Let me preface this post, by saying I love Gears of War. However, my forays into multiplayer matches has yield annoying design flaws.
1. Achievement miners. people who live to unlock all their achievements, thereby sacrificing cooperative play for personal gain. Problem with the Achievement system in general, not inherent to Gears of War.
2. You can nearly empty a clip into an enemy with a power weapon and they will still have the ability to pull off a devastating kill before your bullet fury causes death. How many soldiers could properly aim while getting plugged repeatably with bullets? Serious oversight in my book. When shooting an enemy preparing for a power weapon attack out of cover with weapons like the sniper rifle, torque bow, etc. they should be severely crippled by causing a significant amount of jitter to their aim. This would also allow for better use of cover fire and end the high noon shootout standoffs that often occur between machine gun wielders. need to encourage palyers getting shot to find cover and replan attack.
3. Running and Gunning. Gears does not have played online like the single player game. Players have now gotten very good at dodging machine gun fire until they dodge and roll up and blast you in the face with a from-the-hip shotgun blast. Please make players fatigue relatively early when running and rolling and make the machine gun a bit more powerful. Epic took out jumping and added a cover system, but forgot to mitigate this glaring exploit. It should still be possible to do this, but it should be a lot harder. This would encourage more, "stop and pop."
4. Power weapons. Many matches have become races to the power weapons. Whoever gets them generally wins. Remove weapons from all maps and just give hosts the option to enable power weapons and let the game randomly equip one or two players from each team with particular power weapons from spawn with very limited ammo. If a power wielder kills an enemy power wielder, they can get their remaining ammo. For instnce. In one round a team member from each team will get the sniper weapon and one member from each will get the boomshot.
5. Slow aim correction. Epic needs to improve the of the player to correct their aim. When in aim mode, it can be very difficult to follow an enemy charging and weaving back and forth. This can be easily fixed by implementing more detailed controller configuration including adding slider bars for sensitivity and acceleration. As these go up so should motion blur, overshoot, and jitter. This would make running and gunning harder and encourage, "stop and pop."
6. Sound. Player movements should be a louder. These guys are beasts with hundreds of pounds of equipment on. It sould be nearly impossible to sneak up on someone unless you are tip toeing. I want to hear load grunts, clanking armor and weapons, and particles being crushed under foot. You have to crank the volume to get good movement detection. This should not be the case.
These are just the ones off the top of my head. I am sure i will find more as I play more. But, it seems that because the multiplayer was tacked on at the end, it did not get the same care as the single player. I have tried running and gunning on single player, even on casual, and it is very difficult to not get killed. The multiplayer game needs the same attention and care to produce a similar affect. If they want to get some longevity out of this game then these all need addressing soon.
Of course a better matchmaking system is needed and a lot of criticism has focussed on this aspect, but in my book this should be a low priority. Gameplay is by far more important. Bring, "stop and pop" to multiplayer.
1. Achievement miners. people who live to unlock all their achievements, thereby sacrificing cooperative play for personal gain. Problem with the Achievement system in general, not inherent to Gears of War.
2. You can nearly empty a clip into an enemy with a power weapon and they will still have the ability to pull off a devastating kill before your bullet fury causes death. How many soldiers could properly aim while getting plugged repeatably with bullets? Serious oversight in my book. When shooting an enemy preparing for a power weapon attack out of cover with weapons like the sniper rifle, torque bow, etc. they should be severely crippled by causing a significant amount of jitter to their aim. This would also allow for better use of cover fire and end the high noon shootout standoffs that often occur between machine gun wielders. need to encourage palyers getting shot to find cover and replan attack.
3. Running and Gunning. Gears does not have played online like the single player game. Players have now gotten very good at dodging machine gun fire until they dodge and roll up and blast you in the face with a from-the-hip shotgun blast. Please make players fatigue relatively early when running and rolling and make the machine gun a bit more powerful. Epic took out jumping and added a cover system, but forgot to mitigate this glaring exploit. It should still be possible to do this, but it should be a lot harder. This would encourage more, "stop and pop."
4. Power weapons. Many matches have become races to the power weapons. Whoever gets them generally wins. Remove weapons from all maps and just give hosts the option to enable power weapons and let the game randomly equip one or two players from each team with particular power weapons from spawn with very limited ammo. If a power wielder kills an enemy power wielder, they can get their remaining ammo. For instnce. In one round a team member from each team will get the sniper weapon and one member from each will get the boomshot.
5. Slow aim correction. Epic needs to improve the of the player to correct their aim. When in aim mode, it can be very difficult to follow an enemy charging and weaving back and forth. This can be easily fixed by implementing more detailed controller configuration including adding slider bars for sensitivity and acceleration. As these go up so should motion blur, overshoot, and jitter. This would make running and gunning harder and encourage, "stop and pop."
6. Sound. Player movements should be a louder. These guys are beasts with hundreds of pounds of equipment on. It sould be nearly impossible to sneak up on someone unless you are tip toeing. I want to hear load grunts, clanking armor and weapons, and particles being crushed under foot. You have to crank the volume to get good movement detection. This should not be the case.
These are just the ones off the top of my head. I am sure i will find more as I play more. But, it seems that because the multiplayer was tacked on at the end, it did not get the same care as the single player. I have tried running and gunning on single player, even on casual, and it is very difficult to not get killed. The multiplayer game needs the same attention and care to produce a similar affect. If they want to get some longevity out of this game then these all need addressing soon.
Of course a better matchmaking system is needed and a lot of criticism has focussed on this aspect, but in my book this should be a low priority. Gameplay is by far more important. Bring, "stop and pop" to multiplayer.
