While hotly anticipated co-op games like Borderlands 4 tend to get plenty of community support in various forms, like tools for players to help plan out their character builds, Gearbox has taken to social media platform X to remind fans that the game is still not out yet, and because of that, there might still be changes in the final release.
In response to a Maxroll.gg contributor announcing a new skill planner for Borderlands 4 for fans of the series to play around with leading up to the game’s release, creative director Graeme Timmins responded by saying that skills are still subject to be changed.
“This is an awesome tool,” posted Timmins. “But remember… the game isn’t done yet… and all skills are SUBJECT TO CHANGE. We’re still balancing and fine-tuning all characters, so what you’ve played/seen in demos so far maybe different at launch. Just a reminder.”
Since Timmins was quite enthusiastic about this fan project, the original creator – Byrd – responded in kind, asking Gearbox to help out with further development of the skill tree by keeping its developers in the loop about anything that needs to be added or changed. “Feel free to keep me and the team at Maxroll in the loop with anything we should be adding,” posted Byrd.
As for the build planner, it is no doubt an impressive feat since Byrd and the team at Maxroll were able to develop it based on limited information since it only has the skill trees for two characters – Vex and Rafa. When it comes to the skill trees in Borderlands 4, Gearbox has previously spoken about how the upcoming title will feature more skills in a single skill tree than the last two games in the series put together.
“You’ll find more skills per character than in Borderlands 3 and 2 added together,” said Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford, going on to joke that, “We’re working late on Fridays for you.” Pitchford’s response was a follow-up to chief creative officer Randy Varnell’s explanation that the skill tree offers enough variety to allow four players playing the same character to still end up with differing play styles.
This statement would indicate that Borderlands 4’s skill trees might include more than 30 different skills in each tree. This is in comparison to the 10 skills per tree in Borderlands 2’s characters, and between 18 and 20 skills per tree in the characters from Borderlands 3.
Borderlands 4 is coming to PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S on September 12. The Nintendo Switch 2 version is out later this year.