Extreme difficulty, HUD options, and immersion

[mosch]

In another forum, a group of us have been talking about playing GRW on "Extreme" difficulty setting with little-or-no HUD.

Before you click away, hear me out. This is not just about wanting to get killed over and over. The "Extreme Difficulty" setting in GRW is not getting killed faster. It is not stronger enemies. Instead, "Extreme" is an entirely different game mode than other difficulty settings, such as Regular. A severely reduced HUD + Extreme difficulty setting I'm going to call Extreme Immersion, for short. I will be the first to attest, setting the game this way does not feel "hard to play". Rather it's like you are playing an entirely different game altogether.

For the busy, vanilla settings for Extreme Immersion goes :

1. Options>>HUD>>Enemy and Rebel OFF
2. Options>>HUD>>Minimap OFF
3. Options>>Difficulty>>Extreme

These three are non-negotiable to get the experience. Other settings are a matter of taste, and I will be describing each of those myriad HUD settings in more detail below. For now, let me describe the first things that pop out at you when you try it.

The world.
You start to like, actually notice the game world around you. HUDs are visually distracting. My first day playing Extreme Immersion, I saw details I had never seen even in towns I had been through a hundred times.

The enemies.
The sicarios are well.. acting differently. They take cover a lot more. They actually try to hide from you. They shoot from out of cover and go back into cover. Harder? No. It's more like better.

Your squad.
You don't know where you squad is sometimes. No blue diamonds above their heads. They dart in front of you giving you a heart attack for a split second you thought Holt was a sicario. Without the minimap, the screen gives no indication that a teammate was discovered. Instead, you learn of this by the distant crackle of gunfire. You will need to put your squad at a distance and have them Hold-position a lot.

Heat.
In "Arcade" and "Regular", catching heat led to a non-stop downpour of sicarios arriving by car to hop out and bum rush you. The backup cars keep pouring in until you drive half way across a province and park under a culvert to finally reduce heat.

No longer. A good hiding spot inside the town or base is sufficient to reduce heat. It is possible that lower difficulty settings gave the enemies telepathy which -- ironically -- they do not have in the higher settings.


Individual HUD settings.


My settings for reduced HUD.
Enemy&Rebel OFF <-!
Teammates Names in Ads OFF
XP/Tier Points OFF
Intel HUD ON
Input Reminders OFF
Contextual Actions ON
Crosshair OFF
Helicopter ON
Minimap OFF <-!
Detection Clouds OFF
Objective Markers ON
Communication Markers ON
Item & Location Markers OFF
Alert Markers OFF
Sync Shot ON
Ammo & Items OFF
Mission Reminders OFF
Hints OFF
Notifications OFF
Team Info OFF
Compass ON

Many of these are a matter of immersion which depends sensitively on taste. Someone claimed he played with all these OFF except the compass, (which I don't really believe.) "Ammo & Items"=OFF is the option with the usual effect of not letting you know how much ammo remains in your magazine. However, it has a side-effect in that you cannot tell which explosive item you are about to toss. If you need to place C4, you have to literally turn this HUD option back to ON, place the C4 and turn it back off again.

You could claim that "Objective markers = ON" is cheating. But in Intimidate-the-sicario missions, you need some visual aid which tells you which of the sicario you should not shoot. He often has a cowboy hat on, but not always, such as in the case of gas stations.

Custom Immersion Rules
If you are as addicted to immersion as I an, you can create your own custom rules to follow without any mods. I follow these three 1. Never use Rebel Support Vehicle Drop-off. 2. Never fast-travel unless you are changing provinces. 3. Only fast-travel to Rally Points.
These three rules create a kind of mini-game where you have to find a car, and there is no minimap to cheat.

[LycheeMango]

Thumbs up ;) Good to hear that there are players out there who understand what extreme difficulty means and does.

[[KIN] AlphaObeisance]

I agree. Though playing Tier mode eventually forces you into Extreme difficulty; and it seems only natural to eliminate the HUD for immersion purposes. Nothing really extreme about detection clouds and enemy placement indicators ect. ect. lol

[HalloweenWeed (US)]

There is one thing here I disagree with strongly: turning off the mini-map, because it serves as a compass. You have no idea what direction is North without it (unless you can know the time and use the sun, but then that only works in the morning & afternoon and not around noon, only about 7-8hrs. per day - of in-game time). Operatives inserted would have a compass device, probably GPS-enabled.

GPS devices show the nearby roads, and when configured for foot mode shows nearby foot trails too. So why would a mini-map be cheating? Sorry I disagree on this point.

[mosch]

İlk olarak HalloweenWeed (US) tarafından gönderildi:

There is one thing here I disagree with strongly: turning off the mini-map, because it serves as a compass. You have no idea what direction is North without it (unless you can know the time and use the sun

There is a rotating compass that fits at the top of the screen. You don't need minimap for direction.

[devils]

late to the game, but working up to that :)

A black and tan at sharkey's :)

[[KIN] AlphaObeisance]

İlk olarak HalloweenWeed (US) tarafından gönderildi:

There is one thing here I disagree with strongly: turning off the mini-map, because it serves as a compass. You have no idea what direction is North without it (unless you can know the time and use the sun, but then that only works in the morning & afternoon and not around noon, only about 7-8hrs. per day - of in-game time). Operatives inserted would have a compass device, probably GPS-enabled.

GPS devices show the nearby roads, and when configured for foot mode shows nearby foot trails too. So why would a mini-map be cheating? Sorry I disagree on this point.

FALSE: Enable compass, disable mini map = problem solved

[[BRE] Léonard "le Fol"]

İlk olarak ⎛⎝30 K⎠⎞ tarafından gönderildi:

Thumbs up ;) Good to hear that there are players out there who understand what extreme difficulty means and does.

Btw, "30 K", do not worry we are many, but we are divided (we don't know each other, some are intolerant, not mature, picky and can't relate with other much)... I think that people that play tactical should be less conservative and open minded, keep the vision clear: we are in a phase where new tastes and quality degradation is coming and, there is no "common enemy" narrative I wanna push, it's just that we risk like the world of RTS to face a hard extinction as tactical players and games. Games taht allow to play immersive, no Hud and cooperative are scarce.

So without making this too long, I renew the invite to all players, to join a company of hardcoreers that is still work in progress and always looking for more players. Right now we have around 4-5 active but not always there. So please just join the discord.

At the moment we are about to start Ghost Recon Wildlands Story in NO HUD, Extreme and GHOST MODE. We changed at the moment time for official meeting at 17 UTC + 2 for around 2.5 hours , one day of the weekend every week. This is the address to the discord server I decided to use as it makes things easier... https://discord.gg/FvGxAw

So yeah again, I renew the invite, in case anyone is interested in finding friends that play tactical and are mature and play games with a "quality first" approach...

[[BRE] Léonard "le Fol"]

Still looking for these players that play complete no hud. Extreme ghost mode headset and ptt execute order and just play like we were sf, not fantasy game. Anybody?