Well I never, I hadn't expected to come back to this thread following my experiences with the beta, however I chanced upon an article in RPS the other day that piqued my interest.
It would appear that after the huge-selling and (justifiably) extremely popular Wildlands, Breakpoint sold like a bucket of cold sick. I am not at all surprised, I said from the outset that Division-style MMO-lite gameplay was totally at odds with the tactical shooter roots of the games. Picking up a baseball cap that is a higher level than a tactical helmet and therefore increases your survivability was just nuts. Then there was the 'ooh robots!' gameplay - I like my tactical shooters to be at least a bit grounded in reality and have no desire to shoot up bullet sponge robots.
Now, the latter part is unfortunately baked in as part of the story, buuuuut the sales figures must really have hurt them on one of their premium franchises, as it would appear that they have made some massive changes to how you can choose to play.
RPS Article wrote:When you load up Breakpoint from March 24th, you’ll get the option to choose between three game modes: one to play the it as it originally was, one that gets rid of that rubbish tiered loot and gear levels, and one that lets you customise a bunch of settings to personalise your game.
Now if I read that correctly, it sounds like they are going back to the Wildlands approach - choose the gear you like (OK, maybe some macguffins to unlock certain elements) and take on the world with everything being as it should be, no bullet sponge enemies that are "too high level" - excepting the drones I guess.
A little shop around showed that there is a publisher sale currently going on on the Epic gamestore *cue hisses* with the game £20 till tomorrow. For reasons unknown Epic had decided I needed a £10 off voucher too so I bagged it for a tenner. Two Ubi games in one weekend, with Division 2 having been £1.79 on Friday which was just too cheap for me to forego.
I gave Breakpoint a tryout today, granted in silly MMO clothes, but I wanted to see how it has evolved. Quite nicely is the answer, vehicles feel a lot better with cars handling better than in Wildlands but weirdly helicopters having no heft whatsoever and you no longer start gasping like an asthmatic pit pony if you dare to run for 10 yards. Another nice point is that the prescience of the enemies has gone - in Wildlands you would have them home in on you relentlessly once you had been identified, but in Breakpoint if you break LOS and scuttle off, the bads will all head to your last known location. This makes for some great cat & mouse battles.
So yeah, for a tenner I am in. And come the 24th I eagerly await the revised game mode - just need to convince my co-op buddy to take the plunge now.