Honest and Objective Feedback of Open Beta Breakpoint – PS4 - (2nd Feedback)

This is my second feedback, my first was on the Closed Beta:https://forums.ubisoft.com/showthrea...st+closed+beta

As a fan of MilSim’s and in particular the Ghost Recon franchise, I’ve been looking forward to the next Ghost Recon title and naturally want it to do well. However, as with my first feedback review, I am giving my honest and objective opinion here based on my Open Beta experience.

Bugs to be Fixed

Bugs I encountered:
1. A major issue was the Night and Thermal vision being un-accessible after entering PvP. If you put skill points into the character’s Night Vision and Thermal Vision, and then enter PvP, after you come out and return to PvE, you have lost all access to Night and Thermal vision, rendering you at a disadvantage in the dark even though you have skills placed in those areas. Obviously this needs to be fixed before release.
2. PvP was crashing constantly, bluescreen crashes to desktop on PS4
3. Character was often not displaying weapon, or weapon colours, gear colours chosen in character screen

The GOOD:

Emile Daubon

It was a great decision to involve an actual Special Forces veteran, writer and advisor, and I’ve enjoyed listening to Emile speak about the game and his involvement. I think many of the elements of the game I like come from this technical realism from the balance between the reality and the fantasy.

Concept and Narrative:

I like the concept of Breakpoint; an operation that goes wrong, with the majority of the battle operations team downed, with vital operation supplies lost, and in an unknown enemy territory. This narrative offers the potential to really explore a fantasy reality and show where Special Operations training comes into play against overwhelming odds. I like the idea of Ghosts that have gone rogue, where our Ghosts are now faced with equally trained Mercenaries.

The Terrain and Environment:

Aurora is a beautiful environment, with a lot of work gone into making the various terrains come alive. I love how it feels even more wild than Wildlands. It’s a joy to explore, and the graphics mostly look pretty breathtaking.

Weapons and Painting them

I enjoyed the different types of weapons, and how I could paint the weapons in a way that was definitely an improvement over Wildlands. I do feel this could still be improved upon, but it was already better than Wildlands.

Drones and Behemoths

I personally like the addition of different types of drones and especially the Behemoths. It adds to a type of situation where different tactics need to be considered. I like that the Behemoths are harder to take out in contrast to human targets.

Bivouacs

Love the idea of these camp-like places to tactically prepare for the next operation. It also gives a feeling of being out, living in the wilds of the battlefield.

Soft-Class Presets

Something I just didn’t realise in the Closed Beta was the ability to have 3 Presets (load-outs) per Class. It was a friend who accidently discovered it when we were testing the Open Beta.

I really liked this ability and it came in handy in a number of situations. This basically means there are 12 load-outs you can have; 3 per class. This is a great addition and saves a lot of messing around once you have a load-out you really like.

PvP:

This was the part of Breakpoint I enjoyed the most, PvP, and I really enjoyed it! While I love Wildlands, I was not a fan of the PvP in Wildlands, and that’s as a PvP’er. This version of PvP is more naturalistic and intuitive. It feels like a very balanced PvP, possibly one of the most balanced forms of PvP I have encountered.

I love how you can move from main game, directly to PvP, using the same character and build you are comfortable using. The few limitations on gear serve to create balance, yet do not take away from the character or class that you enjoy playing in PvE.

It seems very simple, and yet seems to achieve much more than the previous version of GR PvP. It Allows players to play to their own style of play, and easily work together as a team, even without the use of Mic’s.

The Just OK:

Night Vision

The night vision was improved from the closed Beta to the Open Beta… but it still feels slightly off. Something in the type of green felt wrong… but it was definitely an improvement. It does feel like it still needs work though.

Stamina

Stamina felt a bit better than the Closed Beta, but at times as I play I am still thinking to myself, this feels like a regular soldier rather than a Special Operative. But it did feel a lot better than the closed Beta.

Survival

The added aspect of survival is a great addition to the franchise, but it feels like it needs work. For example, you don’t need to eat anything, ever. You only need to swig a little drink and you are fine. Yes, there is food as a buff… but in reality, food is not a buff, it is a necessity. You should NEED to eat. I always chose accuracy over the food. At the moment Survival seems a bit pointless, so it would be better to either improve it, or remove it.

Suggestion = Add aspects that involve more survival, including hunger. Add the need to hunt and eat food on a more regular basis. Don’t make it too often, but imagine the day and night cycle. While a Special Forces Operative may be able to go longer without food, at some point they will become weaker and will need to eat at least once a day. Force the use of a Bivouac through the need to eat, or have an energy food/snack that can be eaten in the field.

The BAD:

No Ability to Save Outfits

Not a main issue like some of the things below, but feels pretty important. We have 12 load-outs, 3 per class, and that’s really good! But we only have one ‘skin’ to over-ride the levelled-gear.

Wildlands had 6 outfit slots… 10 would have been better…

Suggestion = Add a skin to each preset, so that when you change preset, you can also design a ‘look’ (skin over-ride) to go with that class preset. So for 12 presets/load-outs there are also 12 skin-overides, 1 for each preset/load-out.

No Ability to Save Weapon Configurations

This was a very frustrating point for me. I pick up a gun I like, for example the Scorpion. I configure it just the way I want it, with all the attachments I want. I then spray it in the way I want. The gun is all setup, and it took some time.

Now I pick up another Scorpion, which is a higher gear level than the Scorpion I have. I equip it, and I then have to once again configure it with all the attachments, and then colour it with paint all over again. It’s time consuming and just simply annoying and incredibly frustrating.

It’s just one negative bi-product of having the ridiculous gear-levelling in Ghost Recon. It soon becomes tedious having to reconfigure the same gun over and over every single time you get a higher-level gun of the same type.

Suggestion = If not removing looted gear-levelling, then add a save preset to each weapon, so that when you change to another weapon of the same type (ie. A Scorpion to another Scorpion), you don’t have to reconfigure and colourise the gun all over again.

Rolling Down Hills and Falling Over Too Often

I like the idea of injuries, falling over, being exhausted, but in actual gameplay experience, it comes across as a very clumsy soldier. It certainly didn’t feel like a Special Forces Operative. I don’t imagine a team of SAS, Green Berets, or a SEAL team being so clumsy and falling down slopes so easily and constantly.

Suggestion = I think this needs a little adjustment. It’s a good addition, but it feels like it needs to be toned down a bit. The point is that the Ghost is a Special Forces Operative, with fitness, agility, and abilities that are far above the average soldier.

Vehicles

Vehicles still feel extremely clumsy and unrealistic

Suggestion = The game really needs huge improvement on vehicle handling and realism.

NPC Civilians Having Attitude

All NPC Civilians have attitude and say things like ‘you are bothering me’, ‘get out of my way’, and various things that seem unrealistic for the psychology of the situation. Even when you rescue them, they do not seem grateful or afraid, just antagonizing and coming across with attitude.

It is very jarring as it breaks immersion… the NPC’s would not all behave like that. The real life psychology of a situation where a civilian has just witnessed their capture’s head being blown off, blood everywhere, and armed military men appearing… the Civilians would be in shock, and be showing signs of fear, or relief and thankfulness at being rescued. They would not in any real situation be giving attitude towards military types with guns, especially when those military types have just used those guns to kill.

Suggestion = Take away all the attitude from civilians, and give them more true to life reactions, such as fear, crying, relief, thankfulness. Wildlands had more realistic reactions from NPC civilians.

Shop and Vehicles at the Bivouac camp

The Bivouac camp is a great addition to GR, but adding access to the shop and all the vehicles just breaks the immersion. It’s things like this that all lead to break the very intention behind the game (as stated by the people involved in the game) in being a game that brings a balance between the authenticity and fantasy of being a Special Operative, and a game where that fantasy is pushed further into a much deeper immersion of being a Special Operator. That whole statement of intention is what got me excited about buying and playing the game, because that’s what we all want, deep immersion into that fantasy of being a Special Forces Operative in a Tactical Shooter experience. But things like adding aspects that are so out of reality to the situation just break that immersion.

Suggestion = It would be far better to leave the shop at the main camp, and just have that as the ONLY way to access the shop. OR, if a lot of players DO want to access the shop via Bivouacs, then allow an option to turn this off or on

Menu UI

The Menu UI is one of the most frustrating aspects of the game. Some parts like how gear is displayed and changed, works well. But other aspects feel over complicated and unnecessarily convoluted. This is going to deter new players who will, like myself and many others, just feel lost and confused by the over convoluted menu system.

Suggestion = At some point in the future of the game, listen to the community to perhaps simplify the design of the UI.

Main Camp

In my first review I listed all the things I liked about the Main Camp, those still stand. However, I still don’t like seeing all these other players. It’s just too many. It breaks from the whole idea that at first you are one of a few survivors.

It is again one of these things that contradicts the statement of intent behind the game as voiced by the people involved in developing the game. It takes away from the experience of being a lone survivor behind enemy lines when there are so many other operators, who all look like your clone. It’s extremely off-putting and immersion breaking seeing so many other player characters walking around, who ALL look just like you!. In fact I cannot see what benefit it has at all. What does this add to the game?

Suggestion = Allow an option to turn off the ability to see other players you are not grouped with. This option would allow those of us that want full immersion to experience that by turning off the ability to see 100 other players who all look just like you.

Gear Levelling – Looter Shooter

Sadly, I just can’t get away from this one. It is the biggest gripe and overall let-down for me, and it seems it also is for many other players. I was hoping that after the Open Beta my mind would be changed with the gear levelling and I would be convinced to buy the game on release. However, my mind just wasn’t changed, but really feel the Looter Shooter arcade experience is an overall detriment to the experience of the game, and undermines all the statements of intent into what the experience of the game should feel like, as ‘the most immersive Ghost Recon to date’.

In my initial feedback of the closed Beta, I wanted to give my own opinions without being tainted by other peoples reviews. After I posted that feedback, I went to read what others had thought, and found many where saying the same thing I had experienced. Since then I’ve looked online and heard what YouTubers have to say about it, and again, all the same points are being made. So I would say that it will only benefit Ubisoft if they pay attention to the largest majority of gamers and fans of the franchise that are all saying the same thing.

It feels like the biggest mistake to turn what has always been a Tactical Shooter, into a Looter Shooter. Why does this impact the game? Why is it such a bad decision?

For me, the first reason is that as a franchise, Ghost Recon has always been a Tactical Shooter. There are already lots of games that are arcade-like Looter Shooters, in fact many more than there are Tactical Shooters. So, turning Ghost Recon into yet another Looter Shooter means that for many die-hard fans of that genre, Ghost Recon has just died. Sure there are tactical elements to Ghost Recon, but those are overwhelmed by the arcade style feel of the Looter Shooter experience. It just doesn’t sit well with the idea and intention behind the game as expressed by Emile Daubon, Mathew Tomkinson, and Grace Orlady. It actually contradicts the things they’ve said about the intention of the experience in the game.

In interviews, Emile Daubon, former Special Forces Green Beret, writer, and military authenticity advisor for Breakpoint spoke about: “Finding a balance between authenticity and the immersion of the fantasy”, also saying, “Breakpoint is a first and third person tactical shooter that puts you in the boots of an elite special operator behind the lines on an island that has been taken over buy a hostile entity… …everyone is ostensibly killed and you wake up alone, cut off from direct support, and you need to uncover the mystery of what has happened on this island.”

When Emile says this, it sounds awesome… and that’s how the game should be, an awesome experience. However there are things that take away from the experience that Emile is explaining. Gear levelling is one of those things.

In an interview with community developer Grace Orlady, Grace, said “We want to make the player live the life of an elite special forces hunter”. Mathew Tomkinson said: “So the first thing we wanted to do with Ghost Recon Breakpoint is to push even further the fantasy of being a Spec Ops”

Both Grace and Emile speak about being put into the boots of a Special Operator, and how this experience will give an experience that we haven’t felt before in other renditions of Ghost recon. Both speak about that realism within that fantasy. However, the gear levelling Looter Shooter experience just completely takes away from any sense of realism, and undermines the intention behind that intended experience. The game loses that focus on tactics, and becomes more about what the enemy will drop and how it will increase your gear level. It feels more like an arcade experience than an immersive fantasy with realism as explained by the team.

The consequence of Looter-Shooter-Gear-Levelling within Team Play

In playing with friends, it soon became apparent that unlike the Wildlands experience, where we were all focussed on the mission and tactics at hand, there was now an unspoken competition going on between the group on who had what gear, and what level it was. It soon became apparent that it was distracting from the immersion of the gameplay. That is something that completely contradicts what Grace Orlady, Mathew Tomkinson, and Emile Daubon have spoken about, with regards to the immersion into the fantasy of being a Special Operator.

The exploration and immersion becomes undermined by the very hunt for better gear and weapons that you actually want to use. It very soon becomes all about hunting for better gear, rather than being immersed into the story and experience of being a Special Operator in that situation. The loot becomes the priority. I noticed this with every group of friends I played with. It was an unconscious thing, that we then became aware of, breaking all immersion.

Being Forced to Use Weapons You Are Not Keen On, While Hunting For Weapons You Do Want

I read the response from the developing team with regards to the reason why they decided on a Looter Shooter, to get people to use different weapons they may not of other-wise used. I can understand that. However, the key to a game is enjoyability, and for players to play how they want to play. By forcing players to use all these weapons they are not interested in, you are choosing the way they should play.

I spent ages just looking for a certain weapon I wanted in my loadout, and only managed to find one towards the end of the Beta experience. For the rest of the time I was using weapons that I did not enjoy as much.

When I did find weapons I was looking for, they were soon out dated because of the immersion breaking gear-levelling in the game. Honestly the whole experience just broke the entire immersion of the fantasy, and completely negated and contradicted all those statements and intentions I had heard from interviews with Emile Daubon, Mathew Tomkinson, and Grace Orlady. Instead of being immersed in the fantasy of playing a Special Operative… it just felt like playing an arcade game where loot and gear level is the priority.

RNG Loot

To make the arcade-like Looter Shooter experience worse, the loot is RNG based. This includes having weapons made from blueprints found in the world. Gamers generally do not like RNG. It certainly feels very out of place for what has always been a Tactical Shooter since 2001.

At some point in my Beta experience, I was looking for a certain gun. After finding the blueprint for the gun, I had it made via the store, only to find it was a lot lower than my gear level and other guns I already had of the same type. This was pretty frustrating and felt like a complete waste of time. Why bother with blueprints at all if they have an RNG to them and can be lower than other guns picked up in the world?

At another point I had played and played, hoping to pick up a new Scorpion sub machine gun. The shop was not selling one, and there where no blueprints. The game went on and it was a long time before I was lucky enough to have a Scorpion drop… however, once again, it was lower than my gear level, and lower than other guns I had in my collection. Again this felt very frustrating and pointless. If the idea is to frustrate players and pull them out of the immersive experience so they focus solely on the RNG aspects of the game, then it’s a success. However, from everything I’ve heard from the statements of intent in terms of the game being even more immersive into the fantasy of playing a Special Forces Operative than ever before, then this RNG system is in direct conflict with those statements.

Suggestion =

Option A: Fully remove the whole Looter-Shooter gear levelling aspect of the game, and return the experience to how it was in Wildlands, with a weapon being a weapon, not 150 types of the same gun and all based on RNG. I feel this is the best option. Of all the fantastic work done to this game, the Looter-Shooter arcade aspects of gear-levelling just completely distract from the immersive experience and make it feel like an Arcade game rather than a Tactical Shooter experience.

Option B:, Re-think how gear drops in Breakpoint.

In Wildlands, enemies dropped guns. You could swap and use that gun, but you could not keep it.

So, one solution maybe to focus on the narrative of losing all the gear that the Spec Ops team brings with them. The Wolves now have it, or it’s scattered around. So you have to make do with whatever you can find. You pick up weapons enemies drop, and this is all you can use until you find the blueprints to have certain weapons made (NOT RNG BASED), or, you have new faction (GHOST) side missions, where you locate intel on gear that was taken from the crash, gaining back the arsenal that the Ghost teams brought with them.

Conclusion

While I love the added realism, the open world, the attention to environmental detail, the soft-class system, the feel of many of the guns, the graphics, and the superb PvP, the major negative point for me is the decision to turn a near 20 year Tactical Shooter into an arcade Looter Shooter. For me it ruins the whole feel of the game. What could have been the most immersive Ghost Recon to date, just feels like an arcade style game.

I believe this decision to turn the Ghost Recon franchise into a Looter Shooter is a fatal one, and I feel the majority of reviews and comments on the Beta, reflect that. You (Ubisoft) already have other Looter Shooter titles in your collection, so to delete this one Tactical Shooter (Ghost Recon), just takes away from something that could have been great. I believe sales of this title will reflect this bad decision, and believe after release the reviews will continue to be negative. With so many people saying the same thing, it would be wise to take note.

Had you (Ubisoft) decided to continue with the Tactical Shooter aspect of the franchise, forgoing any Looter Shooter aspects and gear levelling, I believe with all the other great stuff you’ve added to this game, it could have been one of the hottest titles released in 2019. It’s therefore a terrible shame to see it get so many bad reviews, when it does have a lot of great additions and elements.

From a business standpoint, it may have initially made theoretical sense to the design team to create another game that had elements from all their other games. However, given the feedback from so many types of players, from overall gamers, to hardcore MilSim enthusiasts, and veteran Ghost Recon fans, it seems like it was a very bad idea. The thing to pay attention to here is that so many players cannot be wrong. These players are also customers who would potentially buy the game if it appealed to them.

Obviously as a business, the objective of making a game is to make money and sell as many copies as possible. In that sense, I believe this will fall far short of the success it could have been. The majority of reviews are already bad, and that is just from the Closed and Open Beta’s. Most gamers don’t want to write negative reviews, they want to have a good game that is awesome to play and is a success. So if you are getting so many bad reviews it would be best to take note of what so many players are saying. I think if you (Ubisoft) want to turn this around, you need to listen to your consumers and the multiple reviews, making changes accordingly.

My biggest suggestion would be to completely remove the Looter Shooter aspect of the game. If that is just not possible, then at the least re-think how gear levelling works. In particular, remove the whole RNG aspect to it. I would say this is the biggest thing that seems problematic with the game as it undermines the whole intent of being an immersive experience. This would return the game to a solely Tactical Shooter experience, and would achieve the type of immersive experience Emile Daubon, Mathew Tomkinson, and Grace Orlady spoke about in pre-Beta interviews.