The potential of a Watch Dogs Legion recruit overhaul

In a previous article, I talked about my disappointment with the recruitment system in watch dogs legion and how its integration into the game was done poorly. 

Every characters' moveset was made smaller than watch dogs 2 getting rid of mass hacks and grenades. Their random abilities and perks are meant to fill shallow moveset. This didn't work since the maximum amount of traits someone can have is 3 or 4, and they are mostly minor moves like shocking enemies, 6G connection for hacking etc. that make the character good in one field and mediocre in everything else. Suppose you have a character who specialises in handling lethal weapons. In that case, they will be mediocre at melee combat (which isn't fun to play, to begin with) mediocre in stealth and everything else that you will have to deal with in a mission which sometimes makes those activities a fun challenge. Still, most of the time it makes everything you aren't specialised in a chore or not fun to deal with since you don't have many tools to tackle challenges in fun or crazy ways like you could in the previous game, which makes WD:Legion feel repetitive after playing missions for a few hours. So in this article, I will suggest an overhaul I would like to see in a major update to make the recruitment system solve the problems I addressed

team-ups and commands

When you recruit people to the resistance, they walk among people in the open world which is a nice detail. But other than immersion there is no other purpose to it, What if you were able to request help from any recruit in the same area of London as you, by holding one of the d-pad buttons for a few seconds you would be able to call recruits a text like a popup will appear on the screen showing recruits in the chunk of London you are standing in. you can see the loadout and perks of any recruit you scroll by. When you select one, the recruit will show up on foot or by car. Then they will follow you wherever you go, which will give you a new ability called commands. By holding a button, you will see multiple actions your recruit can execute. 

While undetected, you can command your recruit to choke out an enemy, you aim at, to make stealth easier but to compensate. The unconscious bodies will be visible on the floor, making enemies search for intruders when found, and if the player wants to shroud them in invisibility cloak, they'll have to approach the body and hold Y/triangle to hide the bodies. Choking will be something any recruit can do. (except the elderly who rely on tasers) 

Taking advantage of the perks

Another command will be your teammate to using their tools or abilities recruits with electro fists that shock everyone within a radius would use them anywhere where you point at. If a recruit has a drone equipped, you can command them to drop it, allowing the player to control it. That can be useful if you want drones that dash and cloak themselves without selecting it for your own loadout. If your teammate has perks like shocking enemies that only characters with those perks can do. The ability should be available for the player to use. (with an animation of the teammate performing the hack) If a recruit has 6G you can perform hacks and download data faster when you are not engaging with enemies etc.

Punishment for dying

If your teammate loses all their health, you will have limited time to revive them as they start to blackout. If you are too late, they will be hospitalised and have a chance of being kidnapped. If they have a perk that involves invisibility or the cloak skill and loses all their health, they will be knocked out but automatically become invisible, preventing them from being kidnapped.

Ending the team up

The first way to end a team-up is by dismissing your friend. If you call them over to assist you and dismiss them without getting into a fight, there will be no cooldown for calling them to help again. Or if the player leaves an area of London, their teammate will stop following them and be tired of assisting. This means you can't ask them to assist you again for some time which would be 10 to 30 minutes since they will be continuing living a normal life in London. This will make you switch up your teams and switch strategies while playing through the game.

I hope this won't just be an idea and become a reality

I wish this idea can be implemented in a post-launch update Ubisoft told fans would be coming to the game and listening to some of my ideas. They have done this before with Ghost Recon Breakpoint adding reloading animations to enemies and overhauling systems after requested by fans to do those things. I think this concept which I haven't even explored all the possibilities with yet. Like recruits lacking interest in assisting at certain times of day, bonuses if you and your friends have the same perks and ideas the developers could come up with themselves could make Watch dogs legion's recruit gimmick reach its full potential become a more complete and well-rounded game.