Yes. And a disc means nothing.
Some disc-based game are playable offline.
Some are not. These latter discs will be useless once the game’s servers are gone. Sometimes small communities pop up to support a game through private servers but they are few and far between.
I guarantee our Gears UE - 5 discs will be useless in the coming years since they’re glorified download codes.
Single-player games aren’t excluded from this reality either, you can’t play Doom Eternal without making a Bethesda account. Hell I remember Black Ops 1 not allowing you to play the dlc maps offline.
As for small communities…enjoy them while you can because they could end up under the publisher’s boot at any moment. Remember the Nostalrius fiasco?
This is interesting, but also rather a sore subject. The new adopted style is disliked for a reason, and that reason is greed. Micro Transactions are a disease, and it effects the players, it is also considered a cheat by some, such as a Pay to Win strategy.
What happened to the old ways, such as Halo Reach for instance. Bungie made a full game and created map packs to be released over the year, an option was there for you to buy individual map packs or a season pass. Planning, that is what is lacking in todays games, it is, we shall build a game and work on it once it is released, than we will chuck in some map packs in time. No planning, no clue and no one likes it.
Honestly though, what is, or was wrong with what Bungie did with Halo Reach. The old days were the best. There was structure, games worked, and they were playable. For example, even today, we fans of the franchise, whether it be Halo or even Gears, we comment on how the previous games were better. Halo, it is Halo 3, Gears it is Gears 3.
Gears of War 4 was the begining of a great idea, sadly, just not enough planing was implemented, Micro Transactions and an open Class System. There were some great things in Gears of War 4. Gears 5 tried to improve on Gears of War 4, but got some things ridiculously wrong, and of course too much too some, and as for planning, yeah, not even going there.
In the state of it all, the older ways were better. Gears of War 4 and Gears 5 prove this point. And this working progress crap that is todays game, it really is crap.
I think man that with that statement you wrote pretty much summarizes everything to be honest.
This is what I mean. I empathize with your frustration and share some of it, especially toward the grinding mechanics.
But “better” and “worse” are subjective. Some people enjoy this game through and through. Some people hate the older games. Example of a thread from 7 years ago full of complaints about how bad Gears 3 and Epic games made some people feel:
The main reason people are disappointed is because of unrealistic expectations.
The previous developer sold the franchise because it was getting too expensive to develop (Epic for Gears)
The new developer was created with the sole purpose of making one brand of games (TC for Gears)
The monetization model changes from discrete purchase/dlc to micro transactions/loot boxes and games as a service. (Gears 4).
The current game was advertised as having a battle pass system.
Gears UE is still broken 2+ years later.
When all these changes occurred, the people who hate this type of game weren’t paying attention. There are instances of developers lying before the game is released (see No Man’s Sky) but that didn’t happen here. If anything, Gears of War 4’s entire life cycle was a big warning sign of what to expect from Gears 5.
Heck, the 14-year tradition of Gears games being absolutely terrible online and filled with lag and glitches is somehow a huge blind spot for some people. Why would you expect anything different at this point? Do people think Gears 6 is going to be different?
You could also argue that this developer has had an incredibly muddied public-relations messaging campaign post-launch that is filled with cliffhangers, unanswered questions, and unresolved plot threads and sometimes even falsehoods (intentional or otherwise). Which is a symptom of Games as a Service.
To anyone who hates this game, I say move on, unless they are the type of person who is fueled by rage in which case, carry on with your hate parade (not you, @Useless_At_Halo. You’re chill. Just a lot of other people on this forum who don’t have anything constructive to add).
Game as a service… What they should’ve focus on. Base building and clans. They have about 3 million players. And only a small amount that stays to play the game after the campaing. Why…
Well they are not interested in tower defence or PVP.
So maybe they should’ve focus on something. Like Monster hunter and diablo. Collecting and base building. Expand the community to a new crowd and keep the old community happy with new lore and exploring the world.
Take parts of the campaing and make differnt kinds of side missions, bounties. Gather energy and parts needed for building upgrading your base.
3 player goes out hunting and killing mobs of swarms and bosses. Go into “dungeons” Escapes. Here could also different kinds of side missions been held. Bounties, rescue mission, lower the threath level etc.
Upgradable base, cutomizable weapons and armors to survive different enviroments …
Keep the PVP and Horde scenarios aswell. Where the players can gain energy and other part to upgrade the base. Let them make clans to gain clan things…
I mean its the way to go if you want to build a bigger audince and a game as a service where player feel they can create a bigger and wider world.
Now it feels more like we are begging them to give us what we had and balance the game… Not a service.
Its more begging and crying out to get the base game.
This right here sums up my frustration. I can live with GaaS. I don’t particularly care for the “Seasons” or in gears case “Operations”, but it’s where we are. The only thing I’ve bought from the store was Mechanic Baird and that was with iron from the Tour. That’s only because I’ve rocked that skin since 3. I have zero interest in buying any weapon skins or anything else really. So while I don’t care for micro transactions, I just ignore them.
But your comment summed up my frustration. The lack of communication is aggravating. I’m sure Tuesday’s patch wasn’t anything special, but don’t act brand new and not say anything. The dev streams raise more questions than answers a lot of the time. They ignore any PvE questions or never give a clear answer.
I don’t expect for them to divulge every single thing but come on. We won’t get anything new until they reveal Op4’s release date. They won’t talk about the actual operation until maybe a week before. That announcement will likely be spread out over that week so we won’t get the full details until the day before. They didn’t even reveal the Carmines until minutes before they dropped in the game lol.
Maybe I expect too much idk. But they brag about being transparent but we really don’t know much. We know the ranked and PvE overhaul are coming but have no details on either or an ETA. They’ve talked about a lot of things they’ve been working on for months (community service for quitters, ally XP changes, re-up rewards and XP) and we still have no clue when any are coming. They can’t even talk about when the roadmap is coming lol.
I know things take time and the circumstances the past few months haven’t helped, but it gets tiring hearing “we’re working on it” and “we can’t talk about it”. Or months of silence and say “that’s been de-prioritized as we’ve shifted our focus”.
Sorry for the novel lol. Wasn’t directed at you just getting tired of hearing the same thing.
I’m actually in favor of creating these new experiences as you suggested in your post. Building community tools and infrastructure worked pretty well for World of Warcraft and to a lesser extent Destiny 2.
Gears Tactics and Gears POP are two examples of this franchise trying new things. Escape isn’t for me, though I appreciate the attempt at innovation.
The last time a mainline Gears game (Judgment) tried to innovate, the overall reception wasn’t great.
And I understand your last point about “begging for basic functionality.” I think if we’re at that point, there are much bigger problems at play and we won’t get what we have asked for until many months or years later.
I look at people who bought Fallout 76, Diablo 3, GTA V, etc at launch and feel simultaneously empathetic toward them and critical of them for their purchase.
Gaming should be about fun. Games as a Service as a definition have features which legacy players will not find fun. Which makes me wonder why they buy those games at launch expecting to have a fun experience.
Not at all. It’s really refreshing to hear from you and I really value hearing about people’s experiences and perspectives even if I don’t always agree.
First let me say I’m really happy to see your posts about “No What’s Up This Week.” Always gives me a laugh.
Secondly, I got back to the forums in March (the last time I was this active was Gears 3) and the first thing I noticed was the poor messaging on the dev streams.
If you are interested in checking my posting history, you’ll see that one of the first things I posted was “The Coalition says too much on the stream and in such an unstructured way.” I remember @GhostofDelta2 disagreed with me because he prefers as much communication and transparency as possible.
I’m on the opposite end. When a developer has so many channels of communication, some of it unfiltered (Twitter, Streams, This Week In Gears, What’s Up, etc), the messaging is almost guaranteed to be self-contradictory and ire-inducing for players who are heavily invested in the game.
So please pardon my novel but I just wanted to say I can understand how you feel.
Games as a service is great. However they are many times made the wrong way and not as they where intended. Game as a service provides a fully functunal game. And communicates with the community that gets created by players enjoying the game. The developers can then see what players enjoy and how to contineu to develop there game. Not make a game and plan for dlcs and what to sell before the game has been released. That is not game as a service. That is bad planning and bad market analytics. Assuming to know what to sell and whats good for the players.
The players that plays a game allot starts to like different parts and things about a game and then the need for new functions or extentions is becoming needed or called for. And its then the developers and marketing can start to decide where to build to continue to meet the demand from the players. The more players the more money the more developers the bigger the company grows.
Yes, in theory, but not always in practice. GaaS can be great but expecting it to be great early on, especially the first year, is a recipe for disaster in my opinion.
GaaS does have benefits. Lower initial development costs. Constant stream of revenue to support ongoing development. A game that changes due to user feedback.
GaaS games I’ve enjoyed after they got years of polish: GTA V, Destiny 2, Smite, Warframe
But at launch, there are a lot of examples of high profile GaaS games falling flat with a significant portion of the community: Anthem, Fallout 76, GTA V, Sea of Thieves, Final Fantasy XIV, Rainbow Six Siege, Battlefront 2, Diablo 3
All of these have made me have a strict “no buy” policy for GaaS at launch, despite the potential for greatness.
Games as a service has nothing to do with physical or digital media… it has to do with how the developers choose to support their product post launch.
For example, you can own a physical copy of Gears 5, but your experience will be identical to the rest of us who own the digital version. Additionally, now that video games are so server dependent, the benefits of having a physical copy wont even matter soon, as many of these games wont even let you play campaign if you’re not online.
Haha, Digital Rights Management. A double edged sword.
I should have ended my post with “enjoy your plastic”.
This was discussed on reddit, but they should have let Liam take point on questions and had someone else play. Don’t even need the person playing to actually be on camera. Of course that’s not exactly doable now lol.
A lot of the problem with the dev streams is Dana fumbling over his words and the impression he doesn’t fully understand what some are actually asking. If it’s not that then we get a typical PR response or the “we can’t talk about it.”
I’m the type I want more communication and as much transparency as possible. But you’re right the dev streams aren’t structured at all. The what’s up have turned into recaps and are almost a waste of time anyway. A few of the recent This Week in Gears don’t even have an actual blog, it’s just in a tweet.
I fully expected there to not be a what’s up this week, even if they said last week there would be one. We aren’t getting any real information until Op4 is close. I’d love to be wrong but that’s the way the Operations are designed. Bring as many people back when it drops, have a mid-Operation drop of characters, then pretty much nothing until the next one. The PvE balance update won’t be coming until Op4.
I appreciate the kind words and glad I gave you a laugh with my post lol. It’s great to have actual and constructive conversations.
To clarify, I also want quality communication. My main issue with the dev stream answers is that so much time is wasted answering questions in a way that doesn’t give us any real info.
I much preferred when BChaps curated a thread where he filtered questions and gave answers to already answered questions. He stopped this after TC started ignoring those threads.
I’m watching today’s stream and it has been fun to watch but the amount of news/announcements is zero.
When they announced on Twitter they had this Domez person on stream(don’t really know much on who he is), I suspected this would be the case. Didn’t seem like there would be much talk going on in regards to news or anything… and probably mainly Versus oriented.
Rise DomeZ is a former pro Gears player. He recently retired to pursue content creation. He makes a ton of tutorials on how to improve your PvP gameplay on his YouTube channel.
Alright, fair enough. But my suspicions about the stream were right then. Hopefully they’ll get that PvE one going soon.