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These are suggestions for when playing at the most difficult settings (not using skill trees, no HUD, low bandages, one main weapon, high injury, etc.) is still too easy.
I know this is not a milsim, but at the highest difficulty it should try to enter that territory. It is still ghost recon (Tom Clancy military genre), and not some Fortnite game.
Immersion:
- 1:1 timescale option (or adjustable) for when you want to do night raids.
- Realistic dark nights, like in real life. (wolves and drones should use nv or thermal goggles)
- Remove the popup "Press H to look" when a drone or chopper passes by. The popup is the same as cheating and makes those patrols useless. It should pay to be attentive.
- Items should have weight and only so much can be taken with you at the same time. So no backpack with several rocket launchers, mines, ...
- Every enemy seems to have sniper rifle ammo, or machine gun ammo. Ammo should be way more scarce and sometimes force the player to take the enemy's weapons in dire situations even if they have no silencers attached.
- No ammo and vehicles at bivaks. Only food and tactical preparations.
- No more helicopters or special vehicles anymore at Erewhon. These things are a luxury. You want one, steal one or fight for it. I always go on foot and never fast travel.
- The extra weight of gear should make more sound and impact stealth.
- Some vests (aesthetically) allow the player to take more magazines with them. Like 6 mags for ex. The available slots should be divided between the main weapon and the pistol. Therefore vests and gear should have slots for magazines depending on the vests. This would add to the preparation factor.
- All lights should be destroyable.
- Crouching with a backpack or other heavy gear should impact crouching speed. Equiping lighter gear for stealth infiltrations at night should be more important when you want to go Rainbow Six style. (like black scuba gear or Sam Fisher's uniform)
- Upper body armor, but getting shot in the chest should drop you and make the enemy change target as they think you're dead. Getting up should make you limp, severely impair aiming or make you use a pistol. If you got some bullets elsewhere besides the chest, well though luck then.
- When the player acts too much at night, then the enemy should adapt with more patrols, nv or thermal goggles, mines, ... This should prevent night abuse.
- Breaching charges.
- No player position on the map. Learn to read a map.
Stamina:
- Weapons and gear should have weight and therefore impact stamina loss and movement speed.
- But at the same time temperature in regions should impact the gear required.
- Besides sprinting, normal running should also slowly drain stamina. The speed at which this happens should depend on the total weight of the gear. This makes walking or vehicles important.
- Walking or standing still should 'slowly' or 'very slowly' refill stamina depending on the total weight.
- No instant refill with the water bottle, but it should refill stamina at a faster rate than just walking or standing still.
- Crouching while moving 'long distances' should impact stamina. Imagine crouching with a heavy backpack for several miles.
Enemy:
- The enemy definitely needs a way longer view distance. But the further you are away from them the longer it should take them to recognize you as hostile. Ex. 10 meter vs 300 meter.
- Running makes you suspicious and should have an impact on how fast they see you as hostile.
- Patrols should have binoculars and use them if they see you running at a large distance. If I saw some guys running far in the distance I would check them out. Especially when everyone knows that helicopters with ghosts have crashed down on the island. Walking should prevent the enemy from checking you with binoculars at larger distance as it would make them think you are a patrol. So scouting the environment for enemy positions becomes mandatory.
- Dressing as wolves or regulars should fool the enemy if you have the gear, unless you get too close. But not drones as they could check if you have an RFID tag injected under your skin. (I know it is farfetched, but it sounds cool)
- Likewise, entering special buildings like armories without these RFID tags (which you can never have) should raise the alarm, unless the power is taken out or you use chaff grenades or something that disturbs electronic systems.
- The game needs use of a camouflage system. Green camo in forests, white in snow, ... You get the point. This should prevent the enemy from seeing you. Movement should impact this.
- Base guards should have night or thermal vision.
- When spotted by a drone, wolves should not spawn right behind you. Instead patrols in the region should be alerted and move towards you as they receive coordinates. The drone that spotted the player should move up way higher in the air and start evasive maneuvres to prevent it from getting shot while transmitting the player's position to nearby patrols. Killing that drone is vital and maybe make smoke and forest canopies more useful for evasion.
- Wolves need to be more badass. Now they are just boyscouts who try to look cool.
- Bases should stay on alert when spotted. Atleast one hour in realtime or something. Patrols in the same region should intensify.
- Enemies should stop yelling and giving away their position. Just imagine they communicate silently with each other through their comms or through hand gestures.
- In buildings enemies should cover exit points when they are on alert and know your position, while breachers move in.
- They should use flashbangs or gas grenades when the player is in a building. Not walk in one by one, just to get killed easily.
- Wolves should be special ops and use things like small drones to find and/or confirm your position in the building or environment. Counter them with an emp grenade or one of those lure grenades.
- The bigger drones should make way less noise. They are a bit too loud.
- Bases need to call air support (murmur drones or chopper) unless you take out the power and comms.
- Bases need security cameras which detect those RFID badges. Bases are way too easy as they are now.
- Shooting their legs should drop them and not letting them run and fight. They need locational damage on the arms too.
- Enemies should give their allies cover fire, while the others flank.
- Again enemies should be able to flank without taking huge risks that could get them killed.
- Enemies should have a hard time recognizing you when you pass them at a high speed in a vehicle.
- Quicktime events when fighting in melee, which require random button presses to overcome the enemy.
- Bases need jamming equipment.
(I also know AI is very hard to program and some things might be asking too much, but I think they are worth mentioning.)
AI Teammates:
- They need the same hp as the player and suffer from locational damage.
- The player should be able to choose how many teammates to take along. (max. 4)
- Teammate commands need hotkeys, not the slow command wheel.
- Teammates need a max ammo count.
- Teammates should throw a mag when your out, or the other way around if possible.
Yeah, this list sounds a bit hardcore, but it should add challenge for the more experienced players among us. People who like to think before they act. I believe that Ghost Recon should take its first steps in the milsim category at the highest difficulty and offer a special achievement title, special weapons or hightech suits for those who complete the game on this difficulty. For those who think this list is too hard, there are of course other difficulties. Everybody wins.
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I'm glad you like it. If there is one thing I would really like to be changed now it is the enemy view distance. This can really be done with a patch and is far from impossible, but rather tweaking variables. I just stand there in an open space with several patrols less than 100 meters away and they just do not see me. Even a 50m distance is a blind zone for them. This is the thing that really troubles me the most and it is also why the game is so ridiculously easy. The other difficulties should stay the way they are, but extreme should really have this or atleast an option for it. This alone would have a great impact.Originally Posted by Quimera2-98 Go to original post
The rate of enemy target acquisition is good. They freak out when a fellow soldier gets shot, run for cover and look around for targets, which takes them a while. They do not immediately know the player's position. I like that alot.
I remember AC Origins had this experimental ingame Animus control panel that let the player change a lot of variables and it worked exceptionally well. I tweaked enemy hp, view distance, dmg, hiding map info, disabled fast travel and so on to give me a worthy challenge. I loved every single second of it. Too bad Odyssey doesn't have it. This game should have this too. They could also use it for background statistics to see what variables players really like. For a company this is valuable customer information they can use for a next installment.
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Member
All what is suggested should be tied to a new highest difficulty option in the game and not the other difficulties. There are lower difficulties for easier arcade gameplay. It would not be forced upon those players as they have the option to choose.Originally Posted by LTJasonWolfe Go to original post
Games are dumbed down enough the last 20 years.
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So go to all the time and effort create a whole new game mode with entirely different physics and mechanics that only a handful of people will actually play and won't make them any money. Yeah, not going to happen. In this game, or any future Ghost Recon game. If you want that kind of realism, go join a milsim airsoft team or modern reenacting group. Or the Army. I hear that's pretty realistic. Almost as realistic as Arma. It even has perma-death, and there isn't a superdrone to be found. You can even create a special forces character that actually uses real special forces gear and uses real special forces tactics. And the mechanics are SUPER realistic. Your carry weight is severely limited, as are your stats. You even have to worry about hydration and food.
Did you ever think that games have become simpler to appeal to a broader category of people, thus making video game companies more money? And did you ever think that "hardcore" gamers like yourself are in such a minority that games tailor made for you are rarely ever profitable? Because nobody wants to play a game that hard, and no company wants to make a game that hard just to appeal to a very small number of people. Even if it's just a difficulty level, no company is going to make something THAT specialized just for one mode that only a handful of people are going to play. It's a waste of time AND money.
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I would love to see these features implemented into a harder and more customizable difficulty. I too have played almost my entire Breakpoint experience on Extreme and I immediately cranked it up further still when the Ghost Experience additions were implemented. Maybe it might be best to add another difficulty level above Extreme - could call it Survival or something because that should indeed be your primary concern and one you should constantly be reminded of. Perhaps a sort of Tier 1 mode for Breakpoint with some unique rewards. I don't think perma-death should be a thing, though, since I have died to glitches and bugs a fair few times, like faceplanting to my death with the parachute when trying to climb down a ladder. But make the experience the grueling and punishing one that was advertised. Even on Extreme it's never a concern unless you either go Rambo mode into a base and let the enemies swarm you, or deliberately gimp yourself to give the enemy AI a chance because they simply aren't designed to be a threat for anyone who thinks tactically.
But realistically I think a fair few of these suggestions will remain wishful thinking. At least the ones that are completely new like equipment adding weight or new systems like camouflage. I can't see Ubi Paris investing time in those at this point. Smarter enemy AI might be too much to hope for as well. Some of the most likely I think could be:
Enemy detection range. It's so jarring to stand there in the open, waving at a patrol just 200 yards down the road coming your way, completely blind to your existence. It should be GREATLY increased, or perhaps to an extend you can define yourself. I problem I see, however, is the myriad of random patrols in the wilds that dot the landscape only 100-200 meters apart, sometimes even less. Those should be customizable as well. I think they always felt unrealistic, unnatural and fake and it could lead to a frustrating experience if you couldn't move more than a few yards before you got spotted by some random pop-in patrol. To compensate they could make bases much more populated and challenging with guards patrolling the perimeter, with landmines and with snipers capable of spotting you from more than 100 yards away.
Darker nights. I know we have "Darkest Night", but it isn't actually that dark when you have the full moon present every single night... Maybe a solution could be to be able to customize weather. I think I've seen weather on Golem Island that is so cloudy it blocks the light of the moon.
Less ammo. Speaks for itself. Make ammo matter and be a source of tension. Make the player dread the moment they only have one mag left.
No player position on the map. A small thing, but an impactful one.
More punishing stamina. I like the idea of normal running slowly draining stamina and the canteen only restoring stamina at a slightly faster rate. Make stamina matter.
Thermal/night vision for Wolves. If the Wolves can't be smarter than Sentinel grunts, at least give them some extra toys. Maybe extend the visual range of the Wolves snipers as well. Gas grenades could potentially also be exclusive to the Wolves.
Enemies stop yelling. Agree completely. I think they should also remove the rattling the equipment of the enemy AI makes. It's like they have a load of bells attached to their vests or something whenever they move. It throws every attempt at stealth from the enemy AI out the window, even if it's completely unintentional.
Less drone noise Fully agree. It's god-awful to listen to and frankly one of the reasons I have drones set to "Reduced". They would be a lot more fun to engage if they were less noisy, didn't glow red-hot at 5000 degrees Celcius and instead tried to embrace stealth with camouflage paint or even active Skell camo.
Injury system for enemy AI One of the things I would love to see the most. In general I think the enemy AI should live in the same world as the player, being subject to injuries and slipping down steep inclines. It could add a completely new tactical element instead of the binary 'fully operational and bullet-proof or dead' situation. There should be more of an in-between.
Love all the suggestions, though. With Ubi going out of their way to add things like the bullet distraction and darkest night, perhaps there is a small hope we might see some of them added.
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Junior Member
I agree with the OP, games are getting dumbed down, the Original Redstorm Team who created the original Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon back in the day wanted to deliver something different not just make money by following everyone else. R6 had the "one shot kill" real world weaponry, an extensive planning feature, perma-death, limited ammo etc... unlike anything that was out at the time. A lot of people told them nobody would want to play something so serious and difficult, but guess what? the franchise was a huge hit influencing many games after that and they eventually got bought by Ubisoft. I actually like Ghost Recon as an open world tactical shooter, I just wish it would allow us to dial in the difficulty even more so we can make it more OG Ghost Recon.
