Bullet sponges. Everywhere. | Forums

[xxSHEPERDxx]

Not really feeling the spongyness. Gets pretty Borderlandish later on. I understand that they intended this to be played with other players, but when playing solo it's the worst. Even with a full on weapon dps-centric character build it takes ages to kill one of these guys, and realism goes well out the door when i'm literally unloading mag after mag from an accurate LMG and rifle, and SMG when I run dry, and the enemy not only can't be suppresed, but has no hit stun animations to at least allow players to wound them long enough so the player can back out to find more cover. Thankfully the turret, when you can use it and it's not on cooldown, can at least cause them to turn around, but then they enter a rush attack anim where they one shot the turret up close.

Probably going to just switch out turret buddy for portable cover and scan, to stack their two damage boosts along with the taclink skill. Somehow I get the impression that it's still going to take ages to take one of these sponges down, though.

Feels like a really lazy design, and something more tactical would have been preferred, especially with the Clancy name in the title. (Game gets a little too comical later on, where you can almost tell where Tom passed away during production)

Maybe give the brute styled sponge enemies 'phases', where they will either first appear with one weapon and use a particular tactic, then as you wear them down, they switch it up. IE: If they get close to low health, they will drop that LMG sand switch to a ballistic shield and pistol combo, or use portable cover and attempt to heal, or use the heal skill to revive their dead allies, instead of just sitting there, eating bullets.

[j_Stranger]

Not really feeling the spongyness. Gets pretty Borderlandish later on. I understand that they intended this to be played with other players, but when playing solo it's the worst. Even with a full on weapon dps-centric character build it takes ages to kill one of these guys, and realism goes well out the door when i'm literally unloading mag after mag from an accurate LMG and rifle, and SMG when I run dry, and the enemy not only can't be suppresed, but has no hit stun animations to at least allow players to wound them long enough so the player can back out to find more cover. Thankfully the turret, when you can use it and it's not on cooldown, can at least cause them to turn around, but then they enter a rush attack anim where they one shot the turret up close.

Probably going to just switch out turret buddy for portable cover and scan, to stack their two damage boosts along with the taclink skill. Somehow I get the impression that it's still going to take ages to take one of these sponges down, though.

Feels like a really lazy design, and something more tactical would have been preferred, especially with the Clancy name in the title. (Game gets a little too comical later on, where you can almost tell where Tom passed away during production)

Maybe give the brute styled sponge enemies 'phases', where they will either first appear with one weapon and use a particular tactic, then as you wear them down, they switch it up. IE: If they get close to low health, they will drop that LMG sand switch to a ballistic shield and pistol combo, or use portable cover and attempt to heal, or use the heal skill to revive their dead allies, instead of just sitting there, eating bullets.

This is an RPG. Of course there is bullet sponges...... we have known this since day 1.

[xxSHEPERDxx]

At 26 now. Wep DPS is my focus, so long as I can avoid being shot (which is most of the time), I just lay into enemies.
My firearms stat is at 825
Primary DPS with my AK is 25,070
Secondary DPS with my LMG is 19,440

Rifle is level 24, LMG at 25. Just hit 26 myself. Again, weapon stat is my focus. I was previously stacking armor, and really, armor doesn't do jack **** for your defense, especially when sniper women start showing up in every incursion and can take you below half health with a single glancing shot. After that, I switched to wep dps centric and adjusted my playstyle so use the best possible cover instead of whatever was available, and on these large mofos, I end up kiting quite a bit. There are several instances where the cover i'm using is completely blocking the enemy shots, so I can unload at them with impunity, and they literally just sit there eating damage.

I know the super generic mechanic for the brute enemies is to 'shoot them in the back'. First ones you see are the cleaner brutes with the huge flame thrower tanks on their backs. Shoot the tank enough times and they blow up. Later on you see brutes carrying ammo packs on their backs and you're supposed to shoot them. The ammo eventually starts detonating and kills them or does heavy damage, while keeping them stuck in a panic animation for the duration. Only problem is, you can be aiming dead on at these backpacks and they won't detonate while you're firing at it. Whatever skill you've used to turn the enemy around will expire and they're back to facing you again, full spongyness.

I've just started stacking portable shield, scan pulse with the damage boost, tactical link, and the special ammo which I was trying to avoid (hate consumable buffs in games), and it's raising up the damage a bit, but the brutes at least are still eating thousands of dps per second and flashbangs tend to run out faster than you can recover them. Thankfullly the main mission and bounty missions have checkpoints that will stick you back or near those missions without totally resetting your progress, though the smaller elite enemies (purple/gold health) can still pose a problem in missions where a death means you're respawning miles away and the instance is reset entirely.

I do use one of every weapon, and keep them maintained with mods and replace them when I get my mitts on a higher level version, and I do use the sniper rifle (semi auto) quite frequently, as even without scope firing, it's heavy per shot damage can bring down elite targets fairly quickly. When it comes to brutes though, they won't flinch.

The 'shoot the back' mechanic is too generic/cheap. I'd like for it to be changed as mentioned above, or in similar fashion, so that instead of them being a one trick pony with a fifty mile long HP bar, they react differently and will use varied tactics as their HP drops, which can change for each type of enemy (cleaner brute, merc brute, gang brute, etc). It would make things a bit more engaging and tactical instead of how it is currently, where they just eat bullets non-stop if they could use player level abilities against the player. Currently they just spam LMG fire and will stop when reloading (or spam a flame thrower when they get close). Elites tend to spam grenades in place of using an LMG. There is that one elite that will actually deploy a turret, which was pretty cool and more in line with what i'm wanting to see more of. (Though they have no cooldown on the turrets and can seemingly deploy them right after you blew up their last one, which is then kinda shady).

Even Defiance (eventually) learned to vary up their Brute class enemy tactics, where initially they all functioned similar to the minigun toting bio-men that do exactly what Division's brutes are doing. Defiance was the lesser game by miles. Far as The Division goes, I think this can be done to improve it.

[Arsenic_Touch]

It's funny, you never see people complaining about npcs being sword or fireball sponges in rpgs. Yet they always complain when the mechanic is identical but with guns. /sigh

[Dark-M-C-5]

It's not really that bullet spongy... The better question, is hows your accuracy? I'm downing people my level in 2-3 shots with a marksman rifle, a couple short bursts for auto weapons.

Higher level enemies though are a diff story.

But would it make sense to take out a level 17 and level 7 enemy with the same AMT of bullets?

[Aiden_Warren]

Not really feeling the spongyness. Gets pretty Borderlandish later on. I understand that they intended this to be played with other players, but when playing solo it's the worst. Even with a full on weapon dps-centric character build it takes ages to kill one of these guys, and realism goes well out the door when i'm literally unloading mag after mag from an accurate LMG and rifle, and SMG when I run dry, and the enemy not only can't be suppresed, but has no hit stun animations to at least allow players to wound them long enough so the player can back out to find more cover. Thankfully the turret, when you can use it and it's not on cooldown, can at least cause them to turn around, but then they enter a rush attack anim where they one shot the turret up close.

Probably going to just switch out turret buddy for portable cover and scan, to stack their two damage boosts along with the taclink skill. Somehow I get the impression that it's still going to take ages to take one of these sponges down, though.

Feels like a really lazy design, and something more tactical would have been preferred, especially with the Clancy name in the title. (Game gets a little too comical later on, where you can almost tell where Tom passed away during production)

Maybe give the brute styled sponge enemies 'phases', where they will either first appear with one weapon and use a particular tactic, then as you wear them down, they switch it up. IE: If they get close to low health, they will drop that LMG sand switch to a ballistic shield and pistol combo, or use portable cover and attempt to heal, or use the heal skill to revive their dead allies, instead of just sitting there, eating bullets.

I don't get what you're issue with bullet sponging is as all mmorpgs has that, so what you're saying you like enemies that only takes few hits to kill?
if anything, you don't like bullet sponging in Destiny of enemies of health and shield health.

But on the other hand, I do agree that enemy NPCs health are indeed way too massive in comparison to other MMOs, (Which has nothing to do with bulletsponging)
NPC's just has large health pool, that has nothing to do with bulletsponging, in which it seems dyslexic for you to comprehend that the higher the level, the more health they have and the higher damage weapons you get, if you get a 10k damage weapon shooting a level 10 NPC, they die in few shots, then do you call that bulletsponging, or do you can using a level 10 weapon on a level 10 npc bullet sponging?
or is bullet sponging for a mmorpg that shouldnt have bulletsponging like cod and other non mmo games?

[I Redemptionx I]

It's funny, you never see people complaining about npcs being sword or fireball sponges in rpgs. Yet they always complain when the mechanic is identical but with guns. /sigh

Not really that funny, or that hard of a mystery - those games don't have the balls to call themselves a Tom Clancy game, something this game has no business doing so, especially when it takes dozens of rounds to put down a guy in a hoodie.

You wanna make an RPG in a modern setting using firearms and etc, no problem! sounds like fun! But stop acting when fans of the Tom Clancy brand are confused when the game is completely devoid of anything that resembles reality.

[Dark-M-C-5]

Not really that funny, or that hard of a mystery - those games don't have the balls to call themselves a Tom Clancy game, something this game has no business doing so, especially when it takes dozens of rounds to put down a guy in a hoodie.

You wanna make an RPG in a modern setting using firearms and etc, no problem! sounds like fun! But stop acting when fans of the Tom Clancy brand are confused when the game is completely devoid of anything that resembles reality.

With the recent advances in technologies such as Google and YouTube you should always know what you're getting into. 5 min of gameplay and anyone can see the type of game it is.

[I Redemptionx I]

It's funny, you never see people complaining about npcs being sword or fireball sponges in rpgs. Yet they always complain when the mechanic is identical but with guns. /sigh

With the recent advances in technologies such as Google and YouTube you should always know what you're getting into. 5 min of gameplay and anyone can see the type of game it is.

I get that. Also with the Beta.

But you market a whole series of games, based on semi-realistic (comparatively)-physics, tactics, and atmospheres (a brand that goes back decades) then you suddenly out of nowhere publish a game that goes against everything the brand stands for. But then blame the consumer? Blames on them, definitely but shame on ubisoft for even exploiting the name just to make sales.

This have shouldn't be a Tom Clancy game and they used it regardless just to get extra sales. And it's somehow justified because is a "mmorpg".

You'd have avoided alot of frustration by just calling it "The Division" and leaving the Tom Clancy name out.

[TidalSpiral]

I get that. Also with the Beta.

But you market a whole series of games, based on semi-realistic (comparatively)-physics, tactics, and atmospheres (a brand that goes back decades) then you suddenly out of nowhere publish a game that goes against everything the brand stands for. But then blame the consumer? Blames on them, definitely but shame on ubisoft for even exploiting the name just to make sales.

This have shouldn't be a Tom Clancy game and they used it regardless just to get extra sales. And it's somehow justified because is a "mmorpg".

You'd have avoided alot of frustration by just calling it "The Division" and leaving the Tom Clancy name out.

He sure pulls a lot of purists for a dead guy.