Major Patch for Gears of War 2 This Month

[Keane Ng]

Major Patch for Gears of War 2 This Month

Gears of War 2 [http://www.epicgames.com][/I] this month that will fix multitude of exploits in online multiplayer while adding a few minor features.

Though nothing is set in stone release date-wise, Epic's Mark Rein bugs and exploits [http://gearsforums.epicgames.com/showthread.php?t=650739] that have allowed some opportunistic players (read: cheaters) to break the game by doing things like meleeing through walls, having infinite Lancer ammo or equipping a shield and a two-handed weapon at the same time. Other changes include a more reliable shotgun in laggy matches, a penalty for quitting matches early and more protection against planted grenades and chainsaw attacks.

And, since, as Rein put it, "we know you folks love achievements," the patch will include new achievements for the recently released [http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/games/offers/0ccf0003-0000-4000-8000-00004d53082d] DLC maps, achievement tracking for the War Journal and more frequent achievement progression alerts. I personally find it pretty annoying to be constantly bombarded with "you've killed X number of aliens you are totally rad!" messages, I know a lot of gamers like their Gamerscore egos to be constantly stroked, so I can see Epic's reasoning here.

"This is just a very small list of the things that will be in the next title update," Rein added, so expect to see more info on possibly more substantial changes to come from this patch in the near future.

Permalink

 

[Rednog]

I'm a bit interested to see what they think is a fair penalty for quitting matches is, and if it applies to all aspects of multiplayer. I personally play Horde mode 75% of the time, and because it is such a long thing most of the time people lag out or disconnect randomly. Even I have been randomly dropped by the servers because there is no ability to switch hosts.

As for the weapon changes (nades/chainsaw) I'm really hoping it doesn't mean that the shotgun becomes the king again, for me the shotgun ruined the multiplayer aspect in Gears 1.
Also, I've never really had a problem w/ planted grenades, most people put them in the same place over and over and you can easily pick them off with a shot or two. I personally like the grenades how they are because it promotes some sense of tactics besides the traditional people springing from wall to wall firing the shotgun in the process.

 

[Fire Daemon]

Here we go again.

Gears 1 was patched to hell and back. They could never decide what was fair and balanced. Everything changened drasticly. The power of weapons, the range of explosions, the power of active reloads, the range of that stupid cover your head thing. It was annoying, Epic should balance the game before it comes out.

The glitches I can understand but fixing the gameplay over and over again is really fucking stupid.

 

[fyrh56]

Here we go again.

Gears 1 was patched to hell and back. They could never decide what was fair and balanced. Everything changened drasticly. The power of weapons, the range of explosions, the power of active reloads, the range of that stupid cover your head thing. It was annoying, Epic should balance the game before it comes out.

Yes, curse the greedy bastards for trying to make the game enjoyable. They ought to just drop the game entirely and not support it in any way like EA does after the first two weeks.

 

[Fire Daemon]

Here we go again.

Gears 1 was patched to hell and back. They could never decide what was fair and balanced. Everything changened drasticly. The power of weapons, the range of explosions, the power of active reloads, the range of that stupid cover your head thing. It was annoying, Epic should balance the game before it comes out.

Yes, curse the greedy bastards for trying to make the game enjoyable. They ought to just drop the game entirely and not support it in any way like EA does after the first two weeks.

They tried to make the game enjoyable and balanced. Tried and failed. Before the Annex patch a lot of people where bitching about Grenade Tags and how unfair they are. Epic decided to listen to there community and made it impossible to get away from the grenades after you tagged someone.

Ironically people complained that the Torque bow is too underpowered and that the noise it creates gives people a warning to hide behind cover. Epic patched that by removing most of the noise of the Torque bow so you can only hear it when sitting next to the guy. Now some guy just has to look straight at you for a few seconds to get a kill.

They made one, one hit kill weapon incredible underpowered and the other way overpowered. Annoying they made the one that can get six kills overpowered and the one that can get two tags underpowered. This is rather annoying because before the patched them everything was balanced. The Torque Bow alerted other people so you had to either wait until they where in the open or take them out at a very long range. Both of these take some amount of skill (either good aim or the game knowledge) and if you did not do well at these then you where not going to get kills. Seeing as how the Torque Bow is a one hit kill and potential game winner it should not be easy to use for everyone in the game. Basically those that sucked with the Torque Bow bitched about this and Epic gave in.

The same with the Grenades in a way. It used to be easy to kill someone if they came running in with the grenades if you worked as a team and looked after each other. That means if you wanted to get a tag kill you would either have to wait until everyone is in a CQB or sneak up on an idiot that decided to run off by himself. Usually it's the idiots that run off by themselves, usually looking for their favourite super weapon, that get themselves killed that get grenade tagged. Especially when they try and get a weapon from the opposite side of the map. These people could never figure out why they kept on dieing and complained about it on the forums. Epic changed it so it was nearly impossible to get away from the grenade tags and increased the range of that "cover your head thing" so that people would be encouraged to throw the grenades. People then started bitching about thrown grenades, claiming that it's easy to make people cover their heads and shotgun them when they can't do anything.

Epic give into their community way too much. If enough people complain about something they change it. What they fail to realize is that those people may not represent the majority of the players and probably only complain because they can't think of a way to counter it.

Thats mostly the reason why I jumped on board with IW. They only listen to the good ideas on the forums, like double EXP weekends and new maps (never got a snow map though) and ignore ths hit idea like being able to cut grass.

I wish Treyarch could have been the same. You know the dogs you get after 7 kills, started as a joke on the Charlie Oscar Delta (CoD4) forums. The dogs are actually surprisingly good fun but they could have done something a little more original.

 

[fyrh56]

Here we go again.

Gears 1 was patched to hell and back. They could never decide what was fair and balanced. Everything changened drasticly. The power of weapons, the range of explosions, the power of active reloads, the range of that stupid cover your head thing. It was annoying, Epic should balance the game before it comes out.

Yes, curse the greedy bastards for trying to make the game enjoyable. They ought to just drop the game entirely and not support it in any way like EA does after the first two weeks.

-big wall'o'text-

First off, I'd like to say that I agree with you for the most part. There's imbalance issues that seem to be dead obvious, but still, that's not my point. My point is, even if they are listening to the wrong hear, they are actually listening. I still regard Epic as one of those old-school companies capable of supporting their creations for longer than 3 months. Sure, they're no Valve, but Epic is still in my good books. A little more care on what should go in the game should be taken, but I believe that's just "nubs vs skillz" balance troubles. It'll probably get ironed out, eventually. I find the nades incredibly overpowered, but given that I only play GoW occasionally, I just blame it on self-nubness.

I honestly hate those nades tho. Maybe if I ***** on them forums...

 

[Fire Daemon]

First off, I'd like to say that I agree with you for the most part. There's imbalance issues that seem to be dead obvious, but still, that's not my point. My point is, even if they are listening to the wrong hear, they are actually listening. I still regard Epic as one of those old-school companies capable of supporting their creations for longer than 3 months. Sure, they're no Valve, but Epic is still in my good books. A little more care on what should go in the game should be taken, but I believe that's just "nubs vs skillz" balance troubles. It'll probably get ironed out, eventually. I find the nades incredibly overpowered, but given that I only play GoW occasionally, I just blame it on self-nubness.

I honestly hate those nades tho. Maybe if I ***** on them forums...

Oh no, I do agree with you there. It is good that Epic support their fan base. They just seem to support it so much that they essentially give in to their fan-base's demands.

I think most of this is because GoW multiplayer was fairly rushed feature. If I remember correctly, there are a couple of interviews on the bonus features disk that claim Multiplayer was originally not expected to be much fun and was only added a few months before launch.

Gears 2 however has had multiplayer planned out from the beginning so you would expect it to be more balanced and fun. Personally I found number one more fun then number two. The maps in number two lack the same quality as number one.

 

[TsunamiWombat]

...How do I access these patches exactly? just run the game on XBL?

 

[SpyOfGeneralTso]

...How do I access these patches exactly? just run the game on XBL?

When [if?] the patch is released, it will prompt you to download the new patch, or stay off of XBox Live.

If you're looking for -notes- on what the patch did, then I would suggest the internet's glory of infinite knowledge, where it should be posted somewhere. (Again, when the patch actually does come out.)

 

[mattttherman3]

Well maybe with a stronger shotgun people won't need to roll before they kill me. I hate the shotgun, I really do.