I'm calling you out Coalition. This is a disaster and I expect it to get worse

General Discussion
#76

Being as blunt and polite as possible:

Having campaign variants locked behind Tour of Duty and other useless filler like bloodsprays and generic markers comes off as scummy. All of this gated off content should have been in the game by default at launch, along with ALL of the characters from Campaign (Paduk, Baird, Cole, Clayton, Lizzie, etc.).

Tour of Duty should have been ADDITIONAL weapon skins, more Iron rewards and a unique character skin every few ranks. The content currently contained in the Tour is CLEARLY customization that was held back from the general Supply Drop pool.

I understand that you are only the messenger and core game decisions are out of your control (somewhat, at least), but think about how absurd this sounds: “Hey, here’s a full-priced video game with content from Campaign locked behind grindy challenges and half the main characters are unavailable for at least three months after launch.” Gears of War 4 launched with more personalization options than this game (multiple character skins and full weapon skin sets)…and there was no 3-month window that people were beholden to for unlocking content.

Using a claim on Twitter and Reddit saying “there are over 200 customization options available,” and not citing 90% of that includes bloodsprays, banners and markers makes you look severely out of touch. Players want INDIVIDUAL CHARACTERS AND 20+ FULL WEAPONS SKIN SETS to start with at launch! Promotional skins don’t count in this regard and in-game the skin set total is less than 10, even after grinding Re-Ups and Tour of Duty. The game is barebones, plain and simple.

Now, here are my useful suggestions/improvements that you can pass on to “the team” (the hard-working people that I know you always mention):

*Make Tour of Duty Operations a PERMANENT fixture in the game. Change the rewards every three months but keep former Operations available in the game and allow players to choose which Operation they want to make progress on. So, for example, when Operation 2 starts keep Operation 1 as a simple toggle in the ToD screen. If someone plays at launch this month and doesn’t touch Gears 5 until next year, that person can either make progress from Private I on the current Operation or choose to continue from Operation 1, 2, etc.

I understand wanting to give players a reason to play on a regular basis, and incentivizing “Operation exclusives,” but Gears 5 isn’t Fortnite. It’s a full-priced game, not a Free-to-Play title. You’re not at the mercy of needing to profit from micro transactions, so ACT LIKE IT. Reward players who choose to stick with the game and give others a reason to keep coming back, if they can’t grind in this arbitrary 3-month window.

*Horde needs the option to allow duplicate characters. It works fine in Arcade and when the servers were acting up, I was in a few Horde matches with duplicate characters. The game still played fine, no one was confused about who was who, and nothing about the game magically became easier or unbalanced because of two JDs or two Marcuses or two Kaits, etc. I know it’s not the “vision” TC had for Horde, but locking out players from playing as the character they want is laughably bad game design.

In all honesty, I think the entire mode needs to be redone and ultimates need to be tied to classes, giving players the option to play as whichever character they choose. No, I don’t need to know that Kait doesn’t need help because she can Ghost. That’s what Tac-Com and class icons are for. If someone wants to play as JD and Ghost as a Scout class, it’s fine. It might be an adjustment for some but nothing game-breaking. If there is an issue with voice lines, I’m sure there are options available in the pool of dialogue already recorded…or the voice actors can be brought in for a day to do new lines.

*Lastly, give us customization loadout options like Gears of War 4. Four options for each mode: Versus COG, Versus Swarm, Horde and Escape. It can be the initial menu after choosing “customization” and the character screen currently in the game can follow. Worst-case scenario, if the current layout is baked into the game, make a similar menu like Gears 4 with tabs for each mode and patch that version into the game. Give players the option between “default” (the current layout) or “classic” (the Gears 4 customization menu).

I wish everyone at the studio the best of luck with this release. As it is now, the game feels like early access to a title due out Spring 2020. Borderlands 3, Call of Duty MW and many other games will be released in the coming months. Please tell the team that people will continue to play Gears 5, but not in its current state. Trying to chase Casual gamers and monetization trends will be the downfall of this franchise. Focus on your core gamers, lower the price of Iron-specific items and add more Iron earnables in Tour of Duty. Give players the option to play Campaign chapters for Tour of Duty progress. Let go of this fear-of-missing-out angle with Tour of Duty and keep past Operations when starting a new batch of content. Make this the best Gears game possible. At this current time, Gears 5 is nowhere close to that.

9 Likes
#77

That was very well put. The only thing I would suggest is tie customization unlocks to xp and give them at certain levels, as everyone keeps suggesting, the way gears 3 did it. It wouldn’t be hard to keep track of but unfortunately they added so much extra garbage in the form of banners/blood splatters/emotes and markers and have thus complicated the situation. Also, so that tour of duty doesnt go away or at least the challenges dont become useless rather than up the rank of ToD just make the reward for completing a challenege just an exorbitant amount of xp this way there is a point to doing them that contribute to unlocking things but people dont have to complete them as some challenge people to play modes that quite frankly arent great in their current states.

The devs keep saying “we hear you gears fans, you want to earn things instead of paying for them.” Yet they seem to have completely missed the mark on what people actually want. But I digress. As my favorite franchise I really hope they end up fixing this because it’s in a rough state and one can very easily and objectively by comparing to past entries and current monetization trends in the industry see what TC obviously tried to do here.

1 Like
#78

They were always going to monetize 100% everyone is at it. Why not there a business at the end of the day, they will have targets to meet and some people will be daft enough to use micro-transactions. I will not go further into that topic as I want to leave a quick review

Just want to say it’s always been the same on these forums I used to come on here and rant away during the launch of gears 2 and 3, loved gow 1 & played competitively.

I won’t rant too badly just want to give a few thoughts to TC Octus

Campaign was great imo well done, decent enough story, large open areas was a nice change.

Horde is from the small amount I’ve played is okay nothing great

Escape haven’t played too much so can’t comment fairly

MP I’ve been smashing for the last week and got to say it’s poor, it has potential but needs some big patches if people are going to stay around and buy your micro transactions you love. Issues are as below

Critically bad

  • hit registration, I’m not the first to bring this up as I can see, it’s completely off at times

*not sure if I’m getting shot by a tri-shot or a lancer at times, needs toned down quite a good bit

  • Flashbangs, they need toned down or changed, very annoying addition to the series

  • Kill cams, where I know they won’t always be accurate due to lag but they show some massive discrepancies, quite a lot, not sure how this wasn’t picked up during testing

  • Lack of content as op has said, I know there’s more to come after three months but you will be lucky if half the people are still playing at that point

Bad

*Gnasher speed and power, too slow in between shots imo and too powerful up close slight boost of speed and nerf would be perfect - bullets feel light yet strong if that makes any sense, the heavy feel of your shots and gibbing doesn’t seem to be there. Just doesn’t feel right

  • Strafe speed could do with a slight speed up

  • Ranking system, MVP’d and won three or four KOH ranked matches in a row and stayed in silver 2, moving about 10 places at a time, seems a bit rubbish ? If I lose it goes down much quicker

  • Glitches & Lag throughout MP, one match recently I was stuck in spawn with only a gnasher visible and a camera that could move, quite strange.

  • Vasgar

  • Hammers and other similar weapons should be removed from ranked and only used it core or else make a ranked comp playlist (quite like the hammer btw just think it doesn’t fit in ranked along with a few others)

*All weapons need toned down they are too powerful

Okay

  • Horde & Escape

  • Movement in general

  • Exhibit, Bunker, training grounds

Good or Great

  • Graphics - still slightly cartoonish but big improvement as it’s so much more detailed than previous installments, frame rate of course a big win also looks great on the screen, best graphics in the series yet, which is expected by now tbf but impressive none the less

  • Campaign

  • Asylum, Icebound, District - good nothing amazing my three preferences

  • Aesthetic changes to weapons and audio of lancer for example pretty cool, except the audio of the flash bang remove that ASAP lol

I could think of more and may make my own thread at a later date but that’s the jist of it, get the critically bad aspects changed and it’s potentially a great game but I’ll be done with it until it’s patched a few times not interested in the MP after playing it for a decent length of time now

6/10 in total the marks are due to the campaign and graphics, MP let’s it down it’s all about camping and lancering which is the route they’ve always tried to take after gears 1 TC or epic it doesn’t matter it seems. I respect the big changes that have been made to try take a new direction but unfortunately in its current state the multiplayer is simply not fun to keep playing, period.

Gears 1/UE > Gears 4 > Gears 2 > Gears 5 > Gears 3 > Gears Judgement

#79

Your review is all over the place and then there’s no way I could even take it serious when you have Gears 2, 4 and 5 ahead of Gears 3.

I mean what the ■■■■ lol

Gears 2 was a complete, glitchy, laggy mess of a game. It had so many title updates and it was still broken. Gears 4 started introducing delays and catering towards the casuals (excluding Escalation/competitive, because that’s just ■■■■). Gears 5 is Gears 4 but even worse.

#80

It’s not really all over the place at all, it’s fairly well laid out

Gears 3 I hated, it made me stop playing gears after I played 1 & 2 competitively, gears 2 without a doubt was absolutely awful at launch and only got semi decent to play after a few patches

End of the day not an installment of the series comes close to 1 or UE, they have never ever had the sequel they should of got.

#81

And fyi gears 2 and 3 catered to casuals as well they’ve been trying to do it since gow 1, it’s always the same

#82

You hated Gears 3 and stopped playing, because you probably sucked at it.

It was miles better than that ■■■■ of a game Gears 2.

Stopping power should have been removed from it, but everything else was slick and even today… the game is better than all of the others (excluding Gears 1).

1 Like
#83

Yea yea, I played it for the first week and yes stopping power and all the other causal friendly sht they added in plus the game was a mess I uninstalled it after the first week, maybe didn’t give it enough time but was pissed off with the direction they had went with it for MP.

Again this game is another mess but it looks good I’ll give them that.

At least we agree gears 1 was where it was at

1 Like
#84

I’ve laid it out a bit better on this thread

#85

Gears 2 was the worst sequel to any game i’ve ever played. Probably a good thing though. Gears 1 totally dominated me and my friends haha.

#86

Banners, bloodsprays and marks are incredibly lame in my opinion, I couldn’t tell you what the bloodsprays are for. I don’t notice banners. Marks are just marks. Their shapes are all the same to me when I play. Oh, and emotes. Can’t work out how to use them at all haha.

Noob these days.

1 Like
#87

Yeah as if your hanging around long enough to admire the bloodspray you left after gibbing someone. Just completely pointless and waste of development time

1 Like
#88

It’s all filler stuff, so people won’t get the character skins early and quit grinding.

They might think that people who are new to Gears find those banners etc. cool. It just doesn’t fit Gears in my opinion… I agree that the franchise needs changes, but what they’re doing right now just doesn’t fit…

Hit detection/Ranks needs to be fixed, along with the servers etc. (And at least nerf the flashbang)

2 Likes
#89

New base characters will be earnable for free, then after the Tour of Duty ends, you will be able to purchase them with money. Like with Griffin in Gears 4.

It is the fairest way with the current system.

#90

I’ve literally never seen (noticed) one in every game i’ve played, no joke hha.

#91

Well I’m be honest here neither have I. Lol

#92

Gears should be treated like your old mum with the respect and the dignity they have earned and deserve not plastered in make up and pimped out like Brass House waiting room

1 Like
#93

You’re not serious are you? TOD gives you very basic character skins, blood sprays, marks, expressions and 500 currency. Which will take you a huge amount of time to get and within a 3 month period good luck.

500 currency buys you maybe a mark. Ok?

The characters you can earn in TOD should have been starter characters to begin with. Gears 3 had more than double gears 5 starting characters.

The only cool skin is team metal gnasher which is from gears 3 go figure. Rock gnasher skin is cool too but it’s highly unlikely to obtain considering it is the highest reward which takes an unrealistic amount of time to get.

Supply drops are RNG so you may never get anything good.

The only thing gears 5 beats gears 3 in is the amount of missing content. You wish this game was as good as gears 3 I hope one day you make a game that is.

4 Likes
#94

You think that’s lazy, you should see the Re-Up rewards where you get a awful bloodspray on the 1st and then after that you get a single Gears 3 desert camo weapon skin for 1 gun for every Re-Up after that. Absolutely. Insulting

#95

The Ice-skins are very nice! It’s all I need so the rest is just a bonus, I play because it’s fun, not to unlock cosmetics like it’s a job. Maybe try that.

3 Likes