Guns were better in BL1? I haven't noticed. Don't know why people got pissed off at TPS when it was exactly the same as BL2 but with additional features and the Space was beautiful i really liked playing on Jack's Space Station. Maybe it wasn't funny at all like BL2 I would agree with that.
For me, with TPS, the main thing is that it was just shorter. And without your typical bandits, I guess, much of it "felt different." I still liked it a lot: I thought the classes were great and the base game was worth it in the end, but the salt was more or less rubbed in because fans were spoiled by the expected DLC content from previous BL games. TPS was, really, quite a massive letdown in that department. So...it's really a value thing. BL1 and BL2 would and do frequently go on sale, GOTY editions or whatever, for something like $12-17 USD. All that content, I challenge you to find a better gaming deal than that, anywhere, for as long as those games have been popular. TPS did drop the ball in the value department.
The reason that BL1 had "better" guns follows several issues:
1--the randomized loot table, with gun parts, changed drastically with BL2. With BL1, any gun part could spawn with any type of gun, period. This was removed with BL2, where you had scopes or barrels that were locked per gun type, or per special gun (say, a Legendary that could only spawn with ~3-4 variable parts...but only 2 of the 4 parts). This effectively dropped the possible guns in half, if not more, from BL1 to BL2. It's simple math, and when they advertised: "MOAR GUNS!!!111!!" It was an easily-proven lie. ...It's annoying. Not that the guns sucked outright in BL2, you just lost that major loot table.
2--Utter dependence on Legendaries. With BL1, many end-game, top tier builds were thoroughly workable, even dependent upon easy-to-find rare-class drops, that you only had to farm for better parts, not simply farming for a near-impossible drop, let alone terrible rolls on that drop, if you ever see it. There was simply far, far more variety in loadout and build potential with BL1 than with BL2, because far, far more weapons were viable, and in general, they were much easier to find. The only grind, really, was trying to get those "perfect" parts on the easy-to-find kind, if you needed that ~+4% or so boost to your stats. If you needed that. With BL2, everything was tied to legendaries which, for the majority of the game's popularity, had awful loot tables and drop rates. It was an obnoxious grind in the end. Yes, of course you can beat all the games without this stuff, but then
that isn't Borderlands. (No, I'm not going to judge you for playing your game the way you want to play it...but come on, this game was designed to entice you into fiddling with your characters and their builds, and gearing them properly to understand how they work at max level). In the end, if we are going to argue about differences in these games, which are simply fun by default and ultimately identical in mechanics from game to game, then we are arguing about the end game/what this game is meant to be: loot, loot, loot, and some more loot. Oh and class builds.
3: I mean, no revolvers. None. No revolvers, man. WTF? this should be number one, but it isn't because math ultimately wins...but no revolvers. Which means, no Defiler...yet another amazing blue class weapons from BL1 that, in BL2, would be scaled into uselessness for no rational reason.
All of this isn't to discount what I think about BL2: which is that it is a more polished game. It is excellent in every way, and both are phenomenal. ...all 3 really. But then I'm the sorta guy that enjoys T3 for its legit merits, Godfather 3, even and yes: Prometheus. All of them on their own, for their own reasons...so yeah, of course I like TPS as well, but everything becomes interesting and controversial in comparison to its relatives. That's the nature of the thing. I find it hard for me to rank BL2 below BL1, but it really boils down to the loot design (Really the most important part of all Borderlands games), and the classes. I mean, well, it's because Lilith. No other class was ever as fun, but I liked most of them. There was just something visceral and exciting about playing a loaded-out Lilith, late in the game, that none of the other games and classes properly captured. A lot of it also has to do with here character/dialogue, I think, but damn Lilith in BL1 is one satisfying way to
wreck computer-generated targets.