Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain |OT2| [EXTREME]

Just completed the Bound Dragons event on the first try. Pretty fun. Panicked near the end and tossed sleep grenades at every enemy. lol
 
Just now digging in to this game, I'm on story mission like 6 or 7... does it get better? This is probably the most disappointed i've ever been in a game. Holy moly guacamole is it ever boring.
 
scoobs said:
Just now digging in to this game, I'm on story mission like 6 or 7... does it get better? This is probably the most disappointed i've ever been in a game. Holy moly guacamole is it ever boring.
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Does it get better? Friend, it will only get worse.

Your best move is to abandon all hope for a good/decent/mediocre/poor story, prepare for the worst and just enjoy the gameplay for what it is, as it is literally the only redeeming factor in playing this game.
 
SJRB said:
Does it get better? Friend, it will only get worse.

Your best move is to abandon all hope for a good/decent/mediocre/poor story, prepare for the worst and just enjoy the gameplay for what it is, as it is literally the only redeeming factor in playing this game.
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Alright, I'm out then. Bummer, I really enjoyed MGS4. This is just a shockingly big turd of a campaign.
 
Overcame the issues I had with the UI, and picked up a few stray side ops. Wish I could remember which 'Eliminate' side op this was but it was the most fun I've had with one of them in a long while. Think it was between number 10-14, but non-repeatable IIRC.

You land in a flat, empty desert area near Lamar Khaate Palace with very little immediate cover. Both the enemy chopper and snipers are looking directly at you so the rocky area to the right is where I headed for cover. I like that everything is laid bare before you yet it also makes you an easy target once you begin to fire. Would have enjoyed revisiting it. Might have to try the Infinite Heaven mod.

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After several months of just letting the game run for like 6 hours a day to auto-farm resources I have finally finished the fourth FOB to its max. With 500 troops in each unit the maximum level I was able to get was a 115 in R&D. Good to see that with 4 max FOBs and several dozens of S++ troops you still are nowhere near the requirements to unlock all the gear.
 
Yeah, I felt confident I'd at least be close to the 120s after maxing the third FOB but nope... I'm not far into building the fourth (just the main platform and working on the third for development) and I don't really have any hope I'll be high enough either with the amount of S++ and S+ staff that I have. Plus I'm sick of the FOB events you that can't be farmed in like three minutes or less.
 
Coreda said:
Overcame the issues I had with the UI, and picked up a few stray side ops. Wish I could remember which 'Eliminate' side op this was but it was the most fun I've had with one of them in a long while. Think it was between number 10-14, but non-repeatable IIRC.

You land in a flat, empty desert area near Lamar Khaate Palace with very little immediate cover. Both the enemy chopper and snipers are looking directly at you so the rocky area to the right is where I headed for cover. I like that everything is laid bare before you yet it also makes you an easy target once you begin to fire. Would have enjoyed revisiting it. Might have to try the Infinite Heaven mod.
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Is that where you dropped in? Haha it's so close to the rocket launcher carrier.

There's also a 2-tank side op that spawns around there that I got into trouble once trying to drop-in too close.
 
What I do find annoying is any time you place staff in the waiting room they disappear after you deploy on a mission or return to Motherbase. I have no idea the whereabouts of around 15 staff.

I allocate them there usually to temporarily boost a platform's level, such as R&D, for development requirements.
 
Finally got to mission 46 yesterday after completing a bunch of side missions. I thought it was actually OK, it's fairly trite but it's not terrible in an of itself.

I thought the way the mission
dumped you back to the first mission, only changing after the crash was fairly interesting, though perhaps altering this version of the mission so we don't actually have the tutorial prompts again would make it feel more like a flashback and less like a bug. It is probably more a reflection on modern gaming but several times I wondered if my save was broken, particularly as I had to pause to re-amend my control preferences back to how they were!

The Huey stuff wasn't great and I'm not quite sure what this is supposed to make me, the player, reflect on apart from the naivety of the Diamond Dogs and the lack of player agency to change of influence the story in a meaningful way. I was a restrained Big Boss, I rarely killed and took the stealth root far more often than not, yet when the obvious treachery of Huey becomes known to the crew I still appear to be leading a bunch of blood thirsty thugs...

I did quite like "my" Big Boss' little smirk when he finds out the truth on tape. Mostly because my Big Boss is clearly less of a dick than the now phantom one is and I like to think he is acknowledging that he knew, if not all along, but for most of journey.

Anyway, really good game overall. It could certainly be better but for what it is - a TPS with a smattering of stealth mechanics - I thought it was well worth the time spent. The open world feels a little wasted as it doesn't really feel alive or in any way changing, it's just a backdrop for locations to host missions and [endless] side missions. I *think* overall I would have preferred something more like a number Ground Zeroes-esque experiences taped together and going back and S-ranking stuff that I haven't already will probably be a chore rather than the pleasure it was in GZ.

So just the Quiet stuff left to resolve. I think I'll save that for later as I barely used he in the story so might employ her on mission replays to change it up a bit.
 
Jeeze, what is with this Code Talkers mission?

I can't best the fucking skull snipers. I feel like I die in the cheapest ways imaginable.

Anyone got some solid strategies/shortcuts to beating these fuckers?

Also, if I'm going to plough through the main story missions to "finish" the game, how much farther do I have left to go and what missions should I be focusing on?
 
Javier23 said:
I just crawled my way through before they were able to see me. Works every time.
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You mean, without even fighting them???

What path would you take through that river area? I was under the impression it was closed off until you kill them.

What camo did you use? (really HATE the lack of MGS3 camo index/system)

Edit: NVM. Found a video walkthrough.
 
Well 100% completion is achieved at 361 hours. I'll get the platinum once I build and dismantle a nuke. Other than that I just need to pick a few stray emblem words and develop some more items. What's the deal with the special emblems? I have a whole bunch of question marks left but I can find any info them since I all find is stuff on the ones I already have. Are they from MGO or something?

I probably won't bother with the last few challenge task since I can't seem to do any FOB missions aside from the event ones. I was really looking forward to going after nukes too.
 
I've so far used walkthroughs for the past 5 or 6 story missions because they are stupidly hard with little room for improvising. Fuck Code Talker and fuck Metallic Archaea. I've never felt so frustrated with a game before.

Either your weapons are underdeveloped, your gear is underdeveloped, or the enemies glitch and just ghost back and forth from your bullets or C4.

I hope I'm near the end of the fucking story because all I want to do is farm side missions and grind FOBs so I can just unlock better gear to go back and slaughter these enemies.

Oh yeah, and fuck that stupid staff infection segment. I couldn't do anything but burn through missions just so I wouldn't lose so many staff.

If the gameplay wasn't so good, this game would be in the trash, for real.
 
Code Talker has a lot of ways you can do it, and items aren't really that imported to it or most missions. It has two fully different ending segments based on your earlier actions, and a couple different approaches to the jungle and more so the mansion. Helps to use the southern cliff in the jungle and then the northern backdoor to the mansion, and then follow the river out of the jungle going west.

The parasite epidemic can be solved immediately upon contamination... it's sort of a puzzle I guess but there is a natural way to solve it on your own. Takes a lot of micromanaging though lol.

Metallic Archaea can be ruthless though. It's mostly just learning patterns. Especially the CQC attacks, that you can learn to easily counter with CQC. But it can be relentless to learn the first time. It was by far the hardest boss or event in the game for me, too. I got my ass kicked a solid two hours, made worse by the fact that I brought Quiet with her NL tranquilizer gun and I wear wearing camo fatigues (which for video/headcanon purposes I wanted to get). Helps a lot if she has her fully upgraded anti-materiel rifle, and you're wearing heavy armour. Same with the rocket launcher: the FB MR with the larger ammo capacity helps a lot. Use the warehouse as a defensive wall to call in item drops if you need to switch.
 
After holding up all of Qarya Sakhra Ee using mostly the disarm CQC + 'Get down' maneuver I began traveling to each connected outpost doing the same, developing into a kind of mini goal between saves. Had previously done this for the Central Base Camp alone and likely by the time I'm through I'll have all of the map face down :p Wish there was some achievement for this.

No supply drops, no sniper rounds left, and all the suppressors have worn out, so it's just the occasional hip weapon ammo pickup for the stun rifle (which btw has a surprisingly long incapacitation time vs the other stun guns). It's oddly satisfying roaming around each camp consequence free while everyone is awake.

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KyanMehwulfe said:
Code Talker has a lot of ways you can do it, and items aren't really that imported to it or most missions. It has two fully different ending segments based on your earlier actions, and a couple different approaches to the jungle and more so the mansion. Helps to use the southern cliff in the jungle and then the northern backdoor to the mansion, and then follow the river out of the jungle going west.

The parasite epidemic can be solved immediately upon contamination... it's sort of a puzzle I guess but there is a natural way to solve it on your own. Takes a lot of micromanaging though lol.

Metallic Archaea can be ruthless though. It's mostly just learning patterns. Especially the CQC attacks, that you can learn to easily counter with CQC. But it can be relentless to learn the first time. It was by far the hardest boss or event in the game for me, too. I got my ass kicked a solid two hours, made worse by the fact that I brought Quiet with her NL tranquilizer gun and I wear wearing camo fatigues (which for video/headcanon purposes I wanted to get). Helps a lot if she has her fully upgraded anti-materiel rifle, and you're wearing heavy armour. Same with the rocket launcher: the FB MR with the larger ammo capacity helps a lot. Use the warehouse as a defensive wall to call in item drops if you need to switch.
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Yeah, the contamination wasn't a huge deal after I found the key to the puzzle. Just ended up sending 450+ to quarantine and lost about a dozen or so.

Code Talker wasn't too difficult once I used the cliff face to just skip the Skulls.

But Metallic Arcahea, I think I set up that whole mission wrong. Stealth Camo, Quiet + Tranq rifle, and a under-developed grenade launcher and MG. I ended up dropping a tank, getting that destroyed then called about 5 supply drops to keep my ammo stocked and just whittled them all down.

I know the Brennan is quite useful against Skulls, but I figure anything less than a 5-7 level Brennan is ineffective against them. I still have lots to play so I plan to experiment once I start unlocking higher-tier gear.
 
Yeah a big problem I think a lot of people face is that Code Talker is presented as a stealth rescue and escape mission, and then reinforces that with the sniper battle and then the sort of overbearing defense of both the mansion and the mansion escape. At two or three times, it either reinforces (or could convince you to switch via supply drop) a stealth silencer/sniper loadout. So most people probably finish the mission in camo fatigues with a sniper rifle and maybe tranqs. Then you get ambushed by the Skulls for Metallic Archaea and you're loadout is basically fucked for that fight haha.

On one hand, I did think it was kinda cool to get ambushed and caught off guard... But it sure makes the fight a bitch, and even worse every single time you restart, you have to repeat the same annoying supply drop. It would have been a small but nice tweak to have Venom grab a rocket launcher from the heli at the start of it, automatically switching your gear up a bit (sort of like the first real Skulls fight in Mission 6 also 'prepares' you and later in the game another mission does that too).

The one solace is that once you do learn the fight and it becomes cake, despite being aggravating as heck at first, I found myself missing it later on. Game could have used a few more boss fights like that... love the mission and free roam gameplay of the game myself, but it doesn't come even remotely close to the bosses of Snake Eater for me. The Skulls are pretty cool in an Ocelot Unit sort of way but the highlight the lack of character and variety of the Cobra Unit.
 
KyanMehwulfe said:
...

The one solace is that once you do learn the fight and it becomes cake, despite being aggravating as heck at first, I found myself missing it later on. Game could have used a few more boss fights like that... love the mission and free roam gameplay of the game myself, but it doesn't come even remotely close to the bosses of Snake Eater for me. The Skulls are pretty cool in an Ocelot Unit sort of way but the highlight the lack of character and variety of the Cobra Unit.
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Agreed. In fact I would've loved one last ultimate Skulls fight with all 3 types.
 
So completed holding up the Afghanistan map. Obtained a few new emblems along the way.

Sadly after either traveling past a certain distance, or by crossing certain checkpoints (I'm not sure what triggers it exactly), formerly captured bases revert to normal. For example after capturing OKB Zero and traveling back down the road formerly captured areas become re-occupied. Was hoping I could make a video of roaming all the way through the map on a Walker Gear.

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Last shot was a guy I choked out with CQC before holding them up, but wanted to grab the screenshot in time for the emblem. You definitely have to hide the bodies well in OKB Zero, since there are so many guards and they'll fill in the former routes. Also used a single supply drop in the second checkpoint of OKB, since I ran out of Fultons. Thankfully it was possible to incapacitate the previous half a dozen camps with no rounds.
 
That's some smooth play, Coreda. Hold-ups are fun although I use it very sparingly. I will say that it's disappointing that PF forces are seemingly infinite and that capturing a base doesn't lock it down for good. Would have been nice to have your combat unit occupy the outposts against enemy attacks.

Slowly capturing all of Afghanistan and Africa would have been pretty awesome.
 
CapitalismSucks DonkeyBalls said:
Would have been nice to have your combat unit occupy the outposts against enemy attacks.

Slowly capturing all of Afghanistan and Africa would have been pretty awesome.
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Totally. Could have been an entire meta game in itself. At least they could have considered the ability to do it single-handedly. Getting to the top of OKB Zero, the highest point in the map AFAIK, felt like it needed the Rocky theme to play, along with the FOB successful infiltration animation :)
 
Continuing from this post I decided to measure some stun weapon incapacitation durations, after seeing a guard post stay knocked out for what felt like 10 minutes. So I traveled to the Intel and Combat platforms for some testing.

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DURATIONS

All measured by the frame at a distance of 18m using headshots, from round leaving weapon to 'Stun' indicator disappearing.

Intel platform staff member with B/B/S/A+/S/A stats (B combat):

Code: 
    Grade   Weapon          Rounds    Duration (minutes)    Type              
    ------------------------------------------------------------------------
    
    [5]     AM MRS-73 NL    Tranq      7:30                 Sniper Rifle 

    [5]     UN-ARC-NL        Stun      6:18                 Assault Rifle     
    
    [5]     Riot SMG         Stun      6:18                 Submachine Gun     
    
    [5]     S1000 AIR-S      Stun      1:15                 Shotgun

Pretty good! Also measured shots to the chest which were identical in stun duration.

While measuring the tranq durations for the earlier post I found that durations varied between the arrivals at Motherbase and also in the field, however they always were consistent relatively. That is, even if the durations changed it was by the same amount across the weapons. I speculated it was randomized upon each deployment, but a few here suggested the differences in incapacitation times could perhaps be due to different staff having different tranq tolerances. Ocelot for example is immune to tranq rounds.

To test this theory I went to the Combat platform via a delivery point to find a higher ranked staff in combat. Couldn't find any S-ranks on guard so I used an A++ staff.

Combat platform staff member with A++/D/D/D/A++/C stats (A++ combat):

Code: 
    Grade   Weapon          Rounds    Duration (minutes)    Type              
    ------------------------------------------------------------------------
    
    [5]     AM MRS-73 NL    Tranq      3:45                 Sniper Rifle 

    [5]     UN-ARC-NL        Stun      3:09                 Assault Rifle     
    
    [5]     Riot SMG         Stun      3:09                 Submachine Gun    
    
    [5]     S1000 AIR-S      Stun      0:37                 Shotgun

I confirmed this difference wasn't due to fast traveling via the delivery point as I drove back to the Intel platform and I peformed the tests on the same staff member. The results were consistent.

So this seems to indicate that incapacitation times are in fact based on a staff's combat ranking, with shorter durations for higher ranked staff. It also shows the UN-ARC-NL is quite comparable to tranq rounds. If you use the Infinite Bandana, or don't mind the less durable grade 1 suppressor, its higher capacity magazine and undermount option make for a decent non-lethal, at least for non-FOB use.

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Then popped some Acceleramin for kicks.
 
I noticed that the stun duration on the shotgun is middling if less than grade 5. I did a couple of infiltrations last night against some A-rank staff and the stun lasted about 45 seconds at most. Plus, it takes two shots to take them down. It's useful when rushing to the core, but I'd just prefer an SMG stun or put two tranq rounds into them and have them drop.

Also, is there any advantageous reason to use stun over tranq? For me, I haven't found any reason not to use my pistol if I can stealth my way through an infiltration.
 
Chola said:
Tranq. weapons are risky if you are playing with reflex mode off,with stun rifles and shotguns you can quickly hit enemies to cancel their alert
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NoblesseOblige said:
I don't think tranqs work on heavily armored units whereas you can still stun them.
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Menthuss said:
Knocking people out with stun weapons is louder than using tranqs I believe.
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Infiltration-wise, I see the benefit of a stun weapon. Within the main game, I rarely run into heavy armor units outside of the side-ops (which I take out with sleep grenades) so I just tranq everyone.

I just need the silencer for my stun shotty and I'm set.
 
CapitalismSucks DonkeyBalls said:
Infiltration-wise, I see the benefit of a stun weapon. Within the main game, I rarely run into heavy armor units outside of the side-ops (which I take out with sleep grenades) so I just tranq everyone.

I just need the silencer for my stun shotty and I'm set.
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I think I ran through the entire main game (sans bosses) with the tranq. pistol, starting lethal assault rifle, and a tranq/silenced sniper. So yeah, through those I never used any sort of stun weapon.
 
NoblesseOblige said:
I think I ran through the entire main game (sans bosses) with the tranq. pistol, starting lethal assault rifle, and a tranq/silenced sniper. So yeah, through those I never used any sort of stun weapon.
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Its opposite for me, i used stun gun all the time since i was playing with reflex mode off
 
It's pretty fun to play with No Markers/No Reflex but I also always bring the Reflex Mode pill during free roam because it's pretty fun to trigger it whenever you want haha

simple things like a headshot (nothing special literally just a headshot in slow-mo)

just let's you appreciate the animation and violence a little bit =p especially when you're already mid-combat and maybe you're going to do a CQC combo or takedown on a couple guards... though it's funny since I play with no HUD (not even the QTE pop-ups now) rarely I'll forget if it's equipped and I'll accidently use it and trigger slow motion for something like climbing a ladder or climbing into d-walker haha
 
CapitalismSucks DonkeyBalls said:
I noticed that the stun duration on the shotgun is middling if less than grade 5. I did a couple of infiltrations last night against some A-rank staff and the stun lasted about 45 seconds at most.
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It's useful for situations where there's no time for accuracy. I bring a S1000 stun when farming the Wandering Puppets side-ops, since in close quarters you can easily blow them back in a single shot. But it's easily the shortest duration and range of any stun gun.
 
Coreda said:
It's useful for situations where there's no time for accuracy. I bring a S1000 stun when farming the Wandering Puppets side-ops, since in close quarters you can easily blow them back in a single shot. But it's easily the shortest duration and range of any stun gun.
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nighttime + shotgun with flashlight = most fun way to do Wandering Puppets :D
 
Mission 45 is killing me. I have full Battle Dress on and I'm still getting wrecked. I'm thinking that me trying to fulton all the vehicles is what's doing it.

Should I start destroying the vehicles with a lock on rocket and then revisit the mission with a parasite suit later to do the fultoning task? Or am I missing something... ?
 
LegendOfGood said:
Mission 45 is killing me. I have full Battle Dress on and I'm still getting wrecked. I'm thinking that me trying to fulton all the vehicles is what's doing it.

Should I start destroying the vehicles with a lock on rocket and then revisit the mission with a parasite suit later to do the fultoning task? Or am I missing something... ?
Click to expand...

Sandstorms are your friend.
 
They shouldn't be able to... they can still see you up close, and if they spot you, they can track you a little farther than their initial tracing range, but it does provide pretty significant cover. My only guess would be... seems glitchy (never heard of glitches like that in the game at all though, let alone that mission)... My only other guess would be maybe if you were at night, maybe the soldiers could spawn with night vision goggles? I don't know if they even can on that mission but night vision I think may help them with sandstorm visibility.
 
just wait until you have the parasite suit with armor to fulton all the tanks. stay indoors, wait for the tank fire that OHKs you, then run up to an opening in the building and pop off a rocket or two, then retreat, wait for the tank OHK shot, run up and shoot. wash, rinse, repeat.
 
Interesting read about a theory about OKB Zero

https://www.reddit.com/r/NeverBeGameOver/comments/4i46zb/theory_okbzero_not_a_weapons_manufacturing/

At the very least, it highlights a lot of the awesome detail in the base... level design in this game in general is pretty underappreciated IMO. So many of the guard posts and outposts have such great layout, as if they were beta tested and tweaked in a MP beta for defensive value, and a lot of the towns or stations have a surprisingly number of ways to go about them: e.g. the far north west cliff behind the palace; the northern walls about either the mountain station in Afghanistan or resupply station in Angola; the general layouts of Ghwandai and Da Walia; the sewers in OKB Zero.
 
KyanMehwulfe said:
Interesting read about a theory about OKB Zero

https://www.reddit.com/r/NeverBeGameOver/comments/4i46zb/theory_okbzero_not_a_weapons_manufacturing/

At the very least, it highlights a lot of the awesome detail in the base... level design in this game in general is pretty underappreciated IMO. So many of the guard posts and outposts have such great layout, as if they were beta tested and tweaked in a MP beta for defensive value, and a lot of the towns or stations have a surprisingly number of ways to go about them: e.g. the far north west cliff behind the palace; the northern walls about either the mountain station in Afghanistan or resupply station in Angola; the general layouts of Ghwandai and Da Walia; the sewers in OKB Zero.
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Grasping at straws that don't exist.
The reason that they reused DD assets in OKB0 is simple. It's a lazy way of saying Venom Boss=Skull Face. They do this quite a bit.
 
that's not really what it's about... it was more about the green aura and ventilation systems corresponding with copper ore refinement. just analysis of its technical design, not necessarily about symbolism between skull face and face.
 
I hadn't noticed previously that all the main structures at the Afghan Central Base Camp have high ladders attached to various struts, and a few connect to each other. Either it was too dark, or I was preoccupied on the enemy presence. Offers several more useful paths.

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