Gears of War 4 is Microsoft's biggest release of the year, and so far reviews for the cover-based shooter have been largely positive. However, now that the game is available to everybody, it appears like matchmaking could use some improvement.
On the official Gears of War forums and the Gears of War subreddit, some fans are complaining about having to wait for long periods of time in order to find a match. Sometimes the game can't find a match at all.
It's not that there aren't any players. After all, the standard edition of the game released on Oct. 11. There are thousands of players attempting to play at any given time, yet many find themselves running into problems when trying to get into a match.
Thankfully, it looks like the developers at The Coalition are aware of the problems. A small update for the game released last night with the goal of improving matchmaking.
"Our Online Services team continue to work around the clock on rectifying some of the matchmaking issues encountered by players," The Coalition writes on the Gears of War forums. "We have deployed another server side update which we anticipate will improve matchmaking times. We'll be monitoring its impact closely."
It seems like it has improved matchmaking for some players, but there are still plenty of upset fans over on the game's forums, fans that so far don't have an answer to their problems. The Coalition has yet to comment on the problems following the release of the update on Oct. 11.
Launching a multiplayer-heavy game is always a challenge and some issues are to be expected. It's impossible to predict everything that could go wrong, especially given how this is one of Microsoft's first major "play anywhere" games that supports cross-platform play between Windows 10 PC and Xbox One.
That being said, given the disastrous online issues present in Halo: The Master Chief Collection back in 2014, one would hope that Microsoft and those developing its first-party games would put extra effort in ensuring fans would be able to play their games online come launch day. Gears of War 4's matchmaking problems don't appear to be anywhere near as bad as that of Halo: The Master Chief Collection, but it's still disappointing to see nonetheless. Here's hoping The Coalition gets all the kinks ironed out soon.
