Earlier this year,Borderlands 4confirmed its controversial decision toremove the game’s ever-present minimap from the screen. Gearbox Software CEO Randy Pitchford shared that the decision had been made because “a local space map is not a good way to navigate when you’re thinking about objectives and opportunities, several at the same time, that might be miles away.” Pitchford instead shared that the game would be getting a compass to help players navigate to their location, but this decision didn’t go down too well.
Clearly having seen the audience’s reception, Pitchford has now confirmed that, yes, the minimap is still going to be absent from Borderlands 4, but the team is replacing it with something that he calls “amazing”.
Randy Pitchford Confirms That Borderlands 4 Is Getting A Combat Radar
In a new32(!) tweet threadon Twitter, Pitchford was discussing the decision to remove the minimap from Borderlands 4, a feature that has been ever-present in theseries' previous games. He indicated that “there are three big costs to the mini-map (and a bunch of other costs). These costs are real and force developers to make trade-offs with other features,” and so it was cut.
After taking the game on a world tour, though, Pitchford said that “roughly 15% brought it [the lack of minimap] up, and most of them, after playing, agreed with our decisions regarding navigation. " However, “a few held their ground with respect to the idea of combat utility. They advocated for a combat radar.”
A few held their ground with respect to the idea of combat utility. They advocated for a combat radar.
This not-insignificant portion of players clearly had an impact on Pitchford and his team, who got to work on implementing a combat radar ahead of launch and made something “amazing” happen. The feature, which “barely squeezed in for a QA pass,” will be off by default but can be turned on. It will display the locations of enemies in the top right corner of the screen, including where they are in relation to the player, and their verticality, whether they are higher, lower, or on the same level.
The Gearbox CEO indicated that it was a rush to make it happen in time for the game’s September 12 launch, but it all happened “because of the best elements of our community.” It just goes to show that if you give developers constructive feedback rather than shouting at them when you see something you don’t like, they might just listen.
