Gears 5 is out now in early access, and the Gears 5 Horde mode is perhaps the best iteration that the series has ever offered. Indeed, every Gears of War game has raised the bar with its Horde mode, and Gears 5 is no exception. This time around, there's more features and playable characters than ever, but unfortunately a glitch that makes adjusting the difficulty of Horde mode impossible is currently causing problems for some players.
Detailed in a variety of posts on the Gears of War forums, players are running into a bug that doesn't allow them to select a difficulty from within the Horde co-op lobby. Fortunately, it seems that there may be a simple fix to this, which will hopefully help Gears 5 players that are experiencing the issue.
Basically, players who can't adjust the difficulty in Horde mode just need to join a friend's match and be granted leadership. The friend can either choose to promote the player experiencing the bug to party leader, or they can simply quit, which will make the only player left in the party leader by default. Either way, this is the first step.
After that, players can then go into the settings, back out, and then join a new lobby. This should allow players to choose a difficulty next time they go into a Horde lobby.
This is a good solution, assuming that a bugged player has friends on hand. However, for players that may not have any friends playing Gears 5, this method may be hard to execute. Players in this situation may indeed find that this Gears 5 glitch is more difficult to solve than they had hoped.
For those experiencing this bug, hopefully it catches the attention of the developers, and it is officially dealt with in short order. The Coalition does have a lot of DLC plans for Gears 5, and perhaps this new content will also bring bug fixes and quality of life improvements along with it.
Gears 5 launches on September 10 for PC and Xbox One.
Source: Gears of War