Borderlands 4’s Difficulty Settings May Really Change The Game, Especially In Co-Op

Co-op games can sometimes have a bit of a difficulty issue. To make a title as fun in multiplayer as possible, it’s ideal to be able to cater to both expert players and those who are much newer to the experience.

A common result in that sort of situation is the experienced player dominating all enemies in sight, while the newcomer has a limited impact on proceedings. This can be ideal if that’s what both parties are looking for (if you’re guiding a younger player through a game for instance), but Gearbox is delivering something rather more sophisticated with Borderlands 4: Difficulty settings that can be chosen separately by each player joining the action.

As reported by GameSpot, the options available will be the standard suite of Easy, Normal, and Hard. Exploiting the elemental weaknesses of targets will seemingly be essential in hard mode, and your Vault Hunter will be far more vulnerable to damage. There will be much more leeway in this regard in easy mode, while Normal will be the safe, middle ground pick it’s always been.

Now, if you’re less confident in your abilities, Hard probably won’t be for you, while Borderlands veterans might find things a bit trivial on Easy. In a co-op session in the new game, then, you’ll be able to choose separately, without negatively affecting your partner’s experience in that way.

Your Borderlands 4, Your Way

I’m a Borderlands fan who has experimented with all manner of silly builds and challenges, like investing only in Gaige’s Little Big Trouble skill tree in the classic Borderlands 2 while exclusively using Shock weapons. I know the pain of not having the right element for the right foes, and chipping away at shields and health bars without them in Hard mode may not be a lot of fun for a new player.

There is some strategic depth to Borderlands among all the chaos, and with this system, players will be able to engage as much or as little as they like with that side of things. It can be hard to please everyone in a lobby with a scaling difficulty system, but this seems to be a solid way of doing that.

If you’re one of those series veterans, you might still have quite a difficult battle coming your way. In August 2025, Randy Pitchford told Insider Gaming:

“There are points of Borderlands 4 that are more challenging … we definitely have pushed the challenges quite a lot, especially with bosses and boss fight mechanics.”

I’m sure the game will be quite the blast, and hopefully this more involved difficulty setting will make it more accessible too. Maybe we should remind ourselves of the franchise’s story to date before getting stuck in.