Gears 5 Pushes Back A Highly Anticipated Mode

What's up with the Gears 5 Free For All mode? Gears of War developer The Coalition told players exactly what was up in the newest What's Up newsletter. The team had to start out with an apology, saying that the upcoming ranked Free For All mode has been delayed.

Free For All mode, an insane every-player-for-themselves sprint, returned to Gears back in December. From the start, The Coalition had plans to bring a ranking system to Free For All, but that's apparently easier said than done. Devs have run into issues reckoning the fact that in Free For All, it's one player against the world. 

"We've been testing the Ranking System in Free For All and discovered some issues in the way the Ranking System operates in a 1 person team Ranked environment." reads the What's Up newsletter, "Resolving these issues is going to take some time, so to make sure we get this right, we're shifting Ranked FFA to the launch of Operation 3 to make sure we do this right."

Yay for doing things right, but boo for those of us who are impatient to see how we measure up to other Free For All mode players. 

Now, when does Operation 3 launch? Operation is The Coalition's special way of saying "season." Operation 2 launched Free For All in the first place back in December. Operations launch every three months, so we won't be waiting very long for a ranked Free For All mode.

In the meantime, the What's Up newsletter promises a much-needed update to estimated wait times in matchmaking. These estimates are based on new and improved math to give more accurate readouts than ever before. Neat. What's also neat is some new sales in the weekly store, an omen update, and the final Operation 2 villain: the Kantus. The Kantus will keep you occupied until Operation 3, we're sure.