Hey all,

So we’ve been looking at all the feedback on our skill ranking system and we completely understand why simply making your TrueSkill level visible can be frustrating. The algorithm is complex, so it’s not always clear how your rank will be affected by a particular match and your rank is based on the team’s outcome and not necessarily your individual performance.

So we’re looking to make a change.

What if, instead of skill rank, we instead showed your experience level. You would gain experience through your individual performance in Public multiplayer matches – the higher your score at the end, the more experience you acquire. Of course the experience gained across the different match types would be balanced so you couldn’t just grind on the respawning game types to try and level faster. The experience requirements for each level would grow with each level gained (like a typical RPG) and we’d have 99 levels of experience for you to show off your leetness.

Generally speaking your level will always go up since you’re always acquiring more score, hence experience, with each completed match. The only exception to that would be people quitting. Players that quit would gain an experience penalty that could cause them to be demoted. At the end of every match you will be able to see how much experience you’ve gained and how much further you have to go till the next level.

Since I know what one of the first questions is going to be, initially we wouldn’t have achievements for gaining experience levels because of Xbox LIVE rules that require all post release achievements to be tied to new DLC content. But when new DLC is released, it’s a whole new ball game then.

So, what do you think?

Thanks,

Rod.

More can be found here

I’m happy to announce that Title Update 2 for Gears of War 2 is now available. It went live this morning at 2 AM PST (5 AM EST) and as you can see from the detailed release notes below, it’s a significant update. It addresses a large number of multiplayer exploits and issues as well as makes some balancing tweaks, includes a couple of new features and even adds 7 new DLC-based achievements. Four of the new achievements require the Flashback Map Pack that came free with your new copy of the game, so don’t forget to redeem your code inside the box!

Once again, I want to thank our community for their patience while we finished this title update and I want to thank everyone for their ongoing support of the game. Gears 2 sales topped over 4 million copies sold in just two months and when we released the Combustible Map Pack in December, it became the number one piece of premium downloadable content for that month.

We’re continuing to work hard supporting the game and you, the community, and we look forward to seeing you online.

Gears of War 2 Title Update 2 Detailed Release Notes

The following fixes and improvements are included in Title Update 2.

Exploit Fixes

Title Update 2 fixes these possible exploits, where under certain circumstances:

• A player could melee or grenade tag through certain walls.
• A player could equip a shield and a two-handed weapon simultaneously.
• A player could make their shield invisible.
• A player could become invisible.
• A player could do a “super” mantle or “kung fu flip,” flying high into the air.
• A player could gain unlimited ammo with the Lancer Assault Rifle.
• A player could fire while roadie running (also known as “crabwalking”).
• A player could pick up a weapon while sliding into cover.
• A player could walk forward while firing a deployed mortar.
• A player could force an opponent to be stuck in the down but not out (DBNO) position.
• A player could prevent other players from picking up a heavy weapon.
• A player could pick up a dropped meatflag without having to knock him down.
• A ragdolled player could be killed without ever going DBNO.
• A player could roadie run while firing the Scorcher Flamethrower.
• A player could get stuck while evading, though they could continue shooting in any direction.
• A player could concuss themselves under the stairs on the River map.

General Fixes

Title Update 2 fixes these other issues as well:

• An issue with client-side hit detection of the Gnasher Shotgun. The fix makes the shotgun more reliable in high-latency situations.
• An issue where players could have shotgun or Boomshot rounds fire into the ground when shooting from the hip.
• A split-screen issue where one player transitioning to the death battle camera disrupted input from the other player.
• An issue that could cause players’ Look sensitivity to be changed to their Zoom sensitivity while zooming in, zooming out, and firing.
• An issue that could cause players to get stuck if they tried to pick up a heavy weapon while firing the shotgun at the same time.
• An issue where players could become stuck if they kicked over a shield while ragdolled from a smoke grenade.
• An issue where bots were unable to kick over a shield that was planted backward.
• An issue where players who quit during voting didn’t show up in the end game stats, which meant other players couldn’t easily provide negative feedback on them.
• An issue where players couldn’t chainsaw enemy meatshields if the meatshields were already damaged.
• An issue where some players would not see the animation of a meatshield being chainsawed.
• An issue where players could not chainsaw an opposing team meatshield in a game type that doesn’t allow respawns (for example, Warzone and Execution).
• An issue where a player partway through the act of raising or lowering the chainsaw did not transition into a duel when attacked from the front with a chainsaw.
• An issue where occasionally a player waiting to respawn could not respawn when repeatedly hitting the left trigger to switch cameras.
• An issue where some teammates couldn’t communicate between rounds in games type that don’t allow respawns, because dead team members were left in the dead radio channel until the next round started.
• An issue where a DBNO player could be seen as standing if knocked DBNO while reloading the mortar.
• An issue where a player joining a Private Xbox LIVE game in progress from another specific type of game could potentially lose HUD functionality.
• An issue on the Flood map where a player’s dying from Imulsion did not trigger a death message or penalize the player as other environmental deaths did.
• An issue with Guardian games where if the leader is the last player killed on a team, the round may not end, due to the respawn timer.
• A campaign issue where the gamer picture would not be awarded when the game is completed on Insane.
• An issue where a player would continue to fire the flamethrower and damage other players if that player was knocked DBNO while firing it.
• An issue that could cause a player to get stuck while moving and quickly attempting to aim the mortar at the same time.
• An issue with Horde games where clients didn’t receive the “waiting for host” message after they failed a wave.
• A Horde split-screen issue that could cause a team to get -2 billion in score, which when posted to the leaderboards looked like +2 billion.
• An issue where dead players may not show up in the metadata for multiplayer photos.
• A system link issue where if a multiplayer match and a co-op game were hosted at the same time on the same LAN, neither could be joined.
• Additional miscellaneous bug fixes.

Balancing

Title Update 2 makes these balancing changes:

• Made planted proximity grenade mines much easier to shoot off the surface they’re planted on, by giving them 50 percent less health.
• Set grenades to respawn less frequently. When a player picks up grenades from a spawned location, a new set of grenades does not respawn until the previous grenades have been used.
• Increased the penalty to rank for players who quit Public Xbox LIVE matches early.
• Buffed the flamethrower to have stopping power (to slow a charging enemy) and to cause a chainsaw interrupt (to force the opponent to lower a revved chainsaw).
• Removed the ability to instantly shoot coming out of a roadie run.
• Added additional spawn protection to prevent proximity grenade mines and chainsaws from killing a player within 5 seconds after spawning.
• Balanced grenade spawn cycling on the Hail map so that both teams have equal access to both types of grenades.

We continue to test internally and monitor online gameplay to determine what else may need adjusting.

Improvements

Title Update 2 makes these new improvements:

• Changed Annex games to use execution rules, to prevent players from leaving DBNO opponents on the ground to bleed out.
• Made Horde waves count toward the “Party Like It’s 1999″ achievement. Each wave is counted as one round.
• Added the ability, during Submission games, to see the flag’s final destination by using Tac/Com.
• Increased the frequency of most of the toasts for in-game achievement progression.
• Added achievement progression numbers to the War Journal.
• Added 7 new DLC-based achievements worth 175 points (progress toward them starts after Title Update 2 is applied):
  • “Skeletons in Your Closet” (20 points): Complete waves 1 through 10 on all Flashback Map Pack maps in Horde (any difficulty).
  • “Trial by, and on, Fire” (20 points): Complete waves 1 through 10 on all Combustible Map Pack maps in Horde (any difficulty).
  • “More Mystery, Less History” (15 points): Win a multiplayer match on each of the 5 Flashback Map Pack maps (any mode except Wingman).
  • “The Roof! The Roof! The Roof…” (15 points): Win a multiplayer match on each of the 3 Combustible Map Pack maps (any mode except Wingman).
  • “Bound by a Shared Past” (15 points): Win a Wingman match on each of the 5 Flashback Map Pack maps.
  • “Forged in the Fire” (15 points): Win a Wingman match on each of the 3 Combustible Map Pack maps.
  • “Annex: Now with Execution Rules” (75 points): Win an Annex match on each of the Flashback and Combustible Map Pack maps (Public only).

More can be found here

Tehflakes.ca is hosting a Gears of War 2 Community night! More information will be available at http://gearsofwar.xbox.com/Templates/CMBlog.aspx?id=1326
Here is the important info about this community night:

This Saturday, January 17, you can test your skills against DarthAlbert III and Tehflakes

Date: Saturday, January17, 2009
Time: 9pm – 12pm EST

Come out and test your skills against Tehflakes.ca (and maybe win some cool Gears stuff), add the gamertags below to your friends list, and join them for a game this weekend!

Tehflakes

DarthAlbert III

I hope to see and play with as many of you as possible. So send us some friend’s requests, leave a message in this thread or send us an Xbox live message.

To be entered into the giveaways come out and play some GoW2 with us and you will automatically be entered to win some very cool prizes. Once the night is over we will collect all names and put them in a random draw for the prizes. We have 2 t-shirts and 2 golden weapon codes.Winners will be notified by Xbox Live message that they have won.

Check out SilverSnail on At www.silversnail.com

First of all I hope all of you had a safe and happy holiday season.

As I mentioned before the break we’ve been working on a major title update for Gears of War 2. This update will address bugs and exploits as well as add some new achievements related to downloadable content. We don’t have an exact date for it but all indicators are it will go live within January. If that changes we’ll let you know.

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.

This is just a very small list of some of the things that will be in the next title update but one more item which has been talked about a lot in our forums deserves a special call out…

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.

So there’s a brief status report on the next title update. At some point I expect we’ll post a more detailed list but I assure you we’re working hard to get this out the door and once it’s done we’ll start working on the next update. We’ll 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.

Source Epic Games – More information can be found here.