I finally bought Gears of War 2.

[rocketpig]

MontanaHatchet said:
Zim, I usually can't get very far in Horde because I'm paired up with awful teammates (due to my low rank).

Rocketpig: The problem is that if one person has a better strategy, you're pretty much screwed. Every match, one person grabs the Torque Bow, camps, and picks people off. Good idea, except now the people who died have to watch as their teammates get owned. You know what motivates me to use strategy? A shot at getting a good K/D ratio.

See, I find there are far more torque bow campers in constant respawn. I almost never die via a "super-weapon" unless it's way late in the round and at that point, it's expected that players will have picked up better weapons.

Why? It's too big of a risk to go for it every time. Given different spawns, different placement, and a known enemy rush, you won't get there every time. And that means you'll often die on the way there, negating the benefits of rushing for it every round.

Annex, on the other hand, is full of score-padding campers who sit with a sniper or torque and maul spawn points or paths out of spawn points. Why? Because it's easy. There's no fear of "well, if I try this, there's at least a 50% chance I die and wait for three minutes" factor. That wait time makes players think more carefully about their actions instead of rushing the torque bow spawn five times because they know they'll get there if they keep trying long enough.

As for watching your teammates, a lot can be learned about the game via watching others play. I find that one of the more interesting aspects of round-based gameplay. You learn the hiding spots, you learn where to lay traps, you learn what areas you can move through undetected versus those you will easily be spotted and flanked. Instead of rushing all the time and dying over and over (whether you get kills or not is really irrelevant), you are forced to learn how to use terrain, weapons, and movement to your best possible advantage.

It's not all about the kills... Sometimes, a large amount of the fun for me comes from quickly adapting to a situation and figuring out how to take down one or two equipped enemies, even if it means I'm almost guaranteed death in the process. Take down a guy with a torque and die, it's probably a plus for your team. Take down two guys and die, it's always a plus for your team. In constant respawn, there's none of that. No one cares if they die. They simply reappear in 5-10 seconds anyway.