[quote name='The Ebbtide']Weird, from the way Epic talked so much about Infinity Blade it seemed like it was a successful franchise.
It's not just that, but other issues with it. The Horde Command Pack was definitely supposed to come with new copies of the game, like the Flashback Maps did with Gears of War 2. Clearly they realized that 3 DLCs in a Season Pass was much harder to sell than 4 DLCs, so they pulled it. Also, Horde Command Pack is already on the disc, but they justified it by claiming it was so that the weapon and character skins were able to be seen by all players, even though the character skins were mostly already in the Campaign, and so they should have been available to everyone to begin with.
Also, the Horde Command Pack withheld some content from Horde, so it was incomplete, and reset peoples Silverback progress when it was released.
Lamest of all with that pack, was that it came with extra maps. After a few weeks, these maps were added into the rotation online, since they were already on disc, meaning that people who didn't buy the DLC could play them still in matchmaking, further insulting those who bought it.
I have no complaints about Raam's Shadow, except for that it was a better Campaign than Gears of War 3, which is sad for an expansion to be better and fit more with the theme of a game series than an actual title for it.
Fenix Rising was sort of bland, and I'm surprised they brought back Escalation, as it was an uneven map.
Forces of Nature was okay, but the big deal with it was that it included a slightly altered Guardian. That was literally the hype of that map pack, which was stupid to begin with. They removed one of the most popular playlists from Gears of War 2 (like Horde in Gears of War Judgment), with no real justification. Their excuse was that "people will love Capture the Leader," which they didn't, and the drop in that playlist was steep from release.
People on their forums demanded Guardian back, and Epic claimed it was literally impossible to bring back. The number of people playing multiplayer was greatly declining, since they worked to butcher their game, and added a bandaid with a quick mod to capture the leader, making it play slightly like Guardian.
(Expect to see this with Judgment if the multiplayer number steeply decline from release.)
The bigger fiasco was the 1 day sale on the Season Pass around Christmas. The last two DLC packs hadn't even released yet, and Raam's Shadow had just come out. The Season Pass was advertised as the best discount on all of the DLC content yet to release, yet that was not true. A Season Pass is a preorder on content, and to have a sale on it when it's not even completely released yet is an insult to your fans. Everyone who had purchased it prior to that day should have at least received the last two packs on sale, since they paid for the initial 2 packs.
Other issues were that game boldly stated dedicated servers on the back of the game case, with no asterisk behind it mentioning the need for all content. But if you wanted the chance to play on potentially smooth playlists (there was no guarantee of a dedicated server when you joined a match), you needed all the DLC by at least the 3rd DLC release.
And, after the release of the last DLC, they pretty much abandoned support of the game. Aside from putting everyone at 29/30 events played for War Supporter because of their own laziness, it's been lackluster with any real interest from Epic.
They have increased the XP recently, though, to encourage returns to the game to hype Judgment.
(Another issue with the game was the useless Event Calendar that only told you to "Buy More SHIT!" It never actually told you about actual events, which would have helped the community with War Supporter.)
It just had a lot of potential, but was fairly disappointing. If they hadn't have hyped it so much, it wouldn't have been so bad. But it just wasn't as grand as they made it seem. If they hadn't have had the Season Pass, I wouldn't have minded them having as sale on content after it was released. It's the idea that only a few months after the Season Pass comes out that they have a sale on it, that it becomes a true insult to the people who actually play your game.
I really wish they had a Classic Mode, that also had Join-in-Progress. I'd rather have less characters, and weapon skins (that actually meant something, rather than were just additional purchases), to allow for me to Join-in-Progress with my character skin. And the 'Tower Defense' of Horde just didn't work. Either somebody would buy a Silverback, hogging kills (intentionally or unintentionally), causing people to quit due to little to no kills, no money made, and little progress in rank or defense levels, or people would hold their money, barely using it, so that you'd be overrun with no defenses. And teh Silverback guy would beg you for money to repair their Silverback at higher levels.
Horde in Gears of War 2 just felt 'better.' Hold a spot, defend it with shields and firepower, and survive. This whole, spend money, invest in bases, rebuy when you die felt...odd. I did like the boss waves, though. Just a neat way to make Wave 10 more intense.
If anyone did play the weekend(s) they had Classic Horde, the new setup didn't work with Classic Horde mode. Shields disappeared literally at the end of a wave because there was no longer the pause between waves. Enemies climbed over cover and knocked down shields, so it was much harder to hold them back. They would have needed to have two completely different setups for a Classic Horde to work.
I just feel like the more the edit and alter, the more I don't like it. Adding new modes, like Beast Mode, is fine, but keep things the way they were.[/QUOTE]
Good post. Makes me a little upset about Epic again now that i was reminded.
I gave up on Horde mode after just a couple of days after release. That shit got frustrating.
I didn't even know about the season pass discount. ffs.
