Ghost Recon Breakpoint questions

[Brian Boru]

2019 open world Shooter TPP+FPP from Ubisoft. Wiki | Ubi | Steam | Epic

• RECOMMENDED:
  • Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
  • OS: Windows 10 (64-bit versions only)
  • Processor: AMD Ryzen 5 1600 @3.2 GHz, Intel Core i7 6700K @4.0 GHz, or better
  • Memory: 8 GB RAM
  • Graphics: AMD Radeon RX 480 or NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 (6 GB VRAM with Shader Model 5.0 or better)
  • DirectX: Version 11
  • Network: Broadband Internet connection
  • Storage: 67 GB available space
  • Additional Notes: originally released for Windows 7, the game can be played on Windows 10 and Windows 11 OS

@red_5ive reminded me I had this but never played it—it took a lot of flak 'back then' so I let it sit. Recent reports are a lot more encouraging—let retailer update it for you if necessary—so I installed it from Ubi and gave it an hour or so.

Skip Intro

There's a skip on the intro it seems, was that always there? I pressed it anyway and got straight onto the ground with work to do. Nice.

Third-Person, First Person

TPP isn't my thing, but GRB has a hybrid where it goes FPP when aiming. Bit odd, but I'll take it—not cheesed off by the TPP yet anyway There are FPP mods on Nexus which look a bit messy to install—include EasyAntiCheat hack—so I'm waiting to see if it's a game I want to stick with before installing that.

I don't suppose there's any other specialized mod source like FCmodding for the GR pair?
What mods do you recommend?

Change Aim to a toggle control

Speaking of aiming, game stupidly defaults to 'Hold' RMB for aiming—or is that a thing, maybe I'm the stupid one? …world pauses spin to ponder… Took me ~5 minutes hunting in menus to see if there's a way to make it toggle—and huzzah, there is! So okay, not too bad, could've been stupider.
PSA:
In Controls for KB&M go to the Customize menu. Small icons across top, it's in second one called 'Combat and Teams'.

Seems to be hugely customizable, which is great for choice and less great for learning curve. So I've dialed everything to easiest setting to reduce curve while assessing.

I hope menus are also a curve thing, seem really confusing so far—even the basics. I don't know what pistol I have, or can/did I swap it for the other one showing up in a menu. I should have a second weapon slot now, and there are a couple of ARs showing in menu—but no idea if I own one or both, or how to activate.

Admittedly I did fall asleep just after that tale of woe, so hopefully all will be revealed in a more wakeful state

 

[red_5ive]

I think you've convinced me to play this one for my holiday open-world shooter game. But I'll also have to revisit FC6 during that time-frame to get all my fixes in for the season lol.

I can't believe it's almost been 5 years since I played Breakpoint. I don't remember much of what you mentioned above. The only delta that I'm aware of since I played was what I mentioned in the other thread, that they didn't initially have any AI teammates. It was a little weird playing the game without any. I'm sure there's been more changes, but I'll find that out when I dive back into it. I had a GTX1070 at the time so I'm really looking forward to a replay with better hardware, where if I recall I was barely able to hit 50 fps.

 

[Brian Boru]

I don't remember much of what you mentioned above

The bits I read indicate Ubi have been adding and patching for a good bit after release—Steam says "LAST UPDATE: Sep 25, 2023 (14 months ago)"—tho of course it could be updates included with the DLCs.

I had a GTX1070 at the time

1060 here, didn't notice any problem so far @ 1080p.

 

[ZedClampet]

2019 open world Shooter TPP+FPP from Ubisoft. Wiki | Ubi | Steam | Epic

• RECOMMENDED:
  • Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
  • OS: Windows 10 (64-bit versions only)
  • Processor: AMD Ryzen 5 1600 @3.2 GHz, Intel Core i7 6700K @4.0 GHz, or better
  • Memory: 8 GB RAM
  • Graphics: AMD Radeon RX 480 or NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 (6 GB VRAM with Shader Model 5.0 or better)
  • DirectX: Version 11
  • Network: Broadband Internet connection
  • Storage: 67 GB available space
  • Additional Notes: originally released for Windows 7, the game can be played on Windows 10 and Windows 11 OS

@red_5ive reminded me I had this but never played it—it took a lot of flak 'back then' so I let it sit. Recent reports are a lot more encouraging—let retailer update it for you if necessary—so I installed it from Ubi and gave it an hour or so.

Skip Intro

There's a skip on the intro it seems, was that always there? I pressed it anyway and got straight onto the ground with work to do. Nice.

Third-Person, First Person

TPP isn't my thing, but GRB has a hybrid where it goes FPP when aiming. Bit odd, but I'll take it—not cheesed off by the TPP yet anyway There are FPP mods on Nexus which look a bit messy to install—include EasyAntiCheat hack—so I'm waiting to see if it's a game I want to stick with before installing that.

I don't suppose there's any other specialized mod source like FCmodding for the GR pair?
What mods do you recommend?

Change Aim to a toggle control

Speaking of aiming, game stupidly defaults to 'Hold' RMB for aiming—or is that a thing, maybe I'm the stupid one? …world pauses spin to ponder… Took me ~5 minutes hunting in menus to see if there's a way to make it toggle—and huzzah, there is! So okay, not too bad, could've been stupider.
PSA:
In Controls for KB&M go to the Customize menu. Small icons across top, it's in second one called 'Combat and Teams'.

Seems to be hugely customizable, which is great for choice and less great for learning curve. So I've dialed everything to easiest setting to reduce curve while assessing.

I hope menus are also a curve thing, seem really confusing so far—even the basics. I don't know what pistol I have, or can/did I swap it for the other one showing up in a menu. I should have a second weapon slot now, and there are a couple of ARs showing in menu—but no idea if I own one or both, or how to activate.

Admittedly I did fall asleep just after that tale of woe, so hopefully all will be revealed in a more wakeful state

From what I remember, the GUI is a nightmare in both Ghost Recon games, but you eventually get used to it--around the 300 hour mark.

 

[red_5ive]

From what I remember, the GUI is a nightmare in both Ghost Recon games, but you eventually get used to it--around the 300 hour mark.

I remember it being doggedly slow too because it seemed system resource intensive. At least in Breakpoint. And that I never got used to. It gave me the sensation that I was just waiting... and waiting... and waiting... and... sigh...

Kind of like wearing a straight-jacket... If I knew what it was like to wear a straight-jacket..

 

[ZedClampet]

If I knew what it was like to wear a straight-jacket..

They are more comfortable than they look...I mean...I don't know either.

 

[red_5ive]

I started into my long-awaited Breakpoint replay last night as my annual-open-world-end-of-year-holiday game. The GUI/menu is still cluttered like @ZedClampet eluded to, and it seems to have even more/unnecessary things to click on than I remember.

There's an interesting new feature called "immersive" mode which "removes the notion of gear score entirely", according to the in-game description. I decided to try it out as it does not have the gear/weapon level and bonus stats, which interested me because one of the things that annoyed me in my initial play-through was it seemed like you got a nice high powered weapon, upgraded it, only to find a better one an hour later. I ended up with a collection of weapons - or horded, rather - just in case, which in the end was just pointless to keep it all.

Apparently these are the 4 main things the mode offers, taken from this Reddit post that I found when I looked it up, because for all the garbage Ubisoft put on the screen they either decided it was more important to give you links to buy stuff that you don't need instead of providing details on the feature, or because of all that said garbage I just couldn't find it:

1. No marking enemies in immersive. This is huge.
2. No minimap and enemy clouds. This is closely tied to point 1.
3. No Gear Level and no weapon bonus stats. No gear level makes the game MUCH more fun, but the weapon bonus stats were significant.
4. You character takes more damage. heals slower has uses more stamina.

One of the other big things I noticed in that mode so far is that if you get under cover in the brush, it dims the screen, an effect to obviously try to make the environment and gameplay more realistic. But, the end result is it feels exactly like what it does - it dims the screen. It essentially feels like when ABL kicks in on an OLED, and I thought that's actually what happened initially since I play on an OLED. So far that's the biggest negative that I've found with immersive, but I'm also barely an hour or so into the game.

The cool thing is you can swap back to regular mode at any time, but apart from the dimming I'm enjoying it enough that I'll stick with it... for now.

 

[ZedClampet]

1. No Gear Level and no weapon bonus stats. No gear level makes the game MUCH more fun, but the weapon bonus stats were significant.

In theory I like the concept of gear levels in games, but in practice they don't do anything because to keep a game from getting too easy, the developers have to level the enemies along with the gear level, which actually feels somewhat frustrating as a player.

It's been too long since I played Breakpoint, so I don't know if it worked that way there, but I remember it a lot with Division and Division 2.

There has to be something better than imaginary leveling for those of us who like progression systems so that we don't think the whole thing feels pointless.

 

[red_5ive]

In theory I like the concept of gear levels in games, but in practice they don't do anything because to keep a game from getting too easy, the developers have to level the enemies along with the gear level, which actually feels somewhat frustrating as a player.

It's been too long since I played Breakpoint, so I don't know if it worked that way there, but I remember it a lot with Division and Division 2.

There has to be something better than imaginary leveling for those of us who like progression systems so that we don't think the whole thing feels pointless.

Actually I do like and would normally prefer leveling. It just bothered me in this game that each piece I wanted to keep had such a short lifespan, which didn't appeal to me. Unless I'm mistaken, there was no way to increase weapon level other than boost some of its perks/stats. At least that's how I seem to remember it as I was constantly swapping out weapons and gear.

 

[red_5ive]

I finally reached the main base camp, and the Ghost teammates were there waiting for me. There were no AI teammates when I played the game initially. They've added customization options for the teammates, which I don't believe were available in Wildlands. It's pretty much everything from load out to gender and physical appearance, same as Nomad (your character). I like that aspect of it. You can also choose which teammates to bring instead of always having a full team at all times.

One big issue that remained from my first playthrough is the game does not work well with multiple monitors. I like to run a second monitor while I'm gaming, and the same random choppiness that I would get during my initial playthrough is still there. That prior run was 5 years ago, and my hardware has significantly improved since. It goes away when I run single monitor.

 

[ZedClampet]

I finally reached the main base camp, and the Ghost teammates were there waiting for me. There were no AI teammates when I played the game initially. They've added customization options for the teammates, which I don't believe were available in Wildlands. It's pretty much everything from load out to gender and physical appearance, same as Nomad (your character). I like that aspect of it. You can also choose which teammates to bring instead of always having a full team at all times.

One big issue that remained from my first playthrough is the game does not work well with multiple monitors. I like to run a second monitor while I'm gaming, and the same random choppiness that I would get during my initial playthrough is still there. That prior run was 5 years ago, and my hardware has significantly improved since. It goes away when I run single monitor.

Yeah, there were no AI teammates when I played, either. Didn't know they had added it. I played Wildlands with my son, so we didn't have teammates in that either. May come back to these at some point and give them a try.

 

[red_5ive]

Yeah, there were no AI teammates when I played, either. Didn't know they had added it. I played Wildlands with my son, so we didn't have teammates in that either. May come back to these at some point and give them a try.

And that was the main reason for my long awaited re-play. Coming off of Wildlands, it was really weird using those drone things for sync shot in Breakpoint. And lonely too lol. The cool thing at least is they retained those drones so you can still use them with the teammates for up to 7 sync shots, for a total of 8 targets if you count yourself in. I haven't gotten to a point where I can use them all yet, but I'm counting the minutes...

That's cool you got your son to play, Wildlands or otherwise. My son hates any military style shooter so I could never get them to jump in. Although I think his distaste for them might be changing as he's been trying to get me to play Helldivers.

 

[ZedClampet]

And that was the main reason for my long awaited re-play. Coming off of Wildlands, it was really weird using those drone things for sync shot in Breakpoint. And lonely too lol. The cool thing at least is they retained those drones so you can still use them with the teammates for up to 7 sync shots, for a total of 8 targets if you count yourself in. I haven't gotten to a point where I can use them all yet, but I'm counting the minutes...

That's cool you got your son to play, Wildlands or otherwise. My son hates any military style shooter so I could never get them to jump in. Although I think his distaste for them might be changing as he's been trying to get me to play Helldivers.

We played just about everything together. I've had a tough time adapting to life without him since he went to college. I had my fun, though. Back to solo...

 

[red_5ive]

We played just about everything together. I've had a tough time adapting to life without him since he went to college. I had my fun, though. Back to solo...

I hear you there. We played a lot of Destiny before mine went off to college. He's been out for a couple of years and working in the real world now. It hasn't been the same since he no longer lives here, but he works in a related field as me so we have a lot of good discussions.

 

[red_5ive]

I'm really enjoying this game way more than my first play-through due to the addition of A.I. teammates. I'm about 13 hours in, and all I'm doing is roaming around discovering landmarks and the treasures therein. This is one aspect of open-world games that I really enjoy, and something that I appreciate with the Ubisoft variety. I tend to get lost exploring. I enjoy the scenery and ambience, and playing in a multi-channel HT setup with DTS:X MA audio and enabling Auro3D on my A/V processor really helps that. When will I ever roam the snowy mountains in full tactical gear, with the inevitable skirmish around almost every corner?