MGSV - General Chat Topic

/MG/ Metal Gear Discussion /MGSV/
41

Same with Death Stranding. I never got why because all the other gameplay options like HUD, markers, reflex, etc. are all there.

I think the “for what” in this case is the missions themselves, much like Hitman. The meat-n-berries of these new Hitman games is the act of playing and replaying the missions any number of different ways, and that’s generally how I’ve gotten my moneys worth with V. I still don’t agree with anyone that the actual level design is anything less than great. To me, the outposts are cream of the crop in terms of providing tons of cover, multiple roots to an objecive area, and enough enemy presence to make zero tracing satisfying.

For me, that was enough, but the issue really is just Kojima’s just being a shit writer and an even shittier scenario planner.

Like the entirety of mission 30 is such a paradox of idiocy. Because as a mission, mission 30’s the best “final level” of any MGS game to date. OKB Zero was perfectly designed with tons of routes to each checkpoint and a much higher concentration of guards with stronger gear than any outpost in the game, which makes fighting them head on or bypassing them so much more satisfying.

Everything else…?

“Make contact with Skull Face.”

“Get him talk so we can find out what his plans are.”

“Go along with him even though we have no way of ensuring he won’t just kill you.”

“No sign of Sally anywhere near the base.”

It literally feels like Kojima straight up forgot everything that happened right before this mission because the Scooby Dogs already “knew” what Skull Face’s plan was by mission 29. They got one detail flipped but they knew what he wanted to do with the word worms and knew, thanks to Huey and his magic legs, that he was only at OKB Zero to activate Sally, which they knew was at Serak Power Plant, since Kiefersnake saw the housing chamber there.

There was literally no reason the mission shouldn’t have just been a boss mission at the end, where you find Skullster so you can fight and kill him head on. Who cares what the dude’s plans are if he’s dead?

That whole sequence and what follows at the plant just reeks of contrivance because Kojimbo was okay throwing all the pieces to the wall if it meant he could “subvert expectations” by omitting any boss fight against Skull Face so revenge wouldn’t be satisfying.

Long story short: Kojima’s a fucking idiot who will sabotage his own story and game as a result if it means “being different.” He’d rather be artsy than just tell a good story (not that he’s capable of the latter, since all these games have shit writing).

And I think that bleeds into the gameplay a bit, hence having a big open world with fuck all to do. Because people who blamed that on Konami forget that Death Stranding’s a thing, and there’s really kinda fuck all to do in that open world as well, beyond fighting the same two boss monsters and delivering cargo to the same customers with increasingly less reward incentive. With MGSV, it didn’t bother me because the missions themselves are really fun, highly replayable in ways no other video game is, and have great enemy AI to fight and sneak around. But you do start to get a sense of excess within both games when you see how condensed the missions are, in the case of MGSV, but how little of the open world is actually used in these missions.

42

Looking back at it, by and large even the gameplay and level design of MGS V is very overrated. It has amazing mechanics, but the majority of your play time is spent in big open areas or infiltrating samey looking camps.

Unlike something like Deus Ex were each level was hand crafted to perfection and balanced in such a way to make the experience more personal depending on how you choose to approach a mission; the majority of MGS V’s gameplay lacks that. It gives you a lot of options in theory, but they’re not exciting enough to use to push you to keep playing over and over after a certain period of time.

I had fun with it I guess.That’s all there is to be said.

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43

I think the level design of MGSV just flat sucks. The “open” world design actively detracted from the quality of the gameplay. The best parts of MGS have always been the core. And sneaking and infiltrating just isn’t fun in a shitty level. That’s what made GZ so exciting even though the story and material were so dumb. Camp Omega was awesome. A couple missions worked in V but the handcrafted parts failed the most somehow. OKB Zero was a shit mission in a shitty boring level. They made a kick-ass engine with fantastic controls and cool mechanics and did fuck all with it. FUCK. Now I’m mad about this game again lol.

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44

I could not disagree more about the level design in this game. Partially because, as someone now trying to make levels for his game, it’s a fucking goddamn nightmare. But largely because everything Camp Omega did on a functional level, V’s outposts did as well, just on a smaller scale. Like Camp Omega, each outpost had tons of structural cover which worked both for bypassing guards or as cover spots when shit got hairy and you went into pointy-headed-rambo mode. Each outpost had the same ground placement options as GZ, like anti-air guns, fuel barrels and vehicles, but with turret guns, mortars and flairs added as well. And since each outpost was usually built around specific missions, and only a few got repurposed for other main ops, you end up with multiple roots to objective areas for those missions, including a few secret paths, just like GZ.

Visually, none of it’s all that remarkable with the exception of the mansion and valley, but in terms of gameplay, I fail to see what about it doesn’t feel hand crafted. Each one feels structurally different from the last and provides differing paths and challenges of their own. There’s a lot of openness around each outpost and a bunch of empty checkpoints, but I never found that got in the way of the actual core missions at any point in my playthroughs.

See, to me, the mark of truly strong level design in a stealth action (and what I’m trying to base my game on) is how viable zero tracing is. If a level is truly well designed, you can carry out an objective by getting in and out of the heart of an outpost without needing to engage with a single enemy. And by all metrics, V’s outposts did that, due to the sheer volume and placement of cover spots to get around.

In fact, hell with it, I’m just gonna whore out the level design segment of my review lol:

45

IMO the only good levels in the game are the mountain outpost in Afghanistan and the oil storage factory place in Africa. Those required you to actually use the mechanics and scouting in order to zero trace anything. The rest are so open that you could just hop in wherever you wanted and avoid all guards without really expending any effort other than abusing the threat ring. I think the mark of good level design is more than zero-traceability, but rather requiring you to actually use the tools in your kit in order to do that. Outside of a couple missions, you never needed to do any recon or planning or bring any particular special items to help you out.

Not to mention the fact that for most people, the infiltration consisted of tranq headshot → fulton extract and repeat until you win. Obviously you don’t have to play that way, but when your mechanics are that easily abused, it’s very difficult to call it good design.

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46

I would argue that pulling that off zero trace in most of the main ops is still a challenge, since you’re eventually centralized towards the objective area. No matter where you start from, you will inevitably be forced into the heart of hostile territory for most missions in order to carry out the goal. The only exceptions I can think of off the top of my head were some of the assassination missions or the ones where you’re blowing up tanks. And for the main missions, the tranq method doesn’t work after a while because you end up with a lot more armored soldiers who can’t be tranq’d unless you knock them out with CQC or use the rocket falcon punch.

That’s kind of MGS in a nutshell after MGS1 tbh. In all of these games, a lot of its core mechanics are rendered moot because you can bypass all the cooler stuff by just using a tranq gun that has the range and stability of a sniper rifle. Even in GZ, all the sneaking can be rendered moot when you can just kill everyone without consequence and carry on from A to B with the same ease one would have with the knockout-n-fulton method. The only difference is that one’s gonna limit your ranking to an A and leave a few more stains for the staff to clean up.

I sort of agree that if there’s one very, very easy method to get from A to B every time, it can a problem with design, but also always maintain that if it’s just one of many methods and there are far more entertaining choices that I don’t have to go out of my way to experience, I will inevitably go with the latter. Especially since, in the case of V, you yield higher rewards for not playing that way. Zero Tracing sees you end each mission with a huge boost of GMP, which always has immediate use since missions cost GMP each time (unless you got mods).

Because the flipside to that is V almost can’t be that strategic, careful sort of stealth game. After all, you’re only gonna play covertly and carefully if the consequences of getting caught are dire. Anything else, and you’re only playing that carefully through choice, which is certainly something a lot of us who love stealth tend to do by default. But in the case of V, the consequence of getting caught is “fuck it, I’m Rambo now.” That was a big part of what made the game so fun for a lot of people; the knowledge that getting caught wasn’t even punishment, but rather, one experience bleeding into another, and still working out despite that, since action played just as well as the sneaky parts.

I just can’t think of any way to tweak V’s game design to force players into being more strategic without compromising the action.

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Lol yep. Totally agree. These are the two I mentioned to Max when I was like “Oh, actually, maybe this game does have potentially good and comparable GZ areas!” But it fell very flat.

48

This is true. But I think you can make stealth more challenging without changing the consequences of being discovered. I think the issue is more centered on the fact that either option is somewhat trivial. Some of the most fun is when you decide before a mission even starts that you’re going in loud and just load up with all your best weapons and murder machines. ( the shitty scoring system ruins that but who cares about score) But you don’t really have to do that anyway because you can sneak perfectly with a normal rifle and tranq pistol and just turn into a left trigger spamming headshot machine whenever you want. So going rambo is too easy too. I think the consequences of being discovered should be more about fighting you way out to new concealment or escape rather than “here I go killing again lol” and finishing the mission with 50 kills. Not that that isn’t super fun, but you should have to be prepared for it. Like we have the whole system of airdropping in new equipment and load outs for exactly that reason if you change your approach mid mission. But you never need it because you can do it with your default AR most of the time

49

I actually disagree with that notion because that goes against the sort of game MGSV set out to be. Which is a toybox game that provides enough structure to each mission so that you’re not pissing in the wind, but enough freedom that stealth or action are perfectly viable options. Going the route of “fight your way to safety” is what games like MGS2 did outside of set pieces. It wasn’t that actually fighting the enemies was hard. It was that the they just kept coming and coming which is what forced you to have to fight your way to escape. And the trouble with applying that sort of game model is it runs contrary to the intentions of the game letting you go guns blazing as you see fit. Even going full lethal can still actually lead to an S-Rank if you’re fast enough.

Plus, that also gives more incentive to develop more weapons since combat can become more and more fluid and efficient with tailored weapons to suit your purposes. For example, the starter rifle gets the job done, but if you’re someone who replays the missions a lot, it’s not gonna be enough against a higher rate of heavy armored soldiers or helicopters when they inevitably call in reinforcements. There’s enough to the outposts to let you accommodate, like using fuel drums to take out heavies, manning turrets or mortars for larger groups or choppers, etc.

Both the fight your way to safety and fight your way to victory options are viable for stealth action, but I think it’s less about which one is better and more about which one the player personally prefers. For me, I’ve always preferred the option to just kill everything because it lends itself to more satisfying combat, knowing I can work towards an actual end of killing all the dudes. I certainly appreciate the “fight to flight” model for action too, which is why I liked MGS2’s alert system as well. I just didn’t like it as much as MGS3 and V’s alert system, and just don’t think that would work for this sort of game.

That said, one thing I do think could’ve been a solid middle ground is creating stronger reinforcements when the bad guys call in the goon squad if you haven’t taken down their communications system first. Like calling in stronger guards with walker gears, body armor and deadlier weapons. That way, you can still fight your way to victory, but the reinforcements could make you work a little harder for it.

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50

I think something like that could have gone a long way to make you have to make more meaningful choices preparing for and executing a mission which would be awesome.

51

That’s another reason why the PC version of this game is the gift that keeps on giving. You can use infinite heaven to make it so enemies can you kill you really fast, give them higher resilience, and even a larger field of vision that makes hiding from bad guys even harder. On PC, V really is whatever you want it to be, that’s why I wish Konami would save face and just make a “Metal Gear Maker” game, since V had the tools for such a mode to be expanded upon, given that modders created “Side Op Companion” to let them create custom levels and missions.

Dunno if that’s viable anymore though now that they dumped the Fox Engine for UE5.

52

It is telling that everyone who defended this game at the time had to either mod it or self impose challenges to be able to enjoy it. If only it was possible to self impose a better video game.

I don’t think a great steath game can simultaneously be a great third person shooter, it has to be designed for one or the other. You could shoot your way out of pretty much anything in TPP, and that’s if Quiet hadn’t already cleared the outpost for you. I don’t know how i’d reconcile the two, and i’m not sure how GZ got it so right. Maybe the lack of open space, cover, and awkward map layout made it harder to gun your way through GZ.

I mean, ideally MGS should have always been about solo infiltration with on site procurement of all weapons, but that wouldn’t fit with the premise of TPP. Perhaps it would have been better if it was designed as a TPS with light stealth, that’s how I ended up playing it anyway.

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53

For me, modding was never essential since I mostly did just play vanilla MGSV. It’s just a very fun way to jump back into a game where I’ve done most of what I can do, just to shake things up.

But far as the latter goes, that’s kind of MGS’s bread and butter. So much of MGS3’s mechanics are moot when you can knock everyone out and jog from A to B. One of the best bosses in the entire series is completely self-imposed on the player because sniping The End at the docks is incredibly quick, easy to pull off, and saves you a lot of time. Yet, by in large, we actively choose not to do the easy thing most of the time because the fight is just way more fun than the Meowster Gang. So much of the clever mechanics of MGS2 are completely moot for the same reason.

The existence of the tranq gun has essentially broken the balance of this entire series in half, and even without it, MGS1 still only had eight rooms with guards in the entire game, none of which were especially challenging to navigate.

I’ve never gotten the sense that any of these games were really designed with difficulty on the brain tbh. So much of it is “do what you want,” but in the case of games like MGS2, combat isn’t a viable option the way it was every other game after that, since the reinforcements eventually stop coming.

To me, MGSV’s existence runs contrary to that idea, since I’ve never had as much fun with any third person shooter as I have with V, or any stealth game the way I have with V. The way I see it, if a core gameplay loop just feels deeply satisfying and rewarding to pull off, and offers incentive to play certain ways without completely dinging you for playing an alternate way, it’s doing something very right.

The best example I can think of is mission 22. That mission is, bar none, the most fun I’ve ever had with this series, in both stealth and action. Trying to bypass all of Mosquitos gang to reach the very top of the last platform undetected is incredibly difficult, and while you can punch your way to victory if detected, the incentive to keep things stealth is the mere fact that the act of sneaking by unnoticed feels so damn good, especially when scaling the tower.

In that very same mission, however, should you opt to fight your way to the top, it’s a freakin’ adrenaline rush running, diving, blasting through the bad guys and just shooting your way to the top without stop. The act of diving to struts for cover, shooting dudes when hitting the ground, lobbing grenades, swan diving like a lunatic, blasting some more, rolling to safety, landing the occasional headshots, it all just feels better than any third person shooter I’ve ever played.

It’s the fact that both situations are perfectly viable, and that both feel as good as they do that I truly maintain that restricting it to one or the other would’ve been a detriment. I always point out mods for those who personally prefer just the harder stealth, which is perfectly fine itself, but also maintain that runs contrary to what this game was all about. It really depends on what a person is in the mood for at any given moment. And that’s a big part of why I do still occasionally jump back into this game, almost six years later. No other video game has great a core gameplay loop for me as V for Vendetta, and it’s the fact that it lets me go action or stealth or helicopter railshooter that plays a huge role in that desire to come back for more every once in a blue moon.

In the case of GZ, the difference was the enemy waves. You had to fight through around 80 guards to clear all of Camp Omega. But far as the actual difficulty goes, it was perfectly doable to blaze your way through the base, especially if you decided to hop into the tank, because the marines become powerless to stop you at that point or had the M16 with the grenade launcher attached once you’ve S-Ranked any mission once. Even the other tank that shows up in the second half of the GZ mission can’t do much against your tank once you start shooting since there’s no cooldown to the canon.

The real differences lie in the duration of the alert phase, given the volume of guards that will keep showing up until you reach the 80 cap. That plus grenades kill you in one hit, which they don’t in MGSV, and that if guards get too close, they rifle butt you, which they don’t do in MGSV either. But as someone who’s done the “action route” for GZ a few times to see how it fares, I don’t necessarily think it’s harder, since the marines go down as easily as the bad guys in V. Plus, reinforcements always come in the same grouping path once you wipe out enough enemy NPC’s since FE can only render about 12 NPC’s to be on-screen at once.

It’s just a lot more time consuming and a bit more tedious since the combat never escalates, due to guards not having any gear variety in GZ to make you mix things up.

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54

Imagine having to run 2,000m to your mission start, only to run another 1,000m to your first mission objective, only to be caught by some random patrol only 100m away so you have to restart the whole mission again and redo you 3k sprint.

Mo Farah is shaking. Usain Bolt is struck.

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55

Apparently I have over 400 hours in this game according to Steam. So I guess it was pretty fun

56

Wow, look at you. A fan of MGS on this forum? I’m disappointed, Tibbs.

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57

Not as disappointed as I am with myself. Fuckin nerd shit!

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58

Get the mod that skips helicopter rides at the beginning of missions. Like, there’s no reason to sit there and wait other than maybe listen to Kaz’s mission briefing.

59

is there any legit way at all to buy the forth base without actually spending any real world money? I’ve stopped playing this game since i’m jampacked with S and above ranked soldiers. my levels never increase anymore.

60

The face when you spend the better part of a year editing an MGSV review with five TB’s worth of gameplay footage you personally recorded and pieced together in a two and a half hour long review…and some guy with literally over five hundred times your sub count downloads your video, uses a bunch of your footage and edits without asking for permission or at least crediting you for your work, to squeeze out a half-assed video full of generalizations and bullshit…that immediately gets four times as many views in one day as yours did over the course of eight months…

Whatever cool is, this isn’t that.

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