The Coalition rethinks Gears 5 multiplayer XP changes following player feedback

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Looks like these gears need to be greased again

(Image credit: Microsoft Studios)

Gears 5 was meant to undergo some hefty changes to its multiplayer modes, but following fan feedback, The Coalition has decided to go back to the drawing board after just two days. 

Tuesday’s server-side update was intended to rework the XP system to make it easier for players to work through totem challenges, which players complete to unlock new characters. The Coalition said these totems were designed to take about 10 in-game hours to complete, but they crunched some numbers and found that the average player was taking longer than that, though they didn’t specify how long.

Before the changes were made, The Coalition said the discrepancy was due to “an inconsistency between MPXP rates in Versus and lower difficulty levels of Horde/Escape on Elite or lower – which accounts for the vast majority of our player base – and higher difficulty PvE play." 

In an effort to balance that, The Coalition tried to increase base XP across the board while also removing the difficulty multiplier in Horde and Escape modes. This led to fan backlash, though, as higher difficulty PvE players didn’t like being inadvertently punished, so just two days after the changes, they’ve been reverted. The Coalition now says it’ll go back to tweaking things in an effort to “restore difficulty multipliers while also ensuring we’re awarding more XP for lower levels than we did before Tuesday’s change.” 

The studio says it’s actively re-tuning things now and hopes to have new changes to share as soon as this week. In the meantime, if you need more XP in Gears 5, you can log in once per day from Friday til Sunday to be gifted an XP bonus.

Mark Delaney
Freelance Journalist

Mark Delaney is a prolific copywriter and journalist. Having contributed to publications like GamesRadar+ and Official Xbox Magazine, writing news, features, reviews, and guides, he has since turned his eye to other adventures in the industry. In 2019, Mark became OpenCritic's first in-house staff writer, and in 2021 he became the guides editor over at GameSpot.