In my experience, I originally LOVED Exile and still do to an extent. It’s just that, as others have stated, the map is terribly unbalanced. The Gauss hog to me is the elephant in the room.
Essentially what happens when I play is, red and blue go for Scorpion, blue in a mongoose and red just runs to it, another blue picks up rockets, and even if red side gets the scorpion, it’s blasted to Hell in an instant by the blue’s rocket launcher.
Then you have the almighty Gauss-hog. I don’t like the vehicle in the first place, but what makes it worse is the maps design. It’s hardly worth it for me to change my loadout JUST so I can go after the gauss with a plasma pistol and plasma nades, since for me, I am not the best aim for one, and for another, I have little experience with plasma pistol. Usually I might get gauss sniped 2-3 times in a match at most because I try not to let it touch me. So, as someone who wants nothing to do with vehicles unless I’m hijacking a ghost or skyjacking, combined with how little I get killed by a gauss, it’s just not worth it to me to go after it.
Let’s not forget about how Exile is just a giant freaking loop with one side completely obscured by cover in the middle of the map, making that window you have to PP a gauss even smaller. If you try EMPing from the middle areas of the map, it’s easy to miss or just get gauss-sniped before it even matters. Even IF you get the EMP, the gauss will immediately put its crosshairs on you and screw you. If you try PPing it from, let’s say, directly behind it as it drives away, you have also a huge chance of getting owned before anything can be done.
And forget trying to call any teammates to shoot up the hog with you.
Oh, and one thing I noticed that bothers me also. This may be wrong but I’m pretty sure there’s more cover on the front of the gunner than on a standard hog. I can snipe a vanilla hog gunner down pretty well, but a gauss gunner? Doesn’t happen. Not from the front. I have to take the back. Whether its coincidence or lag that’s prevented me from sniping the front I can’t say for sure, but it certainly appears to have more cover.
Let’s also consider how, in pretty much every Exile game I get into, the blue team wins and there’s some smug loser sitting at the top of the leader board with 22-40 gauss cannon kills. At most 5 deaths.
The vehicle is, in my opinion, OP, at least on Exile. And combined with the sheer number of times it’s picked, it becomes a huge chore to find motivation to play on again and again. That is why I personally dislike Exile now.
Great for sniping!