What’s Up – September 3

Welcome to What’s Up! Your one-stop location for everything in the world of Gears.  This week is all about the Developer Playlist and changes we want to test publicly and see what resonates with the community. This Playlist will go live next Tuesday, September 8.

In the latest version of this playlist, we are exploring:

• Consistency changes to the Gnasher
• Increasing the Flashbang radius
• Decreasing weapon respawn timers
• Assessing the quality of 4v4 King of the Hill

Gnasher Consistency

Spread Change: We’re looking to increase the parity between the Hipfire and the ADS spread size as much as possible. Our belief is if we equalize the damage potential at range – how people use the Gnasher will become a preference rather than one being objectively better than the other.

• ADS Spread Modifier: 0.45 > 0.47
• Hipfire Spread Modifier: 0.9 > 0.6

Removal of the Pellet Round Up System: A brief explanation for those of you that don’t know about this ‘round up’ legacy system. This was a system designed in Gears of War 3 so that when a player hits “most” of their pellets, the damage done is rounded up to the maximum potential damage it can do.

For Gears 5, this was tuned to 70%. Basically, if you hit at least 9 out 12 total pellets meant you would do the maximum potential damage at that range.

In overall effect, hitting 9, 10 or 11 pellets was the same as hitting all 12. Landing 8 or less means your damage was calculated per-pellet based on the range modifier.

As you can see there is a significant damage difference between landing 8 and 9 pellets (33.3%). We think this adds to the feeling of inconsistency of damage at range.

By removing this system and making some damage adjustments to compensate, we feel this will make the damage dealt more intuitive and logical to the user. Here is the base weapon damage change we’re testing in the Dev Playlist: 525 dmg -> 600 dmg.

Now that hitting 9 pellets will equal 9/12 maximum damage, we feel an adjustment is needed to keep a similar feeling of damage at range. This may result in 99% in 1 to occur, where the player hits 12/12 pellets ~1uu outside of the gib range (250uu). 

We know this feel like a controversial change. But we believe that it’s more logical to have that number at 99% rather than 87%.

This means that landing 8 (8×1.5 = 12) pellets within gib range (250uu) will result in a gib. (Previously 9 with round up). We don’t expect users to feel any real difference here, except for not seeing 70% in one. 😉

Cover Damage Mitigation: We are removing the cover damage mitigation to help improve the expected damage results.

In its current form – this mechanic is very important for the overall gameplay but we feel it adds some inconsistencies to Gnasher play around covers.

In layman’s terms, this new change means if you can see them, you can hit them.

Flashbang

The flashbang change at the start of Operation 4 didn’t quite reach the intended goals we wanted for this utility grenade. We wanted to clean up the visual effects, which we believe we hit the mark on, but also wanted to give people a good chance to avoid the Flashbangs they saw coming.

After feedback, we understand that we may have gone a little too far in reducing the stun radius and believe the new changes move the Flashbang to a healthier position. Flashbang Stun Radius: 300uu -> 325uu

Weapon Respawn Timers

In previous titles, all power weapons would respawn 30 seconds after use and all secondary weapons would respawn 30 seconds after pickup. This added a layer of fun and dynamism to each match we feel is currently missing.

We are lowering our weapon respawn timers and having them universally set to after use (timer will start if the weapon de-spawns or all ammo is used). We hope this change will get people’s favorite weapons in their hands more often.

Heavy: 90s	Power: 60s	Grenades: 30s	Secondary: 30s
Salvo	Boomshot	Smoke	Boltok
Mulcher	Dropshot	Flashbang	Enforcer
Tri-shot	Embar	Frag	Hammerburst
Ice Cannon	Longshot	Incendiary	Markza
Breaker Mace	Overkill	Shock	Retro
Lancer GL	Torque Bow		Talon
Buzzkill	Claw

4v4 King of the Kill

We want to see what 4v4 looks like on a bigger scale using the Developer Playlist.  At TC, we have always discussed the difference between 5v5 and 4v4 and what it means for Gears MP gameplay.

We believe 5v5 offers fast-paced matches with constant action at the cost of stronger setups and oppressive team fire. On other hand, 4v4 adds more importance to each kill, less lane coverage which creates more opportunities for individual plays and more personal engagements.

As always, we’ve set up a feedback thread on the forums. Let us know what you think

– TC