The Coalition dropped an update to Gears 5 yesterday, with Title Update 2 focussed primarily on a mixture of bug fixes to things like the Boomshot and Flashbangs, and sorting out the much maligned Ranked multiplayer with a full season reset. Well, that was the plan, anyway…
Unfortunately, that cornerstone change has been delayed. Improvements to Ranked multiplayer matchmaking were set to go live alongside Title Update 2, but The Coalition tweeted that these have been pushed back to next week on Wednesday 13th November.
The planned Ranked Season Reset and Ranked Improvements deployment coming with Title Update 2 today has been moved to Wednesday, November 13th.
We want to make sure we get these changes right, so we're taking a little more time to make further refinements to the system.
— The Coalition Studio (@CoalitionGears) November 7, 2019
The problem stems from a discrepancy between a player’s Skill Points rating and their Skill Rating, with The Coalition deciding that the best course of action is to simply wipe all player progress and start from scratch instead of letting thing reset more naturally. As a consequence, all players will need to take part in five placement matches to get a Rank, even if they did them before.
By way of apology, they’re making the Blood Moon Imago character skin free for players who log in between the rank reset and the end of the current Operation game season.
Here’s the patch notes for Title Update 2:
- Improved the consistency of the Boomshot with changes to the behavior of the secondary ‘bomblets’
- Flashbangs will no longer affect players through cover
- Full fix for the drop weapon exploit, including re-enabling weapon drops
- Fixed a bug that could cause players to be perma-flashed in a match
- Fixed a bug that could cause Enemies in Escape to sometimes be unaffected by Flashes
- Fixed a bug causing the Weapon’s Locker to eat weapons in certain circumstances
- Added a new check to prevent players using certain low covers to shoot through walls, ignoring muzzle block
- Resolved an issue causing the Gnasher to have bullet magnetism while ADS when Aim Assist is disabled
- If no users vote for a map in Quickplay, the next choice will now default to a different map on the same mode rather than the same map
- Fixed a bug that caused players to have to wait a couple of seconds before being able to reload when Hijacking a Boomshot Scion
- Power granted at the start of the Horde match is no longer applied as Power Gained in Tour
- Sarah Connor: Enemies can now be gibbed when in one-shot range using her Ultimate
- Fixed an issue that could cause enemy AI to teleport and ‘double vault’ if their vault is countered
- Fixed an issue that could cause Scions to have a fully black model after being killed in Escape
- Players can no longer share Power with AI teammates
- Total Enemies Killed stat for Campaign now tracks correctly
- Escape Leaderboards no longer show ‘Top 0%’
- Resolved a state where audio could be lost in Act 4 in 3 player co-op
- Additional miscellaneous bug fixes
Once the Ranked reset is resolved, The Coalition will be turning their focus to December and the launch of Operation 2, with another wave of updates and improvements in the works. It promises to be the biggest update to the game yet.
Gears 5 is available now for Xbox One and Windows PC, and comes as part of Xbox Game Pass.