Gray Zone Warfare has blown up since entering early access on April 30, but players are already asking the developers to make major changes to players’ accounts, specifically regarding factions.
When you first boot up GZW for the first time, you’ll be tasked with selecting one of the game’s three factions. This is who you will represent on the battlefield, but players don’t realize that once you select your faction, you can only play with those in the same one, and can’t change until the next wipe which is expected in six months.
Already, plenty of players have realized that their friends chose different factions from them, leaving them unable to play with each other for half a year. This has left plenty frustrated, and calling for change.
In a post on the Gray Zone Warfare subreddit, Songrot wrote that MADFINGER needs to “introduce a way to reset account within days [because] otherwise this could become a disaster. Friends not knowing they have to be the same factions are stuck and many will quit [rather] than not play with friends.”
It seems that the development team was at least aware of this issue, with LeaglizeMilkPls stating that they had to “manually reset multiple streamers’ accounts so that they could switch,” while POOTDISPENSER called the current system a “weird decision,” complaining that they can’t play with a “handful of people on Discord because we’re all different factions.”
As for solutions, there were a couple of ideas put forward that could solve the problem. TheWigglyNiggly suggested that you should be able to join the party of any player, but the party would swap to the host’s faction. That would allow people to play together, and return to their own faction when playing solo.
Another option is to simply allow multiple characters to be created on an account. None of your inventory would carry between them, but at least you would have the option to switch back and forth and play with your friends.
For me, these seem like obvious improvements, and it’s a little strange that these weren’t considered before the game was released. While splitting people up and representing a faction all the time is a fun idea on paper, the most important thing is letting people play together, as that will be the lifeblood of Gray Zone Warfare.
I’m willing to give the developer the benefit of the doubt though, as the game has only been in early access for 24 hours, so hopefully some big updates are on the way.
