Welcome to the new What’s Up, our weekly blog where we’ll recap everything that’s happened in the past week and talk a little about future developments. In What’s Up this week:

TU 4.1 Patch Notes

Multiplayer XP Tuning Update

New Gnasher Tuning

Valentine’s Event Now Live

New Versus Tour Medals

TITLE UPDATE 4.1

Title Update 4.1 is the first hotfix of Gears 5, a new approach we’re embracing at The Coalition to allow us to be more nimble and reactive to the most impactful issues in the game.

These hotfixes fall out of the schedule of any usual TU drops and instead focus on targeted updates for the issues that matter most to you. Our goal with this approach is not only to make us better at reacting to issues as they emerge, but also giving us the chance to deliver smaller features or key changes faster than we could before.

Our first hotfix is currently in Certification with a non-final but expected release date of Tuesday, February 18th. This hotfix TU focuses on some key PVE issues that emerged since our last TU, as well as delivering some gameplay improvements to PVP. Here’s the full patch notes for TU 4.1:

Gameplay

Players can no longer gain the momentum-based speed boost after using melee

Updated the Gnasher weapon switching animation to be in a fire-ready state 4 frames earlier. Shots previously fired in this 4 frame window would be drawn from the left shoulder, causing the shot to land wide in rare circumstances.

Fixed an issue that caused enemy AI in Horde and Escape to kill DBNO players faster than intended

Fixed an issue that could cause players to be in a broken state after being rescued from an AI struggle

Heroes and Villains

Lizzie’s Ultimate Ability will no longer cause disconnects or crashes from the game under certain conditions

Lizzie’s Explosive Munitions Skill Card will correctly cause splash damage when killing enemies in defense mode

Baird’s Bloody Support Skill Card no longer applies to enemies taking damage from barriers

User Experience

Addressed sporadic hitching occurring in menus, map builder and joining custom games

We have another hotfix, TU 4.2, in the works . As we get closer to the date, we’ll give you more info and what to expect.

MULTIPLAYER XP UPDATE

On Tuesday, we released an update to Multiplayer XP that aimed to deliver a more consistent higher-rate XP earning experience for the majority of players.

As part of that update, we removed the difficulty multiplier curve for PVE difficulties in lieu of a flat doubled XP earn rate for all difficulties. As of this morning. we have decided to restore the difficulty multiplier to PVE following yesterday’s deployment.

To achieve our goal of improving the MPXP across the lower difficulties (most PVE matches are Elite or Lower) while retaining the best MPXP returns at the highest end of PVE play, we have returned the difficulty multiplier curve with upped rates across all difficulties except Master.

To account for the return of the difficulty curve for PVE players, we have also further upped the MPXP rate for Versus to triple its original rate (up from double the original rate with Tuesday’s deployment).

For full details on today’s second round of MPXP changes, read our blog here.

GNASHER CHANGES

Earlier this week, we made further changes to the Gnasher tuning as part of our ongoing revisions to the mechanics of Gears 5 (which began with our movement update in Operation 2).

The goal of these changes was to bring more time, depth and strategy to close range fights, and act as an effective counter to Gnasher players that thoughtlessly charge an opponent – a step that complements some of the recent movement changes.

You can get the full details and developer insight into the changes here.

THIS WEEK IN GEARS 5

In case you missed it, This Week in Gears 5 tee-d up the next 7 days with a look ahead at everything going on in the world of Gears 5. This week included:

Valentine’s Week Events!

Free Boost Weekend

New Versus Event Tour Medals added

Weekly Store refresh

For full information on all these events and updates, you can read the full article here.

SIGNING OFF

That’s all from What’s Up this week. We’re excited to get some key fixes and improvements out the door next week with more to come across our next hotfix and the arrival of Operation 3.

As we get closer to Operation 3, we’ll have plenty more to talk about on top of our hotfixes – not just in terms of the new great things to look forward to, but showing you even more of the ways your feedback is informing the future of Gears 5.

If you’re looking to join us for our usual stream, don’t forget this week we’ll be live on Friday rather than our usual Thursday at 3pm PT. See you then.

TC, out.