To the gnasher users/self proclaimed "hardcore" players (not a rant, just an idea)

[Sticky T Fox]

I've also got a message for the hardcore players who have played Gears since the beginning, and resent the addition of the Sawed-off: I have bad news for you. Both the Gnasher and the Sawed-off are casual weapons now.

Look at your own performance, and be honest with yourself. Did you suddenly get much better with the Gnasher when Gears 3 came out? I know I did. And it wasn't meditation, or anticipation of Gears 3 that made me so much more skilled. Nor was it 3 weeks of practice in the beta. All of the weapons are easy to use now. Mostly because the whole game engine is more reliable.

People are always saying stuff like
The Sawed-Off is a casual weapon, made for new players or players who aren't as skilled as other Gear die-hards.

As if there's no way a skilled player can reap the same benefits, or as if a weapon that allows a noob to get one or two kills during a match is a severe handicap to a pro that can get ten or twenty. And people say stuff like

The lack of aiming required is starting to frustrate me.

which is not true, for one, and again, suggests that for some reason the ease of use is lost on skilled players.

What about the fact that you get ten times as much ammo with the Gnasher? Or that it takes several seconds to reload the Sawed-off? Or that the Sawed-off has a flashlight on it to telegraph your intentions to the opponent? You don't hear much about these aspects of the Sawed-off. A few players whined and complained for months because they couldn't adapt, and Epic made change after change, bending over backward to accommodate them, and they're still whining because they didn't just jump right into a brand new game and shoot to the top like they owned the place. If things keep going like they are, in six more months the Sawed-off will be a pickup weapon, it'll weigh as much as a mortar, and everywhere you carry it you'll have a brass band behind you and a heavenly column of light indicating your position to everyone, and when you pull the trigger a little flag that says "BANG!" and some confetti will come out, and the same "hardcore" players will be in here whining about something else wrong with it.

Blood flying off the person you shot at is not an indicator of a hit. Sometimes you must accept that you will get hit/gibbed by a player who doesn't appear on your screen to have a good shot, or is "too far away." You cannot scientifically measure distance by positioning yourself "exactly" in the right spot in a YT video. Demonstrating range while standing still is not remotely equivalent to what will happen in a real match where there is added lag from other players and everything is moving. All of this is true now, as it was in Gears 2, and before that in Gears 1, and it really looks like people are just resentful that they spawned with the wrong weapon. Get killed by the SOS while carrying the Gnasher and it's "OMG what a noob he can't use a shotgun," or get killed by the Gnasher while carrying the SOS and it's "WTF that's crap he was right in my sights if I had a Gnasher he'd be dead."

You don't get hardcore by whining, people. Man up and figure out a way to avoid getting killed by the SOS. I will give you a hint: Don't assume you can just get in someone's face and gib them anymore, and don't barge around corners without checking first.

[DJ CARNIV AL]

Its the fact that in many of the close quarters sections of maps, theres a lot of them! A gnasher player still has to use skill and positioning to get a kill against an opponent. A SOS user just has to show up and remember to press the trigger! You cant wall bounce or even roll away most of the time thanks to the range and spread. They should recieve less points per kill!

[ben1bob]

I'm a medium Gears gamer and as such I can take an objective view on all aspects.

i've seen your other posts so that comment made me laugh. you insult the "hardcore" players and support the SOS fervently.

so no, you're not objective. you're one of the posters etched on my brain as quite the opposite in fact.

as a "hardcore" player myself, i know more about the game than you i am being a little facetious as a response to you claiming you're objective but... i'm telling you, the SOS changed the gameplay for the worse. it's not as fun as it used to be. my opinion isn't worth more than yours, but i'd say mine is more roundly supported than yours.

games are about fun and skill. the two should be intertwined. as in, the more you put into it, the more you get out of it. in GoW3, that is not the case at all. the folk having fun at the mo are sitting behind corners with the SOS or sitting behind cover rifling folk down. that's not my kind of fun because my mom could do that quite convincingly and get kills. i like a mixed bag. rifle use, and then some fun CQC with the Gnasher.

[DJ CARNIV AL]

i've seen your other posts so that comment made me laugh. you insult the "hardcore" players and support the SOS fervently.

so no, you're not objective. you're one of the posters etched on my brain as quite the opposite in fact.

as a "hardcore" player myself, i know more about the game than you i am being a little facetious as a response to you claiming you're objective but... i'm telling you, the SOS changed the gameplay for the worse. it's not as fun as it used to be. my opinion isn't worth more than yours, but i'd say mine is more roundly supported than yours.

games are about fun and skill. the two should be intertwined. as in, the more you put into it, the more you get out of it. in GoW3, that is not the case at all. the folk having fun at the mo are sitting behind corners with the SOS or sitting behind cover rifling folk down. that's not my kind of fun because my mom could do that quite convincingly and get kills. i like a mixed bag. rifle use, and then some fun CQC with the Gnasher.

^^^^ Seconded!

[Harperlarp]

I see some people still think the SO requires no skill at all. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying you have to be good to get kills with it, but getting close enough for it to do damage is usually a challenge in itself. You try to rush people and they just back away firing at you with their rifles or gnashers, killing you easily. I said the same regarding the chainsaw back in Gears 2 when people used to always call me a noob or a cheat for using the saw. I love it, it looks awesome, but it's a tactical decision. First of all you have to actually get to the enemy without taking much damage at all, that is usually quite hard. Even if you do manage to kill them if one of their teammates is nearby you're dead as soon as you finished sawing them, fact. With regards to the DBS you could say the same about the gnasher, it too can gib people at point blank range and you don't have to aim, I've been killed many a time by people pulling the trigger up close and killing me, does that require much skill? On top of that is also holds 8 shells and reloads about 3 times faster than the sawed-off. It does pretty much everything a DBS does but with none of the drawbacks. The gnasher only requires skill if you're more than 10 feet away from the person you're trying to kill, the DBS won't kill anyone from that range, and people say the DBS is overpowered? I'm not saying that the DBS is better or worse than the gnasher, they both have pros and cons. People used to corner camp with gnashers all the time on Gears 2, getting insta-gibbed up close was part of the game and I accepted that. I've always been about the Lancer, I don't like using the gnasher, just like you find it fun, I don't. I prefer shooting or sawing people with my assault rifle, I only use the DBS because I simply don't like using the gnasher. It's good to have a nice mix of guns to play with rather than just running into a match full of gnashers which was basically all Gears 2 was in the later days. You like having your gnasher battles? Good, keep having them, no-one's stopping you, why are you trying to stop the people who don't use it from having fun?

[Eco93]

I see some people still think the SO requires no skill at all. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying you have to be good to get kills with it, but getting close enough for it to do damage is usually a challenge in itself. You try to rush people and they just back away firing at you with their rifles or gnashers, killing you easily. I said the same regarding the chainsaw back in Gears 2 when people used to always call me a noob or a cheat for using the saw. I love it, it looks awesome, but it's a tactical decision. First of all you have to actually get to the enemy without taking much damage at all, that is usually quite hard. Even if you do manage to kill them if one of their teammates is nearby you're dead as soon as you finished sawing them, fact. With regards to the DBS you could say the same about the gnasher, it too can gib people at point blank range and you don't have to aim, I've been killed many a time by people pulling the trigger up close and killing me, does that require much skill? On top of that is also holds 8 shells and reloads about 3 times faster than the sawed-off. It does pretty much everything a DBS does but with none of the drawbacks. The gnasher only requires skill if you're more than 10 feet away from the person you're trying to kill, the DBS won't kill anyone from that range, and people say the DBS is overpowered?

Have you ever used a Gnasher in Gears 3? Even up close and personal, you still have to aim while blind-firing, this isn't needed for the Sawed-Off, because of the huge spread it has. With the SOS you know you're invincible when you're in melee range. Worst thing that happens is you dying, but at least you take someone (sometimes even multiple) with you.

Besides, if you think the SO is hard to use then that's you, because every time I use it I instantly kill everyone with it without having to put in much effort. The only 'skill' SOS requires is some common sense.

[Keiran]

I don't hate the gun, I hate the p**sy tactics behind it. You rush, click a button w/out aiming and if missed, run like hell until you can reload, rinse and repeat.

[kinmad4it]

And to the people who say "Atleast it's not a gnasher fest".. It was fun when it was a Gnasher fest.. I actually enjoyed that. It made my heart race it gave it a challenge and most importantly it felt like Gears of War.

Fun for you, yes, and a lot of other people too. However, not everyone enjoyed the constant Gnasher fest the previous games became.
Gears came out to a load of hype and was hailed as the greatest ever "cover based" third person shooter. Notice the two higlighted words there, cover based. The single player part of the game utilised this perfectly and the multiplayer seemed set up to emulate that as well. but we all know what happened regarding that though.
Giving people more options of how to play the game is a bonus in my book. Maybe Epic are trying to get the multiplayer back to what they originally intended from the very beginning.
Slightly hypocritical to say the sawn off requires no skill to use because you don't have to aim it. The vast majority of these so called "Hard Core" players look down on anyone who actually uses the left trigger when playing with the Gnasher, preferring to hip shot and wall bounce. So they're not "aiming" either, just getting their opponent in front of them and firing. Isn't that what the Sawn Off players do? Only difference is it's not the all mighty Gnasher.

The majority of whining about the Sawn Off comes across as childish and selfish. "I liked the game the way it was and don't care about anyone else. Make it like I want it or I'll scream and scream and scream till I go blue in the face"

Epic aren't catering to the "casual" crowd. God I find that term both insulting and pathetic. What does "hardcore" mean? You spend more free time playing one particular game, it doesn't mean you enjoy it any more and it certainly doesn't mean your opinion is more valid.
They're catering to the people who would love to play Gears if it wasn't a constant repetative Gnasher snore fest. There's probably more people out there who don't like playing Gnasher games than there are those who do, just they don't voice their opinion.
That's how it comes across to me anyway.

The really sad thing is that Epic seem to have listened and if we're not careful Gears 3 online will slowly be reduced to nothing more than Gears 1 with new maps. That's certainly what an awful lot of people would love going by what I've read on here.

[Sticky T Fox]

If you can run up to someone holding a Gnasher, Lancer, Retro, or hell, even a snub, get that close, fire, and then get away, then they were probably never a threat to begin with.

[Harperlarp]

Fun for you, yes, and a lot of other people too. However, not everyone enjoyed the constant Gnasher fest the previous games became.

So true. Like I said before, I've not really got anything against the gnasher, if it's used in moderation like all the weapons. But when it's nothing but match after match of gnashers 24/7 (which is what Gears 2 turned into) then I get really bored. Don't make Gears 3 go the same way. By all means have your classic playlist, enjoy it, but let the rest of us enjoy Gears of War 3, the game we paid for. I didn't pay for Gears 3 only to have it turn into Gears 2, I already have that