As time is going by, I’m starting to come across more and more issues (cheevo progress broken, pvp issues, etc), but the main thing I can’t understand is why we’ve gone backwards and lost essential features, game modes… and why we don’t have some small extra stuff added on?
I’ll be as short as possible. For example, in gears 3, imo, we had the best looking war journal that tracked stats wonderfully, displayed ribbons, medals, a section showing all of our progress and skin unlocks. It was easy on the eyes and gave detailed info. We had extra features… an arcade mode in campaign, fun modifiers to just go crazy with. We had horde, we had beast mode, arcade campaign, pvp. It was the best gears game to that point, features and all.
Gears judgment released and it wasn’t good, but it had good features. The customization had increased and we were able to play around with the most fun looking skins yet. We got survival and overrun. We got free for all and domination. The PvP maps were actually fun with the added verticality (even tho most of em were scrapped gears 3 maps that were repurposed for judgment, they were really fun. The quick swap stuff was terrible and the red vs blue stuff ruined it… but… I always said to everyone I ever talked to about it… if judgment was a full on dlc package that was added into gears 3 instead of being a new game (the new modes, campaign, maps, etc) I would’ve paid $60 for it just to turn gears 3 into the biggest feature filled gears game of all time!
With that being said… we got 4 which was basically the safe game that took no chances, even selling us the majority of gears 3 maps back to us AGAIN, just to get another gears game out there.
I kno it sounds like a long rant, but here’s my point… why have we gotten games that had great modes, only to lose those modes as the series progresses? Why do we still have a basic game AGAIN that feels barren and lacking features?
Here’s the minimum stuff that I think should’ve been in gears 5 at launch:
FFA, capture the leader, wingman, domination (and Escalation), regular and arcade campaign, fun modifiers for horde and campaign, beast mode, escape and reverse escape (controlling swarm while other players are cog, basically a PvEvP version), Overrun, survival (using current weapons, not judgments), custom weapon AND character skins in campaign (cutscenes didn’t need to reflect the changes), all the horde variations from gears 4, the ability to make custom enemy spawning waves in horde and more control over certain aspects of horde, a war journal, a good in game stat system in that war journal, gears 3 style medals (that also reward you stuff upon completion) and ribbons, the option to play as swarm in co op vs AI (why are we forced to always play as cog?), and also have the current stuff, like dodgeball, TDM, KOTH, etc etc…
Why is it as the series continues, I feel like we’re getting the bare minimum here just so there’s more stuff for the next game? Is it really so much to ask to have a bigger game, filled with some of the best past stuff? Is it really so hard to enable fun modifiers, campaign skins? Do you think this is truly the best gears game you could’ve made, TC? Seriously? I feel like even the menus, navigation and overall look of the UI is a step backwards. Sometimes, less is more, but here, it’s all clunky looking and for what? Did the list of modes really need to take up that much space? I’m not attacking you guys, cause there’s some very talented devs at TC, but some of the choices are just head scratching strange.
I know this post won’t get any traction and the core features of gears 5 are set, but come on… do you guys really feel like it was the best move to have less features than previous games (again) when gears 3 seemed to be going in the perfect direction for added features and fun.
I say all of this with love and respect… I just wonder why things like padding the campaign with pointless skiff rides was the priority when you could’ve just added an arcade mode on top of things with fun modifiers to allow us to really enjoy the game when we replay it. With so many games having so much customization and fun extras these days, why does it feel like TC doesn’t want us to have the most fun possible? Why can’t you turn the fun up to 11 and just put simple extra things in (like campaign skins, etc) as the bare minimum? Why does the game have to work so hard to be “just another gears game”??
TC, you have a ton of skilled ppl, but I feel like that doesn’t make up for an average feature game. I hate to make the statement, but just like 343i took over halo and left out fun features in their games moving forward (see halo reach at the best feature filled game, then it went back down to bare minimum after that), I feel like you guys did the same after you got control of the gears ip.
I’m just sayin… by the crazy chance this reaches someone who matters… think of how amazing the game(s) would be if you just added more of the features I listed above. Even a handful of stuff would make a world of difference. As a fan, it’s not too much to ask for features we should’ve had by now, and features that were never brought back. We need more content brought back and when the “new car smell” wears off, a lot of ppl will go off again to other games that deliver on being rich with features.
And FYI… ppl would pay for season passes, if you added genuine new content (not recycling all old maps from old gears games), even if it’s old returning modes, like overrun, beast or fun variants of stuff, like reverse escape or even reverse beast or reverse horde. When you charge $15 for ONE character skin, that is a horrible model to ensure no season pass. If you add valued content, ppl would pay, but even now, you’re losing sales because you charge too much! $5 a character skin is acceptable, but $15?? Who the heck thought that was acceptable?? You guys need to have fair prices, not this unfair business model you currently have… but I digress… that is for another post…