It's been months since the launch of Gears of War 4, but developer The Coalition is still making some big tweaks based on player feedback. The latest example will come with the March update, in which the Gnasher will get some big tweaks and improvements to make its shots feel more consistent.
As explained in a new blog post, a lot of player feedback has noted that the Gnasher's pellet spread was inconsistent at close range, which was enough to mean the difference between your target living or dying.
After some further investigation, we discovered that a mechanic that has been present in past Gears games to prevent shooting through walls was creating a perceived inconsistency with the Gnasher. The Gnasher would typically have its pellets start from the stock of the gun and move through the barrel. This was to prevent users from shooting through walls. This pull back means that the spread is wider than is intuitive at the end of the barrel, and so players were missing some of the pellets when they thought they should have hit with the whole cluster.
The solution, it turns out, was to adjust the point at which the shots start to disperse from the barrel, moving it forward. You can see a before (left) and after (right) look at the change below:
Overall, this should make the Gnasher's shots feel a lot more consistent with player expectations while still preventing the gun from shooting through walls. And the Gnasher is just the first gun that will get this treatment, as The Coalition says it will perform further tuning passes on other weapons to tighten up competitive play based on feedback. Look for those to start rolling out after the March update.