We hope you’re enjoying your first few days with the Ghost Experience! As we stated in our Developer Update, one of our main focuses in the coming months will be gathering your feedback about the current Ghost Experience and how it can evolve later this year with future updates.
We’re already compiling your feedback, but we want to make sure we’re able to get the right kind of information to ensure we’re still moving in the best direction.
In the thread below, we’d love to get your high-level feedback on what would make positive and impactful updates to the Ghost Experience. Some examples of the type of feedback that would be helpful here:
• Further develop the survival aspects of the game
• Make the crafting system more relevant
What we’re not looking for here are very specific things like fixing issues with the laser on 416s (it has been noted!) or topics like the AI Teammates / Offline Mode that we’ve recently touched on.
To be very clear, posting an idea/feedback here does not mean that we will be adding it or that our CM team can personally respond to each one.
Each request has a specific impact in terms of development and needs to be carefully explored by our team. We must first look at technical feasibility, implications of addition, and the relative popularity of the request.
We’re excited to hear your feedback and work together on shaping the direction of the Ghost Experience. Based on the conversation and feedback you give us, we will investigate the opportunity of compiling the data for a second Community Survey.
If you’ve already posted your thoughts in another thread, feel free to link it below!
Thank you again for your continued support!
Hey Bard, would it be possible to sticky this please?Originally Posted by UbiBard Go to original post
Done!Originally Posted by Stomp0nMybaIls Go to original post![]()
Thank you Bard.Originally Posted by UbiBard Go to original post
Figured I'd copy my thoughts here,
Note: This one is going to be rather short than what I normally write since I don't have much "bad things" to really say (One absolutely game-breaking thing though), I won't be talking about bugs or response to fixes, as they're expected and with the global pandemic going on right now, there is so much stress on everyone that I expected some to slip through the cracks and the fact that an update at all and fixes(assumedly) got or are getting pushed out, that's extremely commendable, and also I'm going to be saving a much longer write up for the new story content since I really want to dissect that much further.
The Great
So, Now that it's out I have to say, it's pretty damn good, and It actually shows how much small changes can end up freshening the game, and changing it. Limiting bandages, removing health regen and other crutches have actually forced me to change my game and now that I've actually been punished for trying to Rambo, for once in Breakpoint, I actually have to play as a "Ghost" now, and on the plus side if I ever want to change it up, I have a mass of options to pick from and take off, unlike Wildlands Ghost Mode, which looking back was quite lazy compared to what we got with these options. The Erewhon runaway is finally gone, so now many others and I don't have to endure the legions of Plaid Chads, the Khaki Pants Crew, or Dark Lords of the Sith, and I can actually appreciate the beauty of Erewhon and not feel disgust. The new ammo mechanic while unrealistic, I actually enjoy from a gameplay perspective since I now actually run the possibility of running out of ammo if I'm careless for once, something I didn't even think about before. Picking up weapons I'll speak about in the next paragraph, but there is an issue I have with the system. Finally of course, Garbage score is gone as it should be, and who knew it also fixed the cluttered UI, since now the Inventory is now strictly your weapons and class, now the Inventory UI is so clean looking and minimal, it's not the absolute clusterf*ck that required a PHD in timewasting it used to be, and also side note, the MTX tab is now completely hidden away while in immersive mode for those who don't want to see it, similar to Wildlands' store was.
The Disappointing
There was two things I was rather disappointed with was Enemy detection and damage being tied together, and weapon swap mechanic. Enemy detection and damage is pretty self explanatory, as Chris said these would be much better separate, as I would love to make the detection higher than advanced so the enemies have some competency, but at the same time I don't enjoy being randomly one shot by an enemy I missed that forces me restart an entire base I just spent the latter half of 30 minutes clearing, or in case I get ambushed by a swarm of the fun police (read the bad section). The reason I was disappointed by the weapon swapping wasn't because mechanic itself, but how it impacts the enemies, as now the enemies all have truly varied weapons that differ from each other, but the all act as if they have the exact same weapon, which is extremely disappointing, not game-breaking, but disappointing. How great would it be if the weapon that the specific grunt had would actually impact how that grunt performed, such as if a Sniper had a G28 instead of the Bolt action they normally had, they'll do less damage, but they'll be able to pop off shots much quicker, or if a shotgunner had a SASG-12, he'd again do less damage, but would have a suppression effect similar to the minigunners, if a normal rifleman had an AK-47 instead of the normal Sig-556, he'd do more damage and have a longer effective range, but he would stay further back, and have a lower rate of fire from his weapon. Basically I'm asking that new enemy architypes to reflect the new variety of weapons the enemies now carry.
The Bad
Now there is one truly bad, game breaking issue that holds this update back, and ding ding ding you guessed it, Drones. Man if you thought they were bad with Garbage score, they're absolutely the fun police in immersion mode. Speaking on the bullet spongy side, Murmurs and flying drones are quite good and get a pass, as even the toughest one requires at most maybe 6 or so shots from my rifle, and it seems like a majority of their health is their armor, and once it's gone it's pretty much dead. Land drones and especially Behemoths though are another story, they're absolutely so absurdly tanky with no handicap on their speed and damage per second at higher difficulties. It feels like fighting Ornstien and Smough, but Smough is buffed and has speed hacks, it's ridiculous. The most egregious thing with drones is their spastic speed and evasion patterns, as trying to hit a murmur when it's spinning around and doing spastic Star-Fox maneuvers is nearly impossible, and if there's poor latency involved, then good luck because you're probably not going to hit that thing at all. Their maneuverability is so ridiculous that they don't even adhere to the rules of the game, as cutscenes show them off MUCH slower than their in game counterparts. Finally, their DPS(Damage Per Second) as well is insane, as due to the high rate of fire with the murmurs and Behemoths weapons, on higher injury and damage rates can lead to you burning through your syringes and bandages in a matter of seconds, and all these factors combined with the natural spam of land and air drones make Elite Faction Missions actually impossible at this point to solo which I'd constitute as game breaking. I'm saying this as someone who doesn't hate the idea of drones, since Ghost Recon has always been a futuristic series and I like the enemy variety, but the execution is so counterintuitive and screams artificial difficulty that it's ridiculous. I know you guys (the Developers) have read my drone rework, and I think you've used as the basis for this (I can tell since Murmur health is exactly how I described it should be months ago, and a variant of the Behemoth that shoots gas grenades was added, something which I said should be added) which is great and I thank you, but I emphasized that the speed of the drones is a large issue, and its reared its head around again. This needs to change, and I hope it does, as that is the one big issue.
Conculsion
My final thoughts are there is obviously more work to be done, with adding the AI Squad, making enemy AI better, making the world more immersive, more gameplay additions, etc to make this game a true Ghost Recon game, but this was a great step towards that, and has made the gameplay much better, and has brought my enjoyment back into the game. Also fix the drones please, Thank you.
Changes to make TLDR:
- Separate Enemy detection and Enemy Damage into their own separate category.
- Add an option to limit our carry limit for ammo (i.e only being able to carry 200 rounds of ammo).
- Remove some of the Hardcoded Keybinds (Like weapon swaping).
- Reduce the "speed" and evasion maneuvers of all drones by 50% or so.
- Increase the damage land drones and Behemoths take to explosives by about 2x or so.
- More civilians in towns.
- Have Human enemies be stagger more when shot.
- Add the Injury/terrain system that the players have to human NPCs.
- Add the eat/sleep patrol cycle to human NPCs like Wildlands had.
- Lower the spawn rate on enemy helicopters (but keep Azrael's spawn rate the same).
-Give enemy helicopters fly patterns similar to Wildlands, instead of consistently flying over your head.
Thank you and stay safe in these trying times, Ubisoft Staff.
So after a couple days of playing with the immersive mode i thought id share a few thoughts on it and moving forward with it. First off i think you've done a good job of now making the base game playable and enjoyable but in all fairness this is how the game should have released to start with but hey you got there in the end.
*From changing just a few setting has for me transformed the core of the game and i do enjoy going about the world and getting into firefights as now i have to think about what i am doing where as before you were just rambo with heath regain and pumped up stamina. The injury system is great i was running away from couple of folks and got shot in the back injuring me and making fall and roll down a hill as i hit the bottom i was majorly injured and looking for somewhere to take cover and patch myself up. The game now has some enjoyable moments.
*Great to finally not have a whole nations worth of weapons in my backpack that i don't even have on, i only have the ones i choose to take and if i need to change i have to either pick up one or get back to a bivouac.
*Changes to starting on the gunsmith are a positive but there is much work to do there. It is nice having new silences but they look awful with the patterns and not being able to change the colour. And what about the 3d visuals in the patch notes, we haven't seen them so what are they.
*I like the shock pistol but it would be better if it was equipable without being a class ability.
*Ai at the moment is the best i have seen them so far with not bugging in the shut down loop, they are approaching from different directions and different amounts of people depending on alert stage. They are better but there is still a lot more that needs to be done with them so they seem different from each other as they all seem to have the same behavioural patterns and it would be great if they acted differently from each other.
*******THINGS FOR MOVING FORWARD*******
*Something needs to be done about these damn drones both stomp and hugo give you great ideas for this but at the moment they need toning down in ammour protection and speed just to make them playable, a little rebalancing with go along way for the time being but it would be great if there was an implementation of a way of dealing with them other than the temp results of the shock pistol or having to go loud and take them out that way.
*Azrael and choppers need a proper flight pattern and not just spawn over head this is one of the worst aspects of the game and one that needs changing. At the moment their frequency just a little to much and needs slightly lowering. And as the sound loop bugs on the azrael you don't know if it is the sound loop or one is still around.
*The enemy settings need to be opened up like the tactics so we can have extreme time to detection and tactics while having damage done to your Ghost by enemy fire on advanced so to utilise the injury system which at the moment isn't really working when you play on extreme as you die in a couple shots.
*Having settings to limit the amount of ammo would be another good addition done in the same way as bandages so people could set their own preference.
*More settings and freedom of choice is always the way forward.
*Complete removal of all passive effects of weapons unless you can find a realistic way of doing it but not after swapping weapons +3 damage, i thought we were coming away from those aspects.
*The dull and lifeless world needs a lot of work as does the story in the way it is written and delivered. Mission diversity needs improvement also.
*Please do something about the civs even if it is a setting to mute their annoying lines and nothing that is not a necessary.
*Bug finding and fixing needs to improve.
*Detection when in vehicles needs to be sorted it is still bad, enemies become alerted every time i don't think it has improved at all.
*I didn't notice any change in the vehicles behaviour they all still need work.
*Night vision still needs improving.
I'm really enjoying immersive mode, but feel like its economy might be unbalanced compared to the original mode. Since there's no more weapon dismantling, I can't find metal parts anywhere to upgrade my guns. And I'm not making a lot of Skell credits so I can barely afford anything at Maria's shop.
I'll share a full report, I sent into the studio a few weeks ago, in a new thread as it is detailed @ubibard.
My main feedback for here is that the mission vs story balance needs to move more towards full mission briefings with main objectives and optional side objectives you can tackle as you please. The current structure of go here, go there, talk to this person, read this intel feels too linear. Whilst that may be OK for a crime mystery it doesn't feel like it makes the most of the environment we are in. We should know the whole of each mission from the outset and have less of the story reveals.