Gears 5 Multiplayer: Finally the changes we needed

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alistercat

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Gears 5 has had a few multiplayer betas now and having played it I can confidently say the game has changed. It only took them 6 games. No more shotguns.

You may have seen Brad play the Beta on UPF a month or so ago and based on that you might think that it's business as usual, but it didn't highlight the biggest change to the game. No more shotguns. When I say the game has changed, of course I don't mean the overall gameplay is suddenly different. You're taking cover, shooting beefys boys until they go down. For those who have played other Gears games you will recall every match boiling down to a few players rolling and point blank blind firing a shotgun to kill you in one hit. Maybe 2, if you're lucky.

With Gears 5 competitive each character has their own weapon loadout and the Gnasher shotgun is no longer part of any loadout. You cannot pick up a shotgun on the map. Kills earn you credits which can then be spent on special weapons depending on your class, and the gnasher/overkill are included in these but you cannot start with one. For a fan of the series who recently played some Gears 4 to get ready for the new game this is a massive improvement. As an average skilled player it allowed me to actually participate in multiplayer without being frustrated all the time.

Is the change from being one shot all the time more or less likely to make you give Gears 5 a chance?

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Toxin066

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Wall bouncing and shotgun is Gears.

This makes me less likely to give Gears 5 a chance, at least in the multiplayer aspect.

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PhilipDuck

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Sounds good, looking forward to Friday!

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nutter

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#4  Edited By nutter

I haven’t played much Gears competitive since Gears 2 (the one where they made the awesome call to have getting shot slow movement progress toward the shooter).

It was great to be able to be a team, take positions, and punish folks who come bounding and rolling in with shotguns. Unfortunately, I think the larger community revolted.

They went back to shotgun-fests in 3 and 4 and I just played the Coop modes.

If Gears 5 chases away shotgun rolling by making you need to earn it each match, that MIGHT get me

back into it. Of course, it could always turn into some bullshit where the team that loses round 1 quits since it’d maybe lock them out of the game they want (shotgun rolling vs not).

I’ll say it again, I thought the Gears 2 method of getting slowed when running into gunfire was pretty much perfect. You could still grenade tag and shotgun roll, but you had to work for it, tactically (or catch people sleeping).

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alistercat

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@nutter:The credits don't carry over between rounds but I could be mistaken on that. Plus the gnasher you purchase only has like 6 shots instead of the 32 or whatever it was before. The being slowed down by shots is still in there.

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alistercat

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@toxin066 said:

Wall bouncing and shotgun is Gears.

This makes me less likely to give Gears 5 a chance, at least in the multiplayer aspect.

I can understand that, but for the average player that stuff gets so frustrating. Jeff has commented on the shotguns in gears being a problem many times before.

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BoOzak

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#7  Edited By BoOzak

They should just make a mode filled with shotguns and one without them entirely. I feel like that would make everyone happy. I doubt i'll spend too much time with the multiplayer, i'll probably spend some time with Horde and whatever that Escape mode is though.

I find it hard to get excited for competitive shooters these days, i'm not sure why. I think Battle Royales broke me.

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OurSin_360

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I haven't played since like gears 2 or something, but shotguns were the only thing that was fun about it. Shooting the assault rifles were boring and the torque bow and other special weapons were inconsistent and hard to use.

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alistercat

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GunstarRed

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Only in Arcade do you have different loadouts, You can still wall bounce and shotgun to your hearts content in the main MP modes, even playing Arcade and using one of the characters that can unlock the shotgun show that the shotgun is still a 1 hit kill monster.

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nutter

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@alistercat: This all sounds really cool. Thanks for sharing!

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nutter

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@alistercat: Epic struggled with shotguns since Gears 1. It was supposed to be more tactical, but shotgun rolling became a thing that took over that first game, eventually.

They introduced gunfire as a slowing mechanic in Gears 2. If you were walking, roadie running, rolling, whatever, you’d be slowed moving toward the shooter, forcing you to back-off or get dropped. I thought this was a cool way to allow for some risky shotgun rolls and grenade tags without them taking over...there was a loud group (majority, minority, I don’t know) who were vocal about this.

Gears 3, Judgement, and 4, as far as I can recall, left shotgun rolling in with minimal counters for it.

But yeah, this has plagued Gears since the first game. I’d love for them to either introduce different hoppers or just choose a style and stick with it. I’m all for the original intent, but I think a big chunk of the community loves their rolling...

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cmblasko

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Gears multiplayer being shotgun-centric was the thing that made it stand out from other multiplayer shooters. I'll still try it out but I am way less excited about it than before. Reminds me of Halo adding COD stuff in an attempt to appeal to that crowd, only to further push its own crowd away.

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Humanity

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I don't envy their decision making meetings. You either cater to an existing fanbase and alienate a whole lot of other people who do not understand the hidden mechanics and get repeatedly obliterated by series veterans.. or you streamline some things and risk losing the existing fanbase.

If it was a reboot then I can see it being an easier choice but stubbornly this is a continuation of that same series, so people will be expecting the same mechanics. Personally I never cared for the shotgun wall-hopping stuff because it felt like early days of bunny-hopping - a weird semi broken mechanic that people got good at and now became this awkward broken meta.

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sweep

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#15 sweep  Moderator

I don't expect this will make any significant difference to the way multiplayer feels to be honest. There are still plenty of options available for close-range fights (Grenade tags, melee, chainsaws, etc) and personally in gears 3 I was routinely picking the Retro Lancer over the shotgun anyway - it was the perfect counter and I was pretty upset when they removed the option to select that gun as a default weapon in Gears 4.

If it means that fights are less likely to devolve into two people just rolling around each other in circles and hip-firing shotguns then that's cool I guess, but I fully expect the new meta to result in something equally bullshit. Weapon balance is something that's always been hugely contentious in the Gears community because so many of the weapons have the ability to insta-kill in a way which feels unbelievably unfair if you're on the receiving end, and it's almost a meme to complain that the last weapon that you died to is OP.