Randoms. So he has little control over what’s built.
Well then I guess all I can offer is that an individuals expectations of a mode calibrated around extreme teamwork/coordination should be adjusted/lowered if they do not engage in coordinated teamwork…
There really isn’t any other solution to the hard enemies besides teamwork and coordination, unless all your randoms innately know what to do, and do it, without talking… Very, very rare circumstance, even with high reups.
Idk man. I think a couple of others and myself are merely scared that these opinions of limited experience are going to be heard and ruin the beautiful and intricate balance that horde 4.0 is offering.
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I don’t know, I haven’t actually tried it. It would be a pretty big handicap, so higher difficulties would probably be out of the question. For someone who dislikes the hero system it might still be more fun than the current conventional horde?
As I’ve said earlier I really like the hero system, I just feel that TC has very much failed to create a proper balance.
I’m not sure how healthy it is for a game to suggest that we start hardbanning certain overpowered characters in lobbies and consider that solved, rather than calling for the devlopers to do their job and balance the game. In other game communitys, banning a character would be a last resource.
Not sure where you’ve been. Custom lobbies specifying certain characters has been a thing since Gears 4.
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I think you’re seeing it the wrong way my friend.
I see it this way:
TC offered a hugely difficult and expansive skill ladder for this horde mode, which can be climbed at any speed, and to whatever height an individual likes.
You can take jd, kait, or not.
You can use jack as a bastion through walls, or not.
You can become a masterful engineer and basically solo the waves till bosses, or not.
It’s all up to you how your experience goes, well, and your teammates of course.
My point is, people aren’t “hardbanning” anyone. They simply choose to have a harder game sometimes, and an easy laid back farm game other times. I think we all do this, sometimes we want to challenge ourselves, and sometimes we want an efficient grind.
JD/kait/bastion jack/turret spam are all efficient grind options you have a choice of engaging in 
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I can see your point now, even though I can’t agree with it. I have never felt the need to grind horde for farming, I only play for fun and adjust the difficulty according to the challenge I prefer at the moment. As such, any imbalance in the system or presence of meta teams to me is a detriment to “fun”. I feel difficulty should be achieved by changing the modifiers, not by changing the team.
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Different people different goals man, heck, different game different goals.
Some days I boost all day, play 1-2 games for fun, then hit the grind again. Other days, the opposite. Just whatever hits the mood ya know?
Be aware… lots of text ahead. Read at your own peril. Or whenever you got time. Hopefully it clears some things about me as a player up, though.
Now that I have time to type this up properly, let me start this off with some things I would like to mention beforehand :
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I used to play Gears 4 Horde avidly, beforehand. Like, a LOT. Nearly every day for the better part of the first six months after Gears 4s release and was having a lot of fun doing it(I stuck with the game for more or less two years, getting it one or two months after launch in December and starting Horde in more or less January). Hardly had any issues with the class based system other than that it seemed a little too reliant on having a Scout with Deposit Bonus for power collection purposes. Speaking of 4s Scout, its only real existential purpose was to collect power and didn’t get any proper tanking abilities until they added more skills to the classes, which made it just about tolerable because you didn’t get too much time to kill with power collection duties, and building was not your role so it could feel pretty boring being that role for 2+ hours. Had the most fun playing the mid-difficulty level(Hardcore) but also did a bunch of higher difficulty matches
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I quite liked being the engineer in Gears 4 and experimenting with various base setups mostly geared towards assisting the team in killing the enemies, and building bases with as much power efficiency in mind as possible, rather than just throwing Sentries just about everywhere to make them do the work. This involved placing barriers in places where enemies naturally passed through, mostly Level 2s to conserve power, and Level 3s or 4s in case they did get through there(basically fallback points or last line of defense cause they’re rather power hungry), and past any decoys placed to distract them and if the Shock Sentries weren’t enough help for the team to finish them. No barrier boxes, however, not in the way you can do them in 5, because certain enemies such as explosive Trackers did a lot of damage to them and the Barrier health generally did not seem to be as high, plus once something was destroyed it would be gone forever with some power in its place, so keeping them alive was a priority for me, more so since there were fabricator levels and you could not build Level 1s or 2s once you reached Level 2 or 3 for the fabricator.
So I would often not place them sideways and not in boxes, instead placing decoys in spots between the first and second line of them, or occasionally outside. This includes many matches on the two highest difficulties, which were Insane and Inconceivable, where if the map and circumstances allowed it I’d build fairly extensive bases with a bit of thought put into them, not relying on MG Sentry support except for further back to cover spots used by Guardians and Sentinels or in case of breakthroughs(one such setup even took out one or two Carriers on wave 40 Insane once when everyone else got killed somehow and I was unable to revive them before they get killed). It seems somewhat identical to what you refer to with your area of operations and base zone where lockers and other stuff is kept, even if it may be hard to imagine.
Impact was one of my most liked Gears 4 maps because its spawn location allowed you to both keep a core area for the base and build out further from there, to a point where it could slow enemies down on whatever path they took and the combination of decoys, Shock Sentries and barriers made it much easier to pick them off, or just keep it small and simple which I never liked doing because I felt it was actually more risked than to create multiple layers of barriers/defenses so if one point got overrun it didn’t mean instant failure or having the enemies in the middle of your base. The point I made where one such “fortress” took up almost an entire third of the map, which allowed it to finish off not one but two Carriers(with some assistance from myself with a Dropshot, of course) on Insane once was on that very map, and that was a match where there was just three of us left at a certain point, with a Sniper, Scout and me as engi, so it was good enough even for that. Of course, the other two being decent teammates also helped.
- Other times, I would limit the base to further back(when I was still learning what worked and such for the highest difficulty, or if the team just wasn’t good enough to let me build out further), like my first attempt at Inconceivable without any MG Sentries. Just some barriers, two Shock Sentries, two manned turrets and decoys to hold off the enemies. Worked like a charm and felt pretty rewarding when we didn’t fail once even with some Kestrels trying to mess us up on wave 50, even though it was a fairly simplistic and small setup. Some time later people (finally) started discovering the usefulness of keeping Dropshots to kill enemies since they could one shot almost everything except for bosses on a direct impact or headshot, so relying on turrets was mostly a thing of the past unless somebody asked to have one when that became the most prominent way of playing outside of the engineer using Sentries as offensive tools(mostly unnecessary if you ask me, but you cannot dictate people how to play).
Basically, I’m not a stranger to rendering enemies mostly ineffective on higher difficulties as an engineer. But this kind of building seems to have become a lot more rare in Gears 5 where Dels or Bairds either just build a fairly simplistic base, or just rely on Sentries a lot. Or it was never very common to be a support oriented engineer when playing with randoms to begin with.
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From time to time I’d even do a decoy only build which was not that effort intensive or requiring of thought to make function, seeing as it just involved putting loads of them out there. which gave the enemy so many distractions it was like shooting fish in a barrel. Until some Guardians or Sentinels showed up as their AIs either got way less attracted by a decoy, or just not at all, going straight for players instead. Nothing a well placed Dropshot did not solve, however(which is no longer a thing as now, the Dropshot no longer has one shot kill capabilities on a direct hit or headshot, sadly… was a lot of fun to do that). Could you describe the Lancer GL as 4s Dropshot? Maybe, but in my opinion the GL has a much lower skill requirement than the Dropshot where you need at least some basic idea of when to time the drop of the projectile so it either homes in on a target or goes straight down on it. If good enough with it, there is not even a direct LoS requirement for the weapon. The GL? You just point the targeting laser at an enemy and the rocket propelled projectile does everything else for you if it doesn’t hit something on the way or explodes on the ceiling. Boring. The Boomshot at least requires you to compensate for its ballistic trajectory if fired at long ranges.
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I’m open to “taking risks” or more open approaches, at that. When I had basically gotten to the point where I could make it a lot easier to beat the highest difficulty settings, I had started experimenting or wanting to use different spots on the various maps to try them out, but so many people just want(ed) to play it safe, only ever using the spawn setup locations, always on the same side of the map, which was eventually boring. Never had much success using LFG either.
But I no longer play an engineer in 5 because some genius at TC thought what the Gears players totally wanted was an MMO/RPG style “hero” system and I can’t just put any role on the two characters I like enough from a personality standpoint to use them, Kait and Lizzie(heavily favoring the latter as it now stands). No offense to Del but he doesn’t interest me enough to really use him even if an engineer. Neither does Baird, really. Or any of the other characters. Or maybe I just no longer find the engineering role appealing. Don’t know for sure, really. But the hero stuff certainly has played into me no longer doing base building in 5 when I quite liked doing it in 4.
Just don’t think this hero stuff has any business being in Gears due to the very nature of a character. At least, I think it should be kept to spinoff titles like J was if anything. Different subject, but it’s part of why I currently am not fond of the existing Horde and why I want a version closer to Gears 3 that is more balanced around not having any sort of skill card boosts, but with free fortification building and placement. The whole system really doesn’t work in my favor.
Also, due to the nature of some… personal aspects, which do not necessarily impede upon communication via text chat or mic, though I mostly use text to communicate if necessary or wanted(mic only finds use if someone decides to invite me to a party, but I’m not a big talker so most of what I say is necessary things or calling the positions of enemies out). I do not really have many people to play with, and the ones I could currently are mostly just preoccupied with grinding everything XP related out as fast as possible over having fun(too many players seem to be, otherwise I wouldn’t understand nearly everybody requesting for a JD in their Horde lobby even when it’s a match with the easy mods on), which is not a concept I really get behind and have abandoned after attempting to get anywhere in Gears 4s Wings, or obtaining all its achievements(I stopped somewhere at 3,500/4,000 GS for it) because it was just getting in my way of enjoying my playtime.
Now, to get to some of the other points made.
That’s already two things I rarely ever see in my games. Hardly anybody even seems to bother putting any decoys out any longer despite them still being useful(though they may need to be Level 3 or 4 to be of the most use). Have only seen three or four engineers bother to try using the damn things, even though they make life so much easier for players. And while I have seen the barrier box strategy in use a few times, it seems to be criminally underrepresented or however you want to put it relative to how useful it is for helping everyone kill easier. Part of me feels like players may be stuck in their Gears 4 ways too much, in part explaining why the Gears 4 maps are still so popular and why everyone only seems to pick the “easiest” Gears 5 maps instead of trying to learn how to handle the “less easy” ones properly. Or trying to build bases outside of the immediate vincinity of the spawn area.
I do not try to kill the enemies with a Hammerburst or Enforcer, you know? If I play Lizzie, I only keep the Enforcer until I can get a Hammerburst, which is also ditched as soon as a Claw is available. Otherwise I normally keep the Dropshot and pick a Boomshot and/or Torque Bow if nobody else wants one, to keep alongside at least one Tri-Shot as soon as one is available. It’s just that with overall damage being lower than in Gears 4(except for JD and Kait, as far as I’m aware - can’t really tell you what I can do with Lizzie at a max when those two are around, or the base is set up in such a way that there is no kill zones outside of MG Sentry range and for some reason their damage output always feels better than mine over a short period of time if I do not choose to be Kait), while their health appears to remain the same or even higher, I do not find it particularly enjoyable or ‘challenging’ to dump dozens of Claw shots or Tri-Shot rounds into Drones/Scions respectively to make any sort of dent into them. But there is no real middle ground. Either you keep More Health off and everything extremely squishy, or you turn them into sponges. Also really not that big of a fan on how More Lethal handles the Hammerburst and Elite Drones(to a lesser degree the Shepherds, Guardians and Hunters with the Markza). All it takes is some stray fire coming your way to down you, which I find is a little frustrating at times. Also do not think it is really adding to any kind of challenge much. I found it more fair in Gears 4 because we had weapons to do the same to the enemies with(killing them instantly or very quickly), but this does not seem to be the case as much in 4.
If you would like a TL;DR…
I pretty much discovered this in Gears 4s Horde when playing it much, about a year or so into it after I had mostly spent that doing base builds which eventually were set up in a way that MG Sentries would cover main paths where no teammates were, which often also got me a bunch of kills even when it was not my intention, until I later transitioned to a more support based engineering style as detailed above and experimented with ways how that worked, but no longer engineer in Gears 5 because of everybody’s not so beloved hero system. Nobody seems to want to take any kind of risks either which quickly gets boring. Why would I always want a Kait and/or JD in my matches even when they aren’t strictly necessary?
Do tell me, though, how do you handle a Kestrel properly if you have no JD or Kait to get rid of it quickly if there was no overhead cover available? Can only really imagine the Silverback being used to somewhat tank its shots so the team is able to shoot it properly, if there is a Lizzie player around. Or Keegan slaps some explosive rounds into it with a Salvo?
You could probably teach me a thing or two, though… if I didn’t just stop going anywhere near Master a few weeks ago cause I don’t really enjoy it a whole lot with the way it is made right now, when people just build simplistic bases and what not. The most fun I’ve had so far on a higher difficulty was on District on Inconceivable where I covered the middle building when Del had set up a box of barriers in it and I basically made a pillar and right hand advantage(would you consider this an exploit? it’s built into the game, sort of since every character always holds weapons on their right side, and TC has kind of made it so you can’t be completely covered while still being able to fire your weapon so I wouldn’t) my best friends for more or less 50 waves. Other than when a Matriarch chose to come rampaging around to get killed in the base itself. But it’s more often than not outside of my influence to how the base is built so I kind of have to work around it, and sticking to Insane and Elite, the two difficulties I currently prefer the most, also sometimes gives me teammates so awful I am the one thing keeping them alive as Lizzie with everyone downed or dead even before wave 10. Dreadful. Also, few people here actually know the GT I currently use to play on Xbox.
Also not really a big fan of how not having the option to restart is a mandatory requirement for pretty much any difficulty, not that anyone want to fail to begin with. But I find it better to have the option available regardless of difficulty, or if it really was an absolute must they should just keep it for Master only. Also, whose genius idea was it to slap Survivor on the proper matchmaking queue as the very first thing when you leave Beginner? Like that’s not a bad thing or problem at all.
How do you even imagine those? More number increases for the aspects you say you have learned how to counter almost completely already? I don’t think it would add much to the challenge tbh. Throwing in more Scions, Bastions or Guardians, however, might, rather than just upping the numbers. Which is something me and others have been arguing for, really, when we say we have issues with how the difficulty scaling is artificial due to the health, damage and accuracy buffs added on every difficulty increase.
And having to contest with randoms more often than not is a big turnoff.
Constructive opinion exchanges > arguments fuelled by emotion for sure. You can have something… I don’t know, a virtual cookie if you read through all this text. I have nothing better to offer.
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To be honest…5 players should start with the same weapons…lancer…snub…gnasher…put various weapons on maps for individuals to choose from…thats horde and real teamwork on any difficulty imo…
Hero nonsense with imbalanced characters…with imbalanced weapon loadouts…is just that…nonsense imo🤔
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I may be the one of very few who actually read most of that, haha… And I admit, i didn’t read EVERY word 
Few points:
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like you, I spent a lot of time playing at Engie in GoW4. There were two basic approaches used by me - with a team which wasn’t able to do it themselves, it was decoys and sentries, with few barriers, OR decoys with lots of level 4 barriers around them - the Engie got most of the kills in the game, but everyone was happy since we “finished”.
With a team which did know what they were doing, my job was creating and supporting decoys and lockers - that’s IT. Maybe a couple of level 1 barriers, at the very start, to slow down incon juvies from jumping into the base in the very early waves… the last year of GoW4 horde was all incon runs with no heavy fortifications at all.
Funny you should mention it, I was playing JD last night (I was solo in private, just trying some things) and a kestrel showed up - the mortars MISSED IT! I selected the boss, got both visual and audio confirmation of the selection, I hit mortars, and they… missed… Its health bar dropped by about 1% from the mortar strike, I’m guessing some splash from the near miss… Like WTF… What’s the POINT of having this ultimate if it MISSES the boss you are trying to use it on??
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in GoW4 each of the three killing classes (soldier, heavy, sniper) was very effective, with the right cards and weapons, on all waves of all diff levels… Yes, even a soldier, on incon, with the embar, dropshot, headshot multiplier card and frag cards using shocks… I was very impressed, but he was an awesome player… And heavy/sniper, yes, you still had to pay attention to cover, but you could deal serious damage to the enemies… I don’t find that in G5… And I’ve never played it on the top 3 diff levels! even on Elite, non-trishot attack strategies are a suicide in .later waves…
Dropshot headshot isn’t an instant kill anymore? frag tag isn’t an instant kill anymore? (on DR1s or Scions, that is, still work on drones and such)… How about Torque? Torque headshot was an instant kill on anything non-boss in GoW4 - I’m assuming that’s no longer the case, in 5?
But but… changing a single config number somewhere in the code is soooooooooooo much easier than working on AI logic, so rather than making the enemies smarter at diff levels increase, it’s just so much easier to make them OP bullet sponges…
Can we DO it? Of course… Fill the map with L1 spikes and overlook it with shock sentries, as someone said - sure, that works…
Is it fun?
Not for me… YMMV…
Getting through your reply but it may be later today before I reply.
I like to respond to lengthy posts in kind. So give me some time, and I’ll reply.
It isn’t a one shot headshot kill even on the tougher Drones(Elites, except Snipers) on Insane with health mod on, although I believe the following explosion will kill them on Incon and Master. Torque Bows also do not kill with one headshot on DR-1s and Scions any longer either, in Horde and Escape. They left those weapons with their one shot capabilities in the Campaign, but not in Horde.
Was it possible to Torque headshot a Pouncer in Gears 4? I knew you could Torque headshot a Snatcher which did a ton of damage(which I have not been able to make work in Gears 5 if still possible), but do not remember it for a Pouncer. They do have modeled in the “eyes” of a Sentinel as a weak point in 5 when it wasn’t in 4, and appear to count the vulnerable belly of a Snatcher and Pouncer as a weakspot now rather than their heads and the belly, though, so it’s possible they made it so they cannot take a headshot from the Torque Bow now, when it was possible in 4…
I’ll still be up a couple hours. Take your time. Even if I didn’t see it tonight I’ll just read it tomorrow(since I’m EU based and get up in the morning for my studies outside of weekends I tend to sleep in 4-5 hours from now during weekdays).
They already have a dynamic AI behavior that scales across the difficulties. This is a part of the game currently.
This is only my prefferred method, and there are many others!
Hmm… I don’t know… I have to admit the Torque wasn’t one of my main weapons in GoW4, I preferred the Drop… I used it as scout a lot, if I’m running around and I had to deal with a pouncer… I know you could headshot a Pouncer with a drop (even as scout), you’d get the headshot sound, I’m pretty sure that killed it… But don’t know about the Torque…
I’ll be honest, my memory on that is also completely failing me, also having been a Dropshot main in Gears 4 , mostly using the Torque Bow for very long range work. Know a Longshot, EMBAR and Boltok or Markza were capable of Pouncer headshots, though.
Still haven’t sat down for your reply, but it seems like you and omen would particularly enjoy elite difficulty games with specifically the extra health, regen, and extra damage mods off.
No more spongy, instant downs, and the enemies don’t need to be constantly tapped to keep from full health!
To unlock these mods you just need to go to wave 50 on each map and beat the right-most mod you have unlocked. This will unlock the next mod, these can be done with all the other mods to the left of it left off, and it will still unlock the next mod. Good way to unlock master for each weekly hive as well.
On a note of power weapon headshots- I do agree. For the first time, that these could use buffs.
Traditionally in horde these weapons have offered massive damage boosts from their headshots, and it would be nice to see that maintained. (Although- as a caveat to that- fahz chutani still offers these capabilities. Quite effectively. - however these weapons specifically should be this strong universally with headshots. Perhaps not to the degree of one shotting, because incon/master are obviously meant to push the difficulty ceiling of horde higher than it has been before- but still higher than they are now.
I’ve actually got most or all the mods unlocked for the non-Gears 4 maps. I occasionally try Insane or Elite, though I find if the health mod is off enemies die too easily. It is sometimes fun but given how difficulty is created in the current Horde(and me not being a fan of ultra short down times) having the health mod on is kind of what I’d have to go for. Sometimes I do want somewhat of a challenge. Playing Insane with a Del, Jack, Keegan, Lizzie and Kait with Health, Regen Penalty, Survivor, Execution Rules and Regeneration on Allfathers Arena certainly was an experience. Especially when Matriarchs marched in on 10/30 respectively. If I always wanted an easy experience I certainly wouldn’t have stuck around there, or sometimes feel like trying higher difficulty settings for a challenge.
I see.
Well, try having the regen off instead of the power mod.
the power mod really isnt that bad, and the regen mod is arguably the hardest of the lot.
I don’t really mind regen much. It’s mostly a nuisance if there’s Guardians or Sentinels buzzing around or when you’re trying to kill the Matriarch without someone having bleed(not counting Lizzie with the Mulcher since not everyone will use that weapon on the Silverback and the Matriarch will charge for the machine if not frozen and instantly take it out, assuming the Mulcher doesn’t or no one else staggers her), your Keegan doesn’t realize the Boomshot for some reason won’t harm it if it doesn’t hit the weak point while the Torque Bow and Dropshot will hurt it anywhere. Should you not have any GLs at your disposal.
Regarding a previous or different point you made in another thread(I believe) about Gears 4 - it wasn’t all speedruns which didn’t take much effort or skill(they were horribly boring so I never got into them a lot and quickly got tired out of or stopped with them). Plenty of matches were to be found on the matchmaking queues(skill of randoms varied but you could find decent players on there for Hardcore - Inconceivable). Some LFG posts were also made for Sentry free runs and what not, but those were harder to find. I related some experiences of the mode in 4 in my large post above. I spent most of my time in regular matches from Hardcore to Inconceivable, but I was able to level my skills up well enough with Scrap obtained from duplicates and whatnot. The biggest deal was trying to unlock skills with the RNG drops, which is to me one of the main improvements 5 made to the mode, not requiring RNG to unlock a skill. Otherwise it may have had less enemy variety, but fortifications were mostly the same besides the presence of the manned turret and different ways in how the enemies interacted with some of them(as in, explosive Trackers could wreck them very quickly if you weren’t careful, something that is much less present in Gears 5 Horde, or how they worked(destroyed forts gave you back power instead of there being a yellow outline to rebuild them from, so you had to buy a new one to replace it, and if you didn’t have any spare Level 2s or 1s left upon their destruction and the fabricator was Level 2 or 3, no more Level 1/2 barriers for you, so if a stray Swarmak rocket came into the core of your base and struck a stack of Level 2 replacement barriers, well, you weren’t getting those back, which was a great deal of annoyance to me when it happened so I often separated the stack into various smaller ones to reduce the risk of losing them all because of such a thing), and 5s forts generally seem tougher. Well, except for when they get hit by a Boomshot which totally wrecks everything, seemingly, and Sentries in particular.