We need a single, one-stop searchable place, to find all upcoming changes, issues being worked on, issues being investigated, and things that are being reported as issues but are working as intended. When there is an issue, we could see the status of the issue, whether that be investigating it, working on a fix, testing a fix, fix expected to be deployed on a certain day or in the next TU.
A sticky thread here would be the most logical place due to the length of content contained, but with links to it in TWIG, What’s Up, the occasional Tweet, etc. Maybe something in the following format, with a few examples thrown in to give a better visualization:
Current Issues/Work
Global
Allies XP – XP per level requirement reduction – in progress, ETA ____
Re-UP XP – XP requirements reduction – in progress, ETA ____
Verses
General
Ranked
Ranking System Overhaul – in progress, ETA ____
Social
AI difficulty in Co-Op VS AI – even on the radar?
PVE
General
Horde
Escape
Resolved
Global
Verses
General
Ranked
Social
PVE
General
Lizzie’s Silverback game crash – Fixed on: ____
Horde
Escape
Overly Aggressive Melee AI – Fixed on: ____
This alone would be great, but one additional feature that would be awesome is including either a relevant internal ticket number for the community to reference if they wanted/needed to provide additional details or ask about it, or a link on each item to a dedicated thread on it for discussion.
Why do we need this? Currently, most info gets released “somewhere” but there are so many different places that it is hard if not impossible to keep up with it. For example, the only official info I know of about the upcoming allies XP change can be found by coming here to the forums, looking at a thread about the AI difficulty in Co-Op VS AI, and finding a link to a recording of a Pro League Live Stream on Twitch (https://www.twitch.tv/videos/578505893) and jumping to about 1 hour and 5 minutes into it. I’m sorry, but that seems ridiculous that something that is supposed to be confirmed as coming at some point has not been officially posted anywhere else in the last two months.
Similarly, the most up-to-date info on adjusting the Re-Up XP requirements I know of is found in a This Week In Gears post from a month ago (https://www.gears5.com/twig-apr30). However, I don’t understand the wording “to reduce the hockey stick effect from Re-Up 20 onwards”. The highest XP increases are actually re-ups 16-20, where they increase by 2,000 per level on each of those re-ups. Re-ups 21-30 only increase by 400 per level on each of those re-ups. Even by re-ups 46-50, the increase per level is only 1,500. Does this mean the overall XP needed for every re-up going to be dropped? Or just even out the increases per re-up so re-up 50 is still at the same place?
The other frustrating thing this could fix is letting folks know when an issue has been seen and acknowledged by TC. When Lizzie’s Silverback was causing Horde & Escape matches to crash, I don’t recall seeing anything from TC acknowledging there was an issue. As a result, many folks posted here and on Twitter trying to draw attention to the issue, but no responses that I recall seeing from TC. Then again, I didn’t scroll through every thread with dozens of posts about it, which brings us back to that one-stop place for all upcoming changes, issues, etc.
The same thing happened with the overly aggressive AI that would insta-kill anyone who got downed in Escape, making is nearly impossible to complete Master difficulty runs. Post after post with no acknowledgement, so keep posting until we finally see something stating it would be fixed in the next update.
Since the beginning of Operation 3, the Beginner difficulty AI on Co-Op VS AI acts the same way as the Hardcore difficulty AI. I’ve seen posts in the forums here and I’ve posted on Twitter. Is TC aware of this change? Was it intended, or an accident like the overly aggressive melee in Escape? No way to know, as no one from TC has acknowledged seeing the posts. I can’t image it is intended, as why have two difficulty labels for the same difficulty? Just reduces the number of people you can get matched up with to face basically the same enemies. Plus nothing saying they were planning/meant to bump the Beginner difficulty up a little. Or maybe I’ve missed something in a Live Stream about this, sorry, I have better things to do than watch someone else play Gears for 2 hours while getting maybe 5 minutes of new info.
One additional benefit of having a “resolved” section would be to be able to showcase how many issues have been identified and fixed.
