Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain

[cretin]

Just having fuckers chase you from base to base would have helped.
I'm starting to suspect that the reason the Fox Engine runs so well is on account of how few the NPCs are per sector.

That's my suspicion too, or at least why I guess they left such large maps so empty.

 

[Child of Malkav]

There's that mod Infinite Heaven which makes it so that enemies, helicopters, vehicles (including thanks) patrol the map and the enemy upgrades don't expire. It also allows your soldiers at mother base to ride vehicles and walkers and stuff and I think that you can also customize them further than in vanilla.
I also remember that I didn't play it for long because it started acting up and was difficult to install. But still, pretty much a must have mod for this game.

 

[Beowulf]

Releasing ground zeroes as a separate title was a mistake. It's a good set piece and would go a long way to filling out the dead space in MGSV.

Doing open world MGS game was a mistake. This game reaches its heights when doing more structured missions.

I disagree insofar as I can see what they were trying to do with the open world and tactical options, it's just the implementation failed, mostly because it's empty. Moving over land would be a lot more meaningful if there were platoons patrolling like there would be IRL, mortar and AA sections adapting to your reliance of certain tactics etc.

As it actually is, yeah it would've been better off something closer to MGS3

That's actually my beef with the open world in MGS V.
The world is rather empty with small of interests with small number of enemies here and there.

It get's interesting once you get to a mission area.
Sure, you can have fun cheating AI along the way, but that's just filler.

 

[TheHeroOfTime]

Open world doesn't means sandbox.

MGSV world is empty because it should be empty. The maps (Afganistan and Angola-zaire frontier) are supposed to be warzones, not theme parks. That's why I like them so much. Because they actually feel like conflict zones. And of course, there's no much things to do in conflict zones.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

they actually feel like conflict zones. And of course, there's no much things to do in conflict zones.

That's the thing, there could be that great sense of being behind enemy lines, but it's pulled down by a somewhat static world.

 

[Beowulf]

Open world doesn't means sandbox.

MGSV world is empty because it should be empty. The maps (Afganistan and Angola-zaire frontier) are supposed to be warzones, not theme parks. That's why I like them so much. Because they actually feel like conflict zones. And of course, there's no much things to do in conflict zones.

Pfft

I don't want it to be a theme park a'la Skyrim. For example, I liked the open world of the Witcher 3, that many people here bash for being empty.
But just compare Ground Zeros and any mission from the main game. There is only a handful that give you the same sense of scale, and many are just a little bigger compounds.

My point is - it's nice to have this open world, but I think that by creating it, the missions themselves took a hit.
I think that MGSV would be a better game if it just had a string of hand created main missions without this open world part.
But to each his own.

Anyway - MGSV still has great AI (in the sense it's actually fun to play against, not ruthlessly efficient) and many small systems that interconnect in good ways. And the most fluid animation transition I've ever seen in a game (soldiers surrendering, going from running to prone, etc ...).

 

[TheHeroOfTime]

There's a lot of main missions MGSV that are lot more rich in terms of design that Ground zeroes. Even some "filler" missions have a lot of substance to them, like guards that are executing prisioners and you must save them or events like soldiers training kids. Even Camp omega as a map isn't that special compared to Afganistan base camp or the OKB Zero. The thing with Ground zeroes is that it's very well paced. It feels very "Metal gear" because it has abundant and strong cinematics through it, and also very tight and small gameplay sequence. The overall setting resembles a lot the Shadow moses entrance sequence from the first MGS, playing with your nostalgia if you follow the franchise from long ago (Like that scene where Snake takes off the binaculars). But leaving aside those things, it isn't that unique compared to a lot of missions from the final game.

The first 31 missions from TPP are very well designed overall, leaving aside some ones that are complete trash (Like the one where you have to destroy armored vehicles constantly). And the game goes downhill during the Chapter 2 of course, feeling completely rushed from that point.

 

[Beowulf]

The first 31 missions from TPP are very well designed overall, leaving aside some ones that are complete trash (Like the one where you have to destroy armored vehicles constantly). And the game goes downhill during the Chapter 2 of course, feeling completely rushed from that point.

Well, that's my point - MGS is at its strongest in structured missions, so ..

 

[Spark Mandriller]

Open world doesn't means sandbox.

MGSV world is empty because it should be empty. The maps (Afganistan and Angola-zaire frontier) are supposed to be warzones, not theme parks. That's why I like them so much. Because they actually feel like conflict zones. And of course, there's no much things to do in conflict zones.

They don't feel like conflict zones though. They can't, because there's only one faction in them. If there's meant to be a war on then the Soviets just won by default, because there's nobody there to oppose them. Africa is even worse, since it's meant to be two sides fighting instead of an occupation, but there's no actual fight. There are just some mercenaries sitting in their outposts doing nothing.
In an actual warzone you find war. There should be fights. There should be troops moving around. There should be resistance fighters hiding out in the wilderness/in towns. There should be civilians in the towns for the resistance fighters to blend in with. In MGS V you get none of that. All you get is some soldiers on holiday just sitting in their bases waiting for you to come by and rob them. That's the entire world, just empty space and soldiers waiting around.

 

[cretin]

Open world doesn't means sandbox.

MGSV world is empty because it should be empty. The maps (Afganistan and Angola-zaire frontier) are supposed to be warzones, not theme parks. That's why I like them so much. Because they actually feel like conflict zones. And of course, there's no much things to do in conflict zones.

War zones have platoons doing daily combat patrols especially when there is a known saboteur element in the area. MGSV has two men going on walkabout from outpost to outpost and the occasional supply truck... it's not about being a sandbox or zoo its about making USE of the game world and making decisions about travel feel meaningful. Mgsv has the obvious framework of a tactical game with fire support, troop deployments and supply... in practice these end up being nothing more than curiosities, largely because of what we're talking about.

 

[Jack Of Owls]

Just started playing this now. Only MGS I played was recently with Ground Zeros (the nerve of them selling that as A FULL GAME!) Wow, normally not a fan of interminably long cut-scenes but that opening was pretty fucking rousing. It oozes Triple-AAA class and actually felt like a good horror-thriller. Have no idea what the fuck is going on though but the imagery was searing... literally. Is that burning man suppose to be like a Fourth Horsemen of the Apocalypse kind of thing? And that ginger-mopped ghost-girl hovering around. WTF? Don't answer any of these questions. I want to be surprised. Have a feeling it's going to be a fun ride.

 

[ultimanecat]

Since everyone is rightfully criticizing the lack of interesting stuff going on in the open world, I'm going to give this Infinite Heaven mod recommended earlier a whirl. Some of these settings I could give two shits about (lol make all the enemies female in bathing suits) but enabling random patrols overland directly between command posts, making ground vehicle patrols use tanks and APCs, having helis patrol the map, and enabling a percent chance of a few random events when entering a mission zone are right up my alley.

 

[Jack Of Owls]

I'm glad hardcore mods are available for this because that's something I had major problems with in Ground Zeroes - AIs that just seemed... dumb and unrealistic.

 

[Ereshkigal]

I'm glad hardcore mods are available for this because that's something I had major problems with in Ground Zeroes - AIs that just seemed... dumb and unrealistic.

Check this out:

 

[Jack Of Owls]

I'll probably play a little vanilla then check out some mods. Konami should have included a hardcore mode built in. Shit, even Ubisoft games like the later Far Cry series had decent AI that could be relentless in detecting and pursuing you. There were times playing Far Cry 3 & 4 where it actually felt like I was being hunted. But in Ground Zeroes I felt like I could murder 10 soldiers in plain sight, then squat behind a gasoline barrel 10 feet from the pile of corpses and comfortably take a dump as the AI just waltzed right by me, then just pull up my khakis then briskly walk out of there.

 

[Average Manatee]

I'm glad hardcore mods are available for this because that's something I had major problems with in Ground Zeroes - AIs that just seemed... dumb and unrealistic.

Check this out:

I've tried settings like this, unfortunately it gets kind of retarded in a few situations:
- Concealment and camouflage becomes useless. I'm guessing they are static bonuses to the distance at which you get detected rather than percentile modifiers, because with large vision increases even going prone in high grass gets you spotted from a hundred feet away without much noticeable difference from just being prone on the ground normally.
- Being spotted and being identified should be completely different. As it is you might be spotted while crouched at 500 feet and identified as an enemy (raising an alert) immediately at 200 feet. This is fine, but it gets awful when e.g. an enemy catches a momentary glimpse of a 1" x 1" patch of Snake's back through a window at 200 feet and immediately go on alert as they recognize the glorious back of Snake. The amount of you that is visible should matter greatly to identification, especially when you are in environments where other soldiers normally are (e.g. seeing the foot of a guy prone next to a rock is suspicious, seeing the foot of a guy walking up a stairway in a base is not suspicious. Unfortunately I'm guessing the game just doesn't have the functionality programmed in to have soldiers in any other states than a binary in LOS vs. out of LOS.
- Lots of instances in which enemy vision should be drastically reduced aren't. e.g. vehicles on patrol. The canyons in Afghanistan are often narrow as hell and with vision increases it can be flat out impossible to hide from them depending on where you encounter them.

 

[J_C]

I'm glad hardcore mods are available for this because that's something I had major problems with in Ground Zeroes - AIs that just seemed... dumb and unrealistic.

Check this out:

This looks pretty annoying to be honest. Yeah, the guards behave realistically and can spot you from far away, so you have to move extra slow and extra careful in huge-ass map, making it a chore to move around.

 

[Jack Of Owls]

I don't ever want to play a game like this that's totally realistic (the ARMA series taught me that hard lesson), just one where there is a seamless, believable behavior from the AI instead of acting glaringly stupid. Realistic behavior is another thing entirely. Will be continuing to monitor this topic for tips & tricks on those using mods who found the right balance.

 

[Ereshkigal]

This looks pretty annoying to be honest. Yeah, the guards behave realistically and can spot you from far away, so you have to move extra slow and extra careful in huge-ass map, making it a chore to move around.

The guy just did the video to showcase the possibilities of Infinite Heaven. He did other videos with toned-down settings (enemy sight down to 300% instead of 400%), no markers, both player and enemy health to 40%... it can be played somewhat smootly (forget about ghosting though). The point is that you can customize your difficulty any way you want, you can set different values for night gameplay, whatever. Sight to 200% provides a decent challenge for those who already dominate the game (Ground Zeroes hard mode was the equivalent of 150%).

Another one of his vids:

- Concealment and camouflage becomes useless.

There are some mods that modify camo index value, making them more useful (or OP, depending on your view), but I haven't tried them. Even with vanilla camouflage values, you can deploy at night with the Ocelot fatigues which are pretty effective and can potentially help when playing with these sort of "realist" AI values

 

[Falksi]

Crawling around for hours is just so much fun.

When I was a kid playing Double Dragon, R-Type, Buck Rogers:Countdown to Doomsday & the Phantasy Star series THAT's the kind of progression I wanted to see after 30 odd years. Take all the pick-up & play fun, deep RPG elements, and great stories out of games, and crawl, crawl, crawl along to the sound of people talking bollocks to each other.

Amazing.

 

[ultimanecat]

So the Infinite Heaven mod is pretty granular and let’s you adjust a host of options. I’ve set enemy sight and hearing to 150% and generally early on it seems to get me noticed (but not identified) more readily. I may indeed turn it down because some areas are designed for enemies with shorter sight lines and enemies will get more aggressive later on, but for now it’s a good mix of challenge and playability. That being said, you can also adjust enemy AI to be more or less capable in several other ways to balance things out.

So far after playing an hour or two I have it set with beefed up foot and vehicle patrols (including a helicopter), random events occurring 10% of the times I enter a zone, and the above enemy improvements and it still feels pretty vanilla to play but also more challenging and interesting. I may add in Skull units in free roam later but at the moment my weapons/item development isn’t at a place where that would mean much other than quitting out to the ACC.

 

[Ereshkigal]

This may not be known, but use the bushes whenever you can, they provide 100% camo index thus making you invisible to the enemy even if he's right in front of you.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

This may not be known, but use the bushes whenever you can, they provide 100% camo index thus making you invisible to the enemy even if he's right in front of you.

Nope, been caught in them.

 

[Ereshkigal]

Nope, been caught in them.

Well, you have to watch your placement, you don't need to be fully inside them (maybe you exposed an arm or whatever), you can stay a bit behind, the bush acts like a wall, it's better explained in this short video (activate subtitles):

 

[DJOGamer PT]

MGSV world is empty because it should be empty.

MGS5 game world is empty because of the same reason MGS5 is an incomplete game.