First of all, I’d like to say that you guys have done a great job with the immersive mode I was very much looking forward to Breakpoint’s release ever since it was announced. When the Beta was released, I was disappointed with what I played. Now however, after playing the immersive mode, I have bought Breakpoint and am very satisfied. You guys did a great job.

Now that that is out of the way, I’d like to offer my feedback on how to further improve the immersive mode’s survival and crafting aspects. This is coming from a player who really cares about Breakpoint and it’s success and I think adding at least one of these ideas would vastly improve the Breakpoint. To form these ideas I actually sat down and played Breakpoint with my friends for a few hours. I informed them that Ubisoft was looking for feedback on how to improve the ghost experience and we all brainstormed on how the survival aspects and immersion of the game could be improved. We came up with a few realistic ideas and some more complicated but fun ideas that could actually be added to Breakpoint that would improve the game.

Here are our ideas and why we chose them:

1: Temperature System:
We thought about how this game aims to go for immersion — and when we are on the top of an ice-cold mountain, there is nothing more immersion breaking than being in a t-shirt and the player being unaffected. So we were thinking — what if there was a temperature system that could be toggled in the settings, totally up to the player if they wanted to use it or not. We thought back to The Division’s Survival game mode where there was a minimalistic temperature bar on the HUD and you needed to bundle up in order to be able to withstand that type of cold.

How could the temperature system be implemented?:
We were thinking that it would be a great idea to mimic the Division’s temperature system, but make it better and less harsh. So like the Division Survival, different clothing and equipment should have temperature values. When you put the clothes on, your temperature bar raises according to the value of the clothing you equip. And for each setting the player enters, he or she should have to have meet a minimum body temperature in order to have retain their max health and stats. The consequence of not meeting the minimum temperature requirement could mean the player slowly freezes and loses health like in the Division’s survival mode until they pass out and have to respawn. Or; other stats like speed, stamina, and damage received could be negatively affected. Perhaps the temperature of certain provinces could change daily depending on their geographical location, weather, and time of day. For example, it would be colder in a certain province if it was night time, snowing, and the player was at a high altitude. The players body temperature would increase if they found shelter in an insulated building like in the Division’s survival mode. Crafting could also tie into this system. Perhaps the player could find rags/cloths inside of buildings, crates, or on soldiers in order to craft warmer clothes such as coats, hats, boots, and gloves. These clothes could also be bought at the store. We understand that once you have warm clothing, there would be no reason to ever have to deal with all of these systems again. That is why we think it would be wise to provide the players with an incentive to take their warm clothes off when entering warmer settings. This could at least provide some gameplay in that they’d need to remember to equip warm clothes in the right setting. Or perhaps all clothing could have a durability that wears down as the player plays in extreme weather conditions. We know all of this would be time consuming to implement, but some type of implementation of a temperature system would make the game so much more immersive, intense, and fun. A blizzard or snowstorm perhaps would actually be quite intimidating and a fun challenge to deal with. If you guys could mimic the fun challenge that The Dvision’s Survival mode offered with its temperature system (maybe a bit less harsh), my friends and I all agree that this would be extremely fun.


2: A Food/Water Bar and Storage System:
My friends and I like the idea of crafting rations, collecting water, and hunting. But if you were looking to improve the survival and crafting experience in breakpoint we think it would be so much better if there was an actual food and water bar. We know that breakpoint is more of a military survival game and not a full on survival game. That’s why this system should be optional within the settings and the player should be able to toggle how punishing this system is depending on the experience that they want. Also, they should be able to toggle a new storage system which involves them needing them to store the things they find out in the world. They would store these things at a bivouac or storage container back at Erewhon. Upon death, the player should lose certain things so that death is more punishing. This would urge them to store their things every once and a while. This would be completely up to the player whether or not they want to play with this feature on. But for the player who turns it on; the game would be so much more engaging and immersive.

How would it be implemented?:
We thought that there should be a minimalistic food and water bar on your HUD that needs to be maintained. By not eating or drinking, the player would have to withstand the set consequences according to what he or she selected in their settings. Maybe one setting would be that as your food and water bar deplete, the player’s stats get increasingly worse. Maybe another setting would be that the player’s stats would increasingly get worse and worse, but if either bar completely depleted the player would pass out and have to respawn. The hardest difficulty setting could be that consequences of passing out have the player losing their XP, collected resources, medkits, bandages, equipment from chests, and etc. that haven’t been stored inside of their player chest (something you could implement) back at Erewhon. The player could also store their things like collected resources, medkits, bandages, food, and equipment from chests at a bivouac. No matter what though we think that the player should lose some XP upon death when playing with the food/water and storage system on. This just provides more of an intense gameplay experience and gives death more meaning. Either way, the player should have to transport their things from their bivouac to their storage chest at Erewhon or just leave it at the bivouac. There shouldn’t be some magical chest that contains your items wherever you go. When it comes to the water system, the player should have to find, craft, or buy a canteen if they have their death consequences set to max and lose it upon death. When you die, maybe you can have a time limit in which you can go back and find your stuff, or maybe an enemy soldier could pick it up and you have to kill him to retrieve it. Maybe the enemy soldier could take it back to his outpost if you and your team die, and you have to break into that outpost to retrieve your stuff. When it comes to food, you guys should add in more craftable food options depending on the different animal parts and meats that you have. And maybe if you craft a harder-to-craft food item with rare animal parts, the player could get rewarded with XP and more of his hunger would be restored than if he ate an easy-to-craft food item.


Conclusion:
My friends and I understand it’s unrealistic to implement all of these things and that they would undoubtedly reduce the performance of the game if they were all added in. We also understand that not all players want an experience like this. This is why players should be able to toggle these settings. This way your game can cater to two different crowds, one being the survival game crowd, and the other being those who want a more standard and casual shooter experience. The key in all of this is that players should be able to customize their experience to their liking — making the game as much as a survival game or as much as a casual shooter as they want. We believe that if at least some of these major points are added in, Breakpoint would be vastly improved and more liked among the gaming community:

1. Temperature System
2. Food and Water System
3. A storage system/more punishing deaths

(As a bonus, we thought that adding in the option to disable fast travel and another option that lets you control the settings that your entire group plays on would be great too. This is just an easier alternative to letting everyone in the group play the same way rather than having to tell them the settings that you have on)

Thank you for creating an awesome game, we hope to keep seeing it improve in the future