EpicNNG: Have Borderlands 4's Weekly Wildcard Missions been a complete failure?

• January 14th, 2026

Borderlands 4's endgame situation isn't new by now, and I've certainly spoken my fair share about it already. One aspect I do however want to shed a little more light on though, is the newly introduced "Weekly Wildcards" endgame activity.

Added for the first time with Borderlands 4, this activity almost entirely lifts the whole idea of a Destiny Nightfall, tasking the player to tackle a weekly rotating mission with a set of pre-determined modifiers to scale up the difficulty, forcing you to adjust your build and try out new things.

The only problem with this however is that in Destiny, a Nightfall is typically (and in fact, almost always) a harder version of a strike (a new piece of content you won't find elsewhere in the game), which is what makes jumping in to it for the first time so fun.

In addition to this, you'll often find exclusive loot in these activities you can't typically obtain elsewhere. It's a great incentive that really makes logging on each week with some friends worth it, especially given the difficulty ramp of the missions thrown at you.

This is where Borderlands 4 differs however, with these so called Wildcards instead just being replayable story or side quests from the game. If I'm not making myself clear enough already- it's not new content. It's stuff you've already played, only with some preset modifiers, and a dedicated loot drop reward upon completion

Of course, none of the loot provided for completing these missions are unique in the sense of them being exclusive, which really does leave one giant question for the player... Why would you ever want to do these?

Now to the credit of Gearbox, these missions do actually sometimes feature some niche modifier combos you typically will not find elsewhere in Borderlands 4, and that in of its self is pretty fun.

Of course the major problem with this is that often times, these combos can entirely shutdown builds that rely on one damage type such as true melee.

This isn't the end of the world however, as hinted at by one of the developers who suggests that these missions are purposefully designed to challenge the player to swap up their builds on a week to week basis.

I do commend this design goal, however unfortunately in a game with somehow still no loadout system in this day and age of shooters, asking this of the playerbase on a potentially weekly basis feels almost laughable to even think about.

Furthermore, I think the unrest with this content has become apparent too, as most social posts on the official Borderlands account talking about the Wildcard missions either seem to get less traction than others, or just straight up bombarded with negative feedback.