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Hopefully they know from XBL data that people continued playing due to MP and Horde and steal a bunch of idea from ODST and L4D etc to improve those modes. Vehicles, dynamic spawning, objectives and no wave breaks, oh my!

Natorgator wrote:To take it back to the story aspect, I really wonder where they're going with this. In the last book,

Anyone have any speculation as to when it will be set? And what the hell was it that happened to turn all those people into pumice?

I imagine they are going to totally ignore the books, which is great.

Like Zak said, Gears2 already ignored Travis by explicitly having a female squad commander. Turns out EPIC are cynical enough to sell novels to idiots and then totally ignore them?

I wonder how closely they (the Gears writers) actually worked with Traviss on the story, or if at all and it went through some other department.

Havok wrote:I wonder how closely they (the Gears writers) actually worked with Traviss on the story, or if at all and it went through some other department.

They will have just said 'write a book, here's some background info' and Travis would have invented stuff and ignored stuff to suit herself, like she did with SW. EPIC are clearly too smart to fall into the extended universe trap, given how much of Gears2 is a contradiction to Travis' bullshit.

It's actually confirmed by Cliff Bleszinski that Travis will be writing the Gears 3 story. Whether she has been given free reign by EPIC to craft the story or (as I hope) she is being kept on a short leash remains to be seen, I guess.

That's pretty funny, since the guy they got to do Gears 2 did a good job. Good thing I don't care about SP.

Mr. Sinister wrote:It's actually confirmed by Cliff Bleszinski that Travis will be writing the Gears 3 story. Whether she has been given free reign by EPIC to craft the story or (as I hope) she is being kept on a short leash remains to be seen, I guess.

Wow. What a bunch of crap.

Havok wrote:I love how people bitch that games where you are playing a military character with specific goals complains about it being linear, like military guys can just go running off all over the place willy nilly. Screw my time sensitive mission, I wanna see what is over that hill!

Right, because we all know that there is absolutely no middle ground between "corridor crawl where the exact same enemies spawn in the same spots and come at you the same way every time" and "headless chicken playing Grand Theft Sandbox Faction".

Oh wait, the "Flawless Cowboy" level from a game as old as the first Halo. Wow, that was easy.

Havok wrote:

aieeegrunt wrote: It's boring as fuck. I'd rather they just up the damage the enemies do, up their reaction times and shit.

They do genius.

Yes, which we already pointed out for you, and they also make them bullet sponges, which is boring. Here I am shooting one drone in the face for half an hour, while the rest of the drones politely wait behind convenient chest high walls taking the occasional pot shot. We wouldn't want to instead have lower health but much more dangerous, varied or interesting tactics would we? Simply making them more aggressive would be more dangerous and much more exciting than "shoot in head 50 times".

Gears has it's own style, and if you don't like it I don't know why you're playing it. If you reduced badguy hp you have to reduce player hp and SUDDENLY it's not megatough marines fight the uruk hai anymore. This IS the game where you can take heavy machinegun fire and be okay if someone touches your butt.

No, what's funny is when people complain about a style decision by making ignorant statements like 'they couldn't render enough locust'.

Reading comprehension should have been something you learned long before you hit high-school. That ain't what I said. When a sentence is prefaced by "It's like they", it's indicating that I don't think this is what actually happened. I could have substituted in "thought it was too fun", "wanted to make the locust shit" or "didn't know how to make challenging A.I." and the sentence would have had identical meaning.

I can only imagine how shit horde would be if you replaced the tension of the action movie tough guy combat with 'realistic' MW2 'two hit youre dead' stuff.

Yes, you can only imagine, because they never did it. If you're trying to argue that you couldn't make a fun mode out of it, I'd like to see your justification for that. Why exactly does not having fucking shitty bulletsponge imply that you have to have rainbow six level health? There's nothing really wrong with the amount of HP you have on Normal/Hardcore, it's pretty par for the course as a matter of fact.

Gears has it's own style, and if you don't like it I don't know why you're playing it.

See, this "if you don't like something about a game don't play it" attitude is a ridiculous straw man. Nobody was claiming it breaks the game so bad that it's not worth playing. It's a criticism, but when we decide what we want to play we take the whole package into account.

Gears is decent, good enough to warrant playing in my opinion. But it would be excellent if not for this significant flaw.

If you reduced badguy hp you have to reduce player hp

Did somebody hit you over the head with shovel while we weren't looking?

There are ways to make the game more difficult without lowing your HP. For instance, you can make the A.I. more aggressive, more prone to attack in force (instead of one or two charging you and the rest dancing around in a threatening manner while you dispatch their comrades), give you more things to worry about (having a sniper, somebody throwing grenades and somebody charging you for instance, forcing people to prioritize which threats they eliminate first, increases challenge), make ammunition more scarce (not talking survival horror levels, but you're sporting a huge number of rounds, and with the enemies suddenly not taking 20% of your ammunition stockpile to take down each man, you don't need as much anymore), and most simple of all, spawning more enemies at a time. Moving on to more creative things, cover that isn't invincible encourages you to move around more often and think on your feet.

adam_grif wrote:Reading comprehension should have been something you learned long before you hit high-school. That ain't what I said. When a sentence is prefaced by "It's like they", it's indicating that I don't think this is what actually happened. I could have substituted in "thought it was too fun", "wanted to make the locust shit" or "didn't know how to make challenging A.I." and the sentence would have had identical meaning.

Oh, so you don't have a problem and thus nothing to say? Ok.

Yes, you can only imagine, because they never did it. If you're trying to argue that you couldn't make a fun mode out of it, I'd like to see your justification for that. Why exactly does not having fucking shitty bulletsponge imply that you have to have rainbow six level health? There's nothing really wrong with the amount of HP you have on Normal/Hardcore, it's pretty par for the course as a matter of fact.

So you're saying totally changing the game would make it totally different? You're real smart, aren't you?

See, this "if you don't like something about a game don't play it" attitude is a ridiculous straw man. Nobody was claiming it breaks the game so bad that it's not worth playing. It's a criticism, but when we decide what we want to play we take the whole package into account.

No, people are making massively inaccurate statements and expecting people to swallow them.

For comparison, any shooter genre EXCEPT the current wave of 'tacticool' shooters is comparable to Gears, because about 1/3 of a lancer mag kills a locust on normal. Yeah, you play on hard they get more hps, and you play on horde it gets up to like 5x hp, but it takes heaps of fire to kill a guy because YOU'RE MISSING. On normal you can nearly kill two guys with one mag of THE PISTOL, which is pretty typical for 'standard' shooters from Doom onward. The revolver kills guys in two shots. OH NOES TEH BULLET SPONGEZZZ.

It's not GEAR'S fault that people see 'four guys hose a mauler with 3 mags each, most of which misses or hits shield' and figure that's what all combat is like. It's worth noting that Gears2 fixed the egregius 'guys don't react to being shot' element, which is the real problem; if you get a guy in your sights he's dead unless you're on hard, end of story.

Oh, or unless you just miss a whole lot.

Turns out not every shooter has to be MW2/Bad Company/Counterstrike?

Gears is decent, good enough to warrant playing in my opinion. But it would be excellent if not for this significant flaw.

By 'significant' you mean 'overblown' and 'flaw' you mean 'style decision you don't like', right? Just checking.

Did somebody hit you over the head with shovel while we weren't looking?

There are ways to make the game more difficult without lowing your HP.

This is funny, I like this part. See, if the game had guys that died like in counterstrike, and the player didn't, it'd be fucking lame. They're huge orcs, you're huge powerarmored weightlifters, it's a macho game. Nobody complains about this shit in Serious Sam, for fuck's sake. It isn't about difficulty but consistency; everyone is tough. Nowhere near as tough as whiners want to make out (since on normal you can kill 3 drones with one lancer mag) but tough. Just like Elites in Halo, most badguys in Doom-alikes, enemies in twitch games like UT, etc.

For instance, you can make the A.I. more aggressive, more prone to attack in force (instead of one or two charging you and the rest dancing around in a threatening manner while you dispatch their comrades),

You mean like they did in Gears2? lol!

give you more things to worry about (having a sniper, somebody throwing grenades and somebody charging you for instance, forcing people to prioritize which threats they eliminate first, increases challenge),

You mean like in horde or any setpiece battle? Uh oh!

make ammunition more scarce (not talking survival horror levels, but you're sporting a huge number of rounds, and with the enemies suddenly not taking 20% of your ammunition stockpile to take down each man, you don't need as much anymore),

They put more ammo in the game because PEOPLE WHINGED LIKE LITTLE BITCHES. Uh oh.

and most simple of all, spawning more enemies at a time. Moving on to more creative things, cover that isn't invincible encourages you to move around more often and think on your feet.

Oh, so if they were... I dunno... like MW2 or BC2?

This is just like saying the next Transformers game will suck because there's no cover. The designers said 'lol big robots don't hide', which might be stupid, but it doesn't make the game automatically bad. People not liking having to shoot people more than 5-6 times doesn't have anything to do with Gears; it's just what people think games 'should' be like, which changes over time. Chards doesn't like the 'sit and hose' play of Gears, and nobody flames him, because he doesn't lie about it.

Oh, so you don't have a problem and thus nothing to say? Ok.

It's like you're not even trying anymore.

So you're saying totally changing the game would make it totally different? You're real smart, aren't you?

What do you fucking think I was proposing? That we lower enemy HP, then leave the rest of the game exactly as it is, without any tweaks and rebalancing?

but it takes heaps of fire to kill a guy because YOU'RE MISSING.

The lancer deals 53.2 damage per round on Normal, and standard drones have 900 HP. It takes 17 rounds to the chest to kill them. NORMAL. Hardcore is the difficulty that's supposed to be for people who play a lot of shooters ("you know how to pull off a headshot"), and on that difficulty the lancer does 38 dmg / round, yielding 24 rounds to kill a grub. Cut one or two rounds off this from the slight damage increase that you get from active reloading (to be generous), and this is 15 rounds / 22 rounds on Normal and Hardcore, respectively.

You're either talking shit or you have no clue.

For comparison, any shooter genre EXCEPT the current wave of 'tacticool' shooters is comparable to Gears,

What are you saying, exactly? That other games used to do it a lot, therefore it doesn't suck?

On normal you can nearly kill two guys with one mag of THE PISTOL, which is pretty typical for 'standard' shooters from Doom onward. The revolver kills guys in two shots. OH NOES TEH BULLET SPONGEZZZ.

Sure, if you're hitting them in the head with active reloads. Takes the whole mag if you're hitting them in the chest under normal conditions. The revolver is ~3 rounds.

And again, "others did it so it's good"? Come on. Gears is worse than average joe shooter in this regard and you know it. But that wouldn't matter even if it was still popular with other games, because it's still shit. You disagree? Good for you.

Turns out not every shooter has to be MW2/Bad Company/Counterstrike?

Derp derp.

and 'flaw' you mean 'style decision you don't like', right? Just checking.

What, so if something was a deliberate design choice, then it can't be criticized? It's just "not my style"? You're calling me stupid here.

See, if the game had guys that died like in counterstrike, and the player didn't, it'd be fucking lame.

No it wouldn't. You sure seem to be forgetful, since games like MW have enemies that go down in 1-3 rounds from every gun but your player character can survive considerably more than this.

Nobody complains about this shit in Serious Sam, for fuck's sake.

That's because complaining that Serious Sam is archaic and oldschool is like complaining that Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings movies were cribbing too much from Tolkien. I don't play Serious Sam games precisely because they harken back to those old games, and the rest of the genre has moved on to greener pastures.

enemies in twitch games like UT, etc.

Yes, which is precisely what I said earlier.

You mean like they did in Gears2? lol!

Well, I must have been playing a completely unrelated game all of this time, because I was only ever charged by one or two enemies at a time. This is in campaign mode of course, I never played Horde because I don't have XBL.

Chards doesn't like the 'sit and hose' play of Gears, and nobody flames him, because he doesn't lie about it.

Are you implying that I secretly hate these kinds of games even though all I don't like is this one aspect of gears?

adam_grif wrote: Well, I must have been playing a completely unrelated game all of this time, because I was only ever charged by one or two enemies at a time. This is in campaign mode of course, I never played Horde because I don't have XBL.

Horde is pretty similar. It will get more intense near the end of the round because the last two or three guys the AI flips to "charge". It's a lot more fun than SP simply because there is more variability. Also the last guy has the ability to resuscitate himself. Nothing more humiliating than downing a cyclops with a lancer, starting to scavange, and then getting sawed in the back.

Trying playing Horde solo on normal (you don't need live for that), once you are past wave 4 or 5 it gets fun because you are fighting lots of guys, if you get downed you lose, and they are'nt Big Bags of ammo sponge. It's about a thousand times better than SP once you've played SP the two or three times it takes to get too repetitive.

adam_grif wrote:It's like you're not even trying anymore.

It's not my fault you appear to have nothing to say.

What do you fucking think I was proposing? That we lower enemy HP, then leave the rest of the game exactly as it is, without any tweaks and rebalancing?

Protip: I'm going on what you are actually saying.

The lancer deals 53.2 damage per round on Normal, and standard drones have 900 HP. It takes 17 rounds to the chest to kill them. NORMAL. Hardcore is the difficulty that's supposed to be for people who play a lot of shooters ("you know how to pull off a headshot"), and on that difficulty the lancer does 38 dmg / round, yielding 24 rounds to kill a grub. Cut one or two rounds off this from the slight damage increase that you get from active reloading (to be generous), and this is 15 rounds / 22 rounds on Normal and Hardcore, respectively.

You're either talking shit or you have no clue.

This is pretty funny, because I was just playing Gears with Hav. How we laughed when 2 revolver bullets killed someone, or when a short burst killed the lower-type locust (like snipers etc). Hell, Hawkeye from SDN is a demon with the Hammerburst and can kill man-size guys in 5-6 shots. Hav actually mentioned this thread when he ran around with the pistol killing 2 guys per mag. Is this really the 'bullet sponge' where you shoot someone for 'half an hour' or are we going to sit down and agree that hyperbole is stupid?

It amuses me that you base your damage calcs on a mode DESCRIBED BY HEADSHOTS without noticing headshots do more damage. Aiming at upper body = they die faster?

So if your point is half a mag to kill a guy when on normal you're basically invincible beyond 5m is somehow broken, you're missing the point. It's like a 40k game where it takes more than 3 shots to kill someone; that's just how the setting works. Lying and being wrong doesn't change that.

FWhat are you saying, exactly? That other games used to do it a lot, therefore it doesn't suck?

No, dickcheese, that in only one subgenre is it actually normal. If you demand all games have low health, you are actually saying all games should be the same.

Sure, if you're hitting them in the head with active reloads. Takes the whole mag if you're hitting them in the chest under normal conditions. The revolver is ~3 rounds.

Nope; 7 torso shots kill them fine. The revolver is 2 (or three if they're the higher type like General Shirtless Man). Uh oh! Hell, you can kill a boomer-type with a single cylinder of the revolver. Is this the bullet sponge 'problem'?

And again, "others did it so it's good"? Come on. Gears is worse than average joe shooter in this regard and you know it. But that wouldn't matter even if it was still popular with other games, because it's still shit. You disagree? Good for you.

I understand shooters have more than one approach. If you are going to be a wanker and bitch about Gears having a style you don't like, for consistency you have to have a whole shitload of shooters, because Gears isn't that bad. It's only bad if you a) play on hard or b) just finished playing a 2-hit kill game like MW2.

Derp derp.

Nice comeback! No wonder you're such a smart guy!

What, so if something was a deliberate design choice, then it can't be criticized? It's just "not my style"? You're calling me stupid here.

You're the one saying every game has to be high lethality and lying about how much it takes to kill people. PROTIP: if you're talking about bullet sponges and quibbling over a few pistol shots, maybe there isn't really a problem.

No it wouldn't. You sure seem to be forgetful, since games like MW have enemies that go down in 1-3 rounds from every gun but your player character can survive considerably more than this.

Uh, huh? In MW2 you don't have 10x the hitpoints of the enemy; it's just your regen that makes you superior. If you reduced the locust hits and threw more in, it'd just be a setpiece shooting gallery like MW2 only INCREDIBLY EASY because now nobody can kill you. The way it is now is consistent and symmetrical. It's not Gears' fault that you want to be massively superior to the enemy.

What I'm learning is you just suck at shooters.

That's because complaining that Serious Sam is archaic and oldschool is like complaining that Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings movies were cribbing too much from Tolkien. I don't play Serious Sam games precisely because they harken back to those old games, and the rest of the genre has moved on to greener pastures.

So... not high lethality = 'oldschool'?

Yes, which is precisely what I said earlier.

So... you're just being obtuse, as you know damn well heaps of games use hitpoints? Either you hate them all (and are an idiot) or are a horrid hypocrite.

Well, I must have been playing a completely unrelated game all of this time, because I was only ever charged by one or two enemies at a time. This is in campaign mode of course, I never played Horde because I don't have XBL.

Awww, diddums. I guess you don't know what the fuck you're talking about, then.

Are you implying that I secretly hate these kinds of games even though all I don't like is this one aspect of gears?

No, I'm saying you're lying and talking nonsense because an element of a game isn't the way you apparently expect all games to be. Turns out there's more than one way to make a shooter, and if Gears looked the same but played like every other tryhard tacticool shooter ever, nobody I know would be playing it. Indeed, it almost certainly couldn't compete and wouldn't be successful.

This is called 'differentiation'. Adults who can learn new skills can play games that are different.

aieeegrunt wrote:Also the last guy has the ability to resuscitate himself. Nothing more humiliating than downing a cyclops with a lancer, starting to scavange, and then getting sawed in the back.

What the fuck are you talking about? Not only is this complete nonsense, it's wrongness is key to almost every round of Horde I play. You down the last guy, and while he's crawling around UNABLE TO DO SHIT ALL except slowly bleed to death everyone ammos up, grabs guns, plants shields, etc. Nobody EVER gets up by themselves, ever in a million years. Kantus can res people, but the they never do it by themselves.

Seriously.

Given our playing tonight horde appears to have more hp than SP by default; on normal even on wave 1 (ie no multipliers) guys take more to kill than in SP. By wave 30/40s its totally absurd, but that's why it's fun. Insane, where it takes 2-3 guys to kill a single locust and two hits from a wretch will kill you dead is a laugh.

Stark, I've literally watched it happen. Perhaps it only happens on the higher difficulties of Horde, but it happens. You down the last guy, the enemy counter on your screen says it's the last guy, you're doing the scavange thing while he bleeds out and all of a sudden he's up. I've seen it, all of my friends I horde with have seen it, we've made a policy of assigning a babysitter now, especially if it's a lancer dude.

Don't get wise; I've done 50 on hard. Believe me, if anyone had ever seen anyone get up by themselves we'd know.

In other modes with execution rules, if the bleed-out timer runs down they get up. I've never noticed that on insane horde, though; but we're generally too busy getting ruled to keep track of guys. If it was common enough for you to be so scared of it, it would have happened to us (2000 horde waves and up, etc).

EDIT - actually, add Hav and I on XBL and invite us to a horde game sometime. If you use your regular settings maybe we can see it too.

aieeegrunt wrote:Stark, I've literally watched it happen. Perhaps it only happens on the higher difficulties of Horde, but it happens. You down the last guy, the enemy counter on your screen says it's the last guy, you're doing the scavange thing while he bleeds out and all of a sudden he's up. I've seen it, all of my friends I horde with have seen it, we've made a policy of assigning a babysitter now, especially if it's a lancer dude.

Wow, I have never once seen that happen. How many matches of horde have I played? At least 1999.

I'm really looking forward to gears three. I might just hold off on selling my xbox 360 just to play this game.

TheMuffinKing wrote:I'm really looking forward to gears three. I might just hold off on selling my xbox 360 just to play this game.

Considering I have gotten the same mileage out of Gears 2 that I have gotten out of Madden, it is definitely worth the purchase price.

You'd get a lot more mileage out of Gears if not for Madden, also.

Stark wrote:You'd get a lot more mileage out of Gears if not for Madden, also.

For serious... I would literally be Rank 100 and have every achievement... twice.

Havok wrote:

TheMuffinKing wrote:I'm really looking forward to gears three. I might just hold off on selling my xbox 360 just to play this game.

Considering I have gotten the same mileage out of Gears 2 that I have gotten out of Madden, it is definitely worth the purchase price.

The only game that would even come close to me would be the first Halo. I am just now starting to get sick of Gears, and I've been playing it weekly since it came out.

What a bitter disappointment Firefight for ODST was. Been waiting like 7 years for an invasion mode for Halo, and I get ODST stupid skulls and unplayable lag.

Stark wrote:Don't get wise; I've done 50 on hard. Believe me, if anyone had ever seen anyone get up by themselves we'd know.

In other modes with execution rules, if the bleed-out timer runs down they get up. I've never noticed that on insane horde, though; but we're generally too busy getting ruled to keep track of guys. If it was common enough for you to be so scared of it, it would have happened to us (2000 horde waves and up, etc).

EDIT - actually, add Hav and I on XBL and invite us to a horde game sometime. If you use your regular settings maybe we can see it too.

Ya I can't explain it, but we're pretty anal about always downing the last guy. I can add you guys to XBL, but you'll have to put up with my backwoods Canadian cell tower internetz.

Hey if the last guy got up a few times we'd be paranoid too. We have all kinds of crazy habits based on wierd shit that only happened once.

Like that one time everyone but me died straight away and I killed everything all by myself.

what how come no else remembers this come on you guys seriously