Started watching MGScanlon 3 today and Dan basically says don't bother with anything but the sneaking suit, and I constantly hear similar sentiments from other members of the crew.

Don't get me wrong, the sneaking suit is great and I did use it, but only it certain situations... because if you use the camo correctly you are virtually invisible almost all the time. I think this seems silly that everyone writes it off so easily just cause footsteps can be heard.

Seriously though, people need to use the camo more, it only takes a second to swap to at the start of a mission, and in so many cases it does way more than the sneaking suit. You may as well be totally invisible half the time if you crawl around with the right camo, letting you take out whole bases without anyone noticing you far easier and with less effort than simply silent footsteps.

I used the sneaking suit pretty much all the time, but only because I really liked how it looked.

I guess if you only do night missions? Only used it like twice, in the day time it was worthless

Depends on how you like to play obviously, some like having quiet footsteps so that they can run around more easily, and some like the camo so they can't be seen as easily. And some like to switch it up and use both on occasion. It's a preference thing.

I'm using whatever I think looks cool with no regard to how it helps or hurts me.

And if I use the animal pattern I can pretend this is an Enzo Amore game

I played about 60% of the story switching camo, but than I found the sneaking suit does a good enough job, so I just switched to that.

Going in at night with the sneaking suit pretty much makes the camo useless- in my experience it offers similar levels of concealment. Even during the day I felt it worked good enough when prone in grass, especially as you get use to the A.I. and can abuse the range indicators to know at what range/stance they can "see" you. Being able to drop down and not have the fall heard also opens up some more paths of attack in certain bases, though you could argue the same about the camo

Never ever ever ask if you're the only one.

I pretty much never used it. If you picked the right camo for the situation I found it to be way more useful. Being able to sneak up on guys slightly faster isn't that much of a game changer for me. I think @drewbert is limiting himself by not trying out the camo, desert fox is really effective in afghanistan!

I always deploy ASAP, and tend to stay in the field throughout the day/night cycle so I almost never use the sneaking suit. Trading near invisibility for being able to crouch walk full speed isn't the best deal in my opinion.

I used it about twice for the Total Stealth retreads at night to remove any doubt about walking up to guys.

Rocked Desert Fox till I got Animal and now its just generally all Animal, all the time, besides battle dress for any pitched combat situations.

I empathize with Dan's authoritative tone, because that's how I lean when speaking too, but its selling a game short where you can be perfectly well equipped in Olive Drab with a squirtgun.

Yeah same. Like, there was essentially no difference other than that I could now run up to mfers. The enemies are pretty blind even in day time so it's negligible.

@zedprime yeah animal is pretty damn great. Plus snake totally rocks the leopard print look.

Yeah, I always save the Sneaking Suit for major missions, it makes it feel way more special and cool. I've only used it twice so far, I infiltrate at night along with D-Dog in his sneaking suit.

Nope. Used it for two missions. Didn't like the way it looked, and didn't like the loss of camo. Had no problem slowing down a bit when creeping up behind dudes. The loss of far range camo wasn't enough to outweigh being able to move a bit quicker.

I wouldnt have a problem with the camo system if it was like MGS3's, but it's not. You have to call in a supply drop every time you want to change camo, which is kinda dumb. I'd rather just use an all around decent suit that gets the job done and has some decent perks. The stealth suit is that.

Costumes barely made a difference in how I play so I just went off of fashion whims most of the time. Splitter with a scarf is cool, but the sneaking suit is pretty awesome.

Team Sneak Suit all the way.

Having to slowly inch your way behind guards is the worst.

I never wanted to go into the menus and change that stuff around, so I just stuck to the stealth suit since for the regen/silent footstep bonuses. Plus I played a lot of missions at night anyway.

I never had any issues with getting spotted from miles away in the stealth suit in broad daylight, because I had a silenced tranq sniper for most of the game that I used to take everyone out before I got anywhere near the base.

I agree. I generally haven't had much of a need to be "invisible," because I'm able to use cover and buildings to circumnavigate guard patrol paths. Basically, I'm never in guards' line-of-sight, so the silenced stealth-walk ends up being a massive quality of life improvement. I like not having to pay conscious attention to the pressure on the analog stick.

Mostly, I'm glad both tactics are effective. It'd actually be a huge disappointment if either the camo OR the sneaking suit were the definitive way to play.

The only time I used the Sneaking Suit was when I decided to go in at night on a rescue operation or something like that. Most missions I did ASAP and selected an appropriate camo, worked out great for me.

I could never be bothered to figure out which of the different camo types I might need for the upcoming mission, and anyhow spent so much time sneaking up behind guards it made sense to be silent when doing it. I did most of my missions from 6am cause I prefer how the game looks in the daylight.

I usually did alright by reading the mission description and paying attention to where it was located. There were only a couple of times where I felt like I needed to do a supply drop in order to change out into another set of fatigues.

I use it pretty much exclusively because I have had way more instances of guards picking up noise from me moving ever so slightly too fast versus picking me up by sight. Not to mention, even if they see you, there's still a good chance you can drop to the ground and slowly sneak away before they move in closer for inspection.

As others have said, I think it just comes down to your playstyle. Also, now that I have the Hand of Jehuty I probably should switch since I'm not sneaking up on guards nearly as much.

I always do night so sneaking suit is pretty much always used. I think that the only reason you would go and do shit during the day is if you wanted a challenge, I just can't see a reason to do daytime other than that reason.

I mostly only used it during night missions. Granted, there are certainly other advantages to night sneaking, but I did plenty of day sneaking too. I also never used the Ground Zeroes sneaking suit. Not because I didn't have it, but because it seemed like too powerful a thing to have that early in the game.

Sometimes I even went so far as to have camo air dropped in if a mission lasted all night, and went into the day. I definitely found my playstyle benefitted more from being able to blend into the environment than having quieter footsteps. Also, the idea that having to move a little bit more slowly to not be heard whilst not wearing the sneaking suit is some awful thing that you should avoid by using the sneaking suit all of the time just seems absurd to me. Also that's a poorly phrased sentence, but you get what I mean.

Never bothered with the sneaking suit. Since I returned to the ACC between missions I could easily switch out camo whenever I needed to. The red clay camo does wonders for most of Africa. For the footsteps I just didn't hold the stick fully in a direction and never had problems with sneaking up on people, even when they're moving.

Used the first camo you get for 45 hours until I realized "OH...I should probably get some sneaking suit"

Sneaking suit for rescue missions where you're gonna have to break from camouflaged positions and need to move quickly without being heard, ceramic armor for assault missions, camo otherwise.

Droping into the desert with a smurf onepiece didnt seem very appropriate but i use it now and then. Mostly i go for effective camo.

I only used the sneaking suit because I liked being sneaky like a samurai warrior, a.k.a Big Boss.

I used the sneaking suit and tiger stripe camp almost exclusively.

I used to use it all the time early game but slowly sneaking up on guys because of sound is way more fun plus I don't have to worry about the mission or side ops taking to long and extending into the morning. The controls and animation are so sublime that slowly crouch walking feels incredibly easy to do. It's actually one of the base control improvements that makes me fear replaying ground zeroes.

Sneaking suit looks too good for me to use anything else.

I use sneaking suit almost exclusively because I prefer doing missions at night and I like the way it looks. I have used other suits when doing stuff like mine clearing or other non-combat missions because it seems pointless to waste the GMP on a huge loadout.

Night or day I seriously with camo could often crawl around in the middle of the open with soldiers 5 feet in front of me never noticing me half the time, just crawling around bases or everything with no one ever able to spot me, even if I did stuff that made them go on alert. Never is perhaps a strong word but I think correct use of the camo is HIGHLY underrated, and can make such better sneaking situations than the sneaking suit.

Heck even just in the most recent metal gear scanlon[3] I can clearly see tons of situations no guard would have even been suspicious in his direction if he wasn't wearing that silly black suit.

Don't get me wrong, I used the sneaking suit a fair bit too, but very evenly with the other types of suits. I can't believe people write off the camo so easily just for footstep sounds that are not even a big deal, when you can often have neigh invisibility as a tradeoff. [heck, if you are sneaking up on a guy with no silent footsteps, you can just take them out in melee form anyway through reflex mode as they turn around anyway, you get close enough anyway if you really want to go that way before they hear you].

I actually used that Cheetah camo whatever it was called most of the game because of how effective that camo was in so many places as well.

Well the upgraded sneaking suits also give you better health regen and other bonuses. That's pretty hard to pass up. I could see the camo being useful, but when you don't really care about getting S-rank, it's much easier just to go for the sneaking suit every time.

I definitely used the sneaking suit for any story mission I expected to be quite difficult, but I spent the vast majority of my playing time sticking with camo; however, that was mostly because I preferred the aesthetics of the camo outfits over the sneaking suit.

Was holding my head everytime Drew caught a guard's interest and had to crawl around evading him. I was crouch-walking all over bases for the whole game with camo. And you can totally still run up and grab/slam guys before they get an alert off. I guess this will get better as Drew gets more comfortable with guards (I hope). The lamest moment was in the second video, though. "He's a real DIAMOND DOG." *Zooms in on MSF logo*

@dezinus:

Yeh that part really sucked.

Or slow down a little when you get close to a guard, and they won't hear you just the same as with wearing the Sneaking Suit. Either way works just fine, even without Reflex mode turned on.

@Mike: You can also keep your gun aimed at them when you approach and you will hold them up before they hear you. Or tell D-dog to "keep them busy" or whatever the command is while you sneak up.

Silent steps really aint that usefull.

In normal camo, even crouching behind the enemy in normal speed would make them notice that there was someone behind them instantly and in certain situations it'd be really bad so you'd have to use the slower crouch walk speed to not make them notice and that would suck if you're trying to catch up to a guard on a patrol route. With the sneaking suit on, the guy doesn't even notice even in normal crouch walk speed. If you're doing the mission at day time though it'd be an advantage to use the normal camo but I'd just light up a cigar to pass the time or just drop in a mission at night anyways. Not blending in during day time with the sneaking suit can be mitigated by just crawling and I would use the side roll if I wanted to move faster.

The only other real advantage that I could see in using the normal camo for me is that it's way cheaper to deploy but GMP isn't really a problem for me anyways. I'd take mobility over the partial advantage of concealment of the normal camo since I tend to get close to guards a lot due to my playstyle (I stun/tranq EVERYBODY in an outpost in just about every mission).

Plus, I play with Reflex Mode turned off as well so there's also that.

@gaspower: Throw a magazine in front of the patroling guard to have him pause his patrol for a moment.

I think it appeals to people who don't want to think about things too much. The Sneaking Suit makes the game pretty easy, especially at night. Then again, I turned Reflex Mode off towards the beginning of the game and never used it again, which probably isn't the norm. It just made things way too easy.

For people complaining that the combat is too easy, definitely try playing without Reflex Mode on. It almost completely changes most encounters. Plus, you get extra points for not triggering Reflex during a mission if you care about that.

I only used the developable sneaking suit in missions which sounded super important or hard, role playing that Snake would take his best gear when he needed it :P, the faster healing is nice on the harder missions. I never used the suit from GZ because it looked out of place.
I used the appropriate camo for the majority of the game, mainly because it looks cool, i wore a scarf in the desert but not in Africa, sneaking up on enemies was never an issue because i'm good.

The health regen is a deal breaker for me. I don't even use the battle dress outside of FOB

It's a difference between "do I want more arbitrary controller micro managment or less?" in which case for me the answer is always less as I don't enjoy throttling the analog sticks, like ever. Camo really ain't that useful either if you sneak "good" as in keep behind cover, roll, use the environment. If you're crawling so close to a guard from the front that you need camo to not be detected then I'd say you're already sneaking wrong as you should always be angling to get behind guards, at which point camo is really pointless. So to flip the script a little: if you're good at sneaking, as in not crawling right through enemy cones of vision all the time, you don't ever need to worry about camo.

I'm with you OP