My Beta Feedback
Thank you for allowing us access to the beta. Here's a couple of lists of feedback I made for you. Hopefully they'll be helpful.
Likes
- While the helicopter flight isn't great (it's wobbly when you try to turn left/right with the mouse), it's much better than Wildlands.
- I didn't die on a motorcycle during the course of the beta, and I think I only fell off once, which is a vast improvement over Wildlands.
- My favorite improvement is the option to restore the camera to the should the player last had it set for after you leave cover. I hated the fact that I had to manually swap my view back to my character's right shoulder all the time in Wildlands, but in Breakpoint I don't have to worry about it anymore.
- I am also quite pleased that vehicles can now be purchased in-game with money you find in the game world. This is a huge upgrade over Wildlands, where I could never get the vehicles I really wanted.
Dislikes/Issues
- The only blur effect that can be turned off in the settings is Motion Blur. Options to turn off Depth of Field, Chromatic Aberration, Vignette, and any other blur/distortion effects are missing. For those of us who love crisp and clear visuals, these graphics features do nothing more than distract us from seeing the beauty of the game, and also tend to drive us crazy. When the final game comes out, I'm desperately going to want a way to turn these things off.
- At certain times (such as when hiding in bushes), the game narrows the FOV, drawing black around the edges of the screen. This is what I am assuming most games would refer to as "vignette". While this feature may be there to alert the player to a change in gameplay conditions (such as being harder for NPC's to detect), it is also extremely distracting, and reduces the player's ability to see. The effect in Breakpoint is particularly bad, especially since hiding in brush is already obscuring your view, and this effect is far too obtrusive to (in my opinion) be useful. If it is necessary to signal to a player a change in their stealth status, then doing so in a way that does not obscure their vision would be best.
- The only available form of Anti-Aliasing appears to be Temporal Anti-Aliasing (TAA). Aside from FXAA, TAA is one of the blurriest forms of Anti-Aliasing. I have really bad vision in real life, and playing Breakpoint with the Anti-Aliasing on is like trying to play a game without my contact lenses in. Even with all of the sharpening effects in the settings, the Anti-Aliasing is so blurry that there's no point in having it on. Fortunately with the Anti-Aliasing off and the resolution scale at 200, I was able to get nice crisp and clear visuals (and yes, with contact lenses my vision is 20/20, so I was able to enjoy those crisp and clear visuals). I guess what I'm trying to say is, please give us MSAA and perhaps SMAA as well, so that we can have good alternatives to TAA.
- Depth of Field was used at rather strange times, such as when something was in between the player's character and the camera, or when something was getting too close to the camera (or possibly sometimes when something was too close to the player's character?). I know people who love Depth of Field in games, but even they found the random DoF in Breakpoint to be weird and unsettling.
- When playing, my character took up almost a third of the screen. This reduces my vision, and is rather unpleasant. I don't mind seeing my character on the screen, but large player characters that take up too much screen real estate aren't good.
- My first day or two playing Breakpoint, when I talked to NPC's, I couldn't scroll up and down in the menus. I tried every keyboard button and mouse button I could think of (including W, A, S, D, the arrow keys, and just about every other key other than the F keys). It wasn't until I changed the pitch up/pitch down keys for helicopters and planes back to W and S that I was suddenly able to scroll up and down in conversation menus. I tried to rebind these functions back to the arrow keys in order to see if I could figure out exactly what I had done to cause this, however I was never able to reproduce it again after that.
- Whenever there is a menu open, there should be a mouse pointer on the screen, and I should be able to click on any option that I can also select with keyboard keys. Nothing in a menu should be restricted to being activated with the keyboard only.
- When the map is open, it lists the number of objectives (color coded by type) in your area in the lower right corner. As a PC gamer, my natural instinct is to click on this list in order to view the objectives, however this list does not respond to mouse clicks. Yes, you can press "B" to see your objectives, however it would be more intuitive for players if the color coded list of objectives could be clicked as well to see a short list of each type of objectives (of perhaps show them on mouseover and allow a click for more info).
- I have 32 GB of RAM and my video card has 11 GB of VRAM, yet I was frequently seeing issues with texture streaming. I would often be moving around and walk, drive, or even just turn around into a watercolor mess with the high resolution textures eventually "popping in" to replace the watercolor. It would be nice if more textures could be retained in RAM in order to reduce the necessity of texture streaming.
- Some weapon attachments (especially foregrips) have major negatives that almost completely negate the point of using them. Weapon attachments are there to make a weapon handle better, and should never make it's handling worse in any way. Suppressors do cause the bolt of a gun to open with roughly 30% to 40% more force in real life, and this may cause a slight negative effect for handling, however they do not decrease damage or velocity of a shot unless the shooter also reloads their firearm with subsonic ammunition (which doesn't apply to .45 ACP since it doesn't travel fast enough to break the sound barrier). If you want to know more, then contact Forgotten Weapons, as they have extensive experience firing fully automatic and other military weapons for their documentaries.
- The skill tree in Breakpoint doesn't appear to have a way to zoom in and out. It would be nice to be able to zoom out using the scroll wheel on the mouse in order to get an overview of all of the skills, and zoom back in exactly where you want to.
- When moving while prone, your character can only move forwards. This means that if you want to move sideways or backwards, your character first has to turn to face that direction, wasting space and time. This makes it extremely difficult to get into a good position while prone, and the amount of extra time you need to spend turning around and trying again is enough that you could miss a moment of opportunity for a good shot, or even blow your own cover. It's also not very realistic, as even I can crawl backwards and sideways while laying down without needing to turn around, and I sit in front of my computer all day.
- Player character movement in Breakpoint lacks precision. Inertia in human movement is a nice idea in concept, however it can't be represented accurately in a video game. As an example, in real life if I want to walk up to something and take cover behind it, I walk right up to it and stop exactly where I intend to. In Breakpoint, since your character doesn't stop exactly where you intend for them to stop, it can be difficult to get them into the cover you want, or even into the shooting position you want. Sometimes you have to fight with the controls in order to get your character where you want them, because they always want to try to overshoot. It would be best if character movement worked more like it did in Wildlands, at least for the sake of the players.
- During gameplay I shot down one of the large drones, and it randomly stopped falling roughly half way to the ground.
- Large drones can see the player through tree cover. Admittedly they could be using thermal optics, however if this were the case then mud and underbrush would not be able to obscure you from their vision either.
- During the beta, my character's appearance kept resetting to whatever her current armor loadout was. In most cases the skin override appeared to be getting shut off (especially when equipping new armor), however in some cases the reason for the change wasn't clear and the skin override appeared to still be on.
- Gear levels, gear quality, needing to upgrade gear or obtain new gear as you level, a base where you can see other random players, and the way you pick up loot make the game feel like it's trying too hard to be The Division. Honestly, the way gear worked in The Division was one of the worst aspects of the game. The Division 2 may have actually been playable if it used the gear system from Wildlands.
- Being forced to always play online is going to be unpleasant. Especially if the Internet ever goes out (or if there's any other problem connecting to Ubisoft servers) when I want to play. I think the idea of an online-only game with singe-player content is very bad, and I believe Wildlands was superior in that respect.
- While alt-tabbing to make this list, I somehow teleported out of my vehicle, and was far enough away that I couldn't find it or the area I had just been in on the minimap. Later on I ended up discovering that I was teleported about a half mile in the direction I had just come from.
- Climbing ladders requires holding down a key to get on the ladder. I believe this would feel more fluid if it could be configured for a single press of the key instead of holding it down.
- My character frequently clips through her own shirt during animations (drinking in the T-shirt, walking in the scuba top, etc).
- Your character's belt can't be recolored if you're not wearing a vest (at least with female player characters).
- There were several times where I picked up bodies that were next to things (tables, counters, etc) and ended up standing on top of whatever I was next to. I found it was impossible to walk off of these elevated surfaces until I had tossed the body on the floor.
6 people found this helpful
Junior Member
Senior Member
Junior Member
