Gears Of War Creator Thinks Exploits Are E-Day’s
Cliffy B Says Gears Of War: E-Day Really Needs To Nerf Shotguns And Wallbouncing
Gears of War co-creator Cliff Bleszinski has shared an in-depth breakdown of his thoughts on E-Day’s multiplayer, which he thinks needs to pivot more towards casual players.
Earlier this week saw the start of Gears of War: E-Day’s open beta, which let players jump into the game’s multiplayer modes and try them out. For the most part, it seems like Gears fans are having a good time with what E-Day is bringing to the table, as most of the community seems pretty happy with the beta as a whole.
In fact, E-Day’s open beta has already managed to become the most-played Gears game on Steam, which bodes well for the full game’s release. While that’s all good news, it seems that not everyone likes the direction that Gears has taken, as series creator Cliffy B has shared his thoughts on what he considers one of the game’s big issues.
Cliffy B Thinks Gears Of War: E-Day Needs Some Major Nerfs
And Yes, He’s Talking About Shotgun And Wall-Bouncing
As pointed out by Redditor Expensive_Reality967 on the Gears of War subreddit, Cliff Bleszinski, widely known as Cliffy B, shared a lengthy breakdown of his E-Day thoughts over on Facebook. The analysis comes from “extensive viewing of Twitch streamers and YouTube videos” of the game’s multiplayer, but seemingly not from playing it.
Cliffy B says that there’s a “chunk’ of Gears players who only play by wallbouncing and using the shotgun to absolutely “dominate”, and that, while it’s fun to watch and perform, it doesn’t “make sense and work” for multiplayer games. The Gears creator says this is because the skill gap between those who play the game as “intended” versus the bouncers is far too big.
This popular exploit that’s been around for a long time in Gears is “not the way the game was meant to be played”, which he points out isn’t necessarily a bad thing unless it’s become “the entire game” as it has in E-Day. Cliffy B thinks that playing like this breaks the game for anyone trying to experience it normally, since there’s no reason to do anything but shotgun and wall bounce.
Alongside forcing the devs to really tune skill-based matchmaking so that newer players aren’t instantly put off of anything other than Horde mode. If it were up to him, Bleszinski says he’d “nerf the S**T” out of wallbouncing in regular modes and make a playlist specifically for it, which actually sounds like a pretty good idea.
Bleszinski also says that executions in Gears are a “huge waste of time and money” since no player ever uses them, which ties into this whole argument.
Even with those criticisms in mind, Bleszinski praises The Coalition for a successful beta weekend, and points out that game development is hard, especially when you’re making a sequel that risks alienating fans with whatever it does. To be honest, it’s a very well-measured take that Gears fans even seem to be agreeing with.