Gears of War 3: Multiplayer beta, 4 player co-op, and a whole lotta juice

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Games > Gears of War 3: Multiplayer beta, 4 player co-op, and a whole lotta juice

Greed: Apr 28, 2008

Ah Pook posted:

I wish my teammates would get out of the Gears mentality of just holding your shotgun out until enemies get close and then trading deaths. You spawn with your choice of 3 weapons that can drop people at range, why does no one use them?

When the second week started and all the pre-orders beta players started, we named it the "unlocking of the scrub gates." Every kid would stick to shotgun only while my team would just lancer everyone to death, it was glorious.

# ¿ Apr 28, 2011 01:45

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# ¿ May 25, 2013 10:50

Greed: Apr 28, 2008

xzen posted:

As an aside, I've always felt that the Gears community as a whole neglects the Hammerburst entirely. In most of the retro lancer/DBS balance threads on the Epic forums (there are several) it seems like a lot of the discussion leaves the Hammerburst out of the picture entirely. In my opinion it was the best weapon in Gears 2 (especially if you rolled with a full team of people using it) and it's even better now that I can kill people that I've downed with it as well. I've not managed to make it "jam" from firing too quickly yet either, seems to happen all the time with the Snub though

The Hammerburst was banned for Gears 2 MLG because a) its completely broken with modded controllers, b) its way too powerful anyhow without any cheating and c) games turned into hour long camp fests because people were too afraid to move. I guarantee Hammer is gonna get banned again for MLG unless they reduce the shot speed more or reduce damage, its definitely the best weapon in the game. All the MLG teams I have ran into on Ranked are already using Lancer in anticipation of the Hammer getting banned.

# ¿ May 2, 2011 20:55

Greed: Apr 28, 2008

From a design standpoint, Epic clearly tried to make the weapons a lot more beginner friendly.

Lancer- shoots slower but has a bigger clip, chainsaws are unbreakable after priming, chainsawing people is still pretty scrubby regardless.

Gnasher- a lot more consistent than Gears 2, you shoot upclose and your target dies, simple enough.

Hammerburst- added on ironsight for easier aiming but only slightly nerfing the active reload in exchange, still too broken

Sawed Off: scrub town USA, just get close and shoot

Retro Lancer: basically a lancer with half the clip, half the range and triple the damage with an equally bad melee attack, will probably get banned in MLG regardless unless they fix the fact that there is no recoil on hip shooting.

I love the fact that they added in more variety to the weapon choices, but in the end, Sawed Off will get used less and less as people get better at Gnasher and really good players are just gonna stick to Lancer/Gnasher unless Epic balances them because competitions are gonna ban a lot of weapons.

# ¿ May 2, 2011 21:09

Greed: Apr 28, 2008

Psion posted:

I'll be honest, I don't give a single drat what MLG bans. I care about how the game plays for the other 99.999% of the playerbase, and I hope Epic balances for that as well.

The problem is that the game will never be balanced with some of the weapons. How do you really balance the Sawed Off? Everyone complains about it but its still not that great. I really can't see a way of making it balanced without just improving the range more and making it a power weapon, which would be the best way to utilize it. You could keep it a normal weapon and just give it more ammo but giving it more range or a faster reload would put it into overpowered territory.

# ¿ May 2, 2011 21:15

Greed: Apr 28, 2008

RBA Starblade posted:

Nobody cares about or balances games around what "hardcore" MLG Pro players think or do, for good reason.

Also I think literally all of my problems with the game so far have been lovely connections so far. Which shouldn't surprise me, considering the series, but it's still frustrating.

I am not caring so much about MLG people care as what an overall balanced game should be. Getting Hammered down in half a second from a mile away isn't fun.

# ¿ May 2, 2011 21:32

Greed: Apr 28, 2008

Kifisonfire posted:

Do people really have that much trouble with the sawed-off? The only time I get killed by them is either a kill from behind (From which I have little chance to defend) or if I'm retarded enough to run after someone around a corner. In both of these situations you can pretty much count on the gnasher to get at least a down anyway, so why bother?

Basically if you're hiding behind cover and not even bothering to blind fire with a rifle, it's loving obvious you have a sawed-off out and primed for an insta-gib. In which case I'll just not bother and find someone else to kill.

This is what I'm inferring, the Sawed-Off kind of sucks. I want to just make it a decent weapon that isn't insane. If anyone is using it as a main weapon, its probably because they are just aren't confident using the Gnasher which bodies people almost as easy.

# ¿ May 3, 2011 01:28

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# ¿ May 25, 2013 10:50

Greed: Apr 28, 2008

Fenarisk posted:

I actually have very few complaints overall. The Gnasher is pretty fixed somehow and the reload/range is so specific to the sawed off it's your own fault if you die to it (although lag makes close range stuff between sawed offs and chainsaws still pretty weird, my chainsaw hovered midaired cutting someguy after he shot me with the sawed off).

All in all I think I only have 4 balance issues:

1) Smoke range for dropping the leaders in CTL should maybe be a little lower. On smaller maps like checkout it almost always always always goes to the 1 second mark because just a short 2 second roadie run puts you in smoke range.

2) Melee seems pretty worthless. I think it takes 2-3 hits AFTER clipping someone with a shotgun or snub to even down someone, and the melee stun seems almost non existent. I don't really have a problem with this once I learned it's not like the other games, just seems weird it's even in there at all now.

3) Less mortars, more Digger Launchers. Or make mortars start with just 1-2 shots in it, not 3. I also wouldn't mind the mulcher having a slightly (.5 seconds or so) quicker set up time.

4) Sniping seems harder, as shots that would have hit someone crouching behind sand bags in the last games don't connect at all in this one. Seems that even though you see parts of a head you need to see a decent amount for it to count as a hit past invisible cover boundaries.

Overall I like the balance. Every gun has a pretty easy counter and is easily distinguishable either by the look of it or the sound which is nice.

Melee being used as a last resort is fine with me after having to deal with the 2-piece melee combo in Gears 2 for almost a year. Digger is sooooo much better than the Mortar, no more Diggers please. The Mortar is pretty easy to avoid for the most part and seems alright, switching to 2 shots is fine though. I really enjoy the Mulcher the way it is now because it was really terrible in Gears 2 but a very small set up time is probably okay as well. I am really not a fan of the way they changed the Sniper, they made it a lot easier to get no-scopes but scope shots are pretty hard to land now that you get disrupted if you take any hits, I'll probably just get use to no-scoping more.

# ¿ May 3, 2011 23:14

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