Hello Ryan,
Look, I get everyone is different, everyone likes and dislikes different things, you cannot, CANNOT make everyone happy, and thus you have an impossible job. I respect that, but, in the end, when I play a game, it’s only about what I like, right, so that is MY criteria…
Look, I believe there is a lot of good stuff in Gears 5, so I don’t hate it 100%, there are just a few elements of versus which kill it for me. I DO play it every day, but I feel no desire to move up in rank, to “get better”, and I don’t enjoy it. I enjoy playing GoW4 coop more than G5 rankes. Which means that while you retain me as a player, you completely lose me as a Store customer. And I’m sure you can access the data to see how much I spent on GoW4 store content, so you know that I’m not just blowing smoke.
To answer your questions. Let me list specific elements, and in the end I’ll put it all together why it is so negative in my opinion, for me…
- the bllinding omen. It makes it impossible to keep fighting after taking damage… It makes me so angry. I have seen good people outplay multiple others, taking damage in the process, and yet surviving in previous titles. Here, it’s impossible. Once I take any serious damage, ESPECIALLY when there is any smoke in the area, I become BLIND. Even if it’s for 1-1.5seconds, that’s an eternity in CQB… The only option is to run away, hide, until vision returns. I have won 1v1s only to be killed by another whom I could HEAR but not see, because my screen was full red.
Few examples, where the screen turned red and I completely lost my sense of what was going on around me:
- movement/sliding speed. Yes, this is subjective, but in Gears of War 4 I felt like I was moving on Ice Stakes, whereas in Gear 5 I feel like I’m running through ankle deep water… I really enjoyed trying to get better at that type of combat, it really got me excited and hyped up:
I don’t know if it’s reduced sliding speed, or added delays, or what, but movement just doesn’t feel as crisp and FUN in G5 as it did in GoW4. In 4 movement was FUN, in 5 movement is just a part of the game… And movement is a HUGE part of what makes Gears Gears…
- lancer tuning / aim assist. in one of your What’s Ups, your dev said that lancer is designed to punish people for having poor movement in poor positions. Then THIS happens:
This is insane. I had enough time to pull off the wall… that’s it… No time to jump, no time to look for any other cover, NOTHING.
I used to do something similiar to people in GoW4 using the Retro. But here, this is a loadout weapon…
- gnasher ammo count and re-load mechanism: you said you hated shot spamming, and that’s why you reduced the ammo count and increased the reload speed. BUT, this didn’t JUST affect people who do shot spamming. This also affects people who want to play and want to learn how to do gnasher combat for damage (as opposed to 1 shot gibs all the time)… And what is shot spamming? Most of the time, with good movement, it’s easy enough to avoid it… But new people , learning how to CQB, can make it LOOK like they are shot spamming, but in reality, they are TRYING and missing… Reducing the ammo count , making the reload slower, and that half-mag reload mechanism, all make it waaaaaaaaaay more difficult for beginners to survive and learn that style of combat, they are constantly reloading, jamming their gnashers, TRYING to fight, but end us getting killed all the time…
This “ohh, it increases the skill gap, forcing players to reload” is nonsense, it punishes people who play for damage and who are learning thus missing their shots, or taking on multiple enemies…
I was trying to take on few people, and I had to jump away to reload in the middle, but they didn’t, that last one just hit B immediately after missing me (what happened to punishing people who miss their gnasher shots?)
- Chainsaw. I love the chainsaw, I love using it as a measure of last resort… I HATE how you failed to account for a revup request while the gun is reloading. SO MANY TIMES I want to revup the saw while the gun is already auto-reloading, and I just jam my gun…
Yes, I can turn off auto reload, BUT this introduces a lot of other problems elsewhere, so you destroyed my ability to use the chainsaw in a lot of the cases I want to use it…
Now, big picture time.
Ryan, I am a software developer, I’ve been doing high end software for world’s largest banks for a large number of years, I know and understand the reality of software development (I smile when you talk about release and certification schedules, I know exactly what you mean).
I know there is zero change you can bring back the old omen at this point. Ain’t gonna happen, I’d feel stupid asking for that, so I understand that.
The intensity slider is a hack - it might reduce the negative impact, BUT we then lose the information which it is intended to provide us.
However. Personally, i don’t find the ICE OMEN to be bad, at all. In fact, I like it! It doesn’t blind me, I can still see around me, and I know/see how much damage I am taking:
Please give me the option to use the Ice Omen effect to show all damage, even ballistic damage, in versus.
Would it look strange to have the ice omen? Sure, BUT I am the only one using it, the only one seeing it, and it would be waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay better than the current system, AND better than just turning OFF the damage indicator completely (what your slider will become). You can even sell it as an accessibility feature, I have color vision problems which the current omen might be hitting but the ice omen isn’t affected by (and using color blind modes doesn’t make the current omen any better).
Movement - give us GoW4 sliding movement. I can’t tell you what the difference is, in your code, but come on, there IS a difference… speed, delays, etc…
lancer tuning - 30m as the starting point of damage dropoff is waaaay too long. that’s across most maps… Put in some small drop off at 10am and a larger drop off at 20m… The video I attacked shows how INSANE the lancer can be currently. There is NOTHING people can do, and lancer is NOT intended to be a “I see you, so you are dead” weapon, at ANY range (beyond the chainsaw 
)
gnasher - I like no active boost… I can deal with the active = full reload, non-active = half reload. But please put 8 round back in the gnasher…
chainsaw : you have the logic already to tell the difference between a tap and a hold of the RB (to decide between reload and chainsaw outside of a reload). Just make sure you use that same logic DURING a re-load…
I don’t think that any of the above requests would require any redesign of your code (unlike asking for the old omen would), so I believe all of these would be relatively “easy” to do… and would go a looooong way to making me a happy player, who will happily pay for custom content (which I like!).
I can’t believe implementing them would make it any more difficult for interested new players to keep trying to get better in the game…
Thanks…
