Feedback: Good Addtions and the controversy of RPG Elements in a Tactical Shooter | Forums

[Salty-Sayo]

Yep agree

[T1T4N1UM5KULL]

Hey Ubisoft, hey Community

I had two very intense days of gaming with my wife and after we loved Wildlands very much, we were really eager to start playing Breakpoint.

So, I thought I share our thoughts in a bit of a lengthy post.

Lets start with the positive aspects:

Health System
With the first action in this Beta, I was absolutely lucky. Because healing took now some kind of effort. That's a great addition.

Animations
The more detailed animations also are very cool. If have the feeling that it is a bit slower than in Wildlands, but that's cool for me, because it makes it feel a bit more realistic.

Forest
Great Forest Design and the landscape feels very real and gives a very different feel from Wildlands

Action and Stealth Gameplay
It stayed mostly the same like in Wildlands, but that's good. Like the ability to look around corners now, which is a great addition. Enemy movement in danger seems a lot more convincing and threatening. We got surrounded many times and that felt great.

Stamina Fatigue and Water Drinking
Very good addition for the real feel. Could be even a bit more punishing for my taste, but it is already very good.


But I fear I have to come very quickly to the negative aspects and they have mostly to do with the RPG Elements and I have a really hard time getting used to them.

Leveling Weapons
This is weird, because you already could "level" your weapons in Wildlands, but while Wildlands felt very good with adding mods that always have a good and a negative aspect, the Upgrades now feel totally out of place. Why can I collect two G28 and they both have another Gear Value. Also, the mods you can make with weapon parts feel very strange. I cant put two new screws into a Gun and suddenly it makes more damage.

This is a very sad point, because it would have been cool if you would have had to maintain your weapons, clean them and so on, because the tend to malfunction in battle if you don't do that.

But these mods feel like from Skyrim and abstract the game in a way, that feels unnecessary. Now it is not ME getting better in this game, but my weapon. This takes a lot of satisfaction out of the gameplay.

Ghost Recon was, at least for me (but I am pretty sure for a lot of players out there) a bit about feeling like being in a real, tactical unit.It was never a real tactical Shooter like ArmA or Operation Flashpoint, but it was something between. And I feel this got totally lost.

Quests
This is something I want to be straight with. I miss my tasks. Bowman called, said "Go there, do this, do it most efficiently", that was great. But now I wander through the woods, searching some hunter whom I shall help setting up Bear traps. This feels just wrong. I am with a military unit. I was supposed to check what is happening on this Island and after getting shot down, I feel like a military unit would have other things to do like helping a guy setting up some bear traps.

Don't get me wrong, Side Quests are not the problem. We had a lot of side quests in Wildlands. But these all served a very military purpose. And its confusing to me why this disappeared from Breakpoint. Couldn't we instead of setting up bear traps, do something like Clean an area, to get communication networks up, or make a path for ressources transportation. I did the first two side quests and they all are like "Hey man, while you are here and have nothing important to do, could you run some errands for me".

Setting
The setting is the most fascinating for me. I understand that Ubisoft didn't want to place it in a real country now, but why does it have to be Sci-Fi-Fantasy-Island???

Old ruins from some random civilization, super futuristic buildings, cold war bunkers, man that Island has got a history richer than Europe.

The landscape is great. I like the mix of, forest, tropical Islands and swamps, its pretty cool, even it is not realistic. But the rest feels very abstract and the Sci-Fi elements of super intelligent and deadly drones (that are by the way the bullet sponges Ubisoft said they would not put into this game)

Also, the placements of "treasures" is so random that it is really distracting. In Wildlands, you were going into a Base and when you saw "Armory" on a building, you checked it because there could be a cool mod, or a weapon in it. Here, I find weapons and Skell credits in ancient ruins and that feels just out of place. The fact that this distraction from your mission, because everywhere could be the next, hat, helmet, pistol or skin that you need, takes out the pace of the game is the most bothering aspect for me.

Magical Buffs around the fireplace
When I saw the first trailers and press conferences, I was really hyped, because the promise that it would feel like behind enemy lines was something I was really looking for. I hoped for a good resource system (which we got a little bit with the stamina regain trough water) but that the bivouac is now the place were we can get magical buffs is exactly the opposite of what they were aiming for. Instead of adding a more realistic feel behind enemy lines, it abstracts a tactical shooter into the realms of Fantasy RPGs, were hits and damage gets rolled. Why am I more bulletproof when I have eaten something before? And do game developers really think that you can run an hour longer when you drink a bottle of water?

Don't get me wrong. It would have been great if , when you don't eat and drink for a while, your aim gets less stable and your stamina depletes faster. That would have been really cool.

And this is what really annoys me about these Buffs. Because they are something similar to a system where you loose your aim stability and stamina, but they do the exact opposite of it and therefor don't feel real but magical.

This leads me to the main problem that Ubisoft may have with Ghost Recon:

The Tone of a tactical Shooter VS a Fantasy RPG
Ubisoft tried to make everything right with the additions to Ghost Recon Breakpoint. They wanted to give us more reason to play this game longer, to explore more of the world, and I am not hating them for this. I am just so irritated by the fact, that they didn't seem to know how to implement these functions without destroying the feel for realism in this game.



So, instead of just hating around, I decided to give some Ideas, that are maybe not perfect, but would have been good alternatives to the systems we have right now in Breakpoint:

Erewhon VS Military Beachhead by survivors
A Hub City, where everyone is chilling, two guards at the main entrance with Helicopters and Motor Bikes in front of the entry, and no drone, nor helicopter pilot, ever wondered what this is. We have a shop that is selling us weapons, because for some reason, the homesteaders dont feel the need to really fight, but still need the feel of capitalism to sell weapons to stranded soldiers. How many stranded soldiers come to the famous Aurora Shop to get weapons?

A great alternative would have been a beachhead with some stock warehouse. We also could have needed to make raids for ammunition and weapons to support and fortify our beachhead.

Leveling Weapons VS Weapon Maintenance
Now we have weapons that just level up for no reason ad all, just because we put more screws and metal into them

A great alternative would have been to leave the weapon mods like they were from Wildlands, but also add a maintenance function into the game. Metro Exodus did this already and it felt really good in it.

Leveling Armor VS Camouflage OR Magical Armor Buffs VS Real Armor Feeling
Instead of making you super tanky by just getting new gloves, that look exactly the same like the last ones you got, why not an option to be more stealthier when you are wearing the right camouflage, depending on vegetation and daytime.

Instead of the strange, magical buffs on armor that gives you more EXP and makes you reload faster why doesn't the style of your armor impact the noise you make and make the differences between tanky armor and a light drone vest a bit more meaningful. A heavy, bulletproof west and a helmet, makes you slower, deplete your stamina faster but gives you more resistance to bullets, while a lighter armor style could give you, faster movement (also faster reload and weapon handling) but you get killed faster.



I think you see were I am going for. You could apply the same mechanic of "magical buffs" without breaking the feeling of a military, tactical shooter just by renaming the functions. And this brings me to a very sad conclusion. Because it seems that Ubisoft never understood why the players liked Wildlands and why they didn't play The Division.

And, most important, there is also no need for a Ghost Recon Sequel to be like the Division. The Division is good at what it is doing. A nice loot shooter in a semi realistic setting that is fun to play. And everyone who likes that, can play it. But why cant a Ghost Recon Game just be different from that?

The way Ghost Recon Breakpoint is doing it right now, is just copying things that already existed in The Division or Assassins Creed and plugged them into a game that has a completely different setting and tone.

I really wished Ubisoft would have put more time into thinking, how to implement new functions into the system of Wildlands instead of just trying to apply the same (very lame and shallow) RPG Elements they already applied to Assassins Creed Origins and The Division.

The end result is not a sequel to Ghost Recon Wildlands, nor a sequel to the Ghost Recon Franchise at all, but a shallow mix of systems Ubisoft already had, just pushed into another setting.


I don't say I am not playing Breakpoint. But my hype is gone and I think I will stay with Wildlands for a bit longer and wait until Breakpoint is a lot cheaper.

It's not a bad game, but I think it really sucks at being a Ghost Recon game.

Well said

[ArgimonEd]

Hey Ubisoft, hey Community

I had two very intense days of gaming with my wife and after we loved Wildlands very much, we were really eager to start playing Breakpoint.

So, I thought I share our thoughts in a bit of a lengthy post.

Lets start with the positive aspects:

Health System
With the first action in this Beta, I was absolutely lucky. Because healing took now some kind of effort. That's a great addition.

Animations
The more detailed animations also are very cool. If have the feeling that it is a bit slower than in Wildlands, but that's cool for me, because it makes it feel a bit more realistic.

Forest
Great Forest Design and the landscape feels very real and gives a very different feel from Wildlands

Action and Stealth Gameplay
It stayed mostly the same like in Wildlands, but that's good. Like the ability to look around corners now, which is a great addition. Enemy movement in danger seems a lot more convincing and threatening. We got surrounded many times and that felt great.

Stamina Fatigue and Water Drinking
Very good addition for the real feel. Could be even a bit more punishing for my taste, but it is already very good.


But I fear I have to come very quickly to the negative aspects and they have mostly to do with the RPG Elements and I have a really hard time getting used to them.

Leveling Weapons
This is weird, because you already could "level" your weapons in Wildlands, but while Wildlands felt very good with adding mods that always have a good and a negative aspect, the Upgrades now feel totally out of place. Why can I collect two G28 and they both have another Gear Value. Also, the mods you can make with weapon parts feel very strange. I cant put two new screws into a Gun and suddenly it makes more damage.

This is a very sad point, because it would have been cool if you would have had to maintain your weapons, clean them and so on, because the tend to malfunction in battle if you don't do that.

But these mods feel like from Skyrim and abstract the game in a way, that feels unnecessary. Now it is not ME getting better in this game, but my weapon. This takes a lot of satisfaction out of the gameplay.

Ghost Recon was, at least for me (but I am pretty sure for a lot of players out there) a bit about feeling like being in a real, tactical unit.It was never a real tactical Shooter like ArmA or Operation Flashpoint, but it was something between. And I feel this got totally lost.

Quests
This is something I want to be straight with. I miss my tasks. Bowman called, said "Go there, do this, do it most efficiently", that was great. But now I wander through the woods, searching some hunter whom I shall help setting up Bear traps. This feels just wrong. I am with a military unit. I was supposed to check what is happening on this Island and after getting shot down, I feel like a military unit would have other things to do like helping a guy setting up some bear traps.

Don't get me wrong, Side Quests are not the problem. We had a lot of side quests in Wildlands. But these all served a very military purpose. And its confusing to me why this disappeared from Breakpoint. Couldn't we instead of setting up bear traps, do something like Clean an area, to get communication networks up, or make a path for ressources transportation. I did the first two side quests and they all are like "Hey man, while you are here and have nothing important to do, could you run some errands for me".

Setting
The setting is the most fascinating for me. I understand that Ubisoft didn't want to place it in a real country now, but why does it have to be Sci-Fi-Fantasy-Island???

Old ruins from some random civilization, super futuristic buildings, cold war bunkers, man that Island has got a history richer than Europe.

The landscape is great. I like the mix of, forest, tropical Islands and swamps, its pretty cool, even it is not realistic. But the rest feels very abstract and the Sci-Fi elements of super intelligent and deadly drones (that are by the way the bullet sponges Ubisoft said they would not put into this game)

Also, the placements of "treasures" is so random that it is really distracting. In Wildlands, you were going into a Base and when you saw "Armory" on a building, you checked it because there could be a cool mod, or a weapon in it. Here, I find weapons and Skell credits in ancient ruins and that feels just out of place. The fact that this distraction from your mission, because everywhere could be the next, hat, helmet, pistol or skin that you need, takes out the pace of the game is the most bothering aspect for me.

Magical Buffs around the fireplace
When I saw the first trailers and press conferences, I was really hyped, because the promise that it would feel like behind enemy lines was something I was really looking for. I hoped for a good resource system (which we got a little bit with the stamina regain trough water) but that the bivouac is now the place were we can get magical buffs is exactly the opposite of what they were aiming for. Instead of adding a more realistic feel behind enemy lines, it abstracts a tactical shooter into the realms of Fantasy RPGs, were hits and damage gets rolled. Why am I more bulletproof when I have eaten something before? And do game developers really think that you can run an hour longer when you drink a bottle of water?

Don't get me wrong. It would have been great if , when you don't eat and drink for a while, your aim gets less stable and your stamina depletes faster. That would have been really cool.

And this is what really annoys me about these Buffs. Because they are something similar to a system where you loose your aim stability and stamina, but they do the exact opposite of it and therefor don't feel real but magical.

This leads me to the main problem that Ubisoft may have with Ghost Recon:

The Tone of a tactical Shooter VS a Fantasy RPG
Ubisoft tried to make everything right with the additions to Ghost Recon Breakpoint. They wanted to give us more reason to play this game longer, to explore more of the world, and I am not hating them for this. I am just so irritated by the fact, that they didn't seem to know how to implement these functions without destroying the feel for realism in this game.



So, instead of just hating around, I decided to give some Ideas, that are maybe not perfect, but would have been good alternatives to the systems we have right now in Breakpoint:

Erewhon VS Military Beachhead by survivors
A Hub City, where everyone is chilling, two guards at the main entrance with Helicopters and Motor Bikes in front of the entry, and no drone, nor helicopter pilot, ever wondered what this is. We have a shop that is selling us weapons, because for some reason, the homesteaders dont feel the need to really fight, but still need the feel of capitalism to sell weapons to stranded soldiers. How many stranded soldiers come to the famous Aurora Shop to get weapons?

A great alternative would have been a beachhead with some stock warehouse. We also could have needed to make raids for ammunition and weapons to support and fortify our beachhead.

Leveling Weapons VS Weapon Maintenance
Now we have weapons that just level up for no reason ad all, just because we put more screws and metal into them

A great alternative would have been to leave the weapon mods like they were from Wildlands, but also add a maintenance function into the game. Metro Exodus did this already and it felt really good in it.

Leveling Armor VS Camouflage OR Magical Armor Buffs VS Real Armor Feeling
Instead of making you super tanky by just getting new gloves, that look exactly the same like the last ones you got, why not an option to be more stealthier when you are wearing the right camouflage, depending on vegetation and daytime.

Instead of the strange, magical buffs on armor that gives you more EXP and makes you reload faster why doesn't the style of your armor impact the noise you make and make the differences between tanky armor and a light drone vest a bit more meaningful. A heavy, bulletproof west and a helmet, makes you slower, deplete your stamina faster but gives you more resistance to bullets, while a lighter armor style could give you, faster movement (also faster reload and weapon handling) but you get killed faster.



I think you see were I am going for. You could apply the same mechanic of "magical buffs" without breaking the feeling of a military, tactical shooter just by renaming the functions. And this brings me to a very sad conclusion. Because it seems that Ubisoft never understood why the players liked Wildlands and why they didn't play The Division.

And, most important, there is also no need for a Ghost Recon Sequel to be like the Division. The Division is good at what it is doing. A nice loot shooter in a semi realistic setting that is fun to play. And everyone who likes that, can play it. But why cant a Ghost Recon Game just be different from that?

The way Ghost Recon Breakpoint is doing it right now, is just copying things that already existed in The Division or Assassins Creed and plugged them into a game that has a completely different setting and tone.

I really wished Ubisoft would have put more time into thinking, how to implement new functions into the system of Wildlands instead of just trying to apply the same (very lame and shallow) RPG Elements they already applied to Assassins Creed Origins and The Division.

The end result is not a sequel to Ghost Recon Wildlands, nor a sequel to the Ghost Recon Franchise at all, but a shallow mix of systems Ubisoft already had, just pushed into another setting.


I don't say I am not playing Breakpoint. But my hype is gone and I think I will stay with Wildlands for a bit longer and wait until Breakpoint is a lot cheaper.

It's not a bad game, but I think it really sucks at being a Ghost Recon game.

As far as your take on quest's feeling non military ish... USASOC has a Human relations battalion. .. This is the very thing (hearts and minds)

[Ganvai85]

Yes, of course and this ist cool. But i would think there are some more pressing issues after your chopper got Shot down and you witnessed huge Drone swarms taking out civillian boats. ^^

[Tihocan]

I agree 90%, well written.

Only thing I'd challenge is the beachhead idea, as any obvious fortification would be magically destroyed by the drone swarm. The cave makes a bit of sense there.
But I'd think take away the shop, and take away the player hub. It should just be a cut-off civilisation that you can help improve - and missions like the animal trapper quest would make a bit more sense (except for the fact it's so damn far away, that it doesn't)

It would be more engaging if all of the quests provided a direct impact to the overall world and story, by somehow giving you more information on goals or improving the base camp. The result would be more resources and tools, being able to restock on consumables and a noticeable shift in mood towards your character.

[OppositeCoast94]

Well said. The game feels like the outcome of a cost benifit analysis rather than a sincere love of their product. I personally spend my money on content rather then cosmetics and I feel the developers of breakpoint may have really missed the mark on this one. I may be wrong, it may be their only financial option, but so far I feel no real attachment to breakpoint. Guess we’ll see how good their sums are.

[DarkkStarr387]

This man saved me an hour of writing. Totally encapsulates my own opinions and grievances with this game. I've been playing Ghost Recon since the days of Island Thunder and this game just seems like a departure from what made Ghost Recon great. Don;t get me wrong I had lot of fun playing, I love what I see so far. It just doesn;t feel like a Ghost Recon game.

[Ganvai85]

Only thing I'd challenge is the beachhead idea, as any obvious fortification would be magically destroyed by the drone swarm.

Got your point there. It was more of a thing I quickly made up while writing this text. I guess you could still find a lot of good (or less good) explanations where you could go with this. My main problem with Erewhon is not the cave, but this awkward alternative community that exists in it. Change these guys to a military operation and it would make more sense. And change the shop to a stock warehouse and everything is cool. That is my problem, not being in a cave. That is smart.

[DarkJengem100]

Am sorry but are we still pretending like wildlands was some kind of benchmark? That game was a broken mess, anything literally anything is an upgrade on that, there’s things that need to be addressed but let’s not hold wildlands up as some shining example of brilliant game design

[Ganvai85]

In what kind of terms did you think that Wildlands was a broken mess? I had a lot of fun with this, for far longer than I ever expected to have and that just thanks to the coop and the slight feeling of playing some kind of tactical shooter.

Of course is Breakpoint an upgrade. Gameplay in coop didn't change much, graphics and animations have been improved, the forest looks pretty convincing and I like the landscape overall. Still, the atmosphere suffers from the rpg elements in Breakpoint and for me, the atmosphere is one of the most important things in a videogame.

BTW, from a (real) game design perspective I honestly think that the core game design elements are the same and this is a good thing.

There is a lot to discuss about the Weapon Looting system in Wildlands. That wasn't perfect. Why couldn't you add a weapon to your inventory when an enemy dropped it? But I think this would have been the way to go for Breakpoint. Let enemys drop weapons, and collect them. But not add a leveling for weapons and randomise the weapondrops.

Still, I think no matter what you liked about Wildlands (or didn't like) I still think it is only fair to give a reasonable feedback to the developers (especially after they asked for it). So yeah, I miss some things from Wildlands, I love some things in Breakpoint that I now will definetly miss in Wildlands, still, the atmosphere of a Tactical Shooter (or also a lightweighted Milsim) suffers from the randomised loot drop, the leveling weapons and the magical buffs.