Last week I wrote a blog about the campaign of Gears 4, specifically about it's storytelling (as oppose to it's mechanics) and you can read that over here, if you'd like. If you'd not like then that's also fine. You do you.

Since then I've had a chance to spend some time with the multiplayer aspect of the game and, now that I'm nearing level 40, it's time to weigh in; Gears 4 multiplayer is pretty great! The maps are fun, the new game modes are interesting, encouraging teamwork and experimentation with new weapons and tactics, and the social playlists make it much easier to drop in and out of matches. Horde mode is still great, and the new levels of control you have over the purchase and deployment of defences and weapons totally scratches that Home Alone itch of wanting to invent the perfect death-trap. Class skills add an extra layer of strategy, as well as allowing players to buff the roles in which they feel most comfortable to better aid their team.

It feels really awesome to have so many positive things to say about Gears 4 multiplayer.

It's a shame that this is all undercut by their absolutely moronic progression structure and exorbitant microtransactions.

The way this progression is currently structured, loot crates can either be bought with ingame credits or real world moneybones. You can bolster this by completing bounties, multiplayer side-objectives like face-stabbing 10 dudes in a single match, or completing a game with a specific character. You'll unlock 500 credits at every 5 levels (Why not 100 every 1 level, guys?). You'll also get between 50-100 credits for each multiplayer match you complete, depending on how well you do. This sounds like a lot of ways to accumulate moneys, right? Unfortunately, it's not.

The cost of the Elite Crate, the one with the character and weapon skins, costs 3500 credits. If you want to do the math, that means you would earn enough to buy one pack naturally every 30-ish levels, assuming you're also doing bounties and winning most of your matches. I've been playing for 15 hours (total combined with the campaign and horde) and I've only earned enough credits to buy one. And that was even during the double XP weekend that just finished. Obviously you'll get more credits for a higher score; for what it's worth, I was once ranked in the top 500 King Of The Hill players in the world. My k/d is solid.

Leveling in Gears 4 is slow.

Accumulating money to unlock those skins is even slower. The alternative is to buy them with real money, but each costs £3.99. That's the equivalent cost of 5 loot boxes in Overwatch. You can buy them in bulk to drop the price, but when you've just spent £75 for the collectors edition of a videogame, why would you want to shell out another hundred for cosmetics? That's taking the piss.

As mentioned above, Horde allows players to equip custom skills to boost their class skills. These abilities can only be leveled up by combining duplicates. But duplicates can only be obtained by buying loot crates or crafting. Crafting is the process of destroying a skin or bounty to receive a fraction of it's cost back as scrap. But with the unlock rate so low, who has got spares to scrap right now? So you have to buy them, abilities which are vital to progress and complete the more difficult levels of Horde. Yep, The Coalition has established a Pay-To-Win structure for a sizable chunk of their multiplayer. Because everyone loves those.

So, most importantly, what are the repercussions of this on their online community?

The most obvious can be seen in Horde, where players don't have access to the abilities they need and so struggle to play at the later levels, when enemies have been buffed to unreasonable difficulties. I've put in a good 6 or 7 hours into Horde and i'm yet to get past level 40, even with a team of friends in party chat. Part of that may be because we're not good enough, but I doubt it. This is my fourth Gears and I've sunk a lot of hours into previous titles, especially into Horde.

The matchmaking for Hardcore and Insane Horde playlists right now are completely deserted, I assume because nobody has yet unlocked enough abilities to make an attempt worthwhile as oppose to the network code being buggy. On top of this, for some moronic reason you gain more credits for dropping out after wave 10 than for getting to wave 20, so even if you find a decent team there's a good chance them might disappear before you get to a decent wave. As a final kick in the teeth, to get a class to level 10 and have access to all their ability slots, it takes about 80 full runs, levels 1-50, without dying. That's 80+ hours, minimum. The guys who put in that research also made the following discoveries:

• How you perform in your class has no impact on your leveling speed
• Completing bounties, class related or not, has no impact on your class leveling speed
• Working on a difficult wave and failing (e.g. playing beyond your level), nets you no progress to your class skill

I understand that you need a balance between wanting players to feel like they are making progress, and slow enough that there's still an incentive to purchase stuff on your store. I get that. In fact, I think I get is slightly better than the Coalition does, because their expectations right now are completely unrealistic.

I'm their target demographic.

I bought the collectors edition, I love Gears, I have disposable income and, as is evident to anyone admiring my Dota 2/Overwatch/Hearthstone collections, I have no problem spending money on microtransactions. But with Gears 4 I refuse on principle. This is bullshit.

The overwhelming sense right now is that progression is a fools errand. So, play and enjoy the multiplayer, but don't expect to get anything out of it beyond the fleeting joy of chainsawing strangers in half. And don't expect to make any progress in Horde at all, either. Long-term, Gears 4 has a lot of changes to be made, and fast. Launch week is supposed to be the busiest time for a multiplayer community; if you scare the players away now, they won't come back.

Thanks For Reading,

Love Sweep

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UPDATE 1/Dec/16:

Alright, so I'm now pushing level 100 and it's probably time to weigh in on the updates and changes the devs have made. Most prominent is that it's now a lot quicker to accumulate credits, and the price of loot crates has been reduced since my initial review. I've since completed horde not just on Normal, but on Insane as well; there's a knack to it that basically involves hiding in a corner with a bunch of turrets and hoping the boss bugs out every ten waves so you don't have to fight him until the end. It's not particularly satisfying and it takes fucking hours, but considering every enemy can put you down with a single shot, there's not really many alternatives. You also need a balanced team with a scout that has a good power deposit bonus, and a team with enough self-preservation to allow the aforementioned scout play his class. There also needs to be an engineer whose whole job is basically clicking on fortifications for 3 hours. Anyway.

The game still isn't perfect, but it's better. The new maps, only granted to season pass holders, were initially useless as they weren't included in any of the active playlists. Guns have been slightly rebalanced, though this time around I never got deep enough to really appreciate the subtle differences.

In terms of the microtransactions I abandoned their elite crates and sunk all my credits into horde crates. You won't get any cosmetics ever but it gradually (very gradually) gives you the class abilities you need to compete at the harder horde difficulties. They've also decreased how long it takes to level up your class, which means you can push every class up to level 3 or even 5 without only a couple of horde runs. They're still doing their bullshit special-event overpriced "limited time only purple guns waaah!!!!" sale nonsense, but I'm still bluntly refusing to take part.

Anyway. That was the state of the game a couple of weeks ago. I've since uninstalled it.

Thanks for reading (again)

Love Sweep