Thrik

Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain

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Umm... I did a bit of searching and it sounds like the game forces you into the FOB stuff, unless you do some very specific things to avoid it (e.g. never accept the terms of service, or cut the internet connection when the game tries to force you into the FOB tutorial)? Is this really the case?

 

I wouldn't mind if I could keep my FOB understaffed and just accept whatever small losses I might encounter, but it also sounds like you can lose mother base personnel during FOB invasion. Is this true? If this is the case, then that is some fucked up design.

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You can lose a small number of MB staff if they "win" the invasion, but it won't take direct contract staff, so you can minimize the damage by putting your top staff under contract.

 

My strategy has been to just build the bare minimum FOB, and throw a few mediocre security staff on it. That seemed to deter most people from attacking because there's not much there to take. Now that I have an excess of staff/money I've started building out more platforms and ramping up the security. So far that's worked pretty well, I've only had 5-6 invasions and no major losses.

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As far as I can tell, as long as you don't engage in any FOB invasions, you won't suffer an invasion yourself. I have built out my first FOB but haven't played the tutorial invasion so I'm getting the benefits of more staff and resources without the headache of losing it all.

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The benefits in cheap crew space and resource gathering you get is worth any invasions you might get hit by. It would be very difficult, if not impossible, to get up to the higher research ranks without an FOB. If you have no interest in engaging in the mode at all, you should just max out your security ratings for all platforms and try to never build just one level of a certain type of platform. With so many targets out there, all you have to do is look a little less juicy than the next guy on the block. Kinda like putting an ADT sticker in your window.

 

Seriously though, your resource gathering goes way up with the FOB, so the only thing you're really risking are staff, and they run like water later.

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The waiting room is basically HR.

 

Waiting room? I kick them off the platform and hope they can swim.

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Seriously though, your resource gathering goes way up with the FOB, so the only thing you're really risking are staff, and they run like water later.

 

Yeah, imo it's worth it for the extra combat deployments alone. Pretty sure the vast majority of my resources are coming from those now.

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Oh yeah, I forgot about the extra deployments, they're incredibly useful. I'd like to change my answer. Build a FOB, then never go back online.

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Apologies if it's been linked already, but I found a PT easter egg during mission 20 last night:

 

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You can lose a small number of MB staff if they "win" the invasion, but it won't take direct contract staff, so you can minimize the damage by putting your top staff under contract.

 

My strategy has been to just build the bare minimum FOB, and throw a few mediocre security staff on it. That seemed to deter most people from attacking because there's not much there to take. Now that I have an excess of staff/money I've started building out more platforms and ramping up the security. So far that's worked pretty well, I've only had 5-6 invasions and no major losses.

 

I think you can lose up to 8 + 8 + 8 + 12 + 10 = 46 if infiltrator goes out of their way to fulton all the guards on the way on maxed out platform.

 

Actually nvm, they can fulton more if they intentionally trigger combat alarm to lure in reinforcement.

 

Best defense on PC is to max out FoB and continuously manually backup your saves so you can override damage incurred by invasion, and then once maxed out, never touch online ever.

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I've been avoiding this thread for about a week now since finishing this game, out of both disappointment and shame. I'll put specifics in spoiler tags if they come up, but are people generally up to date now on what a disaster this game is?

 

As succinctly as possible, Phantom Pain is an unfinished, underwritten, horribly paced collection of broken promises.

 

And what makes me lose sleep at night isn't that this is the bastard swan song of my favorite game series of all time, it's that due to industry machinations, history might not even remember it as such.

 

For fear of spoilers, Konami invited journalists to review the game at five-day 'boot camps' tied to strict NDAs (non-disclosure agreements). We played between 9am to 5pm, with no unsupervised play outside these hours. That's a maximum play time of 40 hours, assuming no stoppages for eating, drinking, stretching… or reality. So you're trying to complete a 35-50 hour game (or longer, depending on your play style and the nature of your 'completion'… I can't say more), that you've been anticipating for five years, in a realistic window of 30-35 hours. On one hand, you're finally immersed in one of the deepest, most experimental, open-worlds in history – overwhelmed by side-missions, upgrades and secrets – on the other, haunted by a tick-tock race to reach the 'end' without knowing when that is.

 

That's the most information that, as far as I can tell, anyone is willing to disclose about the pre-embargo review process for Phantom Pain. Tell me if I'm reaching. I just cannot fathom how it is otherwise possible for the critical reaction to the game to be so positive when the main, through line story thread literally fails to conclude. I realize how it looks like I'm stirring up conspiracies and arguing over subjective review scores, but I'm tempted to say that I genuinely doubt that many critics even finished the game at this so-called boot camp.

 

Whether it was a combination of not taking the story seriously enough to care if it had adequate closure because a Metal Gear game is just an incoherent rubber band ball of plot threads they're only forced to confront every three or four years or just being satisfied with the gameplay mechanics and the ending credits roll of chapter one, I look at Metacritic and see a list of complacent reviewers which rewarded a narratively broken game in a way that should not be excusable.

 

I hate being this guy who is writing on a message board to complain about game reviews. It sucks that caring about ethics in gaming journalism is the wackest, shittiest thing to care about in the entire world; even before GamerGate, which I'd venture is too busy doxxing people who complained about Quiet's breasts than to actually notice anything out of order here.

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Yeah review events probably had an impact on the reviews, and review events are kinda shady practice (for all members involved) to begin with.

 

I don't see the game as a disaster though because it was just so darn enjoyable.  Plot wise, yes because it is left objectively (I mean haven't seen anything this clearly unfinished for otherwise a complete and polished product) undone.  I guess I just am not all that bothered with nonsense/broken plots if the game plays well enough.

 

Edit: Also for context, last 'open-world' and/or AAA game I have played was... FarCry 3.

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Yeah, I'm with Gaizokubanou. Those kinds of review events are shitty, but I very much doubt they're entirely responsible for the scores. I haven't even finished the game yet and it's probably the most fun I've had with a game this year. If I get to the "end" (whichever ending I actually make it to, since I hear there are a few) and find it disappointing that'll be a shame, but it doesn't stop the game from having been excellent so far.

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I feel like a great many of those reviewers would have no idea who Miller or Paz was or what Big Boss was up to since Snake Eater, since they (like myself) skipped Peace Walker. If I wasn't able to ask my buddy who kept up on all the Metal Gear lore nonsense what was going on, I would be totally lost (and would've never bothered with any of the cassette tapes). The plot not concluding properly might not really register because it's been nonsense the whole time. But the open world is super fun, and probably worth all the critical acclaim despite the extraordinarily uneven and weirdly delivered plot!

 

(Edit: I do agree that those sort of review events are kind of inherently shitty but there's a lot more to this game's whole situation than a review event)

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Most of the game sites that I pay attention to either didn't go to the review event or realized how terrible an environment is was for reviews and took their time before putting up reviews. The fact that people still have amazing things to say about the game after weeks of time to play it outside of that event should tell you something.

 

It's weird to think that this needs to be said, but it's possible to like something for one strong element without liking or even caring about other parts of it. I have absolutely no investment in the MGS series. I tried playing MGS1 and MGS4 at various points, but never got in more than a few hours. I now have almost 50 hours in MGS5 because it lets me spend an hour carefully infiltrating a base, subduing and abducting every person there, steal all the vehicles, and then call in a chopper blasting E-Rotic when things go bad. I don't care that there wasn't enough time for Kojima to fully realize his vision or that story threads don't quite wrap together in a way that's satisfying to me. When that stuff happens, I stop paying attention because it's not what I'm there for. I would recommend this game to any of my friends without hesitation because it's really fun to play. Worrying about what could have been is pointless because there's nothing you can do about it.

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So I don't know if anyone cares at this point regarding some of the minutiae with the ending but there were a few bits that confused me.

I fully understand the appeal of making a second Big Boss but two minor annoyances. Why does the player avatar just suddenly have Boss' voice after 9 years? Is this just a hand wave and hypnotic suggestion thing?

Giant Bomb had a big spoilercast and had the suggestion that maybe since this was technically V and not Roman numeral 5 that the whole game was a bit of a ruse, to be followed by one following the real Boss. Between that and what was cut in mission 51 they could have seen at least another two games, one with real Boss and following Eli. I would love to see either of those but if all Konami does is turn the franchise into pachinko machine fodder I'll be sad but deal with it. The game was incredibly fun and the story did nothing if not give me a ton to think about.

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I started this last night after marathoning MGS1-4, Peace Walker, and Ground Zeroes in the past... oh gosh just a little over a month, maybe a month and a half? WHAT AM I DOING WITH MY LIFE!

 

I made it out of the excruciating prologue (wowwwww) and rescued Miller (poor Miller D: ) and then... went back to Ground Zeroes to do all the content and unlock stuff for Phantom Pain. Yeah, I'm aware none of it is really anything great, but I'm enjoying Ground Zeroes quite a bit for... some reason. Well, the story seemed uh... gross and not great. I guess it's the prologue for PP, but... goddamn.

 

So here we gooooo!

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I just did a mission where I had to extract a prisoner from a heavily guarded base/outpost.

 

It was the second or third gunsmith mission...I think the third.

 

It went really well.  I happened to do two other side missions in there recently and finished a major mission in that same place rescuing somebody (its also where I got a tape).  I knew the place really well from the last three missions that had gone sideways at various points.  This time I just knocked a couple guys out who might have spotted me (with my dart pistol) and then used the underground crawl space thing to slowly sneak my way near where the prisoner was to extract him.  I knocked out three more guys without being spotted (every time I managed to get them in the back of the head with a dart).  I took the prisoner and used a fulton on him and some of the guys I knocked out and then got back in the little crawl tunnel and just got out without being noticed and with only hitting 4 or 5 guys with knock out darts.  It was great...I imagine a couple guys walking in to talk to the prisoner several minutes after my helicopter had left...I imagine them eventually noticing the prisoner and the guy guarding him and the guy guarding the door were all gone...and I wonder what they imagine happened.  I like to think (and the game doesn't support this, but its what I choose to believe happened) that they decided that the two guards decided to help the prisoner escape and they all defected and that I was never there.

 

Now that I can customize my weapons, the bolt action knock-out dart rifle is becoming my new favorite.  Its not too hard to just pick off isolated guys from a distance with it, or to knock a guy out in sight of another guy who is behind something so that when they guy walks over to wake him up you headshot him too and knock him out.  When this works out perfectly you end up with a group of 3 or 4 unconscious enemy soldiers all waiting to be Fultoned off back to the motherbase and its really satisfying pulling that off.  The only problem is that I get overly ambitious and end up forgetting that my suppressor is wearing out and then I alert a base full of enemies that I've been sneaking deeper and deeper into.

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Yesterday I ended up with 4 sleeping guys inside one of those guard towers by doing exactly this. It was funny.

 

Very few things are more satisfying than pulling a prisoner extraction perfectly. I had a couple of instances where I just got in (without even knocking anyone out), got the prisoner, got out. No collateral damage, no disruption of the normal workings of the base, nothing. Just a prisoner that mysteriously disappeared.

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Now that I can customize my weapons, the bolt action knock-out dart rifle is becoming my new favorite.  Its not too hard to just pick off isolated guys from a distance with it, or to knock a guy out in sight of another guy who is behind something so that when they guy walks over to wake him up you headshot him too and knock him out.  When this works out perfectly you end up with a group of 3 or 4 unconscious enemy soldiers all waiting to be Fultoned off back to the motherbase and its really satisfying pulling that off.  The only problem is that I get overly ambitious and end up forgetting that my suppressor is wearing out and then I alert a base full of enemies that I've been sneaking deeper and deeper into.

 

Yeah, I love my tranq sniper rifle. When I finally realized that not hitting the guards in the head can sometimes be a better idea than head shots, I have been very efficient in clearing out smaller outposts: Say, you have three soldiers that can see each other all the time. You just shoot each one on the torso in quick succession and wait for the tranqualizer to kick in. When the first one falls, the others will become suspicious but they will fall to sleep before they can do anything.

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I just did a mission where I had to extract a prisoner from a heavily guarded base/outpost.

 

It was the second or third gunsmith mission...I think the third.

 

It went really well.  I happened to do two other side missions in there recently and finished a major mission in that same place rescuing somebody (its also where I got a tape).  I knew the place really well from the last three missions that had gone sideways at various points.  This time I just knocked a couple guys out who might have spotted me (with my dart pistol) and then used the underground crawl space thing to slowly sneak my way near where the prisoner was to extract him.  I knocked out three more guys without being spotted (every time I managed to get them in the back of the head with a dart).  I took the prisoner and used a fulton on him and some of the guys I knocked out and then got back in the little crawl tunnel and just got out without being noticed and with only hitting 4 or 5 guys with knock out darts.  It was great...I imagine a couple guys walking in to talk to the prisoner several minutes after my helicopter had left...I imagine them eventually noticing the prisoner and the guy guarding him and the guy guarding the door were all gone...and I wonder what they imagine happened.  I like to think (and the game doesn't support this, but its what I choose to believe happened) that they decided that the two guards decided to help the prisoner escape and they all defected and that I was never there.

 

Now that I can customize my weapons, the bolt action knock-out dart rifle is becoming my new favorite.  Its not too hard to just pick off isolated guys from a distance with it, or to knock a guy out in sight of another guy who is behind something so that when they guy walks over to wake him up you headshot him too and knock him out.  When this works out perfectly you end up with a group of 3 or 4 unconscious enemy soldiers all waiting to be Fultoned off back to the motherbase and its really satisfying pulling that off.  The only problem is that I get overly ambitious and end up forgetting that my suppressor is wearing out and then I alert a base full of enemies that I've been sneaking deeper and deeper into.

 

I still have not managed a quiet extraction in that fort. Something always goes wrong.

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