Gears of War 4 Updates Will Add Harsher Quitter Penalties and Lots More Changes

Gears of War 4 developer The Coalition has published a list of some of the "top-level items" that it is working on fixes for. In a forum post, community manager Adam Fletcher thanked fans for their feedback and said the studio hopes to fix these problems and others through upcoming patches.

One such item is balancing for the Hammerburst weapon. This has been a "big pain point" for players, Fletcher said. He didn't say exactly how the Hammerburst will change, but noted that online play has been "dominated by long-range combat" with the weapon and that a tuning update will address this.

Another issue that The Coalition is hoping to fix is a problem where matches start without a full roster of players. This issue is "pretty concerning," Fletcher said. "There may be a quick fix that we can do on the backend to address this but it may require some additional work that would come in a later title update," he said. "We will do what we can to mitigate and correct this one as soon as possible."

The Coalition has also heard players' calls for harsher penalties for people who quit mid-match. A future update will include stricter penalties, though they were not detailed, and it sounds like this might not happen very soon. "Unfortunately, this requires a bit more legwork but we are seeing if we can prioritize and have this come out sooner rather than later. We expect this in a future title update but not the next large one," Fletcher explained.

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Additionally, a future update for Gears of War 4 will add competitive/core lobbies, but since it requires an "extensive amount of work," you shouldn't expect it soon. Fletcher also acknowledged the concerns some have raised about Gears of War 4's Gears Pack system, which involves microtransactions.

"We are looking into ways of improving the experience for all users and we are also looking at additional opportunities to help players obtain packs," he said. "We will keep you posted on these notes in the near future."

Additionally, The Coalition confirmed that it will experiment with "social crossplay weekends," during which it will gather data to determine what else it can do with cross-play between Xbox One and PC. "We will also be looking into offering bonus XP in specific modes that will be constantly rotating either each day or on a weekly basis to help incentivize people to try out each of our different game modes. This would be for both platforms Xbox One and PC," Fletcher said.

Another item being addressed in a future update has to do with backfilling in Horde matchmaking. Right now, if someone drops out, you can invite someone else, but only if they're on your friends list. The Coalition said it will "continue looking into this" to see what else it can do. For now, the developer wants to remind players that they can invite people if someone drops out; this is a big deal because Horde matches can go on for a long time and if someone leaves, you might be in trouble.

You can see more of the "top-level" items and descriptions written by Fletcher below. He also noted that there are "many more" topics that The Coalition is aware of that it could address in the future.

The Coalition did not provide any kind of a timetable for when these issues will be addressed.

Gears of War 4 Changes and Fixes:

Footsteps of teammates much louder than opponents

• We believe DeeBee footstep audio seems to be in a good place based off of feedback from you all. We are looking at increasing human and swarm footstep audio. This will be in a future title update.

Gnasher shots firing but ammo not depleting and registering

• We have a fix for this in our next large Title Update

0% / 100% UI notifications

• This is tied to Unreal rounding numbers up and down and thus confusing people with the numbers they are displaying. We are going to see if we can address this so it comes across a bit more clear on what your true damage and damage taken is. This will occur in a future update.

KOTH/Execution Time Adjustments

• Execution I believe is currently set for 10 minutes. That’s long! We are going to readjust this so players aren’t stalemating for long periods of time. KOTH will be reduced to 1 round in social and we will listen to additional dialogue from Core players if this needs to be reduced down or not. We expect these changes in the next Title Update if not sooner.

Windows Insiders not being able to play

• There is now a new Insider Build that corrects this issue. (Build 14951). You can read more about it here.

Ranks not displaying for other users in Squad

• We are aware of this. We want to display ranks for other users in the squad. This will be in a future Title Update, but will not be present in the next one.

Horde Class Icons in Scoreboard

• We are also aware of this one. We want people to be aware of other classes they are working with in-game. This will be in a future Title Update, but will not be present in the next one.

PC Mics not working correctly at all times

• We are looking into this one and have a future Title Update that will address this issue.

Horde Score abuse issues

• We have received a few reports on this and have fixes coming related to this. We will probably also look into wiping leaderboards after this is done to ensure players can compete to achieve legitimate scores.

Grenade spawning issue

• We have this issue logged and will have a fix for this in a future Title Update.

Players sometimes leaving maps

• We have this issue logged and will have a fix for this in a future Title Update. Players caught abusing this will be subject to disciplinary action including suspensions and bans.