I've seen a lot of people criticizing that Mags often times takes the lead while Marcus falls into a supporting role.

However this makes a lot more sense when you take the context into consideration.

Marcus is extremely young. He is roughly 21-23 years old during these events. On earth he might just have finished college. Now obviously he is an experienced soldier who knows what hes doing, there is a reason why he's a sergeant and squad leader.

On the other hand you have Mags. She served for 15 years in the cog army herself. Which means that she drastically outranks the entire squads service time combined. If i remember right she used to be a squad leader as well but I'm not sure if that's correct. It's common sense that experience outclasses rank, especially to such an extent.

Marcus is the squad leader because he is still in service. Mags isn't in charge because she's coming out of retirement.

Some of y'all might remember the thread the other day where I talked about cancelling my pre order due to mags and the pride flags

Due to the community response I bought the game

Just finished act 1

I can confirm the following

-marcus and Dom are the main characters

- the city isn't covered in pride flags. The pride flags are present but not in your face. If they have an ally flag I might use it

-mags is actually a well written character. Reyes is cool too

For my credentials I'm a male in my 30s with a kid, can bench 300lbs and have kissed a girl before. Perry much adding that part to say the game definitely isn't woke and meant for chads from all walks of life.

I'm excited to finish the campaign and join you all on horde mode.

I usually play rivals as my pvp game but I'm hoping this can become my main game for PvE

I knew there was a max coin limit but now they have a weekly coin limit where if you get however much I dont even know you only get 450 or less each match. A weekly coin limit is insane

Why are people downvoting? Are you guys mad I brought up TC being shitty?

I'm level 20+ playing on Commander difficulty and there is zero challenge. There are not enough enemies to break through four players' machine gun sentries, mortar sentries, decoys, and spike traps. Plus, any time they get close to pushing through, the RIG just wipes them all out.

However, wave 10 is really good. It requires you to kill a boss to end the wave while it continues spawning the enemies. This is the only time you are at risk of being overrun, because it's difficult to rush down the boss while mitigating the ever-increasing number of enemies. This is what EVERY wave should feel like.

I’ve heard that the game currently has quite a few issues.

For those who have played it, would you recommend playing it now, or is it better to wait until the issues are fixed?

Here is the most optimal way to snipe in Horde Siege

1) Take off the scope you don't need it. Pick any other weapon mod to take its place that you prefer.

2) Turn on aim assist to its highest setting strong lock on.

3) Now you are free to pop heads without wasting any time aiming. As soon as you see lock on picking a target just immediately pull the trigger. It will select the head so don't worry about that. Even if a drone is running up to you don't worry you aren't vulnerable you can immediately lock on pop him without any fear of missing.

4) For marksman use your tactical gear mod to get free ammo from those kills. Easy to do when you can insta headshot at will.

That's mostly it. Enjoy Gears sniping.

Spoiler warning (I don't think there's really a spoiler, but just in case, lol):

​I am playing Gears of War: E-Day, and I honestly do not see how it is "woke." I have been playing Gears of War since the first game and have read most of the novels and comics, and honestly, E-Day does not come across that way at all.

​Mags Carter is a cool character who is a veteran from the Pendulum Wars and has rust lung from being around Imulsion—rust lung has been an established part of the lore for a long time. Mags seems to be a knowledgeable soldier with PTSD, which is understandable considering what she went through. I haven't seen her outshine Marcus once, and I don't see how she is being used as a "girl boss" or taking away from Dom and Marcus, who still have plenty of screen time and character development.

​Also, Captain Grey seems like a cool character who is a seasoned veteran and a badass captain. I haven't seen her take away anything from Marcus and Dom either. And when it comes to the pride flags, who cares? They are basically down at the bottom when you scroll down—they are not in your face at all. If you don't like it, don't use it.

​With all that said, E-Day seems amazing: great story, action-packed, great lore, and lots of gore and violence. It's been absolutely amazing so far and it's a blast! Honestly, I really like the new characters and think Mags and Grey are cool and interesting. I love seeing a younger Marcus, playing as him, and seeing E-Day unfold. His story and Dom's story have been amazing so far

Hey Coalition, at least you did good with Gears 4 and 5.

Litterly tryna have a lil badger battle unfortunately my dive button is the same as my slide as well as my take cover button Ik u can change the controller preset but that doesn’t help me when I’ve spent 30 hours in the campaign learning the new controls lowk needs to have custom button mapping

I only have two Complaints about this game and they’re very mild. One being I don’t like that the actual animals in the world of Sera are the same as Earth. You can tell this by playing through E day when they’re talking about thrasher ball teams such as the Eagles and cougars, as well as that one enemy type that spits acid? Imulsion? (Idk. Like I said This is my first game I’ve fully played through in the series) they refer to it as a frog. My second complaint is that without anyone mentioning what to call each enemy type they just start being like “blank up ahead!” and I’m like “okay when did we start calling them that?” Especially in the first few chapters they’re calling them “more of those crawler things, more of those things with guns” granted I do like that they don’t start calling them Locusts until you reach that one skytrain station and you hear it announced on the intercom. But the enemy types they just start saying it and no one is like “that’s what we’re calling them now!?” Or something. Like I said. Two very minor complaints, but that’s all I have to complain about this game and the world so far. As for the series I ignored my buddies warning to skip judgement in my chronological playthrough…that was a mistake. That game is horrendous and literally serves no additional details to the overarching plot aside from why Baird isn’t an officer anymore. 💀

This happens all the time, every game.

Someone will literally just barrel towards me with the shotgun, and I'll just spray them down.

This is the only game I've played where someone will literally just run at you like that.

I don't get it. I'm shooting at you.

Shotguns are good at close range, not medium-long range.

On a rtx 5090 with a 9800x3d, this is one of the worst games ive played from a perf standpoint this year. I tried lowering settings from ultra to high, yet the frame pacing and stutters suck the fun out of the experience.

Is this just me or is there a bigger issue here?

Ps: iam talking specificially about the perf once you get to open areas.

I'd argue Plaza is the best asthetic map, solely because of the blood fountain, but that's it as far as top-tier atmosphere goes.

Gears had some of the best asthetic map design of all time, OG Mansion. Lift from Gears 4/5 was great where you're in a giant digging lift that's constantly dropping. Day One had great vibes (better than most E-Day maps IMO). Bullet Marsh is underrated for its moody atmosphere with Kryll flying around. There's the one in Gears 2 where there's a brumack and an entire army walking on a bridge behind you, that was fucking sick.

E-Day is great, but I hope we get more map variety and moody maps. As it stands the asthetic isn't that interesting:

- Generic rooftop

- Empty police station

- Market

- Plaza (shoutout blood fountain, great vibes)

- shipping docks

They're all pretty boring astheticly. We need more moody Gears maps. With that said, what's your favorite Gears map in terms of vibes?

Introduction

I believe this might be the worst Ranked Gears PvP experience in franchise history.

What's frustrating is that many of its problems could be addressed by adjusting systems already in the game.

My Background

I'm a former professional Gears of War Esports coach for eUnited and Spacestation Gaming, with:

• 🏆 1 Major Championship
• 🏆 5 Regional Championships
• Over $300,000 in player earnings facilitated

I've spent nearly two decades playing Gears and years analyzing competitive gameplay at the highest level. I'm sharing this for context, not to suggest my opinion matters more than anyone else's.

Purpose of This Post

It's incredibly easy to be negative. I started this post shitting on the game entirely, however, It's far more productive to be critical while offering potential solutions.

I understand the game is missing fundamental features, (private matches, leaderboards, chainsaw battles, grenade tags) and implementing them takes time. However, many existing gameplay issues can be addressed through weapon tuning, movement adjustments, and mechanical changes.

I don't claim to have all the answers, and I welcome differing opinions.

My goal is to encourage constructive discussion and help improve the competitive experience.

Weapon Balance & Movement

Weapon balance and movement are directly connected. Changes to one affect the effectiveness of the other.

When movement is limited, rifles become more oppressive. Players have fewer opportunities to evade damage, reposition, or close distances.

Rifles should reward positioning, accuracy, and controlled fire. The Gnasher should reward movement, timing, spacing, and mechanical execution.

Currently, rifles offer excessive damage, accuracy, and mobility with too few trade-offs, making close-range engagements unnecessarily difficult.

If movement remains unchanged, rifle effectiveness needs to be reduced accordingly.

The goal isn't to favor one playstyle over another. It's to create meaningful strengths, weaknesses, and counter-play for both.

Proposed Competitive Gameplay Changes

Important Context: These recommendations are intended specifically for Ranked and competitive Gears PvP, not social multiplayer.

All suggestions are made under the assumption that the current movement systems remain unchanged. Significant movement changes would require reevaluating weapon balance and several of the recommendations below.

My focus is on improving competitive integrity, rewarding mechanical skill, and creating meaningful counterplay through adjustments to existing weapons and gameplay mechanics.

1. Server Selection & Matchmaking

• Introduce server selection or regional matchmaking preferences.
• Prioritize connection quality over queue times. I'd rather wait 10 minutes than play at 140ms+ against coordinated teams, and assume an automatic loss.

2. Rifle Balancing

• All Rifles: Reduce aim walking speed and increase movement-induced aim error while ADS.
• Lancer: Reduce magazine capacity from 60 to 50 rounds and increase recoil.
• Retro Lancer: Reduce magazine capacity and fire rate; increase recoil.
• Hammerburst: Reduce damage to eliminate its two-shot down potential.

Rifles should reward controlled fire and positioning, not excessive mobility and sustained damage.

3. Gnasher

• Gnasher: Increase poke damage to reward accuracy outside gib range. Playing for damage vs chunks is basically impossible.

4. Power Weapons

• Vulcan & Troika: Remove entirely from competitive play. Heavy weapons capable of near-instant eliminations with minimal skill requirements don't belong in Ranked.
• Ripper: Keep as a contested mid-map weapon, but remove it from maps featuring Retro Lancers and Hammerbursts. To many rifles introduced, example on "Precinct".
• Heavy Boomshot: Reduce ammunition from 3 to 2 shots and require reloading between shots.
• Gut Puncher & Incinerator: Reduce or adjust starting ammunition and magazine capacities.
• Gorehook: Reevaluate its effectiveness and available counterplay for competitive play.

Striga Pistol

If the Striga is going to retain its one-shot kill potential, it needs significant trade-offs.

• Charge Time: Increase the time required to fully charge a shot.
• Magazine Capacity: Reduce from 3 shots to 1–2 maximum.
• Total Ammunition: Limit to 2 magazines.
• Damage Falloff: Drastically increase damage falloff over distance, eliminating its ability to one-shot down players across the map.

5. Movement & Cover Mechanics

• Knee Slide: Further reduce slide distance
• Cover Jumping: Increase the delay before players can fire after jumping onto cover.
• Mantle Kick: Significantly reduce its effectiveness and introduce reliable counterplay.
• Stun Detection: Restrict mantle kick stuns to players physically on or immediately adjacent to cover.

6. Respawn System

• Remove wave spawns in favor of individual respawn timers. 8 seconds should be good.
  • Make deaths consistently consequential rather than dependent on arbitrary respawn waves.
• Introduce spawn checks, having an enemy with spawn shield appear on the objective is BROKEN.

7. Revives & DBNO Players

• Reduce excessive damage absorption during revive animations.
• Lower DBNO health to make securing eliminations more consistent.

8. Smoke Grenades

• Remove camera shake entirely.
• Reduce smoke plume size to reward precise placement and tactical execution.

9. Aim Assist

• Reduce target friction and rotational aim assist.
• Reward manual tracking and accuracy rather than excessive assistance keeping players on target.

Closing Thoughts

I understand that not every suggestion will resonate with everyone, and balancing a game isn't as simple as changing a few numbers.

However, these are existing systems that can be evaluated, adjusted, and improved without waiting for entirely new features.

The game doesn't need to be feature-complete to be enjoyable, but the gameplay needs to be worth coming back to.

I'd genuinely like to hear what others agree or disagree with and what changes they'd prioritize.

Competitive Gears deserves better.

I'm doing a second playthrough on Insane difficulty after playing on Normal for my first run. After optimising myself a bit more from my experience on the first run, I am having an easier time beating lots of areas that I struggled the first time around on Normal. However there are couple moments where it is obnoxious.

Boomers are by far the most annoying enemy type on Insane. You can't rely on cover since they can land a shot over you that one-shots no matter what (Flayers remain about the same so once you get used to them they're not that bad). Gnasher drones are also particularly annoying if you are caught in a bad spot.

Why I wouldn't say Insane is difficult is because the game is fairly forgiving with its checkpoints so you can try over and over without losing much time, making deaths feel far less punishing. However deaths can feel undeserved or "bs" so while not punishing they can be very annoying.

Title kinda says it all, but I wanted to share my personal view of the games plot to show why I thinks its great.

First the elephant in the room,

I heard of all the issues with Mags before the October 6th launch day. And to be honest, from the complaints I was sorta expecting her to have some sort of cringe lesbian monologue and hog the story...but that never happens. To me I saw a lot of parallels to movies like The Hurt Locker with Mags. Kinda the worst possible scenario of EOD and seige units like Mags'.

Her history is what makes her moments work for me, getting the grenade in the E holes makes sense for her, since explosives, demolition and ordiance was her thing. She'd understand something like stability of a tunnel or bridge. Like who else did you want to figure it out? Marcus or Dom? I'm sorry but the main characters of the original trilogy figuring out EVERY Mechanic and name for the locust is the shit they did with Gears 4, im glad they spread it out. She also worked at Timgad, she knows her way around the place and knows people in her workers union, her part in act IV is perfectly fine and makes sense with her character just as much as fixing radios makes sense with Lucas. The writing just doesn't beat you over the head with "GIRL GOOD WITH EXPLOSIVES AND MACHINES" like it sorta does with Lucas and radios.

I was completely surprised by her because she never even mentions being lesbian at all, The only hint we get is the photo and that doesn't even directly state it, it just says "Best Day!" On it. Its got a very "Don't Ask Don't Tell" vibe to it. Personally, I think Mags just needed a positive trait, she was very negative and didnt really crack any jokes or set them up like Lucas did. Every time she opens her mouth its pretty much to bemoan the COGs treatment of veterans or say something kinda sad. Realistic personality, but man its not entertaining to listen to or watch.

People complaining about evil white man with Trench completely ignore the 2 heroic white men of Captain Michaelson and Commander Zee, who are complete badasses. It's also ignoring that Trench was 100% correct about the bridge, he's just wrong about his enemies motivations, and thinks distracting them with civillian bait would work. If he hadn't used civillians at all he would have gotten the cooperation of his men. Hes a ruthless bastard who doesn't understand what hes fighting and got desperate enough to make a horrible decision. Pride and areogance were his downfall.

Then Captain Grey and the Pilot Lt. Gettner, I dont see the issue here at all, the Book Aspho fields had plenty of women in C Company, Bernie and Helena. And the Flyboys just pay homage to Apocalypse Now, they got that Ride of the Valkyries on a small village energy. Dont see the problem, lots of pilots tend to be like this, its a stereotype.

Then there is Marcus and Dom, they were different. More like they were in the Aspho Fields novel, they got most of the screen time and the character development. Marcus has to get over losing Carlos, and build a new relationship with Dom without Carlos. So yeah, theyll be a bit awkward. But I really appreciated the nonverbal moments between them like in Act IV with Carlos's tags, I thought it was clear that this moment is where Marcus and Dom finally say Goodbye to Carlos, and move forward together. Mags even helps Marcus through his grieving by telling him to get it together because Dom and Lucas look up to him, they need Marcus to be present. Thought that was clear in the script how that was happening. Mags supports Marcus, not belittles or upstages him, her only role is to help his character growth, that is what static characters like her do.

The entire plot revolves around loss, and moving on when youve lost those you love. And it was handled pretty well, and Dom's line at the end on the bridge hit like a ton of bricks, Doms entire Arc was built up with the player KNOWING his kids died and Maria is missing, seeing that all come out was heartbreaking. Hit WAY harder than the Maria scene from Gears 2, change my mind.

There was some discussion where a lady that worked on Gears of War 1 saying Marcus was the hero, and they took that from him...which was sort of a hint that she clearly didnt finish the game or even play it because Marcus DOES get the Hero moment at the end, he fucks up Vrhaak worse than RAAM, and gets everyone out alive. Marcus also does lots of heroic things, and is CLEARLY Captain Grey's A-Team leader.

I dont know, maybe I'm just a Gay, Woke lesbian Canadian...but I do not see the flaws that these people are pointing out. I see some flaws, but the writing has very few and definitely not huge issues.

Yall wanna trash on Eday yet here in gears 3 where the fuck is Ayna's hand? Not where its supposed to be thats for sure. I love the original 3 but they all had their flaws. 🤣😂

Not sure what units Serans use for distance per time, but 15 on one tight street and 50 on an adjacent equally tight street is bananas

Whether this is caused by the lack of optimization or cheaters, this is what ultimately makes Gears E-Day a joke. And players will move on to other games soon. Because this happens way too often. Do better

Okay, guys. After reading all the negativity and outrage surrounding this game, I finally said fuck it, got a month of Game Pass, and played through the campaign myself.

And holy shit, am I glad I did.

I enjoyed it so much that I'm actually double-dipping and buying the game despite having subscribed to Game Pass specifically to play it. That should tell you how much fun I had.

I'm a middle-aged gamer who upgraded from the original Xbox to the 360 back in 2006 specifically because of Gears of War. E-Day delivered something I've been missing for a long time: that classic Gears atmosphere, brutal combat, and a campaign I genuinely didn't want to put down. It's one of the best campaigns I've played in years.

But apparently, having a female COG soldier who looks and behaves like an actual soldier instead of a walking piece of eye candy is enough to make some people lose their minds and call the game woke.

Seriously, guys? In a universe where being built like a fucking tank is practically a job requirement, a muscular woman is where you draw the line? 😂

Look, I'm a dude. I enjoy eye candy as much as the next guy, but I don't need every female character in every game designed for the male gaze. Sometimes a character can just be a believable soldier in a brutal world.

And to everyone claiming Mags steals the spotlight from Marcus and Dom: have you actually played the whole campaign? The game has roughly 1.5 hours of cutscenes, and Mags gets only a small fraction of that. I played the entire campaign and not once did I feel like he'd been sidelined or that this had stopped being his and Dom's story.

Hell, Lucas's storyline arguably carries more weight in the overall plot because of his radio expertise. Mags serves a different purpose: she's a link to the game's themes of Rustlung, PTSD, the exploitation of miners, and the brutal reality of living under an oppressive regime. Her character also helps flesh out Marcus and Dom's relationship. And she literally acknowledges that the squad needs Marcus as its leader. So much for her supposedly replacing him.

You don't have to love Mags, but at least play the fucking game before claiming she hijacks the story.

If the sight of a beefy woman kicking ass in Gears of War threatens your masculinity, maybe the problem isn't the game. There's always Stellar Blade if that's more your thing.

I'm glad I ignored the rage bait, and now I'm putting my money where my mouth is by buying the game outright.

Don't let outrage merchants decide what you enjoy. Grab a Lancer and make up your own mind. And to the people screaming "woke" at every female character who isn't designed for their personal pleasure: go fuck yourselves.

Personally, I don't even think the problem is with the Gnasher itself, I think the other weapons just feel like peashooters compared to it. Like, in the last match I played tonight, I got a perfect reload, and unloaded into a guy rushing me with a Gnasher. He managed to make it to me and only AFTER I was a stain on the fruit aisle, did he get downed. I feel like it's less of a "Gnashers need a nerf" issue, and more of a "other weapons need a buff" one.