Horde is...Just unfair/passable on Higher Difficulties

Gears 5
#1

Horde is just…Passable on anything above Experienced. Heres my personal reasons why…;

  1. Mutators are Uninspring/Unfair - Who the heck on the team thought it was a good idea to throw in an extra Health/Dmg received modifier?? Horde already “Naturally” gets them at the highers waves. My goodness, this makes killing enemies such a chore. Almost like every damn enemy past wave 20 is a mini-Scion or something . All of the “good” mutators happen to be in “Escape”. Shame

Also, mutator placement is so out-of-place. Why is the “Ironman” modifier at the 2nd difficulty??? Wow. Definitely needs some revision/re-do

  1. Lack of Characters - You release 2 COG characters in October and only one of them is playable on Horde? slow clap Like even Einstein couldnt have thought of that. The DB has blue tint for Gears sake. Its not hard to tell him apart in combat.

  2. Hidden Recoil Mechanics - Why is there a ridiculous recoil increase at higher difficulties?? Wow. I really hope its not a “purpose” decision. At first I thought it was me and my controller. But after a few waves, I realized the Retro Lancers recoil was even worse than that on Gears 3. Such a cheap way to make the higher difficulties “harder”

  3. Skill cards - Icy precision card on Fahz is a joke. Skill cards being tied to certain weapons is an even bigger one. Dont fix what isnt broken? Tip of the iceberg is the fact youre FORCED to play at higher difficulties if you want the good Rare/Epic/Legendary cards. sigh

TC needs to address these things properly. Its almost like they completely forgot Horde is a game mode in this game

8 Likes
#2

I can’t speak on anything above Elite but I have routinely beat Elite Horde with randoms. It’s not even really that hard when you have people that know what they are doing and play a leveled up class. I remember at the beginning of Gears 4 thinking the harder difficulties were impossible to. But 6 months in once everybody had levelled classes and knew the meta you found out it really wasn’t that bad.

#3

I feel like one of the main problems is dependency. Only reason ive beaten horde On Elite was because of a good Engi/Jack combo. I cant help it when im being Outgunned by the Engis sentries. I cant stick my head out more than 4 seconds without being shot up the a55. I dont want to be a hinderance to the team. I guess only MAX cards would have to do. Which is ridiculous since Elite is only halfway up the difficulty wheel

#4

Well I do agree with you there. I would say advanced and above you need a Jack and Del. I would love to see the higher difficulties be beatable with any class combination but I just don’t see it happening. Those two classes are a must.

1 Like
#5

Custom game(s)on higher difficult levels,The host makes sure which rank you must be b4 joining in lobby,I’ve only tried 41-50 on insane Gamer left and I joined with Kate which was rank 11,but they didn’t kick me because she can be invisible if all went down,which they did,and I got some positive messages after the game😀

#6

I agree with most of your points (In particular lack of character selection - when compounded with very few skins, very few playstyles, limited cards and the no-duplicate mechanic).

I can’t attest to recoil increasing w/ difficulty. I know there’s an increased recoil mechanic for 5 in general, that at times feels significant. Maybe I just didn’t notice the correlation.

Some of the legendary cards are garbage, others are mediocre or broken. Fahz is getting an overhaul so hopefully we don’t need to deal with that. (If they wanted to make bonus damage to frozen enemies a passive ability for snipers or precision weapons themselves, okay).

Skills cards being tied to specific weapons isn’t all bad, but the lack of choice is a huge problem. My friend rocked a Hammerburst soldier in 4, and while underpowered to some degree then, it’s less than useless now after wave 20 even on Beginner. Some of that is the gun itself but the skills are also to blame.

Point being, add more suitable cards or widen what weapons skill cards impact.Instead of only getting a recoil bonus on the Lancer, Marcus should get that bonus on ALL lancer variants, if not all rifles (excluding the Claw, since it’s a lmg or whatever). In JD’s case I’d limit it to all lancer variants. Lore-wise he’s less experienced, balance wise he has his niche in bleed/explosives. Let Marcus be the rifle master.

Likewise with damage. If the developers want to encourage a certain weapon’s use, they can simply make the bonuses for said weapon be marginally higher. If JD gets bonus damage with all lancer variants, have the GL capped at 10-20% higher. If Marcus gets bonus damage and recoil with rifles, have them be 10-15% better with the OG chainsaw lancer.

Or at least add additional weapons to choose from. Let Kait have skills benefiting Retro or Talon for example, or Marcus with other rifles. Again, I’d exclude the Claw from most of this outside of future characters since it’s the go-to gun. Giving the Horde version of Mac a reduced-recoil Claw card makes sense to me for multiple reasons.

Being forced to play harder difficulties to get good cards is an issue I hadn’t considered before but agree it’s unfortunate. The loot box system in 4 caught a lot of sh**, but at least you could get lucky and nail a perfect card with credits earned from lower difficulties. Obviously it made more sense to play harder modes to get more currency, but at least you didn’t have to.

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#7

I agree. The hardest difficulties of Horde become near impossible using the majority of weapons and the game becomes an almighty JD-Lancer-GL-spamfest. No JD? Then get ready to eat poo and die! :neutral_face:

EDIT:

A couple if suggestions:

  1. Fahz needs a buff. Once you have the Execution Rules mutator you will need team mates who can kill the enemy reliably from distance. A passive skill of 20% headshot damage and higher ammo capacity would be fine.

  2. Allow characters to replenish grenades from zero. The grenade shouldn’t default to a flashbang once you’ve used up your frags or shocks on your next ammo box pick-up. Players having easier access to frags will help players playing on Execution Rules.

  3. Allow enemies to use pistols and players to be able to acquire and use other pistols.

  4. I’m a bit unsure about Sentries at the minute. They seem extremely weak and their range of fire seems inconsistent. I noticed that their actual range is shorter than their indicated range. Maybe the lock-on / tracking is just poorer than GOW4?

#8

Not to mention overreliance on Jack to provide power for more than a basic base(if power tap spawns are also bad, forget getting their bonuses) and keeping the team alive. Not having Jack makes things WAY more difficult even on Insane with execution and damage modifiers off. Which doesn’t seem right. Counterintuitive to trying out different team compositions.

#9

Agreed. I hope TC take this into consideration when they create the next batch of Horde Heroes. I wouldn’t like them to just replicate the same skillsets, cards etc but they also need to be balanced and useful enough to stand toe to toe with the existing core characters.

#10

Passives in general are very underwhelming and it wouldn’t hurt to give classes more meaningful passives, or multiple versions of the current calibre.

100%. Grenades are useless now, and the inability to replenish from zero short of buying them limits certain playstyles. I loved me some grenade soldier in 4, but alas - no grenades from zero and no grenade skill cards. Why Marcus doesn’t have grenade skills for an alternate build is beyond me.

I agree with enemies and pistols, too. JD access to a Boltok to compliment the short range of gl and synergize with his headshot perk.

#11

The only time I use grenade is on my CoG. That’s just to recharge my ult.

Yeah the only time I use pistols is on Fahz before I get a locker or on CoG for the snub headshts give stim. CoG has snub dmg perk like Keegan but your not killing much with a snub. Now if it was pistols in general and cog could find a boltok the perks might be good. If we had increased dmg for pistols and a recoil reduction id use the talon more.
No love for pistols in this gears. Even picking up a meat shield is damn near useless. Snipers either shoot through it or hit your arm.

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#12

The problem with the higher difficulties is you’re relying on 4 main characters to win. JD for bleed, Kait for bleed, Del and Jack. It’s redundant and boring really. You want kills? Nope that’s jd and kaits job. You want to get power? That’s up to jack. Want to build that’s del. There is one open spot for someone but that’ll probably be taken by cog because of team revive so you sol…
Welp that’s horde.

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#13

Killing a Swarmak on Master is very hard even with 2 maxed JD at the same time, the damm sentinels/guardians with that stupid indestructible shields, 5 or more Bastions protecting Scions with 100% accurate shots is insane. Those who thought is a good idea must be fired.
Example: Min. 30:26 on Master Horde with friends
Not to mention a normal Horde Match would take up to 3 hours, I can’t be sit

Say it’s unfair and ridiculous isn’t enough to express my thoughts. Marcus with maxed lancer and perks is still useless, only using tri shots can help. Sarah Connor is sh!@%#t. I would never use It and I tried to give her an oportunity. That’s why some used glitchs like Kat hologram or lvl 3 barriers glitch to have a chance and get epic and legendary skill cards.

#14

I read in another post the barrier glitch is fixed.
Not to spread more glitches but is there one for Kats hologram? I think I heard something about it one day but never seen anyone using Kat for her hologram. It feels like I’m the only person who tries to use Kat at masters -.-

#15

I’m pretty sure the Kat Hologram glitch is fixed now. It was a thing for about 3-4 weeks I guess from launch?

It worked in the same way as Emile’s Dropshield where you could make it permanent so it never disappears, so you had lots of protective bubble barriers plus indestructible decoys.

#16

That does sound broken.

#17

I already know those are fixed, what I’m trying to say is the game forces some players to use glitches.

#18

Which trolls could use to make a map or location unplayable.

#19

Yes. We really need more viable chars at masters. It feels hopeless or at least very difficult if you dont have a Jack for healing and a jd or kait for bleed. I dont even think a masters without a Del/Kat is even possible.

#20

Just to add, you could create multiple Holograms and Bubble Shields if Emile or Kat quit, rejoined and deployed it again.

It takes time to set up, but gave teams a big advantage.