Lets talk... How do you like S25?

I'll start with the good: sbmm isn't just tighter than normal, it's tighter than it has ever been in this game. In any game I've ever played. The matchmaker still produces a clunker every now and then, but they're the exception rather than the rule. I'm happy about the change, but also frustrated that they seem to have been able to do it merely by wanting to. Why did they never want to before? Why has it taken this long?

Another good: Bot Royale. Adjustable difficulty is a huge step forward... but still leaves us far from where the mode could be. The adjustability seems to affect enemy accuracy and not much else. They still don't behave like real people, they just shoot better. Like I said, improvement is good but we still have a long way to go. The next improvement I'd like to see would be an easy one: full map, full match.

Now the indifferent: Sparrow. Another legend was not what this game needed except that gamers are shallow and fickle and demand "new content" at every turn or else get bored and leave for greener pastures. Or so we're told. I don't know if that's true, but I haven't cared about a new legend since Valkyrie. At any rate, with or without the new legend, the old legends are still a mess of arbitrary favor and disfavor on the part of Respawn. Done on the assumption, I assume, that if they're not constantly changing them then the same shallow and fickle gamers will get bored and leave. I say let them. What I value in a game is not constant change. It's consistency. But apparently that puts me in a minority. So be it.

Ranked changes, store changes, the return of arenas... don't care.

The constant weapon tuning is yet another sop to the short-of-attention players. It isn't needed. See "consistency" above.

Removing the tripletake to the care package is a burden beyond all reckoning. At least to me. Especially when I can finally get at that care package and get my beloved weapon... only to find that they've changed it so much that I no longer care about using it. They already ruined the charge rifle, and now, at least for one season, they've ruined the only other viable weapon in the game. I've been substituting with the longbow, and while it has its charms, what it doesn't have is the ability to inspire confidence in me when I pick it up. Largely because it's wildly inconsistent in use, a characteristic that makes me despise most of the guns in this game. You will say, I'm sure, "recon, it isn't the gun that's inconsistent. It's you." Just give me a normal tripletake, or better yet, a season 0 tripletake, and we'll see just how consistent I am. I'm just tired of guns that are designed to offer players "challenge" by being designed to fight the user. In real life I don't buy or use things that are designed to fight me. I buy or use things that are easy to use and make me look good. Developers, take note.

Over all I'd call this yet another season with a lot of meaningless changes designed to make children feel like they got something new. Without giving us anything that's really new. Except functioning matchmaking. I'd even go as far as to call it "high-functioning matchmaking," an expression I have never been able to use in 25 years of first-person shooters. Honestly, that alone makes this a landmark season.