The Division

If it isn't illegal, then it is unethical.

 

I've played 2.5 hrs of it so far. There is only one true PvE story mission you can do, which was a joke, and the rest is just Dark Zone stuff. The game is actually pretty well optimized for PC, was not expecting that. The gunplay and cover mechanics are pretty much exactly the same as R6 Vegas, with about 1/4th the lethality, and then add on your 2 special skills. PvE isn't challenging at all so far, even the big bad bosses in the dark zone are really easy because you can pre-aim from cover then pop out, scope in to your perfectly preaimed position, shoot 'em in the head, and pop back, repeat 2 or 3x for a normal elite, 5x for a boss, 10x for a named duder with armor. PvE is very meh. PvP has been alright, but definitely distorted right now because of all the people playing the beta. It's pretty much impossible to succeed in pvp without a) a shotgun (if you're doing it right), and b) a full party. For a solo player it's pretty much impossible to extract any loot at all unless you try to bait extract with a white item first then your blues. I really like the idea but each individual dark zone is pretty small and limited to ~24 players, so it definitely doesn't feel open world, then again it's not as restrictive as a CoD deathmatch. Somewhere in the middle I'd say.

Overall, the demo has not swayed me to purchase the game. I'd probably pay $30 for it, but definitely not $60.

 

having absolute entrances and exits leave for massive camp fest stupidity at those locations.

every major MMORPG studio knows this and they try to cut down on these locations as much as possible.

but with this being linked to a pvp zone it makes it much worse for camping and I don't see many people having any fun down the road.

 

12 hrs played: (scroll down for tl;dr)

It's worse than you think, Hollister. There are a couple spots people have found already in the DZ that have 1 egress by ladder and are so high up they are grenade safe. People can go rogue and sit up there for 20 minutes getting kills with no possible way of retaliation, since climbing off the ladder animation-locks you for about 1.5 secs. Unknown whether some abilities like the riot shield will negate the camp spots, since its unavailable in the demo.

Speaking of animation locks, attaching your gear for extraction to the fastrope animation locks you for a good 3-5 seconds, and is enough time for someone else to watch you start to attach your bag, throw an -unprimed- grenade at your feet, and watch you die to the explosion before your animation finishes.

Another thing I supremely dislike is that there is no stamina bar; you can sprint full speed forever, so if someone goes rogue and runs away from you, you'll never catch them, unless you have the map knowledge to cut them off somehow.

Overall I do really enjoy the idea of pvp in Divison. The pvp system plays a lot like APB did, with better loot and shoot mechanics, and pve enemies. The natural tension and player interaction that you get with the pve content, mixed with the rogue agent system and the extraction locations, is well paced and forces high tension face to face confrontations far more often than it did in unrestricted open world survival games like DayZ, ArmA Epoch, etc. At first I thought the small DZ areas coupled with the 24 player instance limit would be a bad thing, but I'm warming up to the idea. The player limit and zone size, coupled with the npc spawns and loot chest locations, sprinkles the threats out well. However, there are definitely some glaring shortcumings in the pvp mechanics that need to be patched. And, as you all know, that won't happen in the 4 weeks we have until release.

My overall impression of the whole game *so far* is that it's fun for a while but severely lacks content and variety, and the game world just... doesn't feel right to me. It feels more like Gangs of New York II than some sort of nightmarish, virus-induced post apocalyptic hell hole. Enemies are street thugs of a handful of varieties, and the only real sense of a viral outbreak you get is with passive visuals and a few of these holographic flashback things that tell a small story with... orange pixels? (hard to explain, but it doesn't work well, definitely seems like a "oh that's cool, put that in!" rather than a real, calculated design decision). Give me some infected, screaming, desperate NPCs clawing at you for a "cure", show clean teams torching infected apartments, give me missions where I protect the wall from being overrun by mobbing, doomed infected. Nope, none of that. Every once in a while the game tells you that you're entering a contaminated zone and you put your mask on, and the mask acts as the artificial level barrier to new content. E.g.; "you can't enter DZ 03 because you require a level 2 mask, your mask is only level 1!" I could also go for a bit more exposition than, "You're on a chopper to Manhattan and it's fucked up by a virus; are you a bad enough dude to kill everyone who doesnt shoot at you?" Maybe it's more fleshed out in the full game, and I am led to believe that it will be, becuase in the demo you start at level 4, which makes me think that level 1-3 will be some sort of outbreak nightmare proving ground tutorial mission to establish everything. (if I were the game dev, at least that's what I'd do).

Another worrying thing is that, after having upgraded my gear from level 4 trash to level 8 epics and legendaries with full epic attachments, the new guns don't feel much different from the level 4 greens. Upgrading your gear doesn't do much but give you bigger numbers on your screen, really. You get some minor weapon performance boosts, but the gunplay is, as you are all well aware at this point, arcadey and bullet spongey, so when your weapon goes from +3% initial recoil to +6% initial recoil bonus, there's no noticable "awesome factor" to tossing that new attachment on, and the weapon doesn't really feel different to say the same weapon with a different attachment that improves hip fire stability. This goes beyond the attachments too, where the Police Issue M4 (level 8 assault rifle) feels pretty much exactly the same as an AK-47, as well as the military M416. Don't get me wrong, finding loot to make your numbers bigger is pretty much the premise of these types of games, and I realize that, but other loot games add interesting quirks and special abilities to mix it up a bit, and I feel like the division is sorta hamstrung into keeping things semi-realistic, where a game like Destiny can go out into the realm of fantasy a bit more. Looting and upgrading gear definitely felt satisfying initially, but that new gun smell faded after a few kills.

tl;dr Bottom line (in my opinion) is this; I've played 12 hours, I don't feel like playing any more of it, ever. I will definitely keep the game on my passive radar and see how it develops, and what some others think of the endgame and its staying power. This is one of those titles that I predict will probably burn bright for a couple weeks and then die fast.

Edit: I'd also like to add that, I did play solo about 50% of the time, with 1 friend about 25% of the time, and in 4-player PUGs 25% of the time. I had the most fun with 1 friend, and actually the least fun with the 4-player PUG. The game spawns AI based on how many players are on your squad, so if 6 enemies spawn solo, I am pretty sure just about 24 spawned with 4 players, they just kept streaming out of their spawn hallways! It makes things less strategic and just more chaotic. I never found myself actually using flank tactics and combined arms to great effect; the ai just swarms you so fast and with such deep health pools that everyone sprays what they got as fast as they can. tactics are 100% about how much dps you can put down range, and how fast your medics can pop their heal grenades before someone goes down. Having access to more than 1 ability in each tree might help this, but you can only have 2 active abilities at a time, and the enemy health pools are just so damn deep in 4 player that you don't really have time to dick around with advanced tactics. It's a shame.

 

got the beta today, I'll give it a look see.

it'll be a shame if its bad, but oh, well, more money I don't spend.

 

sounds meh. and that health pool thing sounds backwords. shouldn't it be high numbers of enemies and lower health pools for a 4 person team? with highest health pools being for lower numbers (solo, 2 person) but not so high that it's silly.

 

If the game had a actual damage model with limbs damage, dehydration, starvation, stamina, emotional health, and sickness mechanics that visually impaired or physically, the game would feel a lot more real.

Maybe it's the forced 3rd person view and cover mechanics that are extremely crappy currently. I hear in some spots it will just switch you between cover locations instead of taking you out of it.


I think the game will do better on the consoles but that's if there isn't to much backlash for the graphics downgrade fiasco.

Edit for grammar

 

Beta has been extended to Tuesday. If any of you guys are in and would like to play with me, add me on U-Play; Derak_Darksun. I'd be interested to try a 4-man squad where all 4 players are well versed in tactical gameplay and all on voice chat.

 

Think I'm in the same camp as a lot if people here. All flash, no substance.


At least XCom2 comes out this week

 

Thinking about The Divison and X Com 2 at the same time really makes me hanker for a good, modern Jagged Alliance game.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commandos_(series)

 

We need to give more dev money to Blackmill Games?