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What really killed Gears of War 2? Design or Lag?

Ok, granted, 'killed' may be harsh considering there are still updates coming, but there's little dispute that the game's community took a steep decline after a very short time.

The thing is, I still do play and enjoy the game. It's still frustrating as hell from time to time, but the lag and lag-related glitches are no longer the laughably pathetic game-ruining issue it was when it released.

I loved the first GoW and I probably had more fun with that game because it didnt have as many glitches or lag issues. That said, I prefer the weapon balance in the second game.

I think there are more viable weapons in play, instead of just the shotgun and the sniper rifle, the damage modeling pushes players to actually use cover and operate as a team instead of bounce around with the shotgun. I can do both very well, but I prefer to play Gears of War like a fast-paced tactical shooter instead of slowed-down Quake game.

However, a lot of the people I play with and run into online vehemently disagree with me. They think more people would have kept playing through the early lag troubles if the game was balanced like the original Gears of War, in all its shotgunning glory. They say that Epic better bring back that balance for GoW3.

Thoughts? I hope Gears of War 3 keeps and builds on the balance of GoW2, but fixes the damn lag and glitching. I mean hell, if Bungie can make a beta for the biggest game of the year, I think Epic can get over themselves and let gamers test their product for them.
 
People boosting Seriously 2.0
 
Just like Mass Effect 2; people wanted a sequel, but the end product was something completly bleh and uninspired
 
shuri said:
Just like Mass Effect 2; people wanted a sequel, but the end product was something completly bleh and uninspired
:lol
 
BrassMonkey1010 said:
Mass Effect 2 was far better then the first.

I think he just went it was very different, and fans of the first game didnt really like some of the changes made in the name of streamlining.
 
A bit of both. On the design side though what killed it was wall-tagging with grenades and the rag-doll effect with smoke grenades. The delay in the shotgun after rolling or roadie-running was just annoying too.

The poor matchmaking and lack of a player match option meant it was a lot easier to put it down, with so much extra waiting around.
 
Definitely lag. The "whose shotgun is actually going to register do-si-do" just got to be too much.

edit: Party chat being added to XBL at about the same time was unfortunate also. The hide-and-seek of the first was a big part of its fun, as a crafty player could plan his way back from unfavorable odds. With party chat and free-roam camera for dead players, that element was totally gone, they'd ask their dead buddy for the play-by-play and everyone just rushed straight to the last guys left.
 
Both initially, but the game is phenom now. Fuck this thread. Gears 2 mp in it's current form is some of the best mp around.
 
shuri said:
Just like Mass Effect 2; people wanted a sequel, but the end product was something completly bleh and uninspired

Which is definitely incorrect both Gear 2 and Mass Effect 2 are better games than the originals which are great as well but I prefer playing the sequels.
 
Shig said:
Definitely lag. The "whose shotgun is actually going to register do-si-do" just got to be too much.

My memory is a little vague about why i quit Gears 2, but didnt it have a horrible pattern of leaving matches uneven with the amount of players?
 
shuri said:
Just like Mass Effect 2; people wanted a sequel, but the end product was something completly bleh and uninspired

Hence those two being two of the best games of this gener.. wait what ?
 
I stopped playing Gears 2 because of the smoke grenades weren't being used as smoke grenades. There were some other issues but I've heard most of the issues I had are fixed at the moment.
 
Lothars said:
Which is definitely incorrect both Gear 2 and Mass Effect 2 are better games than the originals which are great as well but I prefer playing the sequels.

Dunno about GoW (never have played GoW2), but Mass Effect 2, while improving things that were broken in the original, at the same time broke some other things; just like dslgunstar said - in the end it was different game with different feeling; I, for example, still prefer ME1 with all its flaws over ME2.
 
The bugs and glitchs they constantly said were fixed in each and every title update.

update 1: we fixed it!
update 2: we really fixed it this time
update 3: ohh fuck this shit.
 
Going by the thread title it was both, Epic patched a lot of changes in compared to vanilla gears 2 stuff for multiplayer but the lag still changes the outcome a lot of the time for shotgun duels and sniper rifle headshots, delay would also be different every match due to how close or far away the host was to your location.
 
Riding on a tank, shooting alien birds!
Or something. I don't remember. I gave up after that.
 
I played Gears 1 and 2 religiously online and the abysmal netcode seriously killed both games.

Every once in awhile you'd get a good host but even the most miniscule of host-advantage would make a huge difference. Some nights I'd be praying that I'd be the host and then you could go on a rampage.

In Gears 1 it was actually much worse. Host advantage was a COMPLETE advantage.

In Gears 2 it wasn't as bad but still significant enough that you could notice the difference.

Sometimes I would wonder why I'd keep getting partnered up with people with the absolute most terrible connections you could think of (like third world country internet).

I'm not the type to drop out on matches usually but in Gears, sometimes the games would be so shitty that you had no choice but to drop out.

Also - why the hell is there no quit option? Going straight to the Dashboard FTL.

It's pretty much Horde or bust if you're looking for a great time with no problems.
 
Both for me and the lack of support about when bugs would be fixed at the time. Beat SP and sold it and never looked back. I had too much COD4 to play at the time.
 
What killed it for me was the day my rank got erased. I was literally playing it every night with a group of friends and loving it. Once my level 48 rank got erased I just didn't want to play it anymore. I guess loosing 4 months and an insane amount of hours is enough to do that.
 
sillymonkey321 said:
My memory is a little vague about why i quit Gears 2, but didnt it have a horrible pattern of leaving matches uneven with the amount of players?
Nah, it'd sub in bots for anyone that left. Their performance was inconsistent (sometimes they rush headlong into enemy fire, sometimes they'd shoot sideways out of their gun to kill someone), but teams were never down a body.
 
Outside of health regeneration, I can't think of an element of Mass Effect 2 that doesn't just absolutely kick the shit out of the original. The original Mass Effect? A bunch of awkwardness and potential made tolerable with a decent scenario and universe.

Please, please stop bringing up the handful of entry level RPG mechanics and imaginary depth, none of which were tuned or worked correctly, as some lamenting point. Even as a stat/character building freak I don't yearn for dials that dont. fucking. work.

As for Gears 2, the big problem with that game is that they added upon all of the broken, unpolished bullshit in both campaign and in multiplayer along with the general expansion of the game.
 
The multiplayer not working properly when the game came out is the reason I stopped playing the game after i beat the single player and tried to go along with whatever multiplayer i could.
 
Grenade tagging walls forced you to slow down or get blown up (read: annoyed).Dull maps, poor connection and host shotgun. Forced ranked matches - it took ten minutes to get into a match the other day with people who were of the same skill. Me and my buddies are about level 25-30 and we were put against 90-100+.

Basically, without the initial wow factor of the original GoW and most of the games being released around it having a generally superior netcode, it died (irrespective of sales figures).

I still want to play it, it's just the that game doesn't want me to :lol
 
If the game is so busted, why did it sold so well???


(that´s the "Honest question" moment. Im really out of the loop when it comes to Xbox and Ps3, but its still interesting to know about this things)

By the way, did these games really sold that well?

(another honest question)
 
More importantly, how did epic go from one of the best MP designers in the business with UT to what happened with Gears MP? It makes no sense...:lol
 
Yoshichan said:
People boosting Seriously 2.0

Online achievements should never happen.

When will developers learn this?
 
Rekwest said:
Do you know people?

I'm going to go out on a limb and say I'd agree with him, to the point that ME2 wasn't what I wanted in a ME sequel. I wanted loot and Mako exploration and didn't get it. I think that whole 'ME = RPG-TPS; ME2 = TPS-RPG' argument about sums it up.
 
For me, it wasn't different enough and was broken. I played the hell out of Gears 1, up to Gears 2, as a matter of fact. So, the formula had grow a bit tired for me and I really wanted something fresh from Gears 2. What we got was too samey that took the Gears 1 formula, added a few things, and essentially re-released it unfinished and broken.
 
cacildo said:
If the game is so busted, why did it sold so well???


(that´s the "Honest question" moment. Im really out of the loop when it comes to Xbox and Ps3, but its still interesting to know about this things)

By the way, did these games really sold that well?

(another honest question)
You can't see the lag before buying the game.
 
cacildo said:
If the game is so busted, why did it sold so well???


(that´s the "Honest question" moment. Im really out of the loop when it comes to Xbox and Ps3, but its still interesting to know about this things)
People really liked the first. Me and a sizable group of my online buddies played it practically every night from its release until 2's release.
By the way, did these games really sold that well?

(another honest question)
Yes.
 
Game was definitely a mess at the start. It's still a mess today, but a semi-playable mess. Shitty hit detection with the shotgun, host advantage and the inability to fire or melee the shotgun out of roady run, ruined the game.
 
For me it was lag, the amount of lag and the poor matchmaking system as whole caused me to never really get into the online aspect of the game, even though I was very much into Gears 1 multiplayer.
 
Well its was lag, matchmaking problems, inconsistency and about a thousand glitches.
The game was a mess out of the box and by time they fixed the game it was too late and so many people has already moved on and played other shooters instead.

Also when it comes to design, there were some terrible design choices like the smoke grenade, 3 Rockets in the rockets launcher, 7 shells in the mortar, weapon spawn in wingman, no spawn protection and the unlimited grenade tagging. So I think it was both.
 
1. Matchmaking taking 10 minutes to find a game.
2. Laggy games.
3. No quit game option.
-----------------------------------
Those three together made Gears of War 2 one of the worst games I've ever played online. Glitching and weapon balance are a whole other ball game, but what really killed it for me were those. And I loved Gears of War 1's multiplayer.
 
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