The Gears 4 community was also pretty excited for its release, but it seemed to have went relatively unnoticed compared to the attention Gears 3 enjoyed. Beyond a friend or two, I haven't met very many Gears fans, and I was surprised because it seems populated online. The few I met seemed like good dudes. In Japan, Spawn might have been online for Capcom's Matching Service, but I can't say for sure, so I don't really know how its online community was. Gears 4, though, I've played extensively online, and can definitely say that its community is pretty bad. There are some considerate players out there, but they are overshadowed by an absolutely despicable majority whose goal is to make the scene as small as possible. They're poor losers, and even worse winners. When you win, they disconnect and leave. When you lose, they disconnect and leave. When they win, they trash talk and do all kinds of weirdo stuff to your character. Though Gears 4 has gotten better than past games (the first game had the absolute worst community), it seems that some of the worst of holdovers from the first Gears game have come to ruin the experience. Making things worse is a ranking system that seems to be easily bypassed and abused. What it is supposed to do is place players in pools based on skill, so that players are actually playing against others of similar skill.

Now, there could be more to this than I know, and it may not be the case that it's happening in every match, but I've seen matches with players who were skilled way, way beyond myself and everyone else in the game. I mean, these guys were animals. Faster than anyone on the battlefield, bouncing from wall to wall perfectly, never missing a Gnasher shotgun shot, and somehow missing not a single Lancer shot. They move like the guys you see in the Gears Pro Circuit. I don't want to accuse all of them of cheating, and it could be such that these players are just having good games, but these players stand out, and are on a whole other level than what others in the pool appear to be at. It really seems like they're sabotaging the game by abusing the placement system. If there is a system in place to prevent this, then I'm wrong, but it really seems like they're scamming the whole system. The system does not seem like it's free from exploit.

I believe some are intentionally doing bad in the rounds that determine placement at the beginning so that they get placed in pools with players of lower skill. Again, I could be wrong, but if I'm not, this really says a lot about a community that already has a lot of issues. It shows a level of desperation and degeneracy that's disappointing and detrimental to the game. If people of lower skill can't even get into a game with people of similar skill to enjoy the game as it was intended, people will just stop playing. The more cannibalism there is, the less people play, and the closer a game gets to fading into obscurity. True, those few who play only Gears 4 will stay, but that few isn't enough to convince a marketing department against pulling the plug. Ultimately, players who notice all of this wonder what type of scene does this? An absolutely despicable one, that's what. It's not the whole scene (Ribs and other "pros" seem cool), but boy does the majority of its online community just suck.