Horde is Broken

Gears 5
#1

I hosted a game and was able to pick the modifiers and play the character that I wanted. Had an awesome team and beat 1-50.

It sucked.

Even with every variable set to one’s liking, this game mode is a huge disappointment.

Complaints about the embarrassing lack of content aside (characters, maps, skill cards), this version isn’t remotely as enjoyable as previous iterations.

More than half the perks are inconsequential.

Damage and health scaling of enemies is a mess.

Combat is frustrating, with characters getting dropped far too easily and enemies soaking damage.

Skill cards are underwhelming, with bonuses often being very limited. Or they’re just broken. Or, like Kait and Fahz’s gold cards, they make no sense and are useless.

Viability of each hero is severely imbalanced, and viable characters are often relegated to one build.

Bastion shields being 100% impenetrable (instead of providing massive damage resistance or soaking huge damage before collapse) was a mistake.

Match rewards are a joke and matches themselves are often tedious and thankless.

Leveling a character is unrewarding and dull.

Characters not being able to upgrade their select fortifications at least to level 2 is a misstep.

Hammerburst is useless. To an extent the lancer is as well. Neither the hammerburst or Retro receive any love from skill cards.

Changes to grenade/ammo system leave grenades incredibly underused and limit playstyles.

Can anybody think of anything else, that doesn’t include the obvious need for more maps/characters?

16 Likes
#2

Pistols. They are practically useless at a certain point besides maybe for Fahz having a Boltok. They can’t be put into lockers, their damage is just severely lacking at a certain point/difficulty(relative to enemy health/damage). Enemies don’t use them at all so you can’t find ammo for them. They get no skills for damage bonuses or other attributes unlike in Escape(though I doubt many use the pistol skills in the first place).

Everything else is pretty much covered. Lack of variety(including maps in that cause I hate Exhibit for playing with Kait and it’s too easy of a map, and I refuse to play the stale 4 maps which everyone and their mother seem to be playing… this isn’t an insult, mods), and having the “Jack, JD, Del, everything else is filler and preferably Kait for one of the two remaining spots” ‘meta’ already firmly set in place are my main issues right now. I don’t even want to play JD because of how ridiculously OP he is(I’ve made the experience myself both as and with a JD on the team), which only leaves me with Kait to play until maybe December if more characters arrive that month. Not exactly great. Kind of makes me just want to play something else(besides doing Master Escape hives for the medal) till better stuff comes. And hopefully actually balanced characters.

1 Like
#3

Solid point with pistols. I’d like to see ports of the Escape characters into Horde, perhaps with boosts to their pistol skills to make them competitive.

Mac already has bleed on actives with the Boltok. Making it bleed on crits and actives would be on the way to making him viable in Horde. Likewise with Lahni and the Talon.

I do like that Mac specializes with the boltok but he’d also need something like a reduced kick skill for the Claw. To mirror that Lahni could get a Custom Retro card.

The COG gear has some pistol-related perks but I can’t attest to their usefulness.

Edit: Adding the boomshield to Horde would encourage pistol use but I don’t see that happening.

#4

I personally have been having a great time with Horde. I do personally like the defined class roles that people are forced to stay in all though I realize some people are not a fan. Some of your points really depend what difficulty you are playing on. The mode varys widely from beginner to master as do the weapons and roles and their performance. I would like to see that become more consistent across all difficulties. Some roles feel great at the lower difficulties but then seem useless at the high end. I also agree with you on the build diversity. It feels very limited at the moment with basically one viable build per class. I can only assume now that this game has gone to live service model that this was by design where future skills and builds will be drip fed to us.
I would like to see the escape characters be brought into horde as well. Not really sure why they aren’t already. Some things you also mentioned like the grenades are also true and very strange. Seeing a frag grenade in Horde is almost non existent. I personally would like to see Beast mode return as well so us PVE players can use some of the locust characters and unlock medals pertaining to them without having to play PVP.

#5

I feel like Horde isn’t meant to be played on beginner/easy, but even on that difficulty you have to keep your head on a swivel once you get to wave 30+.

On 4, you have to be new to the game or terrible to get your butt kicked on easy. Likewise with normal.

In 5 the first modifiers include ironman, which I don’t mind but find very unforgiving to new/casual players.

The next two are health and damage, which see enemies soaking damage and dropping players regularly by wave 21. Wave 40-50 with these two modifiers on seems like insane/inconceivable was on 4, not to mention you’re facing a mandatory wipe unless you play with custom modifiers that don’t include iron man.

Forget about Master. I like the unique difficulty modifiers but ultimately TC is still just making the game artificially harder by severely increasing health and damage. The scaling of this damage is out of whack both on the 10-wave adjustments and the modifiers.

I don’t mind difficult. Usually I have to play on harder difficulties to stay interested. But this isn’t interesting. It’s artificial and tedious and makes most of the characters feel boring at best, and useless at worst. Not a good recipe for fun.

Sure I can just play beginner or custom games not including the health/damage buffs. However, that only addresses half the problem and the XP you receive is miserable. It’d still be tedious.

6 Likes
#6

Was honestly expecting to be able to build friendly DBs to help you like you got the choice to summon them in the campaign that’d be fun

Imagine Guardian/Sentinel Launch station which has two pads for them. The team can activate them for a short duration until they need a recharge

4 Likes
#7

imo This should have been Del’s Ult - summon a Guardian/Sentinel to follow him around until it dies or the timer expires.

2 Likes
#8

The snipers need buffing. The longshot and embar are under strengthed, even with Fahz’ cards.sniper ammo needs to be increased. I dont know if its lag or too extreme distance drop off, but some tuning is definitely required.

3 Likes
#9

Fahz is getting a Major overhaul soon as many feel sniping is underpowered

#11

Fauz needs an overhaul, damn every character needs one.

1 Like
#12

I’d argue the entire mode needs an overhaul. Especially with how it does difficulty. Not being allowed to restart should never be a mandatory requirement to increase difficulty, it’s just a fun vampire. Damage and health of enemies relative to player health is also completely unbalanced(a complaint already made in Gears 4 Horde which fell on deaf ears). And the aimbot also needs working on. It’s ridiculous that I can try rolling away from a DR-1 firing its Salvo only to be caught in the explosions mid-roll and get downed anyway when I timed it right to dodge the first shot fired.

4 Likes
#13

Nah its simply a ■■■■ boring mode now…u pretty much covered it to be fair.

#14

So far been enjoying horde for the most part with the exception of a few glitches/issues. Power gets in some places where only Kate would be able to get it if she has her pick up distance on. AI on roofs of buildings and teleporting. I do like the weapon restriction and fabrication buying because it makes everyone play their role. Now the character lock I do NOT like. Why if you like say Fahz do you have to be a sniper? If you earn a character or want to be a certain one you should be what class you want with no duplicate classes. @TC_Octus @the-coalition

#15

@AmicableWall421
I agree about the iron mode. Iron mode should be a selectable difficulty, but it definitely should not be the first difficulty.

@buscobuzzy
I’ve been thinking the same thing for a while. One of the several things I liked about gears 4 better. You choose your calls and the characters are just skins. Though sometimes a second of a class can help. Still, they should lock the classes at maximum 2

#16

Im enjoying Gears 5 horde a thousand times more than the boring slog that was Gears 4 horde.

I think the hero system is great and it will give TC the flexibility to add many more playstyles than the Gears 4 class system did. There will hopefully be a playstyle for everyone once the hero roster is more filled out.

#17

Respectfully I feel you’re in the minority viewing 4 as a slog in comparison.

Games in 5 last longer, against less enemies. It’s the same builds with the same characters on the same few maps.

Every single JD spamming a locker of GLs and every Marcus/Fahz hiding in the back with trishots, with all three of them rarely bothering to fire their primary weapons/fire mode, is not how the game should be played.

Spending 7k power for a 1% upgrade health perk is unrewarding, as is the handful of 5-scrap drops and blood sprays you get for finishing a game.

5 Likes
#18

Gears 4 horde was just sentry spam, turret spam(til they nerfed them), hammer of dawn and sniper strike spam.

You basically just watched as those things killed everything in sight. Matches seem to progress much faster in Gears 5 horde so Im surprised you’d think its the opposite.

#19

Which difficulties have you played on so far? Elite to Master have everyone waiting for Jack to wait to forge all the stupid weapons on the map if the last enemy is left alive which draws the match out horribly. Like, 3 hours or more drawn out on Master. And you spend so much time just killing enemies. This Horde is anything but faster than 4.

2 Likes
#20

Admittedly I haven’t cleared master difficulty yet but on insane or below it seems to be faster, especially if you have a JD and Kait killing things quickly.

I feel like in Gears 4 it was well over 2 hours to complete 50 waves unless it was a speed run while in Gears 5 you complete a match in 2 hours or less.

#21

So I agree with your post except that the mode sucks overall. It is mostly what I play now and I could stand for some improvements. Some better cards, some more info, more viability, definitely better rewards/exp, but to say that it sucks overall? No. I don’t agree. Good post though.

Like take for instance damage reduction perks. They max at 30% and that doesn’t even feel like it matters on the higher difficulties/waves.

2 Likes