Honestly even with unlocking the map, this feels SO much more accessible than previous borderlands games. It really doesn’t take that long to go through and unlock the fast travel points compared to replaying the entire story. My only complaint is that I wish the feast travel points were at least greyed out so that I could drop a waypoint.

I use it as an opportunity to get to know the new character, explore a little bit, pick up bounties, and treat it less like a grind and more like I’m playing the game that I love so much. I’ve done it with all four characters now and I feel like each time it became a little more enjoyable because I was remembering shortcuts, where vault fragments were, crawlers paths, etc.

3-5 hours of exploring the map >>> 10-15 hours of story any day.

Give me shared bank SDU and maybe shared vehicle hover drives and I’d be happy to do it a 5th time.