All of those games you listed were more popular than Gears 5 with exception to maybe For Honor (I know very little about that game honestly) so essentially way more people tuned in to them 9 months post launch than Gears 5, this is not to say that Operation 4 is irrelevant or meaningless, but my point still stands that content/changes made closer to launch are almost always far more relevant to a game’s lifecycle than stuff done 9 months after, now this isn’t necessarily true as there are some games that are absolutely huge years past launch (Sea of Thieves is still pretty much like this even now) but generally speaking the principle holds true.
The people that are still playing Gears 5 are going to likely keep playing regardless of what TC does, now I do predict a huge drop in population once Halo Infinite comes out (bold prediction, you could say) but overall the only thing TC can do is just make the game more bearable for longer periods of time and keep player retention up, aside from that the game will gradually decrease in popularity and although you may see a really small influx of new players over time, the game is a decaying tree lol.
My point isn’t to say that because OP4 isn’t the most important Operation that TC should just do nothing, but frankly they dropped the ball many months ago and it can never be picked up again for all those people that left already, I think companies see launch as an insignificant step to a game’s lifespan nowadays, which is a shame because that’s what like 95% of players perception of your game is, why do you think fans love GOW3 so much? because that game was overdeveloped, had very few bugs, was content complete after a few months, compared to this crap where people gotta wait ages for basic junk that should’ve been in the game at (or right after) launch, I’m aware that some of this was intentional (how else would you explain Paduk?) but its hard to be excited about a game, to try to “sell” it to your friends when you know its not living up to its potential.
I do care about Gears 5, I have one person on my friendlist that absolutely loves Gears of War that I’ve been contemplating gifting Gears 5 to, yet I can’t because I know that if I gave it to them today the only thing they would feel is disappointment… blame whatever you will for Gears 5, but that’s a massive letdown, I can’t even give people Gears 5 for free because its as mediocre as it is.
. I love that mode too!!
