Iron Man Mode Needs Fix

Gears Tactics
#1

So, not sure where else to type this out, but I think Iron Man needs to be redone.

Iron man is suppose to make you regret your decisions by losing men, or by failing a mission

my whole issue with iron man right now is the fact that you lose ALL progression if a main character dies.

in a life or death situation (in the real world) if someone dies, thats it they’re dead, i understand that aspect of iron man mode.

but when you END my entire playthru because a main character died thats messed up, and really stupid

my recommendation is:

A: If a main character dies restart the mission over, don’t end the whole damn campaign
or
B: main character dies, hes dead, have a random take his place in cut scenes.

TD:LR: Don’t punish players by deleting their entire campaign because YOU force us to have main characters, or just DON’T have an iron man mode if its not properly done. Iron Man is suppose to be permanent decisions, how can i have a permanent decision if you just delete my damn save game cause YOU wanted to have main characters in your game?

do away with main characters, X:COM did that the right way, no main characters to keep safe, and if you had a protect mission and he died you lose that mission and any reward from it. plain and simple.

story is good, but don’t restrict players to losing everything they worked for because of a fatal flaw of forcing us to have main characters in it. if I had a choice i would NOT have a main character in my missions if i wanted him safe.

And I know i’m going to have people come in here and say “don’t use iron man mode”

I want to use iron man mode, i like the permanent repercussions of my actions, but ending an entire game play-thru is just stupid, the ONLY time a full game play-thru should be deleted is when your entire roster is killed and no one is living.

#2

  1. Simply restarting a mission when a main character dies is precisely how the game behaves when you don’t have Ironman enabled. So don’t enable Ironman and instead be Honestman. That’s what I’m doing, because I also don’t feel like restarting my entire campaign. I have never lost a main character on this playthrough but Sid died in the 2nd mission of my first playthrough and that was it. In this playthrough, I’m Honestman by not restarting any mission unless forced to. If a regular soldies dies, I let them stay gone. That’s happened twice so far and i’m act 3, mission 3 or 4 right now.

  2. Story is a big part of this game and I, for one, am enjoying it. Not sure how far along in the campaign you are and don’t want to spoil it for you or anybody, but I’ll only say that “having a random replace a dead main” is simply not an option. The entire story hinges upon those characters.

  1. Forgive me an “old-man rant” here, but your self-entitled whining is exactly the kind of thing that annoys the living ■■■■ out of me about many gamers (mostly younger). Things like, “cause YOU wanted to have main characters in your game”. Sigh. Dude, it is their game. They get to design it however they want. Unless you ponied up the money to produce this game (which you didn’t, Microsoft did), then they owe you NOTHING. You don’t get to throw a fit because they designed the game they want instead of the game you want. You’re welcome to go build the game you always wanted by yourself. There’s no such thing as a perfect game because perfect means different things to different people. With that in mind, a dev builds what they want and what they believe is likely to satisfy the broadest range of potential customers. You may not want story but most of their customers do. They give you options to play Ironman or not, and as mentioned above you can always force the “permanence of decisions” onto yourself by playing honestly (an inability to do that demonstrates lack of willpower).

  2. And finally, since I’m already sort of being a jerk in this post, let me be grammar cop, too. The phrase you’re looking for is “supposed to”, not “suppose to”.

4 Likes
#3

I agree that it could stand an overhaul in Escape at least so I don’t have to wait several minutes loading to and from lobbies between retries. Just put me back at the bomb planting animation after failure until I choose to leave the game. I only have so much time when I can play so I’d rather not wasste it with an abundance of loading.

#4

I mean, that’s traditionally what Ironman is supposed to be. It worked the same in Gears 4, and Gears 5.

#5

Is there a difference between the Iron skull in Halo(which only restarts your mission upon death in solo play, and reloads the last checkpoint if one of you dies in coop), and “Ironman”?

#6

Yes and no.

Ironman would count any player death in Co-op as a fail and you would have to start the campaign again, solo or co-op. That’s how it was implemented traditionally.

Iron in Halo is a innovation in the ironman mode, which you could call it ironman I guess, but it isn’t traditional ironman.

Imagine doing Halo 2 laso deathless. Shesh. Or back in classic Halo 2 when the iron skull was reversed, solo restarts from checkpoint and co-op restarts mission. Getting through Gravemind deathless would be an achievement on its own.

#7

I was never mad enough to attempt Legendary with Iron, let alone LASO. Getting through any Legendary Halo 2 mission deathless is an achievement on its own, especially if there’s Sniper Jackals(god those things are a nightmare in H2s Legendary difficulty).

Either way I wasn’t exactly familiar with the “classic” Ironman functionality. Doesn’t seem like great game design or fun to me, at least in a FPS or TPS shooter.

#8

Yeah, it isn’t good game design. But then again it was an extra difficulty that was easy to implement compared to Insane and Inconceivable. At least you don’t need to go back and balance every encounter.

#9

I just want one revive on insane. It’s pretty wild that a locust shooting gabe through cover and doing full health damage from the edge of visual range actually ended my iron man campaign immediately. I love the challenge of insane mode but with absolutely no safety net, you’re guaranteed to lose eventually when the dice rolls real bad.

#10

I am the kind of person who play on Ironman every tactical game. And I don’t do it anymore for this game. At least in Insane, the design of the game make ironman a “bad” option. Good new, this is optional and nobody force you to use it.

And anyway, the benefit is low, gears are so much replacable that the death on any non-hero is a complete no care. Even when nobody die, you quicly replace your gears by news recruits because they have a higher level.

#11

Sadly, i’m not apart of the “younger” generation, I’ve been playing games since 1996. The reason why the ironman does not work is mainly because the game forces you to use main characters, and from my current experience (up to chapter 3 where i died) 80% of the missions use 2 of the 4 slots for main characters.

I also develop games on the side as a hobby, and from my experience in developing and playing many tactical games the type of ironman this game uses does NOT work. it may have worked well for FPS versions of the game, but in a game that forces you to have main characters in most of your missions it does not work.

From my personal preference and from seeing most of the comments here, the current ironman punishment does not work for this style of play because the game forces you to use main characters.

Completely losing a story scenario and restarting the whole game is understandable.

Losing 1 character of the 3 main characters and restarting is not acceptable.

My recommendation would to make it so the main characters will be perma DBNO state during the mission (If they were knocked down twice), (essentially dead but revivable after the mission) UNLESS all 4 characters actually died and then i could see the whole campaign being restarted cause all the characters are dead.

The reason why i say this is because in insane difficulty you would NEVER beat the game with ironman enabled, and a poor game design.

having difficulties in a game is to make the game HARDER not impossible.

And you can grammar police me all you want cause of your saltiness, just goes to show your true age, which is that of a 16 year old “know it all” syndrome. :slight_smile: