Is TC trying to throw us a bone on a new map for operation 5?

Gears 5
#41

As long as they don’t pull another Pahanu I’ll be happy, It isn’t Rocket Science to create good maps, Gears has had a decade and a half of great and not so great maps to learn from, I am in way saying that they can’t be creative but the difference between a successful franchise and an unsuccessful one isn’t creativity its execution.

Edit: even being lazy they can offer great maps, there are some amazing Gears 4 maps I would like to see ported, there are tons of other legacy maps that haven’t gotten remakes that would play fantastic in Gears 5, I’m all for new maps but I value quality>everything.

1 Like
#42

Making a good map for Gears of War isnt something simple. I know it from my own experience (everyone can try that though - First release of Gears of War PC has built in map editor - the same that Epic Games used). There are too many factors that needs to be taken into account of producing at least playable map.

Here are some pearls made by Gears community 10 YEARS ago:

Crash made by Kantham

Bloodstrike

Outpost by theron

And my map that is not suitable for any mp mode and would not ever call it good:

Its quite hard to make map that will be outstanding

6 Likes
#43

I wish we had that editor in 5 though. Those tools are excellent learning materials for people that want to develop games later on. I used to do some of my own maps in UT99 and even though most of them sucked, it was always fun to just try out what you had created, same with Radiant in Q3A.

#44

  1. Safe to assume that anybody working at TC (or any popular game franchise for that matter) is far better then your average modder.

  2. Tools are probably better now than they were then.

  3. That doesn’t excuse Pahanu :man_facepalming:
    Nor does it excuse the other trash maps in Gears 5, if your point was to say that the technical aspect of it is much harder than it appears then fine, even more reason to argue they should’ve done a better job.

#45

if they release one it’ll be the last thing they do, so you only have to wait 1 more year (I know that hurts, but had to say it)

#46

It doesn’t hurt me man, I think it hurts Gears/TC more in the long run, when the fanbase support is already fading, if I’m being honest.
Really creative people that want to support games with custom maps don’t want a prefab tile editor, they want the full toolset.
I said this in another post too, id lost a lot of longevity in their games when they dropped their public toolkits and no longer GPL-ed their source.
Not saying that TC has to go there immediately, but that custom UnrealEd on PC would be the right thing to do at this point, IMO. Plenty of people with talent out there that can make great stuff.

#47

TC have some reallly uncreative people, its almost as if they lack understanding of mechanics in the game. Gears 5 has ladders, slides, freezing mechanic, hell why not utilize some of the horde assets to try and create an interesting map? I’m not the most creative or “interesting” map designer or anything but lets be honest here if Gears 5 had Forge (ala Halo for example) community made maps would put TC’s to shame.

Edit: I love mods and in general anytime developers give fans creative tools it almost always works out for them, like of course the Escape map editor is unpopular because A) its an unpopular mode generally speaking and B) its an awful interface and isn’t the most community friendly I would say.

#48

I dont know what is wrong with pahanu, its aesthetically good map, symetric, all covers are good placed. It even fits mostly to points made by Epic Games article about making map for gears. Its open, which makes it hard to sneak at someones back (im not mentioning poorly made footstep sounds which prevents you from hearing enemy getting close too you) . Mostly i assume people rage upon that map because they cant run along with gnasher.

If it comes to TC workers, there was a thread about how MS and TC hire people, i wont copy paste it here. Also assuming that worker is far better than average modder is little missing point as many people that want to make mods doesnt publish their works die to being criticized for poorly map design.

And yeah tools for UE improved over 15 years

1 Like
#49

Excluding creative twists on the map, other than the staircase I’m really not seeing the resemblance to the part of that location seen in Tactics. And it still seems a little far fetched.

1 Like
#50

Creative twist was definitely in mind :slight_smile:

#51

Yeah, something like that could already improve the situation quite a bit, but again, it would be another editor type to create for TC. Gears also has more diverse environments than what Halo provided with Forge, so I don’t know how a one size fits all solution would work in this way for Gears and please everyone.

#52

We only see shape of that map, all assets can be used as placeholders, as we dont know from which part of development that screen is.

#53

its a trash map and it deserves all the hate I (and many others) have given it, Don’t get me wrong the aesthetics and potential of the map are very high, in fact its one of my favorite Horde maps just because of how it looks, but don’t pretend its good because its not.

Pahanu is especially awful when you consider the subpar quality of Gears 5 launch maps from the start (Icebound, Vasgar, Bunker, Camping Grounds, all very unpopular maps) then they add this pile of ■■■■ and its why you see so many “map” complaints today, not just because of how few there are, but because of how awful some of the maps are to begin with.

#54

You made some fair ponts there. Still, I think we have some diffirent approach to map design. I can agree that 1 power weapon is to low for pahanu. I can disagree about lancerfest, distance between the points player can defend themselves are way to big for a weapon with so much low damage output. Openess of map will discourage players from front rushing other pkayers without proper support.

I could point out other things that i see which makes pahanu good map for me, but thats not the thread for that.

Escape Editor would be more popular if it could somehow support making characters progress on custom maps. The whole idea of of custom maps is missing a pointp when you play them without benefits that normal maps gives you.

#55

They (as in Microsoft) would never allow that to happen, its sort of like how if you enable mods in a game they disable achievements, like just imagine how stupid it would be if that were the case? Everybody would just make 5 second hives lol.

Halo’s forge is a great example of game with an awesome map maker, it started off as a map editor in Bungie’s mind but over time they warmed up to it and made it a really solid map maker, 343i (current Halo devs) only expanded upon it over the years.

When you think about it TC screwed the pooch with this one, a good map editor (not even something as sophisticated as the one the devs use) would be wonderful, instead of everybody just holding onto their seats waiting for whatever scraps TC feeds us each operation we could just make our own awesome maps, and not gonna lie they could be lazy and instead of actually making new maps they could just focus on giving us tools and new assets and etc. over time.

I’m aware that you are sort of thinking of a dev kit, although that makes sense I want to stress that a gamer friendly and easyish-to-use map editor/maker would be much more impactful, like one of the main requests from Skyrim modders is that it would be cool if there was a beginner set or something that an average joe can pick up and learn how to make dungeons or NPC’s in etc.

Just to articulate how I feel about this; Forge has been more impactful to Halo then Horde has been to Gears, let that sink in.

Edit: about Pahanu, if Gears of War didn’t become a lancer centric game (with 5 stacks, and ranking system, and etc. exacerbating it) then the map would be much much more popular, same reason why if you go back and look at Gears 2 maps there is no question that a lot of them would be extremely unpopular in Gears 5, like you look at River for example and its a horror to think of the spawn traps/setups/camping that would go on in that map in Gears 5’s climate. Pahanu was about a decade too late I’m afraid.

#56

When map building tools are handed to the community, the community could certainly do wonders with it. For instance look at all the WADS the DOOM community has built? Look how diverse and imaginative they are.

Also coming back to the topic of map editors, when would the ‘Escape Map Builder’ finish its Beta-Phase?

2 Likes
#57

I’m pretty sure it’s supposed to be Blood drive. Compare it to this:

image
image1280×720 196 KB

20201017_125750

3 Likes
#58

I perfectly agree. The foliage and bushes are already there. TC was so close to making this map good.
This approach is suitable for PvP.

For horde mode, they could preferrably change it to daytime. As it would be hard to spot enemies during nighttime (darkness+foliage+enemies taking cover = frustation+ an unsuccessful run) .

#59

There are three sets of stairs in the picture shown above. Blood Drive has only two.

Also an ‘arch’ like support is built between two consecutive columns in the picture shown above, something which blood drive does not show at all.

3 Likes
#60

If you look at elements from the other block maps, they’re not 100% accurate. Maybe they couldn’t replicate the walls properly or they were using previousIy created, already available blocks/ tiles so they just did what they could. I personally think it’s Blood drive and people are over analyzing.

1 Like