Epic vice president Mark Rein has spilled the beans on a hefty title update for Gears of War 2.
The patch "will address bugs and exploits as well as add some new achievements related to downloadable content", and "all indicators are it will go live within January".
We're fixing a whole bunch of online exploits. For example we've fixed the ability to wield an invisible shield, melee through some walls, gain infinite Lancer ammo and equip a shield and a two-handed weapon simultaneously plus many more.
We're also making several small changes to improve the overall online gameplay experience. A few of the ones that might interest you are; increased penalties for quitting matches early, adding additional spawn protection against planted grenades and chainsaw attacks, and adding the ability to see the Submission flag carrier destination by using Tac/Com.
We know you folks love achievements so on the achievement side we're adding achievement progress numbers to the War Journal, increasing the frequency of in-game Achievement progression notifications and adding some new Achievements for DLC.
About that shotgun...
We fixed the client side hit detection on the shotgun so that in a high-latency (i.e. "laggy") match, the shotgun will be more reliable. We've also fixed another bug whereby shotgun and boomshot rounds could strike the ground when firing from the hip.
If the fix you wanted to see isn't mentioned don't fret too much as Rein says the above is "just a very small list of some of the things that will be in the next title update". He adds that a more detailed list of update features will likely be posted ahead of its release.
Rein also says that Epic will be straight to work on the next title update as soon as this one's through the doors, and that the developer will "try to do a better job keeping you informed of our progress on future updates and we'll try to be a little more active in the forums once this update is released".
I must be really really lucky. Apart from some issues trying to get into a Horde game when the game first came out I havent really noticed any major bugs, glitches or game breakers (thankfully!)
Still good to see a Dev fix known issues with the game.
Damn, wish I would of known about some of those exploits. Not that I'd use them to cheat online but they'd make Hoarde Mode a whole lot easier
I do hope they fix the shotgun not stopping the chainsaw though. Not because I'm one of those 'rolling shotgun whores' from the first game but it did happen to me once (before I had heard about it) and it was frikkin' annoying especially 'cos it lost me the match.
I hope the penalties for quitting early dont' apply to Horde mode, because sometimes you I don't have time for all 50 rounds (or I don't expect to get all that far).
What would be really useful is a replacement player for when someone drops out, so that you don't get screwed over if someone like me has other things to do. Randomly add someone who is searching for a Horde game = problem solved. Then I wouldn't feel as guilty for having to quit.
Speaking of which, an actual option to leave would be good too. If there is one, I can't find it. Because sometimes you just want to get away from an annoying team without having to reload the entire game.
What would be really useful is a replacement player for when someone drops out, so that you don't get screwed over if someone like me has other things to do. Randomly add someone who is searching for a Horde game = problem solved. Then I wouldn't feel as guilty for having to quit.
Left 4 Dead style. Yeah, that would be the best option. If you're on 25+ and someone drops out you can guarantee you're not going to last much longer (unless your team is pretty ace).
It won’t affect Hoard mode as that isn’t tracked as part fo your multiplayer rank. What they mean is currently you can quit a game you are loosing by simply hitting the xbox button and returning to dashboard with no real impact on your multiplayer rank making it more profitable to quit a game that is going t**s up than finish it as looser.
Saying that I’m sure half the quitting before matches is due to the stupid playlist system this game uses compared to Gears 1. Instead of getting to choose a game mode you want to play you are forced to vote on one of three. So for example if you like Warzone or Execution you could be forced to play Guardian for 15 mins even if you hate it. Gears 1 matchmaking system was far superior.
For hoard the only thing you need to know to finish it easily is how to plant a shield at the bottom of a set of stairs to block enemies. Do this with the shield facing away from the enemies and they can’t kick it down either. You can easily solo all 50 levels on a level like day one if you do this and are careful.
The glitch they are talking about is one noobs use in multiplayer to get the boomshield + use a shotgun. If you see the ingame tooltip saying the same player is picking up a boomshield multiple times then they are trying to do this. Just smoke grenade or run behind them and chainsaw to deal with it. Look on youtube if you want to know how to do it, it is really lame though.
Forget all these fixes. The biggest problem in Gears 2 is how overpowered the noobsaw is. In Gears 1 it was well balanced, it was a lame way to get a free kill but if you saw them coming a simple shot from your equipped weapon made them drop the saw and they were in trouble. In Gears 2 you can shoot people in the face with the shotgun when they are running at you with the saw revved up and it doesn’t even slow them down.
Personally I don’t really get why they even have warzone and execution in this game as they are almost identical.
In Gears 1 with active sniper downs and downs from boomshot / frag splash damage there was a fair difference between modes. Plus if you downed someone from a distance away they wouldn’t have crawled to their team by the time you got there. Now you don’t tend to get long range downs much so the vote between warzone / execution is fairly pointless.
If they were intent on using the daft matchmaking lists they should have just dumped one of them. Probably Warzone as they have nerfed the long range weapons and boosted the power of the chainsaw
It won’t affect Hoard mode as that isn’t tracked as part fo your multiplayer rank. What they mean is currently you can quit a game you are loosing by simply hitting the xbox button and returning to dashboard with no real impact on your multiplayer rank making it more profitable to quit a game that is going t**s up than finish it as looser.
Saying that I’m sure half the quitting before matches is due to the stupid playlist system this game uses compared to Gears 1. Instead of getting to choose a game mode you want to play you are forced to vote on one of three. So for example if you like Warzone or Execution you could be forced to play Guardian for 15 mins even if you hate it. Gears 1 matchmaking system was far superior.
For hoard the only thing you need to know to finish it easily is how to plant a shield at the bottom of a set of stairs to block enemies. Do this with the shield facing away from the enemies and they can’t kick it down either. You can easily solo all 50 levels on a level like day one if you do this and are careful.
The glitch they are talking about is one noobs use in multiplayer to get the boomshield + use a shotgun. If you see the ingame tooltip saying the same player is picking up a boomshield multiple times then they are trying to do this. Just smoke grenade or run behind them and chainsaw to deal with it. Look on youtube if you want to know how to do it, it is really lame though.
Forget all these fixes. The biggest problem in Gears 2 is how overpowered the noobsaw is. In Gears 1 it was well balanced, it was a lame way to get a free kill but if you saw them coming a simple shot from your equipped weapon made them drop the saw and they were in trouble. In Gears 2 you can shoot people in the face with the shotgun when they are running at you with the saw revved up and it doesn’t even slow them down.
Ah, might have to try some of that before I next go online with it I know about using the shields to block yourself into somewhere (an idea I had by myself too which was pretty effective), but I didn't know if you face them away from the locust they can't kick 'em down. I also found out it's possible to place grenades onto the floor in specific places which is really useful in hoarde and I can imagine it working well in mp, though I haven't tried yet.
And yeah, the losses won't affect hoarde mode, just mp, and like I had already said I agree with the whole overpowered chainsaw, and I'm not one of the rolling shotgun guys that CVG was trying to shift the blame onto
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I know about using the shields to block yourself into somewhere (an idea I had by myself too which was pretty effective), but I didn't know if you face them away from the locust they can't kick 'em down. I also found out it's possible to place grenades onto the floor in specific places 
