[SUGGESTION] Do we want to play Super Mario World or a Clancy-game with tension? | Forums

[redsept]

The biggest reason why Wildlands lacks tension and excitement is the lack of death. You re-spawn when your ghost dies. And you're immortal since you have unlimited lives. It's a sandbox game, and a pretty darn good one, but all the mothers are at the sandbox making sure that the playing doesn't get too rough. The rules have to be nice so nobody gets their feelings hurt. Ghost Mode punched a hole in this, showed the way out, but is flawed.

What makes games like Tom Clancy's Rogue Spear (1999) so much fun is that your actions have consequences to how you play the game. Your soldiers die when they die. And why does this matter, what difference does it make? It makes a huge difference because all of the soldiers are different. And you don't want to lose them, especially the good ones.



Wildlands is similar to Rogue Spear in that manner that your ghost has unique skills, the ones you pick for them. You level up and make the character your own. You create him/her. (Although I'd love to see most of those stats from Rogue Spear reach Wildlands too...)

This is why Wildlands has the opportunity to be as exciting as Rogue Spear once was. The fear of death is real and it changes the gameplay experience, big time! For the better, if you like tension and like that your actions have consequences in the game and to how you play it. Good strategy is rewarded and rushing gets your character killed.

"But we have permadeath in Ghost Mode already!" one might say. Yes, but dying in Ghost Mode deletes your save game. That's messed up, I don't understand why the whole campaign gets deleted! (It's not a one man war, there are many ghosts in Bolivia and new one can be recruited if necessary. And let go of the narrative if necessary in this game mode, we've seen it already.)

So if one ghost dies, another ghost takes his place. A rookie with no skills. He is able to retrieve the guns & medals from the dead ghost, so you don't have to find all your gear again all over the map. This would make the game more mature and challenging. Like Ghost Mode, but without the damn delete-campaign-and-gear-and-everything-else.


Upon death there are many options on how to continue the campaign:

1) Game continues with a new level 1 rookie, no skills
2) Game continues with a new level 5 rookie with 5 skill points to be assigned by player
3) Game continues with a player selected rookie from 3 different rookies with 5 randomly assigned skill points. (Or half the skill points your dead ghost had.)

(or 4) Game continues with your old character but you lose half of your skill points and skill levels [this would be boring, but maybe more accepted..?])

I would prefer at least choices 1 and/or 3 to be implemented to Wildlands. Easy to implement, a huge change to how the game is played!

Death should matter in a shooting game. If it doesn't, it's like Super Mario World. With infinite lives cheat enabled. I'm not totally against re-spawns. I like playing Clancy's Vegas terrorist hunt with 3 re-spawns (and about 30 terrorist). Re-spawning gives me a chance to redeem myself if I get too cocky. No re-spawns would force me to play it realllly slow. Infinite re-spawns would water the whole thing down by making me immune to death (like Wildlands is when not using Ghost Mode). So even though I'm re-spawning in Vegas, death makes things more tense.

I still see resistance against the option to play Wildlands with permadeath for the ghost. I truly am puzzled why would anyone resist adding the option to play Wildlands like this. And I'm even more puzzled why Ubisoft didn't implement this feature in the beginning to Wildlands, as leveling up the character / ghost makes him unique, and the sense of fear of losing your ghost is something Mr. Clancy did use to his advantage in his books.

The atmosphere of tension, war, death and fear. That's what would make accomplishments in the game feel more real and palpable. You put your skin in the game, took risks and succeeded. Or didn't succeed and paid for it.

Choices matter again.



-----------------------
Taken from page 4:
-----------------------


But anyways, going back to the suggested permadeath mode, I'll write a list why the general story isn't needed here as much as you create your own story:


1) The story is created with your actions & Death becomes the story

No quick-loading, no re-pawning, no checkpoints. When you die, you die. There is no going back, and you lose your ghost. Maybe he was level 4, maybe 24. How he died becomes relevant again. Were you pinned in heavy fire by the bridge, with no good cover if you move away from the car that is already burning. You try to make a run for it, it's now or never! And you get cut down by a LMG, lose your ghost and promise yourself you'll never use that stupid strategy again.

You learn, you adapt, you strategize more (vs. the checkpoint/respawn system). You become better because you're more motivated. No quick-loading backwards. What you do really matters, every single time! Dying matters again, as you have invested skill points in your ghost. (If you fear frustration, don't use permadeath.)


2) Retrieving the guns is a return to the crime scene

You see the body of your dead ghost who was unable to escape the last bullet. You see the place he died, and remember how he really looked like. Yol see the place again where you made your wrong choices. But he's dead now so he's not getting back up again, so you have to get the gunzz.

This becomes a mini-mission every time you die. The body is guarded by 10 cartel members, so first you'll have to take them out, wherever the body is located. It can be anywhere, so the place is totally random. Only after you get to the body you get to your old guns and gear. (If you die on this mission, the original ghost remains intact with your guns, so you'll never lose them.)


3) Their lives and deaths matter again

Remembering the ghosts who died with a memorial screen including places of deaths, stats of killed enemies etc., photos and maybe even videos of the sad moment how you lost your ghost, that would be support the story of how the campaign has really proceeded. Every death is counted for, nobody goes forgotten. And since you can customize each character, they're really unique gosts. Every ghost is precious when they become skilled. That's why the tension and excitement would be higher than without permadeath. (Again, if you fear frustration and don't want your ghost to die, don't use permadeath.)


4) The cheat-mode is finally turned off

When you play a racing game with a rewind button (like Forza Horizon etc.), you can rewind back a few hundred meters and try again. I call that cheating in racing if you can do re-takes. In Wildlands, you always rewind back if you die. Wildlands is like Forza but with the rewind button forced on. That would make Forza boring, every time you drive off the road, the game automatically rewinds you back on the road. That is what Wildlands does, it automatically rewinds you back on the road again every time you mess up. It doesn't even allow you to mess up.


5) No cutscenes or videos, you are the story

The cutscenes in Wildlands are a bit over the top for many, and it sometimes feels more like watching a really poor episode of CSI or some other crappy cop drama. The acting isn't par with the rest of the game, IMHO, nor is it par with Clancy legacy. The story is nice, the acting is not. And it takes you away from the game world, you suddenly can't control your actions at all. So dump the acting, the briefings can be done with text files and/or radio. Now your actions become the story, not some pre-made cutscenes with only one outcome. (If you like the story, it will still be there.)


R6) Permadeath honors the original Clancy R6 games

Don't be a fool or you'll get your ghost killed, for good.

[Ghost-Ami]

Pretty sure none of that will ever be implemented in this game. Maybe next time.

There was some game that came out recently only for PlayStation, I think, that had three main characters, and up to two of them could die, and you could still continue the story as long as one remained.

It was some sort of nearfuture scifi RPG type thing about AIs/androids, I can't remember what it's called.

Now that's the sort of thing I'd like to see in a Ghost Recon or even Assassin's Creed title.

And Ubi ought to lean in harder toward RPGs. In Wildlands we have some elements, but even their openest worlds are still too railroady when it comes to story and character development.

Technical masterpieces but somewhat less narratively impressive.

I've noticed Bioware and Bethesda have been learning from each other lately, and Ubi ought to be doing so as well. I often feel those three developers each have a piece of the puzzle for creating the perfect game.

Synthesis is a beautiful thing.

[redsept]

Pretty sure none of that will ever be implemented in this game. Maybe next time.

Why not? The Ghost Mode was implemented, why not something like this that is close to it? Ubi is making improvements to Wildlands as we speak, it's not like they've stopped. And here are my suggestions to be added to the game: https://forums.ubi.com/showthread.ph...-campaign-Vote

There was some game that came out recently only for PlayStation, I think, that had three main characters, and up to two of them could die, and you could still continue the story as long as one remained.

Now that's the sort of thing I'd like to see in a Ghost Recon or even Assassin's Creed title.

That's basically the sort of thing I'm proposing here! If you had a squad of three and permadeath, that would be the game mode you're talking about. That's basically how State of Decay 2 works, there's a team and people sometimes die. And new ones can be recruited, although I'm not sure would dead ghosts be replaceable in your example...

But anyways, permadeath for the character is the key! But how permadeath is best implemented, that's a discussion worth having. Should you have a group of ghosts (Rogue Spear, State of Decay 2) or just continue the game with a new green recruit "straight out of the academy" when you die. If there is a group, is it always replenished with new recruits when someone dies, or is it game over when everyone in the group dies?

There are so many options and at the current moment, Wildlands is taking advantage of none of them. It would be soooo easy to implement a game mode like this to the game, even in a very bare way (continue game with rookie ghost, retrieve gear from the ghost who died). I bet it wouldn't take many hours to implement this option to the game. It would take away many frustrations that people have with Ghost Mode, and I too do like Ghost Mode, but it has its huge flaws.

Synthesis is a beautiful thing.

Yes, and the synthesis of the normal campaign and Ghost Mode would be great!! Permadeath for the ghost and other options would be also selectable by the player.

[Ghost-Ami]

Well, a few things people request around here get fixed or added, but most do not, and some of what we're given seems a product of wrongheaded groupthink rather than community request.

For instance I'm a bit amused by PvP victory poses and voicelines (which are fun in PvP), but I haven't seen anyone else who's happy with those, and even I think emotes are a total waste. When, how, why would we ever use them? What application do emotes have? How did they become such a significant part of the battlecrate item pool?

Where did this come from, the implementation of emotes? Who was asking for that? It's recently been brought to my attention that the Wildlands community on Reddit is much bigger than here and that Ubi reps monitor that, so did it come from there? Did the company just think, "Oh, hey, this will surely be fun, let's add it in." Who knows. Not a lot of transparency really.

Another example, "O&M" has disappointed a lot of people for fixing only a few of the many issues we've raised concerns about here, and some of those apparently aren't even actually fixed---like the weapon attachments thing.

I myself must have brought up a dozen different immersion breaking bugs in the last few months that really bother me, and literally nothing I asked to be fixed was fixed in "O&M".

Many of the things I brought up where as simple as fixing a mesh or texture or animation here or there.

It's given me the impression that Ubi's intent is not to perfect the game for perfection's sake but rather to fix only the things the largest number of people complain about most vociferously.

Yes, we got Ghost mode, but I get the impression that 394939574534 people asked for single primary and maybe some of the other things that wound up in Ghost mode. I do not get the impression that there is any united popular consensus about how to rebalance Ghost mode or permadeath character development versus campaign progress, so I doubt anything will be done.

Maybe I've just become a bit jaded because of how inconsistently effective player feedback seems overall, I dunno.

[redsept]

Maybe I've just become a bit jaded because of how inconsistently effective player feedback seems overall, I dunno.

You should move your pessimism aside, things are changing. Games are becoming platforms, and those platforms can and should be upgraded. It's a different world now than it was just 5 years ago.

But continuing on the subject, I made a picture that shows how permadeath affects the game. The dotted line is Wildlands as the character automatically becomes a supersoldier (somewhere between levels 15-30), no matter if you die a million times.


You know your ghost can't die in the upper image, and that dotted line for developing a supersoldier makes thing even more boring than in Super Mario World. In Super Mario World you lose the extra abilities like flying when you take a hit, that's even more than what Wildlands main campaign can do atm! Ghost Mode was a step forward, but a step too big. Don't delete the whole campaign when the ghost dies, it's a very small and reasonable request.

The lower image shows the permadeath effect on the tension. As your ghost levels up and gains more skills, losing him becomes a bigger priority and raises the stakes. The game becomes more tense and your actions have consequences not only in the game world, but also to how you play the game. You have to apply different tactics when you have a level 5 vs. level 30 ghost. The game changes when you die. It makes death relevant again, not just a save-load situation.

[Ghost-Ami]

...it's a very small and reasonable request.

This is the moment I realise I've officially become a GRW "bittervet". XD

[redsept]

Maybe I've just become a bit jaded because of how inconsistently effective player feedback seems overall, I dunno.

You should move your pessimism aside, things are changing. Games are becoming platforms, and those platforms can and should be upgraded. It's a different world now than it was just 5 years ago.

But continuing on the subject, I made a picture that shows how permadeath affects the game. The dotted line is Wildlands as the character automatically becomes a supersoldier, no matter if you die a million times.


You know your ghost can't die in the upper image, and that dotted line for developing a supersoldier makes thing even more boring than in Super Mario World. In Super Mario World you lose the extra abilities like flying when you take a hit, that's even more than what Wildlands main campaign can do atm! Ghost Mode was a step forward, but a step too big. Don't delete the whole campaign when the ghost dies, it's a very small and reasonable request.

[cym104]

I'd say permadeath is just not for this game.

A much much better idea would be to simplely disable auto-save, and make it that you can only save your progress at rebel hidouts WHEN you are not in combat or hunted state.

[Kane_sg]

- Lives matter in Mario World
- You can collect Life
- When you die but still have Life, enemy respawns, your progress retained for the time being, just like Campaign KIA
- When you run out of Lives, you are reset to point one - just like Ghost Mode

- Super Mario World is a mid 80 games coming from different genre and technical level
- Ghost Recon Wildlands is 2017 game as a tactical shooter open world game where you play as a an specific agent called Nomad where the game keeps progressing and death canonically does not happen which when player fails, it's disregarded with a soft reset
- Both games are irrelevant
- Your hope of having these kind of games growing should be placed in military simulation game such as Arma

[redsept]

I'd say permadeath is just not for this game.

Why? What about my suggestion is so bad?

I claim that it is much better for the ones who have completed the main campaign and are still playing. They're not mostly casual gamers, they want a challenge and longevity. That's why we got Ghost Mode, but it has its flaws, and my proposition would make the the game feel much more dynamic and organic.