Why does level 16+ players play on lower difficulty levels in Horde Frenzy (Elite or lower)? Is their something I’m missing and/or not understanding?
If they finish they get double the cards, so could be worth playing an easier setting for quick cards.
Maybe, like me, they do not enjoy how monotonous and overly restrictive the gameplay feel at Inconceivable and Master can be, and do not enjoy how enemies sponge way too much while putting out far too extreme damage, or they do not want the bother of execution rules.
3 Likes
Those the things I like about playing in harder difficulty, lol. I like the challenge of something being hard to beat.
Once my character get within a certain level, I go up in difficulty, and they get high enough I only play in the hardest levels, and never go down.
I feel like players that play that way take away from other lower level players. They’re so much more stronger, it becomes counterproductive.
It could be that the double character XP has enabled players to quickly reach level 16+, but they haven’t maxed out their green and blue cards?
Don’t forget the lvl 1 players in masters trying to get boosted
1 Like
I don’t mind a challenge when it’s actually difficult, eg beating Inconceivable/Master Escape hives.
But Master or Incon Horde? It’s just boring and monotonous with hardly any liberties, and if you want your guns to feel like anything you have to be Kait, JD or maybe Fahz, Keegan. I hardly find it challenging either, most of the time. Just a monotonous experience with ultra spongy enemies that down you in an instant for anything other than not shooting at them, or make even blind firing at them extremely risky… when it shouldn’t be, it’s called blind fire for a reason.
2 Likes
100% agree with you. Incon/Masters gets so boring. The enemy should be smarter not spongier lol
Yeah. But discussing it with Ektope, he thinks it’s more challenging. I don’t agree with it. More sponge ≠ more challenge. Particularly when enemies down you so quickly and punish you for bloody blind fire. That’s just so ridiculous.
Yea thats just a weird way of thinking. Being able to trishot a spongy enemy while he stays in 1 place isnt no where near as challenging as an enemy who realizes its getting hit and starts to move in and out of cover or an enemy that realizes that a freedom lancer was just shot into the air and moves out of it way. Spongier is not challenging its boring
2 Likes
I got all my characters on 18 and done all maps on master. It was boring and tedious as it’s too long, not fun at all or challenging in my opinion. Just did it for the serious 5. You spend most of your time getting down by the magic bullets that hit you in cover and from across the map. Not to mention getting wiped out by a stupidly over powered Sentinel who downs your whole team in a split second on wave 35. Me and my friends don’t play master or inconceivable any more due to that. I rather play beginner with my six year old son as we have more fun and can go the whole 50 waves and it is challenging if you don’t use the main characters like JD, Kait, Keegan etc.
2 Likes
You ain’t never lying about that, lol. Very annoying.
Horde is only enjoyable in lower difficulities for me… At least I can move a lot!
I don’t mind doing lower difficulty. It lets you try different play styles. But the maps get repetitive and depending on the time, there may not be full lobbies. Even the only way to enjoy playing Hijack Build on Jack is to join lower difficulty while having maxed out Jack. So that’s something.
This is why I favor the harder difficulties. That’s what the challenge is for me, how do you successfully navigate around that obstacle, is were the intrigue lies for me.
I already made that experience with Gears 4 where your means of getting around the sponginess were more varied due to a higher power level of the classes and certain weapons in general. In Gears 5, I find it just comes down to “build a Forge, put down barriers length wise so the enemy is stuck in them as long as possible, put down some Sentries to help kill the enemies because they are so spongy you need to have MGs “help” to kill them if you’re not Kait, JD or Keegan, throw some lockers out, maybe build a couple of Shock Sentries as well, decoys are practically irrelevant with how quickly they go down”. It’s always exactly the same thing every match, there’s hardly any variety and it just gets boring. Where’s the challenge? You’re literally just shooting up the crippled bullet sponges and hope you don’t get a ridiculous insta wipe caused by an overpowered Sentinel or Guardian, because there is practically nothing that can stop them from charging right into your base at their mechanical heart’s content, without JD dropping a nuke ult or multiple GLs on one, and that there is no Swarmak spawn or that it stays back until you cleared the rest of the wave.
Whereas in Gears 4 you could opt for bases to only make the team kill enemies with minimal engineer involvement(decoys only, barriers and decoys, Shock Sentries and decoys, barriers, Shocks and decoys), adapt them to if the team was not good enough to handle the enemies without any Sentry support(though I was still reluctant to use MGs as a front line tool), or engineers only built the base mainly for themselves to get the kills, which I never really did as I thought it was hella boring, and didn’t feel great. And you were not just stuck with Tri-Shot spamming to be remotely effective on the higher difficulties, you had manned turrets(providing you could find a safer spot to use them in), which are almost the same as spamming a heavy weapon for the majority of the match anyway, except stationary, the Torque Bow and Dropshot were useful in the hands of anyone and not just a Fahz, JD or Keegan, or you could even use an EMBAR to go with, which is now another weapon where if you don’t use it as Fahz, besides the active stun, it’s utterly useless. Unless you’re playing Escape, that is.
I played a LOT of Gears 4 Horde(perhaps not the highest number, but it was around 40+ days of in-game time in the mode). It took a long time until I was well and truly done with it just a few days before the Gears 5 release. It just had more variety than this “do it all” method in Gears 5 which is used every. single, time. In every match. With almost always the exact same outcome. No thanks, I learned how to deal with excessive bullet sponges in Gears 4 Horde already. I don’t need an even more restrictive version of the same thing playing Gears 5 where it is even more monotonous with only one base build used 100% of the time and you have barely any means to stop a charging Guardian or Sentinel like you used to have in Gears 4, and you’re liable to spam a Tri-Shot when you’re not Fahz, Keegan, JD or Kait. If Gears 4 Horde was played like 5 Horde on the higher difficulties, or any difficulty above the beginner difficulty levels, since people don’t want to not rely on the JD crutch very often, the chances are very high I’d have stopped playing it way earlier than I actually did. Or never played the two higher difficulties after realizing how boring they are.
Point simply being, this is nothing new for me at all and a complete step backwards in variety to Gears 4 Horde. I fail to see the challenge when it consists in making the enemies as easy to kill as possible with the use of fortifications, thus negating almost any difficulty that might have been had in killing those enemies, and you use the exact same type of base setup every single time for every map, in every match. But it’s not even fun to play Inconceivable and Master in Gears 5 Horde. Whereas it was much more so in Gears 4 Horde to play Insane and Inconceivable. It offered more variety, and more than just “spam a Tri-Shot as a non-damage dealer” when it came to killing the enemies. Yes, the enemies were spongy but at the same time, a Torque Bow or Dropshot could insta kill almost anything on a headshot or direct hit(for the Dropshot), and they were actually fun to use as anyone and not just helplessly useless at even killing some Drones that survive a headshot from those weapons, especially when they’re an Elite, unless you have, you guessed it, a damage boost on those weapons or for headshots.
And you still used the base to make the enemies easier to kill/less dangerous. So even though Gears 5 Horde is supposed to be new it really isn’t. It just took Gears 4 Horde, made it more restrictive, nerfed the fun weapons into the ground completely, and made the enemies even more spongy and ridiculous. So much fun… not. It’s the sane or a similar experience but more restrictive and less fun with a complete lack of variety once you figure out how to deal with the bullet sponges properly, eg make them worthless.
1 Like