Here's wat will make Gears 5 blow up

Gears 5
#1

First of all i think MP gameplay in Gears 4 is pretty solid. TC did a great job of paying attention to the nitty gritty details and got a lot of the Gears “feel” right. Huge improvement over past titles and a lot closer to where it should be than i had expected given the trend the series was going in. I don’t think they need to deviate too much gameplay wise.

I think what will bring Gears 5 to the next level is the “extra” stuff. The features supplemental to gameplay that add depth to the competitive culture that keeps a game alive years after release.

  1. We need more playlist consolidation and, i know it’s a pipe dream, but universal tuning as well (at the end of the day i prefer a comp and casual tuning rather than just casual tuning or something in between which leaves no one happy). Consolidated player pools equals faster matches, better connections, more equal skill levels. I cannot express how important player pool size is to the overall quality of the multiplayer experience. Realistically maybe we have just Execution and KotH, and then one “casual” TDM playlist to warm up or mess around. Add in a special event playlist as well.

  2. Next should be the ranking system. I’m more than happy after all these years TC decided to give us a real ranking system. While it is definitely a step in the right direction they should expand on this for Gears 5. We need more stats, more medals, and maybe even more ranks. Everything should be comparable among friends and among the general population. Cooler ranked emblems, display the rank in more and different kind of ways (ie. league shows it on your character portrait, on your lobby icon, etc), ranking up should feel like a big deal, breaking through to another division should feel like a real feat. We’re not all kids who are are afraid to have our feelings hurt or want to be told we’re awesome all the time. A lot of us are adults and we want to compete. We want something to aim for. We want that coveted rank and when we get it we want to feel rewarded after all our hard work and determination.

  3. Party size filtering! One of the most frustrating things about any MP experience is getting matched against a coordinated team as a solo player. The Best solution is to only match similar party sizes up behind the scenes. The reason why this works is because if you only let a certain combination of party sizes play against that same combination, Rank is actually party-size independent! Meaning it doesn’t matter what size party you are playing with or against, your ranked always means the same thing. I think the potential trade offs of having to wait longer for a match are well worth it if you ask me. And if Gears 5 is as good as i know it can be, we’ll have a thriving matchmaking pool that won’t even be affected by party size filtering.

  4. Lastly and this is probably the biggest one from a profitability standpoint, i see a ton of potential in merit-based aesthetics. What i mean by this is skins that are unlocked through a merit-based feat (for example kill all 5 enemies in a ranked execution match 10 times) and then purchasable with real money. The reason why i think this model is the future of micro transactions is because it incentivizes the purchase of aesthetics, without using any cheap tactics to achieve this. What? How? Yes, this is a fair way to increase the spending of the consumer but also in a fair and honest way. This is a long term mutually beneficial strategy for games that want to remain profitable for a long time. And if it needs to be said, quality over quantity as well! I’m sure most of us would rather have a few cool an appropriately themed skins then a bunch of random rainbow cutesy skins. And i’m sure most of us would even be willing to pay more money for a product we really want. Also TC should explore the various types of aesthetics. Taunts, executions, name decorations, etc. there are plenty of possibilities. More opportunity for honestly earned profit.

Thanks for listening, Looking forward to seeing what TC can do for us in G5.

1 Like
#2

TC have already said that it’s difficult to have one tuning because the playerbase have a preference.

I much prefer Core where the rifles are actually useful.

Others prefer Comp.

I can only see keeping the split as being the best option.

I have yet to see anyone want Core Escalation anyway so keeping it Comp for those players is a nice choice for them.

KOTH needs to stay Core for the alternative playerbase that want that.

I’d only have TDM & KOTH as Core Modes and Escalation, Execution and 2v2 as Comp.

Your second point I kind of agree with. More ranks and changes will mean people get to visually see the change more often.

Your final point, as long as items can be directly purchased then it doesn’t matter how else you can acquire them but RNG needs to go.

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#3

I don’t think splitting the game like this this is good for the long term, but if it’s what needs to be done for us to keep the more traditional style of Gears then fine. My point was just that the smaller the number of playlists and the more universal the gameplay the better quality MP experience IMO.

And yes the items should be purchased directly. We can have some low hanging fruit so everyone has the opportunity to buy a skin or whatever, but there should be some more challenging skins as well (and i’m sure more hardcore players would probably be willing to spend more money too).

I think RNG skins are more or less meaningless and not a long term profitable strategy

#4

@Yogy_DMT
This is along term mutually beneficial strategy for games that want to remain profitable for a long time.

Of course they want to keep making money, it’s their job to make games that we play. It takes a lot of people and a long time to make games. Do you ever read game credits? The developers are taking a risk of not making revenue off Gears 5 since it’s going to be on Xbox Game Pass.

#5

Well written with an objective and fair point of view, wish more posts were like this.

I agree with your ideas.