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[Griss]

two things wrong with the bolded

The deployment mechanic in the AssCreed games actually first appeared in Brotherhood, a November 2010 game, and not Black Flag

Peace Walker had the same system that TPP uses regarding deployments and timers and such. When did that come out, you ask? Oh, April 2010.

The rest sound like gripes because the game wasn't what you thought it would be. This game was described as "Peace Walker done big" quite a bit before launch.

Last, here's the amount of people that at gunpoint obligated you to use the wormhole:

You can play this game anyway you like. Dont wish to fulton tanks? dont. Don't wish to fulton anyone not worth fultoning? Do what i did: bullet to the head, hide the body

cmon now, if you want that game you described then go play Blacklist instead. talk about having weird expectations. What you want is like a not-metal-gear

All right, point accepted re: Peace Walker. I bought and played it for a couple of hours, but barely remember any of it. I hated it to bits from the moment it started. Regarding the bolded, I thought that 'Peace Walker done big' was honestly trolls trying to make the game sound shit. Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes was the prologue to the entire game, and was nothing like Peace Walker. What was I going to believe, some people talking or the very prologue I played?

I wasn't obliged to use the wormhole, true. But I was, absolutely, obliged to use the fulton. The game is designed around building up your base and unlocking weapons. It's necessary. Many of the main and optional mission objectives are extractions. It's just part of the game. If you don't fulton people as you play, you're going to find out that you need to later when you want to develop a new weapon. Might as well get it over with at first, you know?

Also, I'm always going to play a game the way it expects me to. I have no interest in trying to arbitrarily gimp my own playstyle. That's why I enjoyed the way soldiers adjusted to your tactics in this game - THAT was the designers saying 'Hey, you've got options, you know? Try them.' And so I did.

As for 'What you want is not-metal-gear'. Peace Walker is this way. Every other numbered Metal Gear does not have fultoning, and plays the way I suggested with my changes. Believe me, what I wanted was very much Metal Gear.

I kind of see your point but the game lets you play it like Luigi or like Sam Fisher or like Agent 47. I've played the same mission in those 3 ways and each was pretty damn fun. You don't have extract a whole base every damn time, so I'm kinda missing your point..?

My point is that
a) The game is designed around that feature
b) You are essentially required to use that feature because you must level up your base and extractions are often objectices
c) Even when you don't HAVE to extract, the game encourages it and doesn't penalise it. You shouldn't have to gimp yourself to have fun.

I've said it before, but the gotta-catch-them-all Fulton mechanic hinders the gameplay in more ways than is immediately obvious.

Scouting for areas to hide bodies, like toilets and dumpsters, becomes largely irrelevant. You can disappear bodies into the abyss of the sky so making sure you know where you can hide them isn't real a concern. A consequence of this is that by not making note of hiding places you don't tend to incorporate them into infiltration strategies.

And lethality becomes even more of an uncomfortable option. It causes ridiculousness like being paranoid about executing an S-rank soldier, making going non-lethal feel like the right thing to do rather than just another option.

I think the game should have focused on gaining volunteers for Mother Base through your actions and removed Fultoning. You might rescue a person via helicopter and that causes you to get more volunteers, things like that. The Fulton metagame does nothing but hinder gameplay, IMO.

We're on the same page regarding this game.

 

[Lostconfused]

I've said it before, but the gotta-catch-them-all Fulton mechanic hinders the gameplay in more ways than is immediately obvious.

Yep, it was a lot easier to deal with in Peace Walker. Maybe because of smaller scale so it took up less time overall. That and you could only have like a max of what 300 people or something?

 

[brau]

All right, point accepted re: Peace Walker. I bought and played it for a couple of hours, but barely remember any of it. I hated it to bits from the moment it started. Regarding the bolded, I thought that 'Peace Walker done big' was honestly trolls trying to make the game sound shit. Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes was the prologue to the entire game, and was nothing like Peace Walker. What was I going to believe, some people talking or the very prologue I played?

I wasn't obliged to use the wormhole, true. But I was, absolutely, obliged to use the fulton. The game is designed around building up your base and unlocking weapons. It's necessary. Many of the main and optional mission objectives are extractions. It's just part of the game. If you don't fulton people as you play, you're going to find out that you need to later when you want to develop a new weapon. Might as well get it over with at first, you know?

Also, I'm always going to play a game the way it expects me to. I have no interest in trying to arbitrarily gimp my own playstyle. That's why I enjoyed the way soldiers adjusted to your tactics in this game - THAT was the designers saying 'Hey, you've got options, you know? Try them.' And so I did.

As for 'What you want is not-metal-gear'. Peace Walker is this way. Every other numbered Metal Gear does not have fultoning, and plays the way I suggested with my changes. Believe me, what I wanted was very much Metal Gear.

I can't believe the amount of people that say that GZ was not a better experience... it just was. Wether it was because it was smaller, or cheaper, or introduced early. The fact remains that the game had more personality. Even if it was part of TPP initially.

The game is contained, it has a story that goes full circle and its an even that has progression. Also design is more intricate, and its more interesting.

This and the prologue, tied with Mission 43 were full of MGS feels. Why is this so hard to see?

 

[Arttemis]

the premise of my argument stems from being able to finish the game without needing to use shit like wormholes or needed to extract every single thing, like the person posted stated.

And now youre discussing some post endgame issues that rear their head at 130 hours, nothing to do with what i was debating.

And why would you spend +130 hours on something that frustrates you so much

I didn't get wormhole technology until after I beat the game. I didn't fulton every single thing, either. But, I did scan the shit out of nearly every soldier I came across, and every time I was nearly spotted by a soldier I missed, I felt bad when I had to kill him before I could scan him first.

Why did I put so many hours into the game? Because the base gameplay is fun. There are a ton of options in how to tackle every single area. I'm typing this comment right in front of my TV with the game on right now, waiting for me to press X to Resume Game on my next mission repeat.

That said, the awful grind required to build up your Mother Base puts a mellow over the entire experience because anyone who wants to get the best gear is required to extract the fuck out of way too many people - like twenty times too many people. It's utterly insane the amount of soldiers you have to extract to get the highest ranks and get the best gear. It's not enjoyable when it becomes a seemingly endless task as opposed to one option.

Griss's suggestions of drastically diminishing the focus on the fulton and extractions would really encourage players to try more options - because there is absolutely no denying that extractions and base building are far too drawn out and important.

 

[Alienous]

And i'd argue that the fulton mechanic is fantastic, it's addictive, and much like many of the tools the game offers you you can leverage it to your advantage or find yourself using it incorrectly and facing those consequences.

to each their own, but IMHO the thing MGSV does right is the minute to minute gameplay. The plot is ehhhhhhh it's pretty terrible but that didn't matter much to me when there was a legendary Ibis i needed to extract

It is addictive, but I don't think that's a good thing.

It's just a layer on top of everything else that reduces the amount of 'valid' options for playing the game. It makes non-lethality seem less like a preference and more like the right way to play the game.

There are a few things it subtly adds to the gameplay, like trying to work your way around killing specific soldiers you might want to take back to Mother Base. But even then I think reducing 'special' soldiers to easily distinguishable ones (for instance having them wear a different type of clothing) and having a constant optional 'objective' being recruiting them via helicopter, rather than everyone in the base via Fulton, would have been more interesting gameplay-wise.

 

[Spaghetti]

two things wrong with the bolded

The deployment mechanic in the AssCreed games actually first appeared in Brotherhood, a November 2010 game, and not Black Flag

Peace Walker had the same system that TPP uses regarding deployments and timers and such. When did that come out, you ask? Oh, April 2010.

The rest sound like gripes because the game wasn't what you thought it would be. This game was described as "Peace Walker done big" quite a bit before launch.

Last, here's the amount of people that at gunpoint obligated you to use the wormhole:

You can play this game anyway you like. Dont wish to fulton tanks? dont. Don't wish to fulton anyone not worth fultoning? Do what i did: bullet to the head, hide the body

cmon now, if you want that game you described then go play Blacklist instead. talk about having weird expectations. What you want is like a not-metal-gear

honestly, i have to agree with this

the fulton system is risk/reward. especially in the subsistence missions, which seems to have sparked this debate.

here's an example i had from a subsistence mission: it's the middle of the day. no phantom cigar. i see an S rank soldier up in a watch tower. it's fairly isolated but there's another guard on patrol. do i sneak around and just go to complete my mission, or do i indulge my kleptomaniac side and go to take out the soldiers for extraction?

i went for the extraction. i took out the sentry under the tower, then the guard in the tower. i expose myself quickly to climb the tower and risk the extraction. little did i know THE ENEMY SNIPER was watching from the nearby outpost. i get spotted, immediate alert with a sniper right on my ass.

the problem here was not the fulton. it was me. i got greedy.

want to take out tanks with stealth sans fulton? mines, explosives, penetrating weapons, missiles. you're not limited at all. the tanks aren't pushovers anyway, and hardly 'giant crates'. if you've got sentries patrolling around it you're risking exposure to fulton it. when taking out the sentries around the tank, you've got the risk of putting the unit on alert, or the tank just hitting its horn to wake them up if you used a tranq. god forbid you get tanks, snipers, sentries, and a helicopter. if you want a test of skill, that's it. fulton or not.

 

[Inferno313]

Like what? Teaching little kids how to read and write and not letting them fight? Sending animals to preservations? Stopping the world from nuclear holocaust and parasitic outbreak?

Sending people to the brig would be poignant if it wasn't just done in a menu and if most people fultoned didn't just automatically work for you anyway.

There are inklings of evil things that could sprout out from this, but he doesn't actively do anything evil.

The implication is that those child soldiers were eventually going to fight. "Whatcha thinking boss?" "I'm thinking that he's tougher than he looks, A little training, he'll make himself useful." I don't think taking someone else's child soldiers for your own and giving them slightly better living conditions makes you a hero.

He only bothers with the animals cause it's a contract.

He's initially after Skullface for revenge, not because he feels the need to be a hero.

He treats Huey basically about as well as Skullface does, locking him in a room to work for him.

 

[Not Spaceghost]

Fulton worked better in Peace Walker for 2 reasons, your base was much smaller and you could specifically farm units with the stats you wanted so you didn't feel like fultoning everything was the best strategy, unless it was a vehicle boss you wanted to non lethal kill. Still though Fulton extraction is getting the same criticisms the Tranq pistol got in MGS2, it gave you an easier way to non lethal enemies because you could effectively choke them out from range. The risk of having to go in there and punch them around till they passed out was gone, in many ways the tranq gun is still a problem to the series because 90% of the time it's all you feel compelled to use.

You can play this game anyway you like. Dont wish to fulton tanks? dont. Don't wish to fulton anyone not worth fultoning? Do what i did: bullet to the head, hide the body

See that's fine and all but a well designed game gives you incentives and alternatives to such things.

The answer to such criticisms should NEVER be "just don't use it". If the game is going to give me something as powerful as wormhole give me a reason to not use it.

Make wormhole be limited to 5 uses per mission as opposed to 48 with no ability to call for more.

Design a game that actually uses all of its mechanics together instead of creating contradictions within them.

Why would I conserve ammo when I can just call for more on the fly? Make ammo drops alert every enemy to your position, make them all flock to you even if you call it out in the middle of the desert.

Why would I use any gun over a silenced gun? Give them purpose, design encounters that favor them. Honestly why are these even shotguns in the game? They don't take out the heavily armored units very well, and they are an instant alert? I use shotguns because they're fun to screw around with but every time I do the game penalizes me in some way, either by giving me demon points, by tanking my rank. by dropping my fame, or by getting me killed because I put a base on full alert by shooting it once.

Don't get me wrong MGSV is a damn fine game, and I enjoyed every single one of my 130+ hours but goddamn does it give me some immense frustrations.

It makes me do all the heavy lifting.

 

[Kevin Shields]

I can't believe the amount of people that say that GZ was not a better experience... it just was. Wether it was because it was smaller, or cheaper, or introduced early. The fact remains that the game had more personality. Even if it was part of TPP initially.

The game is contained, it has a story that goes full circle and its an even that has progression. Also design is more intricate, and its more interesting.

This and the prologue, tied with Mission 43 were full of MGS feels. Why is this so hard to see?

I responded to you earlier brau. GZ was a more consistent experience because it was 2 hours. If you could only have one game when your house was burning down, you would really pick GZ over Phantom Pain? I for one would just PP easily.

 

[brau]

See that's fine and all but a well designed game gives you incentives and alternatives to such things.

The answer to such criticisms should NEVER be "just don't use it". If the game is going to give me something as powerful as wormhole give me a reason to not use it.

Make wormhole be limited to 5 uses per mission as opposed to 48 with no ability to call for more.

Design a game that actually uses all of its mechanics together instead of creating contradictions within them.

Why would I conserve ammo when I can just call for more on the fly? Make ammo drops alert every enemy to your position, make them all flock to you even if you call it out in the middle of the desert.

Why would I use any gun over a silenced gun? Give them purpose, design encounters that favor them. Honestly why are these even shotguns in the game? They don't take out the heavily armored units very well, and they are an instant alert? I use shotguns because they're fun to screw around with but every time I do the game penalizes me in some way, either by giving me demon points, by tanking my rank. by dropping my fame, or by getting me killed because I put a base on full alert by shooting it once.

Don't get me wrong MGSV is a damn fine game, and I enjoyed every single one of my 130+ hours but goddamn does it give me some immense frustrations.

It makes me do all the heavy lifting.

This is called balancing and tuning. Something TPP doesn't have.

I responded to you earlier brau. GZ was a more consistent experience because it was 2 hours. If you could only have one game when your house was burning down, you would really pick GZ over Phantom Pain? I for one would just PP easily.

yea i read it. the whole time vs quality is where i landed. Lots of people spent say 40+ hrs in GZ... why? and does it make the game better? and TPP is 80+hrs...

I dunno... between pc version of ps4 of gz i must've put a good 50 hrs. it was fun. TPP i put close to 80hrs... and i have no desire to keep playing at this moment.

 

[Kenzodielocke]

Soldiers have no personality, enjoyed killing them. Easy peasy, just fulton some new guys with better stats.

Spoiler

Kidding, shooting your soldiers while they salute you and say "It's okay boss" was kinda hard swallow.

 

[Kevin Shields]

It is addictive, but I don't think that's a good thing.

It's just a layer on top of everything else that reduces the amount of 'valid' options for playing the game. It makes non-lethality seem less like a preference and more like the right way to play the game.

There are a few things it subtly adds to the gameplay, like trying to work your way around killing specific soldiers you might want to take back to Mother Base. But even then I think reducing 'special' soldiers to easily distinguishable ones (for instance having them wear a different type of clothing) and having a constant optional 'objective' being recruiting them via helicopter, rather than everyone in the base via Fulton, would have been more interesting gameplay-wise.

Fulton was one of my concerns pregame... But are you saying you would want all the prisoners and crap we have to extract be by helicopter, or are you saying redesign the game and limit extractions completely?

Cause if it's choice number 1 it would be the biggest pain in the ass ever.

 

[SMZC]

I dunno, I found the open world to be rather dull and empty, and in Afghanistan's case filled with dumb walls that more or less force you down certain roads anyway.

There are lots of tiny outposts and a small handful of larger "base" type areas. When you're infiltrating those, it's fun, but all the in between areas are just boring. I'm finding myself firmly in the camp that would've preferred ten or fifteen Camp Omega sized sandboxes to explore versus a whole open world.

But it isn't open world done right, not at all. There is almost nothing this game benefits from being open world. GZ wasn't open world and it used the same mechanics, the reason camp omega is fondly remembered is because it was one super well designed area that was a sandbox. MGSV just has a SHIT TON of nothing between it's fun sandboxes.

I agree that there is not a whole lot in TPP between outposts, but when I call the game "an open world done right", I mean in the sense that the open world is actually there in service of the core game mechanics, rather than serving either as a hub where the player activates linear quests, or a giant space of nothingness in which you collect stuff or tick boxes, both of these being virtually the only ways in which open world games work nowadays.

MGSV's open world is used to reckon bases from all kinds of places before your infiltration/attack, it allows you to infiltrate wherever you want, or to escape from any place the instant that things don't go your way. You can snipe some targets from giants distances, move on to a new location while letting the enemy focus their mortar fire on your previous sniping position, rinse and repeat. Things like that, which really set MGSV apart from other so-called open world games, and that just wouldn't be possible without the otherwise admittedly big empty areas.

I'm actually also of the opinion that Camp Omega is the best designed level out of all of MGSV, and I would have admittedly loved to see bigger military bases like that in TPP. Nonetheless, TPP still features superb level design (speaking strictly about the outposts here). Also, implying that Ground Zeroes is not open world is not really accurate. At the very least, GZ features a semi-open world, this being the reason why both GZ and TPP play virtually identical, since the tactics and style of play that you use in one can be used in the other.

 

[Tain]

Ultimately I agree that the game would be better with more consideration needed when using the Fulton. A strict limit of 3-5 per mission would have ruled. Even a simple limitation of an A ranking, as seen on other tools, would have been nice.

 

[Arttemis]

the problem here was not the fulton. it was me. i got greedy.

Sure, the problem's not the fulton specifically. It's the base building mechanics associated with extractions, in general. They're way too grindy, way too important, and constantly nag at the back of the players head because if they don't get the good soldier, they're just going to have to do it later, and then hundreds more times on top of that, too.

It's not just a matter of deciding to fulton someone. It's the fact that you're actively punished by not extracting as many good soldiers you come across as possible. If you don't extract over 1000 enemies, you're not going to be able to access the variety of gear in the game.

The game has so many options using so many different tools - and those tools are locked behind hundreds of fulton extractions.

That's the problem. It's bad design, and it hampers the whole experience when you're pigeon holed into one type of grindy gameplay just to unlock a larger variety of gameplay - and that grind is insanely long.

 

[Alienous]

Fulton was one of my concerns pregame... But are you saying you would want all the prisoners and crap we have to extract be by helicopter, or are you saying redesign the game and limit extractions completely?

Cause if it's choice number 1 it would be the biggest pain in the ass ever.

I'm saying that the game should have put more of an emphasis on gaining volunteers due to your actions. So instead of "I'll Fulton this base of people" it would be "I'll do this side-op and gain a reputation that nets me X amount of recruits". Then remove the Fulton and have extracting targets limited to bringing them to a helicopter, or exfiltrating an area with them.

 

[Kevin Shields]

I'm saying that the game should have put more of an emphasis on gaining volunteers due to your actions. So instead of "I'll Fulton this base of people" it would be "I'll do this side-op and gain a reputation that nets me X amount of recruits". Then remove the Fulton and have extracting targets limited to bringing them to a helicopter, or exfiltrating an area with them.

That could hve been viable, but I think the better idea would be to limit fultons to 5 for each deployment and mission which would still highlight the awesome aspect of fultoning without making it such a giant part of the game.

 

[JackelZXA]

Saving Chico from the CIA is not the same as recruiting child soldiers and sending them out to war.

You recruit Chico (And Paz, who at the time is known to be "a child") and you put him on your intel team as one of MSF's spies. This is a member of your army. You're just not putting him in firefights. Big Boss has his own reason for taking kids from their nations, to raise them into soldiers using more human means than feeding them gunpowder and threatening their life on a daily basis like the Patriots did with Raiden and other child soldiers.

It could be theorized that, were MG2 to recieve a remake with a more fleshed out narrative, that Big Boss rescued these children from Patriot camps as well. Kaz's failure to reintegrate the child soldiers from V into regular lives could be said to inform the real BB's decision to keep them while giving them a better future within that war state. As of MG2's point in the canon, BB would know more about the world and cipher/the patriots than Solid Snake would for years to come. Big Boss isn't doing it to be evil, he's waging his war on Zero's legacy. (At this point, it's debateable if he knows Zero is braindead or not)

In Peace Walker you are fostering a world where soldiers always have a place, but it is in opposition to soldiers dieing for no real purpose. He's still a PMC, war mongerer, in Peace Walker, but you're seeing it from his perspective. PW's purpose was to explain what Outer Heaven's purpose was. V furthers that, even if you're a different Big Boss, you're still playing your role in that legacy, and your actions resonate with Cipher, Ocelot, Kaz, Eli, Mantis, and the real Big Boss. All these characters go on to have bigger influences on the later story, because of the war Venom Snake lead against Cipher as Big Boss.

Huey and Strangelove willingly join Big Boss. You could argue that the Fulton system is him kidnapping people but it'd be a pretty weak argument when it's just a gameplay mechanic to get items. Most of the people you Fulton will immediately work for you without question and very rarely do they get sent to the Brig.

You do kidnap people, but Marv is not a direct comparison. Kidnapping Marv is dirty business, but now that we know that Big Boss was against Cipher, and logic would state that by the time of MG2: the Patriots, that he'd be grabbing the Oilix formula to take power away from the world economy, the Patriots' economy.

Huey is the one who wanted to build Zeke and Miller is the one who wanted the nuke using the excuse that the radiation was poisoning the river. They both convinced Big Boss but these aren't actions that Big Boss actively chose to undertake under his own volition.

Big Boss agreed to their suggestions and supported it. He is the boss, he makes the last call, and he chose to push the ZEKE initiative and harbor a nuke.

Big Boss was actively trying to stop nuclear holocaust while in Metal Gear 1 and 2 he is threatening the world with it.

We have Big Boss' perspective, he's the one who straight up tells you what his goals are in the MSX games. There's nothing gray about what he was doing.
And even he had the reason that he was taking out the Patriots, which was Solidus and Liquid Ocelot's reasons for doing things too - that doesn't make him a good person. He is still a villain.

You have to remember, he is threatening a world run by Cipher and The Patriots. This is the kind of "Oh Solidus was a hero afterall" looking back with new information you have to do. Big Boss wasn't trying to take over the world and rule it all, he was trying to create the world that the boss envisioned, while also battling Zero's interpretation. Big Boss's words at the end of MG2 with details of the war against zero, cipher, and the patriots. PW, V, and 4 all "address" the MSX games in different ways. Yeah he's villainous, but he's still a gray character because in later games we are given noble aspects to attribute to these actions from Zanzibar Land.

MGSV doesn't do anything to pave the way for the MSX games. It doesn't actually show Big Boss doing things that would lead him to being a villain and it doesn't show the Medic losing his mind either when he's a big ol' goody twoshoes in MGSV.

That's because the medic losing his mind and big boss having a downfall are just things the fans would have read from the trailers, not things that are needed to continue the canon into MG1 and MG2. Solid Snake in those games is on the side of the patriots, without knowing it, which would be more than enough reason for Venom and Big Boss to be against him.

4 and PW made BB's actions in the MSX games less evil, and if Kojima remade them, they'd follow this trend. Fans only want there to be a cool downturn, but that doesn't ACTUALLY fit with the canon as of the last few kojima games. (Why would big boss suddenly turn good in 4 if he was supposedly a maniac villain out to destroy the world in his last memories of MG2? That would make zero sense.)

 

[Freedom = $1.05]

See that's fine and all but a well designed game gives you incentives and alternatives to such things.

The answer to such criticisms should NEVER be "just don't use it". If the game is going to give me something as powerful as wormhole give me a reason to not use it.

Make wormhole be limited to 5 uses per mission as opposed to 48 with no ability to call for more.

Design a game that actually uses all of its mechanics together instead of creating contradictions within them.

Why would I conserve ammo when I can just call for more on the fly? Make ammo drops alert every enemy to your position, make them all flock to you even if you call it out in the middle of the desert.

Why would I use any gun over a silenced gun? Give them purpose, design encounters that favor them. Honestly why are these even shotguns in the game? They don't take out the heavily armored units very well, and they are an instant alert? I use shotguns because they're fun to screw around with but every time I do the game penalizes me in some way, either by giving me demon points, by tanking my rank. by dropping my fame, or by getting me killed because I put a base on full alert by shooting it once.

Don't get me wrong MGSV is a damn fine game, and I enjoyed every single one of my 130+ hours but goddamn does it give me some immense frustrations.

It makes me do all the heavy lifting.

I see a lot of people arguing that A) they can't show restraint and B) the game is too restrictive.

Not entirely sure which it is then.

I never found myself need to grind out for MB or whatever. I think i redid maybe two missions to specifically fulton a specialist in my 75 hours with the game. And fultoning was never some sort of perfect solution. So often, the risk with the fulton was alerting a nearby guard to the fact that there was a random guy floating 10 feet in front of them. I had to know when to use it and how. And what would happen if i fultoned a whole base? Fuck me, now my divisions were full and i had to start kicking people off. So i stopped that shit because it was getting tedious to micromanage my base.

Wormholes are great and, sure, they take a lot of the risk away. But some of you are complaining that the game got too easy with them. ant you can have it, it's designed to allow it

uh, dont use it?

MGSV lets you start a mission with almost nothing in your loadouts. If that's the game you want you can have it, it's designed to allow it in much the same sense that it's designed to let you go fucking nuts, too. Both options are totally doable, really, and even the 15 minute kill all tanks mission early on gives you the option of stealing a soviet weapon halfway through the mission to let you complete the objective

and the most i ever felt that i was restricted by the game's MB expansions shit was when i needed fuel resources, which i then did a deployment and pretty much was fine 36 minutes later.

Like i said earlier, i understand the complaints that the story was poo. What i didn't expect was anyone to complain about how the game plays. It's top to bottom one of the best feeling and enjoyable games i've ever played period. it's just got a lot of bullshit around the edges.

 

[Arttemis]

I'm saying that the game should have put more of an emphasis on gaining volunteers due to your actions. So instead of "I'll Fulton this base of people" it would be "I'll do this side-op and gain a reputation that nets me X amount of recruits". Then remove the Fulton and have extracting targets limited to bringing them to a helicopter, or exfiltrating an area with them.

Ground Zeroes and the first mission with Miller is all the proof needed to show how great gameplay is when you have to stealthfully extract prisoners yourself, not just having it done by some easy-mode magic balloon.

The extraction grind is a big thorn in this game's side.

 

[Kevin Shields]

Ground Zeroes and the first mission with Miller is all the proof needed to show how great gameplay is when you have to stealthfully extract prisoners yourself, not just having it done by some easy-mode magic balloon.

The extraction grind is a big thorn in this game's side.

I think there at least 5 main missions where you can't use fulton and I think it was a great balance with the fultoning and I feel like I got the ground zeroes tension and the convenience of fultoning

 

[Griss]

I can't believe the amount of people that say that GZ was not a better experience... it just was. Wether it was because it was smaller, or cheaper, or introduced early. The fact remains that the game had more personality. Even if it was part of TPP initially.

The game is contained, it has a story that goes full circle and its an even that has progression. Also design is more intricate, and its more interesting.

This and the prologue, tied with Mission 43 were full of MGS feels. Why is this so hard to see?

Completely agree regarding GZ, but as for TPP I felt the prologue was over-scripted, over-long and generally weak, and by mission 43 I had mentally checked out completely. On the other hand, missions 1 (Kaz rescue), 6 (Honeybee), 12 (Hellbound), and 28 (Code Talker) were where the game really, really sang. And when it was good, it was as good or better as anything I've ever played.

That said, the awful grind required to build up your Mother Base puts a mellow over the entire experience because anyone who wants to get the best gear is required to extract the fuck out of way too many people - like twenty times too many people. It's utterly insane the amount of soldiers you have to extract to get the highest ranks and get the best gear. It's not enjoyable when it becomes a seemingly endless task as opposed to one option.

Griss's suggestions of drastically diminishing the focus on the fulton and extractions would really encourage players to try more options - because there is absolutely no denying that extractions and base building are far too drawn out and important.

Cheers. 'Twenty times too many people' is exactly how I'd put it. I just wanted to play another way, but felt like I shouldn't because of that stupid grind. Better expressed by the next comment....

It is addictive, but I don't think that's a good thing.

It's just a layer on top of everything else that reduces the amount of 'valid' options for playing the game. It makes non-lethality seem less like a preference and more like the right way to play the game.

There are a few things it subtly adds to the gameplay, like trying to work your way around killing specific soldiers you might want to take back to Mother Base. But even then I think reducing 'special' soldiers to easily distinguishable ones (for instance having them wear a different type of clothing) and having a constant optional 'objective' being recruiting them via helicopter, rather than everyone in the base via Fulton, would have been more interesting gameplay-wise.

Agree with all of that. Might have given you a reason to free-roam between posts, too.

Fulton worked better in Peace Walker for 2 reasons, your base was much smaller and you could specifically farm units with the stats you wanted so you didn't feel like fultoning everything was the best strategy, unless it was a vehicle boss you wanted to non lethal kill. Still though Fulton extraction is getting the same criticisms the Tranq pistol got in MGS2, it gave you an easier way to non lethal enemies because you could effectively choke them out from range. The risk of having to go in there and punch them around till they passed out was gone, in many ways the tranq gun is still a problem to the series because 90% of the time it's all you feel compelled to use.



See that's fine and all but a well designed game gives you incentives and alternatives to such things.

The answer to such criticisms should NEVER be "just don't use it". If the game is going to give me something as powerful as wormhole give me a reason to not use it.

Make wormhole be limited to 5 uses per mission as opposed to 48 with no ability to call for more.

Design a game that actually uses all of its mechanics together instead of creating contradictions within them.

Why would I conserve ammo when I can just call for more on the fly? Make ammo drops alert every enemy to your position, make them all flock to you even if you call it out in the middle of the desert.

Why would I use any gun over a silenced gun? Give them purpose, design encounters that favor them. Honestly why are these even shotguns in the game? They don't take out the heavily armored units very well, and they are an instant alert? I use shotguns because they're fun to screw around with but every time I do the game penalizes me in some way, either by giving me demon points, by tanking my rank. by dropping my fame, or by getting me killed because I put a base on full alert by shooting it once.

Don't get me wrong MGSV is a damn fine game, and I enjoyed every single one of my 130+ hours but goddamn does it give me some immense frustrations.

It makes me do all the heavy lifting.

Agree with all of this. I buy a game for the designers to set the rules, and make them interesting. There's so much in MGS V that it appears the game just gives you no reason to touch unless you're just 'fucking around'. And it's a game with so many grinds that 'fucking around' never feels like a good use of your time.

Totally agree with the supply drops. If they hadn't existed it would have forced me to change my playstyle on the fly. I ended up trying to resist using them, but in the heat of battle always returned to them. Fascinating point re the tranq gun, which I would see as a Metal Gear staple. Until enemies started wearing helmets I was starting to come to the same conclusion as you did regarding it. Luckily the various different types of equipment meant that problem faded, in my opinion, as the game progressed. If they had done something similar for the fulton then a lot of my complaints would have been eased.

want to take out tanks with stealth sans fulton? mines, explosives, penetrating weapons, missiles. you're not limited at all. the tanks aren't pushovers anyway, and hardly 'giant crates'. if you've got sentries patrolling around it you're risking exposure to fulton it. when taking out the sentries around the tank, you've got the risk of putting the unit on alert, or the tank just hitting its horn to wake them up if you used a tranq. god forbid you get tanks, snipers, sentries, and a helicopter. if you want a test of skill, that's it. fulton or not.

Sure, but why would you use all that awesome stuff when the game is telling you 'Here's the real tool for the job'?

I've finished every side op. There are a TON of 'Tank Unit' and 'Armor Unit' side ops. Not one tank ever, even once, spotted me. Each one was a box I had to sneak behind and fulton, nothing more whatsoever. The only time in the entire game tanks came into play properly for me was Mission 46, and it was quite fun. Of course, then you look at the mission objectives and it's like 'Extract all of them!!!!!'

Well, fuck!

 

[Berserker976]

I'm saying that the game should have put more of an emphasis on gaining volunteers due to your actions. So instead of "I'll Fulton this base of people" it would be "I'll do this side-op and gain a reputation that nets me X amount of recruits". Then remove the Fulton and have extracting targets limited to bringing them to a helicopter, or exfiltrating an area with them.

I would even go one step further, change Demon Points to Big Boss points and tie the quality and quantity of your volunteers to them, so that at a certain point in the game it becomes more beneficial to kill people and build your reputation as a ruthless mercenary leader.

 

[Drencrom]

Fulton worked better in Peace Walker for 2 reasons, your base was much smaller and you could specifically farm units with the stats you wanted so you didn't feel like fultoning everything was the best strategy, unless it was a vehicle boss you wanted to non lethal kill. Still though Fulton extraction is getting the same criticisms the Tranq pistol got in MGS2, it gave you an easier way to non lethal enemies because you could effectively choke them out from range. The risk of having to go in there and punch them around till they passed out was gone, in many ways the tranq gun is still a problem to the series because 90% of the time it's all you feel compelled to use.



See that's fine and all but a well designed game gives you incentives and alternatives to such things.

The answer to such criticisms should NEVER be "just don't use it". If the game is going to give me something as powerful as wormhole give me a reason to not use it.

Make wormhole be limited to 5 uses per mission as opposed to 48 with no ability to call for more.

Design a game that actually uses all of its mechanics together instead of creating contradictions within them.

Why would I conserve ammo when I can just call for more on the fly? Make ammo drops alert every enemy to your position, make them all flock to you even if you call it out in the middle of the desert.

Why would I use any gun over a silenced gun? Give them purpose, design encounters that favor them. Honestly why are these even shotguns in the game? They don't take out the heavily armored units very well, and they are an instant alert? I use shotguns because they're fun to screw around with but every time I do the game penalizes me in some way, either by giving me demon points, by tanking my rank. by dropping my fame, or by getting me killed because I put a base on full alert by shooting it once.

Don't get me wrong MGSV is a damn fine game, and I enjoyed every single one of my 130+ hours but goddamn does it give me some immense frustrations.

It makes me do all the heavy lifting.

Yeah, the game straight up penalizes you for using any other weapons than the tranq guns, which I guess could be a meta way of saying "killing is bad and isn't the right thing to do", but it's a game full of guns and about war so what's the point? And wasn't "become a demon" part of the marketing anyway?

 

[JackelZXA]

What? You're outright penalized for killing soldiers due to not being able to build your base up and improve your gear. The wild variety of gear is the basis for how expansive your options become later game, and to create it, you are 100% required to fulton an unreasonably high, seemingly never-ending amount of soldiers.

Yeah, you can say it's a choice, but choosing not to fucks the player over pretty royally. On top of that, evidently you're demonized for killing by being covered in blood and growing a horn. The game definiely pushes you to fulton the fuck out of everyone, and it diminishes the experience a ton.

I got by in my progression by selling resources, vehicles, and platform weapons I didn't need, and by gaining volunteers and deployment mission recruitments. There isn't one way to play, I picked the way that let me be a horrible murderer and I still got a high level base and high level weapons developed and a fully staffed mother base. (You can only staff a couple hundred guys at a time anyways) My fast and loose style worked for me and I didn't miss a beat. My heroism went up because I was doing side missions as I drove from base to base, and doing anything that buffed that. (I should say that I didn't JUST run around killing dudes, I probably used every type of strategy from lethal to non-lethal, but by the second half, lethal became my primary tactic with captures being something I'd do if I could manage. It wasn't my priority and the game didn't punish me. It let me play how I wanted. That's what makes it so awesome.

 

[Crypt]

Fulton worked better in Peace Walker for 2 reasons, your base was much smaller and you could specifically farm units with the stats you wanted so you didn't feel like fultoning everything was the best strategy, unless it was a vehicle boss you wanted to non lethal kill. Still though Fulton extraction is getting the same criticisms the Tranq pistol got in MGS2, it gave you an easier way to non lethal enemies because you could effectively choke them out from range. The risk of having to go in there and punch them around till they passed out was gone, in many ways the tranq gun is still a problem to the series because 90% of the time it's all you feel compelled to use.

See that's fine and all but a well designed game gives you incentives and alternatives to such things.

The answer to such criticisms should NEVER be "just don't use it". If the game is going to give me something as powerful as wormhole give me a reason to not use it.

Make wormhole be limited to 5 uses per mission as opposed to 48 with no ability to call for more.

I agree with much of what you say, but the wormhole fulton is loud as hell. It alerts anyone within about 30 meters and they come flocking to you. It's actually really annoying sometimes. I think it's balanced in comparison to the balloon fulton.

 

[giancarlo123x]

I'd take 10 ground zeroes quality maps over these 2 large landscapes filled with nothing. Out of every single game in the series this one specifically screams for a s-stance version the most. There hasn't been one since Portable Ops+ sadly.

 

[Reebot]

I see a lot of people arguing that A) they can't show restraint and B) the game is too restrictive.

Not entirely sure which it is then.

Ok I'll make one last attempt to explain via contrast and then I'll write you off as hopeless.

So right off the bat, no, no one is arguing A. If you think they are you're just plain wrong. Not even worth discussing.

Alright so now imagine you're playing Snake Eater and you come to me and say, "This game is too easy if I just kill everyone." I respond, "Well you don't have to."

Why is my "you don't have to" here more valid than yours in regards to MGS V? Because Snake Eater actively rewards this restraint. You get a higher score, you walk down a shorter river, and the game basically says "hey good job buddy, you did a good thing."

Now, MGS V actively discourages this restraint. You miss out on guys, you miss out on money, you cannot progress through the deployment missions, you get a lower score, and you miss out on additional plot and story.

Surely you see the difference.

Intentionally crippling yourself is not the same thing as abiding by a harder set of rules

 

[Lostconfused]

And what would happen if i fultoned a whole base? Fuck me, now my divisions were full and i had to start kicking people off. So i stopped that shit because it was getting tedious to micromanage my base.

Actually the game will do all of that automatically for you by assigning the right people to the right slots and dismissing everyone you don't need. So fultoning everyone is perfectly valid and might even be faster than being selective.

See some people might not have found base micromanagement to be tedious at all because there was no reason to engage with it like you did. Weird how that works huh.

uh, dont use it?

Like, people were just over this, and are still providing arguments that this is not a good option.
uh

MGSV lets you start a mission with almost nothing in your loadouts. If that's the game you want you can have it, it's designed to allow it in much the same sense that it's designed to let you go fucking nuts, too.

Nope. You are forced to have equipment in specific slots. The only way to have this is via subsistence missions.

Like i said earlier, i understand the complaints that the story was poo. What i didn't expect was anyone to complain about how the game plays. It's top to bottom one of the best feeling and enjoyable games i've ever played period. it's just got a lot of bullshit around the edges.

That's a sign to actually go ahead and read other opinions, give them some thought. Some serious thought, figure out why your expectations were so out of line with reality.

 

[JackelZXA]

Ok I'll make one last attempt to explain via contrast and then I'll write you off as hopeless.

So right off the bat, no, no one is arguing A. If you think they are you're just plain wrong. Not even worth discussing.

Alright so now imagine you're playing Snake Eater and you come to me and say, "This game is too easy if I just kill everyone." I respond, "Well you don't have to."

Why is my "you don't have to" here more valid than yours in regards to MGS V? Because Snake Eater actively rewards this restraint. You get a higher score, you walk down a shorter river, and the game basically says "hey good job buddy, you did a good thing."

Now, MGS V actively discourages this restraint. You miss out on guys, you miss out on money, you cannot progress through the deployment missions, you get a lower score, and you miss out on additional plot and story.

Surely you see the difference.

Intentionally crippling yourself is not the same thing as abiding by a harder set of rules

I always kill when it is convenient, and tranq if it prevents an alert in 3 because the score at the end doesn't matter to me and it never did. The Sorrow's boss fight is the only real penalization. Beyond that, I love the shotgun to death. A practical Rambo has always been the best way to play metal gear games. Use every weapon. Non Lethal and Lethal. I can't imagine people who only use the Mk22 hush puppy and slowly drag every single body into a locker in mgs2 are having nearly as much fun as a practical playthrough. (I still use hush puppy and lockers, but I don't hamper myself to only use it. I learned to play effectively in caution state and it makes the game a million times more fun. Kill when you need to kill, don't get caught, if you do just lose them.)

What I don't get is people who think you have to hide until caution goes away when really you just need to drop the evasion meter, and then not get seen. Caution isn't a punishment, it's a variation.

 

[Not Spaceghost]

I see a lot of people arguing that A) they can't show restraint and B) the game is too restrictive.

Not entirely sure which it is then.

I never found myself need to grind out for MB or whatever. I think i redid maybe two missions to specifically fulton a specialist in my 75 hours with the game. And fultoning was never some sort of perfect solution. So often, the risk with the fulton was alerting a nearby guard to the fact that there was a random guy floating 10 feet in front of them. I had to know when to use it and how. And what would happen if i fultoned a whole base? Fuck me, now my divisions were full and i had to start kicking people off. So i stopped that shit because it was getting tedious to micromanage my base.

Wormholes are great and, sure, they take a lot of the risk away. But some of you are complaining that the game got too easy with them. ant you can have it, it's designed to allow it

uh, dont use it?

MGSV lets you start a mission with almost nothing in your loadouts. If that's the game you want you can have it, it's designed to allow it in much the same sense that it's designed to let you go fucking nuts, too. Both options are totally doable, really, and even the 15 minute kill all tanks mission early on gives you the option of stealing a soviet weapon halfway through the mission to let you complete the objective

and the most i ever felt that i was restricted by the game's MB expansions shit was when i needed fuel resources, which i then did a deployment and pretty much was fine 36 minutes later

It's not about showing restraint, it's about not being given proper incentives to use something else. I don't understand how you don't understand this. As far as I'm concerned wormhole is a super weapon since it's an end game unlock but I take issue with the fact that it isn't treated as such.

The game is just poorly balanced.

Do you know why people use wormhole? Because the alternative is just tedious, I could wormhole people out right where they are or I could move them outside and then do it. It doesn't really matter, using the regular fulton balloons when they're maxed out is essentially the same as wormhole only they can get shot down and you need to do it outside.

Also you dont have to micro your base EVER outside of the kikongo outbreak. The game always replaces your lowest rank units with newer ones, spill over units go to the waiting room and when the waiting room gets full they get auto dismissed. Basically it's automated flawlessly so all you need to do is fulton everything in sight.

The game isn't restrictive on a surface level, but it is on a fundamental level. You have this great weapon selection but you can only take 3 and you can't have an SMG in the primary or carry 3 rocket launchers. You have this great weapon selection but half the guns are basically just different models for the same class, what's the difference between the SZ 336 smg and the ZE'EV smg? The stat bars tell me they're different but when I use them they feel the same.

You can make a lot of choices but so few of them feel meaningful that ultimately you're just gonna do what is the most efficient thing.

Also the load out forces you to equip a primary and a secondary. Very lame.

 

[GreyOcelot]

Seems like the only people complaining about the gameplay are the same people who are angry about the game's story. On some "i need to justify my feelings" shit.

The gameplay is way more open and free than any mgs game. It's way more free and open in terms of gameplay options than the average game, the average open world game. Complaints about this shit is nitpicking at most. If only other open world games like batman, witcher, and gta had the kind of options for how you approach a mission. Open world mission design is largely linear and on-rails. Mgsv is the exception to that rule.

 

[Freedom = $1.05]

Your intentionally crippling is my I can play it however I like, consequences be damned, and I get an S rank, a ton of GMP for getting that rank, and my game is actually a lot shorter if I shoot the shit out of everything and then ride a helicopter out.

So again, you can show restraint with your gear (which, hey, it's actually encouraged by making your GMP deployment cost lower) or you can go bananas and ride a tank into battle and send a helicopter in for support fire and light shit up. Or you can just bring a pistol, sneak around slowly and do dirt quietly, and call it a day.

Shit that almost seems like the game was designed to allow for a variety of approaches with risks and rewards and stuff. Weird.

 

[Reebot]

I always kill when it is convenient, and tranq if it prevents an alert in 3 because the score at the end doesn't matter to me and it never did. The Sorrow's boss fight is the only real penalization. Beyond that, I love the shotgun to death. A practical Rambo has always been the best way to play metal gear games. Use every weapon. Non Lethal and Lethal. I can't imagine people who only use the Mk22 hush puppy and slowly drag every single body into a locker in mgs2 are having nearly as much fun as a practical playthrough. (I still use hush puppy and lockers, but I don't hamper myself to only use it. I learned to play effectively in caution state and it makes the game a million times more fun. Kill when you need to kill, don't get caught, if you do just lose them.)

What I don't get is people who think you have to hide until caution goes away when really you just need to drop the evasion meter, and then not get seen. Caution isn't a punishment, it's a variation.

...Not what I was talking about.

Everyone can play Snake Eater how they want but its inarguable that it rewards non-lethal play. You literally get in-game rewards.

Its similarly inarguable that MSG V punishes lethal, non-use of fulton. You literally lose in-game rewards.

Your intentionally crippling is my I can play it however I like, consequences be damned, and I get an S rank, a ton of GMP for getting that rank, and my game is actually a lot shorter if I shoot the shit out of everything and then ride a helicopter out.

So again, you can show restraint with your gear (which, hey, it's actually encouraged by making your GMP deployment cost lower) or you can go bananas and ride a tank into battle and send a helicopter in for support fire and light shit up. Or you can just bring a pistol and call it a day.

Shit that almost seems like the game was designed to allow for a variety of approaches with risks and rewards and stuff. Weird.

Sigh. Well I only have myself to blame for thinking you could understand.

 

[Alienous]

Your intentionally crippling is my I can play it however I like, consequences be damned, and I get an S rank, a ton of GMP for getting that rank, and my game is actually a lot shorter if I shoot the shit out of everything and then ride a helicopter out.

So again, you can show restraint with your gear (which, hey, it's actually encouraged by making your GMP deployment cost lower) or you can go bananas and ride a tank into battle and send a helicopter in for support fire and light shit up. Or you can just bring a pistol and call it a day.

Shit that almost seems like the game was designed to allow for a variety of approaches with risks and rewards and stuff. Weird.

Of course you still have options, and a variety of ways of tackling a mission, but there shouldn't be a 'correct' one, and I think Fultoning in MGSV heavily suggests what that correct way is.

 

[GreyOcelot]

Fultoning and the mission ranking reinforces non-lethality as the correct way to play, drastically reducing your options.

Of course you still have options, and a variety of ways of tackling a mission, but there shouldn't be a 'correct' one, and I think Fultoning in MGSV heavily suggests what that correct way is.

But you can s rank missons even by going lethal and without fultoning

 

[Not Spaceghost]

I agree with much of what you say, but the wormhole fulton is loud as hell. It alerts anyone within about 30 meters and they come flocking to you. It's actually really annoying sometimes. I think it's balanced in comparison to the balloon fulton.

That is very true, wormhole is much more visible than the balloon, but few times will seeing the wormhole actually lead to a full combat alert, most of the time it just makes them go "DIMITRI 4 WTF WAS THAT?!"

Yeah, the game straight up penalizes you for using any other weapons than the tranq guns, which I guess could be a meta way of saying "killing is bad and isn't the right thing to do", but it's a game full of guns and about war so what's the point? And wasn't "become a demon" part of the marketing anyway?

Right it is an MGS game after all you should be avoiding getting kills but when 80% of your arsenal is lethal weaponry you gotta wonder why? It'd be more interesting if they had other stuff in there.

MGS games always give you tons of lethal stuff, but they also aren't grading you every 15 minutes.

 

[Masaki_]

Guys complaining about fulton can always choose not to use it. MGSV is an open game in many ways, including how you play. There's always gonna be a faster and more efficient way to complete every mission, but you don't have to do it.

That's why I'm not bothered when I see a video of someone blazing through Mission 30 on D-Walker. I could do that, but I'd rather play in a way that is most fun to me. It's not a game that forces you into overcoming preset challenges.

tl:dr The game values freedom over difficulty.

 

[KarmaCow]

Your intentionally crippling is my I can play it however I like, consequences be damned, and I get an S rank, a ton of GMP for getting that rank, and my game is actually a lot shorter if I shoot the shit out of everything and then ride a helicopter out.

So again, you can show restraint with your gear (which, hey, it's actually encouraged by making your GMP deployment cost lower) or you can go bananas and ride a tank into battle and send a helicopter in for support fire and light shit up. Or you can just bring a pistol, sneak around slowly and do dirt quietly, and call it a day.

Shit that almost seems like the game was designed to allow for a variety of approaches with risks and rewards and stuff. Weird.

I think the problem is that last part, there is little risk in the end because pretty much anything is viable. It comes down if you find your play style intrinsically enjoyable because the game doesn't really care either way.

Even before the end game where really, who cares about building the base, I didn't find it that stressful losing a certain soldier because there are another billion out there.

 

[Griss]

I agree that there is not a whole lot in TPP between outposts, but when I call the game "an open world done right", I mean in the sense that the open world is actually there in service of the core game mechanics, rather than serving either as a hub where the player activates linear quests, or a giant space of nothingness in which you collect stuff or tick boxes, both of these being virtually the only ways in which open world games work nowadays.

MGSV's open world is used to reckon bases from all kinds of places before your infiltration/attack, it allows you to infiltrate wherever you want, or to escape from any place the instant that things don't go your way. You can snipe some targets from giants distances, move on to a new location while letting the enemy focus their mortar fire on your previous sniping position, rinse and repeat. Things like that, which really set MGSV apart from other so-called open world games, and that just wouldn't be possible without the otherwise admittedly big empty areas.

I'm actually also of the opinion that Camp Omega is the best designed level out of all of MGSV, and I would have admittedly loved to see bigger military bases like that in TPP. Nonetheless, TPP still features superb level design (speaking strictly about the outposts here). Also, implying that Ground Zeroes is not open world is not really accurate. At the very least, GZ features a semi-open world, this being the reason why both GZ and TPP play virtually identical, since the tactics and style of play that you use in one can be used in the other.

Here's the thing, though. MGS V's world was a giant space of nothingness, far more than many other open worlds. There are no civilians, nothing interesting to find beyond the resources or the odd uncommon animal. Any side quest is better off selected from a menu and 90%+ of those happen in bases anyway.

As to the bolded (and your whole second paragraph, really) - no one is complaining about the bases and 400m around the bases. That is the space in which everything you've just said is great about the open world occurs. Beyond that 400m, nothing happens. You might find a truck (astonishingly rarely) patrolling the roads. That's it. Enemies don't follow you out there, it's too far to scout from, it's just land there to be traversed and nothing else, and there's nothing interesting to it from a visual or world-building point of view either.

The bases are really, really well designed for the most part. No one denies that. The big buffer zone around the bases that allows for scouting and multiple points of ingress are essential. Together we'll call that a 'zone'. But all of those 'zones' needing to be together on the same map? With all of that traversal and dead, empty space? I can't see it at all.

The 'zones' are great. The open world is as poor a world as I've come across in some time. In particular, the 'roads' in Afghanistan which hem you in just demonstrate to me that the game designers knew that this was exactly the kind of game and gameplay that they were developing. A game of levels and zones rather than a consistent world, a game where you select missions from a menu rather than stumbling into them naturally.

 

[Freedom = $1.05]

I honestly didn't know about the micromanaging stuff being automatic

So the game actually is even better than i described it earlier. My bad.

Sigh. Well I only have myself to blame for thinking you could understand.

I just think your comparisons are flawed and do not present your views very well. I'm working with what youre giving me here

 

[Alienous]

But you can s rank missons even by going lethal and without fultoning

You can, but the conditions for doing so are more harsh that if you were to go non-lethal.

Ultimately what I'm saying is that I think these systems do nothing to aid the sense of an abundance of options available at any time. Tranq-ing people feels 'correct', and the Fulton system reinforces that notion, so instead of things like 'Oh, the guards are wearing helmets now' making opt for a lethal rifle with greater bullet penetration I still felt very tied to tranq-ing and Fultoning people. It's this element of the core gameplay that alienates options, and doesn't really have a lethal trade-off.

 

[Spaghetti]

Sure, the problem's not the fulton specifically. It's the base building mechanics associated with extractions, in general. They're way too grindy, way too important, and constantly nag at the back of the players head because if they don't get the good soldier, they're just going to have to do it later, and then hundreds more times on top of that, too.

It's not just a matter of deciding to fulton someone. It's the fact that you're actively punished by not extracting as many good soldiers you come across as possible. If you don't extract over 1000 enemies, you're not going to be able to access the variety of gear in the game.

The game has so many options using so many different tools - and those tools are locked behind hundreds of fulton extractions.

That's the problem. It's bad design, and it hampers the whole experience when you're pigeon holed into one type of grindy gameplay just to unlock a larger variety of gameplay - and that grind is insanely long.

it's risk/reward. as i said. you risk exposure to get the soldier, the soldier raises mother base's stats, you get to develop more tools. same with dispatch missions for blueprints. hell, even with cassette tapes, resources, blueprints in the field. nothing is free. and that's the point. the game even has this system tipped in the player's favour by having good soldiers still generate outside missions in the form of volunteers and those found in mostly risk-free free roam. with genuinely few exceptions, you can play the game with the starting equipment just fine. of course though, who wants to do that? so you use risk to gain reward. it's standard game design. getting something for nothing isn't fun.

you shouldn't be fultoning everything in sight, and the game actually discourages it. for one, once you reach higher heroism levels you'll still be seeing C and D ranks roaming among the A++s and S ranks. there's an inherent risk and limitation on using the fulton. it can be seen, heard, and shot down. you risk being spotted, losing a resource, etc. there's a limit on fultoning based on your inventory, and your gmp. so why can you get more fulton supplies and still fulton while in the red? because the game lets you. it doesn't make you, it lets you if you choose, and honestly it's better than peace walker's solution of limited fultons.

this kind of risk/reward for items has been there since the original mgs. one of mei ling's tips is all about not being greedy. this is just that philosophy applied to people.

i think what people don't realise about mgsv's gameplay is that it works on the limitations the player puts on themselves rather than the game imposing limitations on players. a few days ago i made this post

[total stealth] the war economy is one of the easiest missions i've ever had

get quiet to scope the place out, sneak around to the truck in the hangar, wait for the arms dealer and cfa official to get in, let them drive me to the other hangar, choke out a walker gear guard, tranq both the arms dealer and cfa official, smoke grenade to mask my movements, wormhole both targets, hop on a container, wormhole fulton my way out

to which i got these replies (1) (2) (3)

You can also just tell Quiet to snipe the guy and then run away. Takes like 5 minutes.

Shoot the truck once with a lethal round so they jump out of the truck in the middle of the runway, and tell Quiet to fire and done.... neither the CFA or arms dealers wear helmets.

you don't need to do any of that. Go to the right of the airport, aim your rifle or rocket launcher at the guy on the second floor of the center building, shoot, and bounce back on the helicopter

I ran up and shot the CFA official in the face and exfil'd before the chopper even landed

while they're all valid ways of completing the mission, they're distinctly different than mine. i chose to complete the mission the way i did. i made it sneaky, mischievous, and tense through my own actions. that's kind of what mgsv's gameplay is about written large. you don't play by the game's rules, it plays by yours. that applies to the fulton as well.

 

[Not Spaceghost]

Maybe Kojima's greatest ruse this time was that he tricked us all into thinking we had absolute freedom, but he actually just locked us up in a really big cage.

 

[Freedom = $1.05]

Maybe Kojima's greatest ruse this time was that he tricked us all into thinking we had absolute freedom, but he actually just locked us up in a really big cage.

yeah but you gotta give it to him, this is one of the best cages in gaming.

 

[Not Spaceghost]

yeah but you gotta give it to him, this is one of the best cages in gaming.

That I will definitely agree with.

 

[JackelZXA]

...Not what I was talking about.

Everyone can play Snake Eater how they want but its inarguable that it rewards non-lethal play. You literally get in-game rewards.

Its similarly inarguable that MSG V punishes lethal, non-use of fulton. You literally lose in-game rewards.



Sigh. Well I only have myself to blame for thinking you could understand.

I only ever bothered to get the special items once in each metal gear game for when i want to goof around with stealth camo and such. after that I play how I want and just react to situations in whatever way I deem necessary at the time. You don't need everything, you just need to have fun playing it. Getting everything every time is just OCD. Put your fun first, you don't need every item. you already got them on your third playthrough. this is your seventh/first. There's a time and a place for BBE unlocks. Big Boss Emblem is a special bonus challenge, not the intended path. Big Boss, Snake, and Raiden were killers that killed people all along the way to their goals. Use every item in the game, it's your fault if you hamper yourself to non-lethal only. The game's "punishment" for playing lethaly is very minor if you don't get full alerts. There's a reason they give you silencers for your pistol in mgs1 and your rifle in mgs2.


You lose REDUNDANT ingame rewards by not doing that. You can still gain heroism from capturing bases lethally, and that heroism turns into free A++ and S rank soldiers every time you finish a mission. What exactly am i losing? The volunteers seed their stats the same way that dudes in missions do, only i have a higher percentage of high rank dudes. Like....did you just not experience that much? I captured bases constantly between and during missions, and it was at that halfway point where I was experiencing an embarassment of riches. Like...the game rewards every way of play, not just non-lethal. I fultoned guys sure, but i didnt make it my priority. I made victory my priority, and I have a highly ranked, fully staffed, near double level 4 mother base to show for my playstyle.

 

[Lostconfused]

Seems like the only people complaining about the gameplay are the same people who are angry about the game's story. On some "i need to justify my feelings" shit.

Oh please, pretending that others are not arguing in good faith is about the most asshole thin you can post. If you really think that then don't even bother replying or thinking about it.

 

[Alienous]

Seems like the only people complaining about the gameplay are the same people who are angry about the game's story. On some "i need to justify my feelings" shit.

Or perhaps there are people who perceive flaws in the game, and others who don't see any?

 

[brau]

Completely agree regarding GZ, but as for TPP I felt the prologue was over-scripted, over-long and generally weak, and by mission 43 I had mentally checked out completely. On the other hand, missions 1 (Kaz rescue), 6 (Honeybee), 12 (Hellbound), and 28 (Code Talker) were where the game really, really sang. And when it was good, it was as good or better as anything I've ever played.

Don't get me wrong. I enjoyed those missions. They were fun. but they are not a reocurring event.

I liked those missions where you have no weapons either. Even if it was a rehash of a mission done before.