Gears of War 2 Title Update 4 Detailed Release Notes

Title Update 4 has not yet passed certification and so I am unable to give you a specific date for it’s release, but I wanted to get you the information. The following fixes and improvements are included in the upcoming Title Update 4.

Improvements

Title Update 4 makes these new improvements:

• Adds the ability to collect multiplayer experience by playing Horde mode. Players currently gain experience at this rate:
• 50 points per completed Casual wave.
• 75 points per completed Normal wave.
• 100 points per completed Hardcore wave.
• 125 points per completed Insane wave.
• Adds the ability to restart Public Horde from the current failed wave instead of having to start over from wave 1. Title Update 4 also allows the host to kick players from a Public Horde session.
• Increases the frequency of downloadable content (DLC) maps showing up in map voting if all players have shared map packs.
• Adds a message at the end of the match to explain to players that they should wait before quitting so that they avoid an experience penalty for quitting early.
• Adds support for the new campaign chapter, “Road to Ruin.”
• Adds 13 new achievements worth 325 points. All of the new achievements require the Dark Corners Map Pack, a set of seven new maps and a deleted campaign chapter to be released July 28. The 13 new achievements are:
• My Way or the Highway” (25 points): Without being detected, complete the “Road to Ruin” deleted scene after choosing the stealth option.
• “Highway to Hell” (25 points): Complete the “Road to Ruin” deleted scene after choosing the guns-blazing option.
• “Two for the Road” (25 points): Complete the “Road to Ruin” deleted scene in co-op as either Marcus or Dom.
• “Be Careful What You Wish For” (10 points): Reach level 5 in multiplayer and complete waves 1 through 10 on the War Machine map in Horde (any difficulty).
• Ride It All Night Long” (10 points): Reach level 10 in multiplayer and complete waves 1 through 10 on the Highway map in Horde (any difficulty).
• No, But His Face Rings a Bell” (15 points): Reach level 15 in multiplayer and complete waves 1 through 20 on the Sanctuary map in Horde (any difficulty).
• “Lost in Transition” (20 points): Reach level 20 in multiplayer and complete waves 1 through 20 on the Way Station map in Horde (any difficulty).
• “Like Father, Like Gun” (30 points): Reach level 30 in multiplayer and complete waves 1 through 30 on the Allfathers Garden map in Horde (any difficulty).
• “Am I Only Dreaming?” (40 points): Reach level 40 in multiplayer and complete waves 1 through 40 on the Memorial map in Horde (any difficulty).
• “Blood on the Sand” (50 points): Reach level 50 in multiplayer and complete waves 1 through 50 on the Nowhere map in Horde (any difficulty).
• “Afraid of the Dark” (20 points): Play a multiplayer match on each of the seven Dark Corners Map Pack maps (any mode).
• “Did Not Go Gentle” (30 points): Win a multiplayer match on each of the seven Dark Corners Map Pack maps (any mode)
• “Is it Hot or Is That Just You?” (25 points): Kill 25 Bloodmounts with a Scorcher Flamethrower while playing Horde on a Dark Corners Map Pack map (any difficulty).

Exploit Fixes

Title Update 4 fixes these possible exploits, where under certain circumstances:

• A player could copy game progression data from one profile to another.
• A team could use the 50-point revive bonus to artificially increase its score in Horde. Going down but not out (DBNO) in Horde now subtracts 50 points, so there is no advantage to using the revive-bonus technique.
• A player could get 2 points for each kill in Wingman.
• A player could continue to shoot the Flamethrower while performing special movements like evading and mantling.
• A player could cause heavy weapons to spawn continuously while playing Horde.
• Title Update 4 also fixes a number of lesser-known exploits.

General Fixes

Title Update 4 fixes these other issues as well:

• An issue that could cause players to lose all achievement progression if they signed in during a loading screen.
• Issues related to the Smoke Grenade causing a player to cringe instead of knocking them down. If hit by a Smoke Grenade with cringing turned on, players will now:
• Drop the Boomshield, even if aiming while carrying it.
• Drop a heavy weapon, even if it is deployed.
• Cringe while roadie running.
• Cringe while in cover.
• An issue that prevented players from shooting around the lower left side of a planted shield.
• An issue that could cause a DBNO player to not appear as DBNO.
• An issue that prevented Gears players from inviting players of other games to join them in progress in a Private match using DLC.
• Issues that caused rich presence information to become inaccurate.
• An issue that caused the overall achievements progress bar to not reflect the latest achievements.
• An assortment of localization bug fixes.
• Additional miscellaneous bug fixes

Balancing

Title Update 4 makes these balancing changes:

• Adds a 30-second delay in map-based weapon spawning at the beginning of a Wingman match.
• Adds more future server-side balancing options.

Yes it looks like XP is making its way to the horde gametype. If you pause the “Dark Corners” preview video on the front page at 2:49, you will see an “Experience Earned indicator”, and yes it has been confirmed by Joe Graf:

Originally Posted by joeGraf 

We planned/added it before your thread existed.

Originally Posted by joeGraf 

Yes. Glad that’s out there, because I’ve wanted to talk about it for a while. It’s not done the same way as versus mp, but you will get XP for playing horde

This is the thread he was reffering to: Here

According to a recent post on the Gears of War forums there is plans to remove the “Smoke Stun”. Cliffy B and the rest of the Epic Crew plan on doing “Tests,” to see whether or not they should remove the Smoke Stun, or take it out during certain days (ie: Smoke Free Saturdays.) All Evidence does suggest that a change will happen to the smokes:

Originally Posted by CliffyB 
We have the option of disabling the ragdoll concussive effect entirely or replacing it with a brief cringe. We can remove it entirely or simply have “stun free saturdays.” We’re going to do a few test days where we see how people feel about the reduction and/or removal and then adjust accordingly.

Stay tuned.

p.s. I do love you all.

[Source]

I know it’s early, but as some of us know epic has said that they are already working on a TU4. TU3 did a lot to get rid of some of the annoying things about gears, but here are some things that were not included in TU3 that I think they should add to make this game perfect..

All of the new wishlist items will be updated in RED

 Bugs/ Glitches after TU3

DOWN BUT NOT OUT MEATSHIELD GLITCH
This glitch is extremely odd looking and rare, but is a glitch nonetheless. In extremely rare cases it is possible for a DBNO (Down but not out) player to tap A repeatedly while down and when an enemy swoops by to execute him the player will actually be able to grab the moving player as a meat shield. Again, the DOWNED player can grab the enemy executioner as a meat shield in extremely rare cases. As a result, some super odd graphic occurs and both players die.

Level 100 Glitch
I’m not going to state how it’s done seeing as that will only make more people do it, but this glitch needs to be fixed, before everyone is a level 100.

Tac Com Glitch
When spawwning if you hit [LB], your screen will become miscolored, and it makes the game almost unplayable until you die.

Sound Glitches
When charging a Torque Bow, Chainsawing, or firing, if you get smoked down the sound of doing the action you were performing continues.

Frag Grenade Glitch
-If you roll at the precise moment a grenade explodes beneath you, it will not kill you, and instead will do little or no damage.
-When an enemy is stuck with a frag, and then is downed before the frag does off. The Grenade does not kill, or damage to the downed player.

Underhill Garage
When you roll out of the garage door, you usually take cover in the middle of no where.

Guardian Glitch
Get rid of the Glitch in Guardian which generates 2 leaders on one team.

Double Ammo
When someone drops a boom shot, torque, Longshot or even any weapon, you usually will get double ammo. For example, if my friend hughes03 shot 2 rounds out of the Boomshot, leaving one remaining bullet. Now if hughes03 dies, and I go to pick it up, i will have 2 shots instead of one. (i.e. DOUBLE AMMO)

Mortar Randomly Shooting
This happens alot. I shoot about 2-3 rounds from the mortar, and the 4th or so shot just randomly shoots to the ground. Also, if you hip fire it, the ball doesn’t always explode.

Weapon Preferences
In the multiplayer option tab, you can prefer a weapon. But once you turn off your Xbox/go to dashboard, it changed. But the person stays. (I want my gold weapon as default!)

Picking Up weapons
You can also sometimes get stuck now while picking up weapons.

Boom Shield Glitch on Pavillion
Glitch with boom shield is still in pavilion – the glitch that I’m referring to is the one where you can grab a boom shield and glitch yourself through the doors at spawn. They should just take those doors out completely.

River Smoke Glitch
If you are under the bridge and get smoked, you sometimes will get flown through the bridge to be above it.

Smoke’s On Canals
Sometimes when you get smoked on canals underneath the middle bridge, you will appear on top of it.

No Weapon Spawning
You will sometimes spawn without a weapon. And you can’t shoot or so anything to your enemies. I’m not sure if you could fix this because it’s due to lag. It still happens after tu3.

Lasers On Security
Many people know about this. Throw/plant a smoke on the ground let it explode then it knocks you past the lasers and into the mortar/mulcher area.

Picking up a weapon
When you pick up a weapon, and immediately jump back, you actually roll forward into the enemy.

Left trigger after Motar causes no weapon glitch
What the title says.

Skorge
Sometimes when smoked, skorge gets knocked into the air, and sometimes die’s.

DBNO Standing
Sometimes when u down someone, they will be standing up.

 Add on or DLC

Make the trueskill rank system effect the color of your level number
- 1 bar could be white
- 2 bar could be bronze
- 3 bar could be silver
- 4 bar could be gold
- 5 bar (that hasnt reached lvl 100) could be a platinum color that kinda sparkles or somthing
- 5 bar (that has reached lvl 100) would have a platinum colored star
There could be a table of contents on the side of the lobby displaying it.

Make diffrent point scale where points are based on difficulty of kill
-Torque Headshot: 250 Points
-Sniper Headshot: 225 Points
-Boltok Headshot: 200 Points
-Hammer of dawn, Mulcher and Mortar: 150 Points
-Chainsaw: 100 Points
-All others: 175 Points
-Bounus for Dobble kill with 1 shot: 50 Points
-Bounus for multiple kills within 2 secounds of eachother: 25 Points(a peice)
-Bounus for doing a long execution: 10 Points
-Bounus for killing the leader in Guardian: 100 Points
-Bounus for surviving as leader in Guardian: 200 Points

Distance Meter
Add a distance number in the downed players red circle. If we knew our teammate was only 15 feet from us we would all know to try to find him.. but if he’s 50 yards from us we can ignore having to run around the whole map trying to find him. By adding some sort of indication of feet/yards from the players location I can guarantee a lot more people would be helping each other more often.

Blast Radius
Reduce Blast Radius of smokes and frags.

Different Meatshield button
Change Meatshield button to either Y, LB, RB, or a click of the Left or Right Stick.

Melee “Lock on”
Get rid of Melee “Lock on.” If a player hits the B button, they automatically try to hit any opposing player nearby. This is most likely also the reason why the Chainsaw has a “vacuum” effect.

Return of Gears 1 maps
The Return of either Clocktower or War Machine from Gears of War 1.

Play list should go as follows

Wingman Playlist – features Wingman

Execution Playlist – features Execution

Warzone Playlist – features Warzone

Objective Playlist - features Submission and Guardian

Territories Playlist - features KOTH and Annex

Horde Playlist – features Horde

No auto reloads
When your weapon is out of ammo and tries to automatically reload, this can be annoying, that should be fixed or at least an option to turn it on or off.

Enemy smoke grenades have red led
I would like a way to tell without aiming at an enemies smoke grenade if it is ours or not. Like the led’s of the locust are red.

Rank symbols with gear related names
I love the new ranking system; it would be nice to have symbols next to my name, as well as numbers.

Single Player/Co-op DLC?
Many people would love this. or something like an endless horde dlc? That would be sweet.

Host Migration
When the host quits, it will choose a new host. Rod already said it’s very hard to do, but is not impossible and is being “experimented” with.

Public Matches, NOT Ranked
People want this. I personally don’t care. But, it’s a suggestion.

Map Cycle
The ability to when in private match cycle your map selection instead of going to the main lobby every time to choose a new map.

Wall Tags
I think if you die, your planted grenade should go away.

Chainsaw
There is still a little bit of a vacuum on the chainsaw. Please make it so you have to be right next to the person to chainsaw them. It has got a lot better though since the update..(this one is just nitpicking a little)

Connection
I think they should have a connection status beside your name when u join the match to see what your connection rate is.

More in the War Journal
I also wish we could see how many exp we have in the war journal.

Gametypes
-Free For All gametype. This would be ALOT of fun
-Thrashball(Oddball) Gametype Link HERE

Clan Support
Would go along with the whole “team game” spirit…
Rankings:
-Leader (Can invite/kick anyone from clan, Promote/demote people, Disband clan)
-Co-leader (Can invite/kick people)
-Captain (Invite)
-Members (Just members of clan)
Clan Playlist: “Clan battle”
-Execution/Warzone rules
-Best 2/3 Random maps NO VOTING
-Winning team gets 1.5x xp, losing team gets 0
-Must have a full group of 5
-Winner will get points towards a leaderboard showing who is the top clan!
Tournament: “Clan Tourney”
-Same rules as Clan Playlist
-This will be a locked playlist to the top 2,000 clans to join only
-Winning team will be immediately put back into matchmaking and search for another winning team, to prevent having to wait for other teams to finish their matches, you will be put automatically into a “Second round” pool. It will search for second round teams and match you up with one. This will continue until a team has won 4 matches in a row, they will be declared winners of the “tournament”
-Winners of each tournament will be given “tournament points” to also go onto a leaderboard

More Private Match Options
Toggle ON/OFF
-Smoke Grenade stuns
-Environmental effects
-Stopping Power
-Shooting immediately out of a roll/roadie run
-Sudden Death
-Warzone/Execution rules in territory, submission & guardian matches
Other Options
-Map Cycles/Play lists
-Custom Weapon Cycles
-Making private matches not joinable whether or not the room is full
-Boot Mid-Match
-Damage of each weapons
Edit your starting inventory
-Primary starting weapon
-Secondary starting weapon
-Pistol starting weapon
-Grenade starting weapon
Misc
-Ammo each gun
-Change Shotgun Speed
-Custom Button layout
-Character Movement Speed
-Respawn Times
-Toggle the amount of health
-Health regeneration Time (for a tactical or realistic match)
-Betrayal Booting
-Time Limits
-Different Respawn Locations for Annex and King of Hill
-Ability to add more weapon spawns.
-Amount of ammo you get for each weapon when you pick it up.
-Change individual bot’s difficulty ie. if I want 1 insane bot, 1 hardcore, and 3 normal to better simulate public games
-Change Annex “hill” change frequency like after a set amount of time it will change
-Add alternating rounds with custom weapons ie. if I want round 1 to be full of Torque Bows and round 2 full of longshots.
-Active down option so we can turn it on in all sniper matches
-Set the torque’s splash damage
-Reload speeds
-Option so if someones down they cant get boomed torqued or pistol headshotted
-Ability to crawl on the floor
-Blast radius of all grenades
-Detonation time of all grenades
-Set the amount of ammo in each weapon
-”Lucid” display option Gears 1 had to give you that horror movie look

Private Horde Connection
For a private horde match, allow a disconnected player to rejoin the match once re-connected during the same wave. The player shall show up as dead on the team but will get to re-join that same game they got disconnected from.

Hopefully Title update 4 will have the majority of these suggestions in it. We will continue to update this list as we feel the need to. If you have any suggestions make sure and post a comment.