This will be a lengthy post on feasible, implementable, specific changes to existing mechanics that could be performed in only a few days which would greatly enhance gameplay, overall intensity, and decision-making in Breakpoint.


1) Stamina Alterations

First of all, stamina when depleted should affect a variety of tactical aspects of gameplay, including but not limited to weapon accuracy and handling, weapon sway, reticle size, reload speed, and possibly other actions in-game. As a simple example, when your ghost is badly winded from a long run, your aim reticle should both be much larger and shrink much more slowly than if your ghost is not winded at all. Weapon sway should also be affected, with more sway when you are winded making it harder to shoot accurately.

Maximum stamina should be greatly increased, perhaps quadruple the current max pool size (but not increasing regen rate). As a special forces soldier your character's endurance should really be great, particularly when recently fed and rested. But when winded that should be a longer problem that will require more than a few seconds of walking instead of running to fix.

Your maximum stamina represents your level of fatigue and is a strategic concern. It should deplete when you engage in strenuous activities, run out of stamina, or experience pain such as getting shot or falling down a hill. And, importantly, it should decay constantly over time to represent the need to rest. Drinking from your canteen should restore stamina but not max stamina. Stimulant consumables might give temporarily increased max stamina, which fades over time, which can keep you on your feet longer, but only delays the need to bivouac eventually.

Actually restoring permanent stamina should only be done at bivouac. Resting at bivouac will completely restore your max stamina to full, and is the ONLY way to do this.

This system is intended to synergize with being hunted by Wolves where you get increasingly exhausted as you fight and as time passes, and you can't bivouac until you've eluded the Wolves chasing you.


2) Injuries & HP Regen

When a player receives HP damage beyond a full pip they will receive an automatic injury for the depleted HP pip. Being on low HP should affect your movement (as it does now) but also reduce your weapon handling and effectiveness. Larger aim reticles, more weapon sway, slower reload, and generally poorer performance in combat when injured. Bandages will make it possible for your HP to increase but do not restore your HP by themselves. Standard procedure after being shot should be to bandage and then syringe to gain temporary HP and putting you back in the fight.

HP regen should be tied to being fed and rested, and slow enough that it is a strategic effect rather than a tactical one within a gunfight. A well-fed Ghost might fully regen their HP in 90 seconds. Without food your HP will not regen. And if you don't eat for long enough, eventually hunger will make your HP decay gradually.

Syringes should give temporary HP indicated by a dotted, dashed, or colored HP pip. This HP will protect you from damage and will negate the effects of low HP on movement and weapon handling, keeping you in the fight but not permanently fixing your HP problem. Ghosts who have been revived should also have temporary HP instead of permanent HP and will need medical attention. Also note that when your temporary HP decays your mobility and handling will also drop.

Ghosts should have a limited number of times they can be downed before they just die. You can only be revived so many times before you actually need medical supplies. This is what the Medkit should be for- the only way to restore permanent HP in the field, a consumable item where each Ghost carries one. Best practice is to wait until you really need to use the medkit before doing so, after going down a couple times.

Bivouac will fully restore all your permanent HP, and provides an opportunity to fully restock on supplies including syringes and medkits.


3) Knockdown/Stun From Gunshots

Being shot or blown up should often result in a mini-stun or knockdown. Currently only Breacher enemies apply this type of effect, but gunshots in general should be debilitating to the player when hit, if only for a half second to a full second.

Grazing hits that do not fully deplete even a single HP pip should not stun or knockdown. A hit that depletes a pip of damage should usually stun. A mini-stun effect makes the player's character stagger but is only a very brief disable.

Being knocked down is a longer disable than being momentarily stunned. Being low on stamina should make a knockdown much more likely, as opposed to just being momentarily stunned. A ghost with 0% current stamina should have a 100% chance of knockdown if they are shot or blown up. A ghost with 100% current stamina can have zero chance of knockdown.


4) Wolves Hunt System

This is an expansive overhaul of the Azrael Drone / Wolves appearing mechanic, but one which could be implemented quickly.

First, Wolves have a Hunt Level that is similar to the Unidad Patrol Level from Wildlands. Alerting or killing Wolves tends to start a hunt. What this means is that the Wolves know you are in the area, but do not know exactly where you are. This will cause Wolves to spawn (sufficiently far away) and start to search for you, rather than appearing right next to you and being scripted to know exactly where you are and attack.

Wolves should move speedily cross-country to try and find you, in several small groups. This Hunt system requires the implementation of a "search area" around the player's last-spotted position (hidden to the player) which the Wolves will search to try to find the player. Over time this region will expand, because of increasing uncertainty about the player's position. Making noise or being spotted will shrink and re-center this search area around the player again.

The idea here is that the player should want to elude the Wolves' pursuit rather than murder everyone. Killing the Wolves they send will raise the Hunt level, and gunfire is likely to reveal your position. So you need to leave the area where you've been burned, maneuver cleverly, hide, and selectively make stealthy kills when necessary.

Higher hunt levels will mean more troops, better troops, and heavier equipment like drones and vehicles, as well as higher frequency of Azrael drones. Azrael drones are then one of the tools that the Wolves use to search the area to try and find you. And if they spot you, the Wolves who have spawned to hunt you will then attack you because they know exactly where you are.

This meshes with the "survival" aspect of the game because you cannot bivouac as long as the Hunt level is nonzero. So using ammo, consumables, getting injured, getting tired, these things are semi-permanent for the duration of the chase.

Note that this also means that Wolves troops out on the map are dangerous for two reasons. First because they are very strong in their own right, but second because they can call other Wolves to hunt you down. And unlike standard reinforcements, running away from the compound where you triggered a Wolves hunt doesn't mean you got away.

Greater thread on this idea here.