Borderlands Mad Moxxi's Underdome Riot DLC Interview

Gearbox designer Matthew Armstrong chats with Shacknews about Madd Maxxi's Underdome Riot, Borderlands' second set of DLC that's due for release on the Xbox 360 sometime tomorrow.
Shack: Does Mad Moxxi raise the game's level cap? If not, why, and is that something that's coming in a future download?

Matthew Armstrong: Early on, we said we would dedicate our DLC to giving the players what they want. We have many loyal fans who have played the game for a long time asking us for a place to really challenge themselves and show what they can REALLY do. Riot mode is not about growth! It's about proving yourself. It's about over the top co-operative combat and seeing if you're as tough as you think you are.

We have two tiers of tournament. The small tournament is five waves and gives a real nice prize at the end. It's a challenge, but it's designed to be something that anyone can tackle with a couple of friends. Each of the three coliseums takes about 2 hours in the small one, so there are six hours of repeatable gameplay in that one. But for the hardcore player, we have the BIG Tournament, which takes you through 20 increasingly difficult rounds, with new rules added, tougher enemies, and more enemies as the rounds progress. It's an epic challenge where you have to team up with real good players and fight as a team to emerge victorious.

Some examples of these rules are things like low gravity mode or vampire mode or headshots only mode etc. As these overlap it gets to be quite intense.

Now with that being said, we do recognize that some people just want an avenue to build their character just a little more. So what we did is figured out a way to maintain compatibility across all players and also allow people who got Mad Moxxi to gain additional skill points. It's in there.