The Gears Pop Community needs more help from The Coalition / MediaTonic

[Mike_Langlois]

So I have been doing some thinking just to give ideas on what could be done:

Pins from chests: x4
This would mean that if you were starting from level 1, it would take approx 400 chests to get a common pin to max level. (On the assumption of average 60 pins per chest, increased to 240, when 96k are needed to max)

Coins from chests: x15
An average level 8 Brumak thumper gives (across all three chests) about 1.8k. This would make it 27k. As there is literally millions needed for pins at higher levels this will help.

Level xp from pins: unchanged.
If the first two options can be amended, then I dont think this needs to be changed. If people can get a ton of pins and a ton of coins, level 20 will come naturally.

Reaching gold league: x4 cogs for a win, x0.5 cogs for a loss.
Its current about 27 cogs for a win, 15 for a lose. That difference needs to change to be a lot less punishing. More cogs for winning with a bigger loss penalty will mean people stand a chance at actually getting to gold.

I think those are the major achievements that people are missing, and the changes dont require achievement level changes, just loot changes in the gacha code. I think this should be enough that if people played and tried they could finish it, but if you just started today you probably couldnt.

[Piyi_Piyi]

Now the event pass cost 100 crystals.

The rewards (including event pass) give you 100 crystals.

Thanks to anyone who is responsible for this change. Now I can finally exchange my first event pass

[LMC_L4]

It blows that there’s been no word on potential changes from the devs yet.

Plans should have been put in place from the minute they made the server closure announcement as far as I’m concerned.

It would take an extreme amount of grinding to complete this game for me but I was in a position to do it being in a fairly active crew. Then the server closure announcement came & it’s cut down how much horde I can play drastically as realistically, a lot of people in my crew don’t think they can complete the game anymore so aren’t playing half as much (can’t say I blame them).

Now I’m in the difficult position of thinking do I completely abandon a game I’ve sunk hundreds of hours into or just sit around and hope there’s a change from a company I have little faith in.

[thepack1221]

I find myself in a Limbo state. I’m going to be putting enough time into the game to finish off Seriously POP, but I would need to put in wayyyy more time to even have a shot at level 20 stuff.

The real question that gets me is, do I grind as much as physically possible before they announce anything? Right now, I am not. But i don’t know if that’s the correct choice or not. On one hand, they could give us enough items to guarantee we hit level 20, but what if they hand out an amount that wouldn’t quite get a level 15(like myself) to level 20. Then I’d be regretting not putting in more time over the past couple of months.

It’s just a very awkward situation of whether I should play a ton now or not.

[Piyi_Piyi]

For me, when these things happens, I just think:

I will be “happy” grinding for hours day after day? If I grind a lot and then Devs gave you the necessary to level up from 15 to 20, all my grinding was for “nothing” (I’m almost lvl 17).

But, if they only give the necessary to level up from 19 to 20, all my grinding was worth it.

It’s just a thing to accept losing time if they do a massive “giveaway” at the end of the game, and accept too if you don’t grind too much and lost the possibility to obtain the last achievements.

[LMC_L4]

I feel a bit differently tbh. I’m Level 17 (high 18 is I upgrade everything). I’ll definitely be able to get max pin before servers close but max level is a different matter.

I would have to grind a minimum of 3-4 hours per day to hit this within time. That’s if I could even play horde that much at the moment as you’re relying on other players being on at the same time and they have to be willing to play for that kind of time. But let’s say you could do it, I for one would hate to play for that long and then in say February/March, they say ‘hey, we’re giving the achievements away’. I mean great, I’ve got the achievements but so has everyone else only I’ve just lost how much time I’m never getting back.

Not only that, my free time is generally late evenings, looking at a phone for 3-4 hours just before you go to sleep is not healthy believe me!

Probably the biggest issue to hitting max level right now will be getting enough coins. I mean realistically, you need to be able to afford 1,250,000 coins to even make a small dent on upgrading pins at the later level. What do you need to buy that amount? Well 4,500 crystals. My crew earn 150 for finishing in top 10 on weekend events. If we do that for the next 20 weeks, we’ll earn a whopping 3,000 crystals!

It’s a horrible situation to be in and I know a lot of people don’t know what to do for the best.

The devs should have announced the server closure and said there’s good news & bad news. We’re closing down in April but the good news is…insert good news here! Instead, we’ve had the server closure announcement then 2 ‘updates’ which as far as I can tell have done nothing as horde still has disconnects, takes ages to matchmake etc. They announce these updates on Twitter for example and people ask what they are for and nobody ever gets a response. Communication has always been poor from them but it’s just a disappointing state of affairs tbh. Whilst it’s a free to play game, make no mistake they will have made a tonne of money from this game and we as gamers/customers deserve better than what we are getting right now.

[Piyi_Piyi]

@n4k3dLEE

we’ve had the server closure announcement then 2 ‘updates’ which as far as I can tell have done nothing as horde still has disconnects, takes ages to matchmake etc.

I believe those 2 updates were to remove some servers. If they announced servers’ closure and saw many players that stopped playing, they don’t need a lot of servers.

I was playing horde almost without problems on September, some days after the announcement I started to get disconnected at the start of the horde, not getting rewards when the game kick me out (even if I finished some waves, etc).

[Phil_the_Bear]

Ok, so I waited 14 days without posting anything to the forum.

I think lots of people above have made good points

Having an understanding of “if something will happen” and “how it will be done” and “who it is aimed at” could save me and everyone else a lot of time.

For example, if the answer is “our aim is to make a change that ensures everyone player level X and above can finish the achievements”. Then you have a goal to aim for OR you could just stop playing and wait for the “change”.

At the moment I’m grinding out Omen boxes every day, a horde event every weekend and about 4-5 hours of horde speed runs a week. That’s about 20 hours a week.

If nothing happens then I still don’t get the achievements and I’m wasting 20 hours a week.

If the aim is to help people at player level 17+ then maybe it’s worthwhile as I might make it there in time.

If the aim is to help anyone player level 15+ then I am wasting 20 hours a week because I’m already there.

I think @Mike_Langlois said it earlier but even telling us stuff like the JIRA story has been picked by a developer, it’s in local development, a fix has been integrated and is being tested. Etc etc would work for me because that’s what I do for a living.

But anyway, I’ll go back into my box for 2 more weeks now

[Piyi_Piyi]

What's Up - November 26th

WHAT’S UP – NOVEMBER 26 [The November 26 What's Up Header Image featuring Lizzie Carmine holding a Thanksgibbing-skinned weapon] Welcome to this week’s What’s Up! With so much big news over the last few weeks, we’re going to be a little brief today. DEVELOPER’S PLAYLIST TUNING Next week, we’re bringing back the Developer’s Playlist with a few minor adjustments. We want to further iterate on some weapons within the beta tuning that we feel aren’t currently meeting the goals within that spac…

Maybe the help for Gears POP! will be delayed

[Mike_Langlois]

Thats not encouraging but fingers crossed still!

[Mike_Langlois]

Just to keep throwing out thoughts on things that can be done:

Change the league ranking to percentage based instead of cog based.

Have bronze be the top 40%, silver the top 20%, gold the top 10%. Scrap the arenas under bronze and have everything unlockable.

Again this will let more people get to gold league for the achievement, and make ranked less sweaty for the average player.

Still hoping some news appears soon, both TC and MediaTonic are very quiet. Ill be very upset (but deep down not surprised) if nothing happens and its just left to go offline. I know POP is a small playerbase compared to the other issues they have to face, but I would like to think its also a very easy fix compared too.

Heck if you gave some TC devs a hackathon day to fix it they probably could, they are smart people. They just need to be allowed to do it, and thats gotta come from management.

[MCSS_Aerocoupe]

@Mike_Langlois

Have bronze be the top 40%, silver the top 20%, gold the top 10%. Scrap the arenas under bronze and have everything unlockable.

Again this will let more people get to gold league for the achievement, and make ranked less sweaty for the average player.

That would not help the people who still need to reach Gold League. Last night when the season/month ended, there was only around 300 people in the Gold League. I had made it to spot #855 I think, with about 2,890 tags. But spot #10,000 had only around 460 tags. The problem is that the majority of people who end up even in top 30% have already hit Gold at least once. And as the population dwindles, the top 10% will get smaller and smaller.

What they should do is eliminate the current Bronze, Silver, and Gold Leagues and revert back to when the current Arena 8 was the Gold League, Arena 7 was Silver, and Arena 6 was Bronze. That way anyone with over 2,400 tags would be in Gold. And they could just leave the pin unlocks where they are without redistributing them again.

I have to admit I have a growing concern. As more players are quitting, the population is shrinking fast. I just hope that by the time TC/MediaTonic get around to making appropriate end-of-service adjustments they don’t look at the small population and decide it isn’t worth doing anything for the few remaining players.

I was actually shocked by this. Someone made it to spot #3 for the season, was only level 17, and deleted their Pop profile apparently.

[Phil_the_Bear]

Population is so low now it’s actually hard to win games above bronze league.

I know it’s only day one of the new season but the leaderboard currently finishes at 8280 players with someone who has 20 cogs and one win to their name.

In the last horde season crews were making top 1000 with 2 players in the crew.

So yeah, it’s dead.

[Mike_Langlois]

I get what you mean. At the time I didnt think there were so few players left but I see now.

Hopefully we get some scrap of news soon. I wonder if its even still being mentioned? Is it written on a whiteboard somewhere? On someones list? I know they said no to weekly updates but its been 19 days since TC Sera last made a post. I know for a fact at where I work if something isnt mentioned for 19 days its forgotten because everything else moves ahead of it. “If its not been mentioned in so long it must not be important”

[Slipping_Flames]

At one point cheating was rampant. Wonder if people are now being banned?

[MCSS_Aerocoupe]

@Mike_Langlois

Hopefully we get some scrap of news soon. I wonder if its even still being mentioned? Is it written on a whiteboard somewhere? On someones list? I know they said no to weekly updates but its been 19 days since TC Sera last made a post. I know for a fact at where I work if something isnt mentioned for 19 days its forgotten because everything else moves ahead of it.

Yup. And, it has been 27+ days since they gave Ghost enough resources for him to max a pin and reach player level 20. So it isn’t like they have no clue what magnitude of resources it would take to get most folks at least close to maxing a pin and reaching player level 20. Its a shame they don’t do the same for the rest of us and then see how much of the community still needs help after that.

[TheVideoGameGod]

I think the easiest update they can release is to remove the coin requirements from pins altogether. This alone would make the game 4 or 5 times faster. Considering you will have all the pin duplicates to upgrade to 20 long before the coins. This makes sense since its already a long grind just to get the duplicates needed, we shouldn’t have to worry about a second requirement(coins) to upgrade. Similar to gears 5 cards, only need duplicates for cards. Imagine if you needed gears coins on top of that to upgrade your cards.

Also removing the cool down timer for verses chests and omen chests would be most appreciated.

[Piyi_Piyi]

@TheVideoGameGod

Also removing the cool down timer for verses chests and omen chests would be most appreciated

I was thinking about this. They can delete every box except the legendary one and delete (or at least lower) the cooldown.

Now, imagine if they remove cooldown but maintain the variety of boxes.

If you can play horde at any time (Brumak or Thunder 8) is it better keeping playing horde or risk playing versus for the boxes?

Also, I was waiting for the repeated versus event now with event pass paying itself, but still no event…

[Phil_the_Bear]

Honestly the whole thing is frustrating me so much to the point that playing it is now a complete chore. Normal people would be able to just delete the game and not annoy themselves but somehow the achievements make me do it.

At this point players should just make an honour code. If you are losing 1-0 at the 2 minute Mark stop dropping pins. Same applies if you have a tower with 300 or less health with a minute to go. Just let that player have 3 points so they don’t have to play as much.

Anyway, thousands of options.

Give everyone a vast amount of crystals and coins as a gift (like they apparently already have done)

Increase the rewards by a thousand times

Make every crate for everything legendary

Remove the cool down for all crates

Remove the coin requirements for upgrades

Remove the pin requirements for upgrade

Reduce the coin or pin requirements (or both) for upgrades

Auto unlock the achievements

Change the achievements to a lower level

Etc

Right, let’s see if someone wants to do an hour of Brumak thumpers in my crew then…

[Lambent_Lail]

All these suggestions would take a lot of time to recode things and to test things to make sure the game doesn’t break.

The absolute easiest fix is to just put a giant bundle available for purchase for free in the store that gives 1,000,000 crystals and 100,000,000 coins.

By doing this, you give everyone the resources they need to complete the achievements WITHOUT messing with the underlying code. They clearly already have the capabilities to offer coins and crystals in free boxes in the store, so just increase the resources that come in the boxes.