You’re one of the few people here who understands triple A gaming is a business not a charity. If people want games that are purely made out of love and not profit then they should seek indie games
You say that and then we have games like God of War (2018), Titanfall 2, the Witcher 3, the Arkham Series and even Gears 2-3 were much better in ways that 5 on launch.
And along with saying the game was rushed out early, that’s no excuse for it to be bad. If they didn’t have the time then they shouldn’t have filled it with extra fluff like open world “elements” and Fortnite store fillers like Bloodsprays.
Gears 2 was relatively rushed and i’d recommend that 12-year old game over 5 most days. Lots of games are rushed and terrible in their first two months… lots of games also get rid of those issues early one, are transparent about their plans and put a lot of passion into every little detail as they can.
The developers are the artists, just on a timeline. When I see things like the Lancer and Retro sharing executions that don’t make sense or 8 of the COG characters sharing the same exact voice lines verbatim, I don’t see passion or anything worth anything. It’s all void of life when small character details are apart of Gears’ core.
Also, video games are “art,” just like film. The MCU is equivalent to COD at this point, you always expect the same thing but every once in a while it manages to really blow you away.
Gears to me is like Star Wars, somehow the originals managed to be soo good with people torn between whether 2 or 3 was the best, the prequel is always denounced as the worst and people can’t make up their minds as to whether the sequels are the worst or the best.
The more corporate we let our art be, the less beautiful it’ll be. I don’t see gaming quite as black-and-white as this. Nobody should. To claim to be right and understand this cesspool of political corporations and artistic expression; is the same as to claim genius-hood.
I find it hilarious the majority of games you listed are single player. Of course they won’t have the micro transactions gears does. Not to mention it’s silly to compare games like god of war or the Witcher to gears. They serve to to accomplish different things. While you’re at it why not compare The Arkham series to madden lol.
And yes the game being rushed is a reason for it to bad😂 it’s like saying the just because the chicken was undercooked it doesn’t mean it should be raw lmao. So rather than fill it with some content you would rather them do nothing?
Gears 2 had a plethora of issues and post launch that took more than a few months to address. Take the nostalgia googles off.
Again if they are rushed then they have to cut corners and do what they can and fix things down the line. They aren’t an independent studio they don’t control when the game comes out. If Microsoft says we want gears 6 by January 2021 then they have to find a way to make it happen.
Yes genius of course games are art. Some art is made to be enjoyed and some is made to be sold. Welcome to AAA gaming where profit margins mean more than what the creators have in mind.
Again if you don’t want corporatized art play indie games. Aside from that there’s nothing you, me, or anybody else can do about it.
Gears 2 launch was/is the worst launch of any Gears game to date, tons of cheaters/exploits, though the map situation was definitely better for sure. My point was that using that one person’s logic Gears 1 and 2 should’ve been postponed, yet they still released as rushed products. Guess what? People still ended up loving them over time. I suspect Gears 5 will get lots more love over time.
Your argument that TC should’ve been more conservative with how they developed Gears 5 I definitely agree with, but I suspect Escape would’ve gotten the axe before the SP did, regardless though they could’ve focused less on making PvE content and instead just made sure it was a lot less buggy.
Gears 5 was released broken, it is still broken, it will never be anything else but broken. Everything built on top of the base game is cosmetic, and i got to admit, Gears 5 has improved alot. But, because the base game is broken, anything added to it will need tweaking and/or fixing as soon as it has been released.
This is the difference between Gears 5 and other releases before it.
And your Halo reference is a horrible one, Halo Infinite was originally meant to have been made last year. Gears 5 was rushed, therefore bugs bugs and more bugs. Halo is the Xbox flagship, so of course it gets the royal treatment. Gears 6 needs time, if Microsoft do not give it time, all them people saying Gears of War 4 and Gears 5 should never have existed would be so right, and rightfully so too.
Some of the changes are large systematic changes that were possibly argued about for months, hence Ryan leaving TC in wake of removing these changes that take a long time ton”redo” and include a titles update.
Big changes like this matter and the decision to move forth need to be ideal to solve the issue (Sometimes it’s nowhere near as close as it should be)
It’s quite easy to see that for every player that hates one thing another players likes that one thing which makes it hard on seeing true things in the game that need changing.
See , you have all the elements in there, but for some reason you just don’t put them together…
If this was the first Gears game that was TC was making, and all they had to go on was PLAYING experience of the other titles (or maybe even not that, just a description of what was intended), then yes, I agree, Gears 5 is an excellent attempt.
But that is NOT the case!!!
They made an excellent Gears game, in GoW4! The versus was great (sure, 2 tunings etc, but there were people who loved one and there were people who loved the other), movement was crisp, the game was addicting, with maps I really had fun with. There were CQB focused maps, there were lancer maps, and everything in the middle.
Horde was an interesting evolution, with the addition of classes. By the end, every class was useful , every class was able to hold their own on the highest difficult levels. The card RNG was annoying, but you got plenty of scrap and credits playing the game, so you just help buying the Elite packs, and eventually you got what you needed…
Now… Going to Gears 5… THEY THEW ALL THAT AWAY! They made a conscious, deliberate decision to change EVERYTHING, to replace what we had and what we liked and what WORKED with new stuff they just made up out of thin air… The reason for that move is unknow - MY guess? They wanted to create something THEIRS . Actually they pretty much said so, themselves (that whole “with GoW4 we earned your trust, with G5 we felt we had to betray it”. The betray part is a slight paraphrasing, but Rod said in an interview that Gears 5 was about managing fan betrayal to grow the game).
So THIS why TC gets so much hate from me… They flipped me a finger with G5… They got me excited with GoW4, and then they totally changed everything, killed pretty much everything which I loved about playing GoW4 Versus (changed movement, changed weapon balances, changes weapons, changed map design focus, etc); they added these stupid “HERO” characters to Horde, made them large useless outside of a trishop camp on higher levels, kills weapons which were great at allowing everyone good killing abilities (torque/drop headshots, frag tags, etc), but added stupid expressions which make me feel like it’s a Fortnite wanna-be clone while also completely messing up chainsaw control mechanics
And NOW, they are backpaddling like crazy… With so much “crap” changes in the game, now that they are trying to undo the damage they themselves brought onto them, I’m supposed to give them a standing ovation for every single tiny thing they change??
I don’t think so…
The game still largely feels like crap, compared to GoW4. Versus movement, maps, balance is still inferior, Horde characters are still highly limited for most part; dropshot and torque headshots still don’t kill… Most of the cards are useless on higher levels… You still can’t scrap duplicates of useless cards… You still get level 1 ESCAPE cards after playing Elite+ HORDE games…
It is crap… Sure, it’s pretty looking crap… and if someone doesn’t know any better they might think it was good…
But they showed us they can make a good, fun game, with GoW4… And then they gave us THIS …
And if THIS was what people wanted, believe me, they wouldn’t be bending over backwards now trying to figure out what they have to change to make people happy…
That’s why I put so much hate and ridicule on TC…
YMMV
People thought about the same when Gears 2 came out lol.
Most of the stuff you mentioned will be fixed/alleviated come OP4 probably.
Yes, it has been a great change but…
Why even put it in the game? Maybe just in social? Why were they so stubborn about it for this long? That’s really the inexcusable part.
Something very strange happened at TC, perhaps coming from above their paygrade, because what was said by Cleven and now by Jamie just doesn’t add up.
Then why do you sound surprised then you claim all this happened before? Why do you act like our comments and complaints are unreasonable?
I wasnt playing versus in gow1, and there was no horde until gow2, so it wasnt something i noticed.
Ohh, yes… "Please stop compaining about obvious, game breaking problems, they will be fixed in OP/update number {fill in the blank}”
Ok, gotcha.
Its not unreasonable more like a waste of time.
the vast majority of the problems people mention are content related and going to be solved over time regardless, everything else is probably hardcoded and never going to be fixed.
Like you mentioned how much you love Gears of War 4, why not just play that game in the meantime and either they fix the issues you’re worried about with Gears 5 (in which case you go back to Gears 5) OR they don’t and you just stick to Gears of War 4 off and on? I enjoy Gears 5 but I still like to go back to Gears 4 on occasions.
The stuff you mentioned all seems to be stuff TC is currently working towards with Gears 5 so I’m not worried about them too much, I’m more worried about more long term issues (in particular the bugs/glitches) not stuff like maps or “content” because I’m sure TC will flood us with more crap than we can ever hope to care for.
Edit: there are other games available, that is my point. If TC doesn’t satisfy whatever list of demands you want them to you can always play x y or z instead, I’d rather discontent players move on then listen to them whine every day.
Double Edit: it is annoying af to listen to people complain constantly about something you like, whether it be a game or a football team or whatever, I just wanna enjoy my game in peace bruh 
Many people indeed moved on to other games. Gears 4 managed to stay in the top 50 most played games on xbl for its entire lifespan even here in europe. Gears 5 is on its last breath just after 9 months being out. We are seven months into 2020 and we had one new versus map, which nobody plays/votes for because it is one of the worst maps I have ever seen in a videogame.
Therefore I highly doubt, we will see more than two new maps this year. Also characters that are in the campaign are held back as playable in mp for whatever reason and the weekly store updates are the same crap skins recycled from gears 4 just with different colors.
The matchmaking and ranking system are a disgrace to any competitive multiplayer game and the core gameplay is clunky and unresponsive compared to 4 or even UE. If they turn around the whole game in OP4 I will never critize TC again, but I doubt they will fix even a fraction of the many many problems the game has.
You consider top 50 an accomplishment? Gears has never really had the popularity it did all the way back in 2006/2007. I also want to mention that a lot of folks stuck with Gears 4, so that number is sorta split to some degree for Gears 5. Now if you want to argue that the game COULD have sustained way more players then obviously that’s true, but don’t pretend Gears 4 was CoD lol.
I’m not worried about them adding characters, they added about 7(?) OP3 so after OP4/OP5 they’ll start to run out of characters to bring back. Every Gears game has always had tons of characters to choose from, Gears 5 is no different.
Ranking system isn’t nowhere near as bad as people make it out to be, if you’ve climbed the ranks from say Silver to Diamond or even to Master you’ll notice a definite difference in terms of skill level, the only real issue with the ranking system is that you can spend an hour on a match, win, yet still get zero points which is just asinine. The ranking system also just seems to be too complex for its own good, basic stuff like wins don’t seem to matter as much as points do (which is another can of worms). Ranking system is easy to improve is what I’m saying.
Maps is a serious issue and I do agree with you on that, yet you conveniently forgot that Gears 4 had a crap ton of remakes as well (what was the number exactly? about a dozen IIRC) and the launch maps in that game weren’t that great either. I doubt we’ll see too many new maps as well but the question is how many ports (from Gears 4) will we see vs how many actual remakes/new maps?
Iirc, Gears 4 had 34 total maps. 9 new ones(unless Gridlock counts as new) at launch, 4 new post launch. So 13 new maps, 21 remakes, some of which were launch map rehashes.
And re characters, there’s a bunch they could pull, I would think, from other sources than just the games. Like those comic characters that people have been requesting.
Although personally, I find the only other character I may have some interest in that might or might not come to Gears 5 is Sofia. Otherwise I’m perfectly content with Lizzie and Kait.
Oh thanks for numbers friend, I tried looking for a neat source that would show me all the maps for Gears of War 4 but I couldn’t find any, just launch maps mainly.
In terms of COG there are definitely a lot of characters they could still put into Gears 5; Anya, Sam, Dom, Paduk, Sofia as you mentioned, Oscar, Tactics characters, Tai Kaliso, Minh, etc. But for Swarm there’s only a handful that I see people really requesting. I think the bigger question is what skins they’ll offer not necessarily what characters. I highly doubt we’ll see any comic characters come into Gears 5, Scorpio squad is close enough as is.
Please no wrestler Oscar 
I’m going off of memory. Gears 4 launched with 10 maps, one of which was Gridlock, and received 2 per month for an entire year post launch. The four new post launch maps were Diner, Dawn, Speyer(an unfortunately unpopular Horde map that TC at some point decided to exclude from matchmaking even though I thought it wasn’t bad), Glory(which some people argued was just a Trashball reskin and used a similar layout). But I just stated numbers, not the maps in specific.
That and Luchador Oscar can die a rightful death and never return. Aka they should stay in Gears 4.
I still want another skin for Lizzie seeing as neither Motor Pool nor Hivebuster are doing it for me.

I have no idea what else they do with her, I lack the creativity to make dreams come true lol. I kinda want her to have a Silverback themed hero suit (sorta like what they have in My Hero Academia or something) but that’s all I can think of of the top of my head.
Something simple like a Winter variant would have done. Instead of them making a Winter Swarm Sniper(in Op 3?) and Desert Baird in Op 2(aside from the “Baird owns half the Op 2 store BS they pulled) before they gave one to her.
If I were to make skins I would made a headless Tai Kaliso and a Cowgirl Kait (with a strawhat and everything) so yeah… Your lucky I’m not the one making skins lol. What skins they’ll have is anyone’s guess though, hopefully they’ll be dapper 
Yeah… there’s a good reason why some people don’t get to touch certain things. Like you wouldn’t let Ben get his hands on certain fire tools, especially not without supervision.