Power taps - what a still born idea that was, hahaha

Gears 5
#1

Hey

I remember one of the early presentations about Gears 5, it might have been Rod, talking about how Horde was expanding, how now the players will want to grow the base across the map to take over and control these sources of additional power which would become available after each boss wave…

Looking back at that I can barely control my laughter…

While I think it’s not a bad idea, their addiction to RNG, especially when it’s not justified, completely ruined the idea of taps, IMO…

Playing on Master, taps are a lottery, nothing more. If one appears in your base, great, free energy. If they appear outside of the base, they are ignored… And this RNG placement of them is a joke…

I mean, imagine - all fathers… Wave 11, you survived the first Master boss wave, and the tap appears… across the map, at the enemy’s spawn point… Hahaaha… What are you going to do? Move the whole base there? No… Create a second base there, and defend it with half the team? No…

You’re going to ignore it, period…

If it shows up in your base, great!.

The only place, that I have seen, where taps can make a meaningful contribution is Forge, if you get 3 of them in your base… But again, that’s pure lottery, and has nothing to do with still, strategy, planning, coordination, etc…

It’s laughable… I can only imagine how much effort, time, and money it cost TC to create power taps in Gears 5, and if all powertaps disappeared from the game, I’d guess 65% of games would see no difference, 30% would see a minor difference, and maybe 5% would see any noticeable difference (Forge , mostly)…

If they changed the logic, so taps appears closest to your base, and slowly appear further away after each boss wave, ok, MAYBE… But this RNG crap, honestly, most of the time (and I mean 80-90%, not 55% of the time) taps are not a factor in the games I play, because they appear far outside of the base… And there is simple no way, at Master, to secure and HOLD satellite bases across the map…

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#2

Most people don’t play on Master difficulty.

On most difficulties your engineer has time to run over and repair it between waves or Jack can keep them up and that’s 1000 power every wave which adds up.

You really shouldn’t compare playing on Master difficulty to the general game as it’s an entirely different beast which is made to be overly hard.

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#3

It depends on map and mostly modifier and tap can’t be repair if there are destroy and would happen a lot of time because there are in the open so easy to destroy .

The enemy mostly heavy and small enemy do a lot of damage mid-game to end-game so tap die quickly .

Even if yes everybody don’t play master what the point on making something if you can’t use it every time ? And forcing a jack do the job with forge because rng don’t work on jack .

#4

The problem is that the payout is simply not worth the effort.

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#5

Thanks for the feedback. We’ve made some pretty interesting changes to Power Taps in the next update. Stay tuned.

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#6

A good thread and nice to see changes are coming :slight_smile: I have always wondered why it takes a character 5 seconds to push the buttons on taps. A simple press should be enough imo.

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#7

Surely if you have built so much stuff before Wave 11 that you can’t move it all with 5 players to wherever the first tap is, you’re doing something wrong? Even on Master, would you really have that many fortifications that makes moving impossible?

I can’t remember who it was but someone gave a tip that regardless of map, the best place to set up is in the middle of one of the long sides of each map, not a short side or a dead end e.g. spawn. Because you have more width to manoeuvre, can see more of the battlfield at once, and have more chance that the taps will appear within the base. Makes sense, although I don’t know if I’d agree with that for every map. Would this work on high side of Canals, for example?

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#8

Even on higher difficulties, the first ten waves don’t require much in the way of fortifications. My group usually just banks power, then we set up around the first tap.

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