nuffin'.

Imagination only runs so far...

FPS idea where you don't die every minute

I think maybe there's a moral in multiplayer first person shooters - I mean, you tend to get wasted time and time again. Kind of pounds in the idea that you'd just die if you went into a real life gun battle. And in real life, you tend not to respawn (if the games are somehow giving people the impression they respawn after death, well, that's surprising...)

So possibly my idea is more violent for there being less death.

The idea is that you have some sort of beat down status, instead of dying. Your character goes into a sort of defensive mode - you can't shoot, only try and get away. In the levels, there are escape hatches, which only people in beatdown status can use. You get to one, you crawl in and you see your character run down a series of escape tunnels, grab some supplies to replenish themselves, then exit from another escape tunnel point. Effectively much the same as respawning, but you have a solid narrative link from one event to the other.

It is possible to get killed whilst trying to get to an escape hatch, you only have X amount of life left. Getting killed lowers your beatdown score. So you want to develop a strategy with where they are, in case you get beat down. Or maybe your good enough you wont need it...hehe. Sure!

Getting killed can only lower your score, say, three times. And only after you've made two beat downs. So if you've only beaten down one member of the other side, you don't loose that (to give newer players some sense of accomplishment, rather than losing their very first three points of beatdown score). But if you beat down two then being killed loses that second beatdown score.

I think it'd be interesting to play in a combat where the core of the combat isn't...so freankin' rediculous, ie, coming back to life just out of thin air? Ahh, that's stupid!

Some sort of play where self preservation is actually part of play, instead of a stupid macho fantasy of going in guns blazing, neva gunna miss a shot. A fantasy that can only be supported by a rediculous respawn mechanic, showing just how stupid dumb ass that macho fantasy is!