Well I’ve played every Gears game and in my experience the most skilled and hardcore players basically relied entirely on their Gnasher game. Now I appreciate the incredible amount of skill and dedication required to master this style of play but even after hundreds of hours I can say that I never found it appealing personally, yet still enjoyed the games in all their modes.
Let’s be honest: the Gnasher has always been OP and the centrepiece of Gears multiplayer. All balancing revolves around that. I applaud TC for making a game mode which removes that.
As for the regular game modes, I think the rifles are fine, it’s just many Gnasher-only vets have trouble adapting to the fact that you can’t just blindly sprint half way across the map with no cover whilst sponging a whole clip and gibbing the enemy.