This has been one of my favourite games so far this year.
I should point out that I have approached the game mainly as an action RPG with some survival horror elements, and almost exclusively as a single player experience (I have not managed to persuade any of my friends to play it, and I dislike random grouping). All of my opinions should be seen in that perspective. I’m not trying to tell anybody what the “right way” to play is, just how I enjoy playing.
Also, I play on PS4.
* The character creation is simple and straightforward, although having a few more face templates to pick from would be appreciated. I’m happy to see that there are no face tattoos! Not because I don’t like them IRL, but because they are really quite uncommon while many games seem to have them as the only option if I want to make a character with ink. Neck tattoos are fine, there’s a nice variety.
Aside from adding a few more face templates, the only things I would change are to make glasses and face paint into cosmetic items instead of having them permanently affixed, and also adding sliders to change intensity of the facial scarring. I was actually surprised that we can change the face paint and tattoo intensity but not the scars.
* I think the interface is mostly smooth and functional, and once I got to know my abilities I switched to have it auto-hide which is a great feature (and great that it can be toggled). I really like how I can observe my character’s body language to be alerted to dangers even before the UI warn about them, great for immersion.
I would like to be able to “stick” emotes and consumables to their respective buttons, like I can do with grenades, to make them easier to use on the fly. This is not a huge lack, but it would be a nice addition.
* The thing I have enjoyed the most, I think, is how the world design with the cluttered streets, the weather and light effects and also environmental sounds combine to create a varied and often very tense experience while simply travelling the streets. Walking down a street in a dense fog or even blizzard, at night, with dark patches and floodlights combining to make visibility next to nonexistent, and suddenly noticing that my character has crouched in anticipation… very exciting.
Yes, trying to fight while blinded by the sun or by floodlights really increases the difficulty, but it is a type of challenge I enjoy. When I actually pull of a killing headshot across a darkened, foggy street it makes me feel accomplished, because I beat the situation mainly through my own skill.
* I like the pacing and intensity of the fights. As I said, I’ve been playing solo almost exclusively, and that raises the bar both on open world encounters and in story missions. The intensity of the fights have sometimes left me shaking with tension after having scrambled from cover to cover while trying to survive, and success has felt earned. The only mission I got stuck on and had to come back for was the Rooftop Comms Relay, where it turned out to not be enough to just try out different skills - I actually had to go level a bit before succeeding.
There is a very fine line between making such encounters challenging but not punishing. I want to feel that I actually had to work for my success, but that I eventually overcome the challenges through understanding and adaptation. In my opinion, this game does a pretty good job of providing that. Games where it just comes down to memorising exactly where to jump (or whatever), and where I’m punished for any slight misstep, tend to become tedious at best when I get bored with the trial-and-error “exact recipe” type gameplay. I have not come across this in the Division. I tend to narrow in on a certain playstyle in games of this type, but even so I feel that I can experiment a lot more without serious punishment. I enjoy this.
* The game world looks great. For the most part it is very well made, with staggering levels of detail almost everywhere. I have actually never been to New York, but at times I really feel like I’m there, in this post-disaster environment. I particularly like the environmental audio, and how I can detect civilians, or a gunfight, even before it gets within visual range. Also, the first times I got within a block from the Dark Zone only to hear a really loud gunshot followed by more firefight noises… that really set the mood.
I’ve seen some glitches, and I experience some texture popping. There are also audio glitches. However, the main reason these stand out is because everything else looks so great that it becomes somewhat jaring in contrast. This is not a huge problem for me, but it needed to be mentioned.
* For the most part, I like the NPCs. The civilians are fairly credible, although, that couple arguing about food seem to be on just about every street corner all across Manhattan. Actually, a lot of the “barks” are the same, which gets a bit silly after a while. I have also found that the JTF soldiers usually have no idea who they are fighting, randomly shouting about Cleaners, LMB etc.
Also, the people I rescue, either JTF soldiers captured by looters or the people in the Missing Person missions, never really run away when rescued. The JTF folks usually just run behind a car and… just stay there, staring into space, and the Missing Persons don’t even bother running. They just shut off, like a showroom dummy. That makes it feel as if the missions in question weren’t quite finished. Having them run away properly, or having a JTF squad show up as soon as I call it in would be better, in my opinion.
That said, I like how the random street NPCs give the city just enough life within the context, and how most of them behave believably when near a group of hostiles. I also like how the base of operations fills up as the story progresses.
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A few suggestions
As I said, I mostly play solo PvE, and I don’t really go into the Dark Zone. I understand that people like that, it’s just not what really entertains me.
That means, however, that when I’ve cleared the main story there isn’t a lot for me to do in the game world. Doing the story missions on Hard Mode is all right, but if I’m tired from work and don’t feel like starting one of those, but still want to do some stuff in the game, there isn’t a lot to choose from.
I suggest either letting us replay the side missions and encounters, or putting in a procedural system to make new ones. Compare Watch_Dogs, where in the main game the side missions were limited, but in the Bad Blood DLC a system was put in place to generate new ones at certain intervals. Sure, those were even more cookie-cutter than the ones in the main game, but there was still some variety.
Another suggestion could be to add something, maybe in every area, maybe not, to “build”. Sort of like the base of operations, where I use wing resources to upgrade stuff. Re-introduce Encounters, and add something small to use the resources for. It could be something advanced like setting up a field hospital somewhere, or constructing guard houses. It could be something a lot simpler, like when I reach 100 wing credits I get a 1hr boost to scavenging for the particular crafting materials associated with the wing in question.
In any case, it would introduce repeatable, smaller missions, preferably with at least some variety. Of course, they would have a significantly lower reward than the main missions, but if the last “yellow” elite dropped two phoenix credits and had a chance for a high end gear piece, and if three such missions spawned across the whole map every two hours, it would be rewarding but not so rewarding as to replace the main missions.
***
Also, I’m going to put this in here. It’s a Youtube clip commenting on some of the unspoken social commentary in the Division, and it does a good job of explaining some of the things that irks me as I play, but that I haven’t been able to put to words. Again, I really like this game, and find many of the themes in it very interesting, but sometimes it seems that the storytellers haven’t reached all the way.
https://youtu.be/4jKsj345Jjw
A lot of the Rioters (and I keep wanting to call them Looters) are probably street gangs that went feral, but another big part of them are likely to be Neighbourhood Watch type people that have let panic and paranoia run away with them. It would have been interesting to add elements where the player gets to resolve some issues through other means than shooting at them.
The developers have done a good job of putting in choice in the Dark Zone, where you can kill people and take their stuff but you can also choose to help them out and work together. Applying this in some way to the story part of the game world would be really interesting.
Anyway. That’s all for now, I may update if I come up with something else.
Thanks for a good game, folks!
Ah yes, I do have a few things to add.
First off, some things I don't like.
Again, I really like this game, and I cannot count the number of times I've said "F**k, that's beautiful" to myself. Examples Looking down a canyon of streets, watching the interplay of sunligt and falling snow. Crouching behind cover while listening to a couple of looters having an actual conversation that doesn't boil down to "Yeah, I'm such a badass, Imma kill me some cops!" Using the incendiary mod for my seeker mine (or as I call it, the Croquet Ball of Doom).
Some things bother me, however.
The vendors in the safehouses and base of operation.
These people are essentially supply officers, whose job it is to provide me (and the JTF troops) with equipment. I understand why I have to pay for the stuff, mechanically at least, but I dislike that they behave as, well, vendors. I swear, if that Dark Zone vendor at the base of operations tells me "Don't walk away!" just One. More. Time, I will shove that seeker mine up his backstreet access so far that those incendiary bomblets pop out of his nose. It reminds me of nothing so much as "I work with Belethor, in the general goods store!" (clap if you get the reference)
Civilians in need.
Actually, I like them a lot, in general. But sitting in cover inside a building, two floors up, trying not to get shot, and discovering that some poor starving schmuck down on the street wants my water bottle: annoying. Climbing down a ladder only to have some old lady in a purple hat turn away at the last moment and call me "As**ole": annoying. Checking my map only to have somebody claim that their death is now on me because they ran out of patience: annoying.
(edit)
I like that I can get inside so many of the buildings. I do not like the fact that practically all of them are completely empty. Even with so many dead or evacuated, I should be finding at least a couple of civilians or looters in there, but nope. Also, a lot of the interiors are extremely similar. I understand why this is, building thousands of unique interiors would be impossible. I'm guessing most of the interiors are procedurally generated to some extent, but maybe tweak the procedure a bit or add a few more interior assets to reduce the IKEA ad feeling a bit?
I also think there is something skewed with the loot drops and stuff, high end stuff doesn't really seem all that... legendary. Especially when I can buy blueprints for them in my base. More purples, fewer gold, make the high end stuff really worth while? Maybe? I'm not a numbers person, and I don't usually enjoy the gear grind aspect of games very much, so I have nothing solid on this, but yeah.
There's some other stuff, I'll edit it in as I come up with it.
I have seen a bit of talk about the astonishingly bulletproof tarps used by CERA, as well as a few other strangely durable materials. My life ingame has been saved a number of times by this.
It is, however, not very realistic.
So, I was thinking about glass. The other day, I sat in cover while sniping at some Rikers through a great plate glass window, perfectly safe myself behind a thin sheet of particle board, when I got this idea.
Treat those materials, lite tarpaulin, plywood and such, like non-transparent "glass".
Glass obviously has collision properties, which is why we can't walk through it. It also obviously is permeable by bullets, which is why we can shoot through it. So if a low cover made of tarp was like that, only non-transparent, it would still obscure me from enemy detection, but it would offer considerably less protection once somebody started shooting at me - or I at them.
Why is this not already in place? I have a few guesses, but it lies in the developers' hands to explain it. It could be because nobody in the development team came up with the idea, but that seems quite unlikely. More likely, it's because the increased amount of code it would require to add to all the pieces of cover that would be affected is simply to great, and would weigh down the game engine too much. It could also be a deliberate design decision to make sure that all types of cover would be equally reliable, to spare the players the extra trouble of having their cover position collapse around them.
In general, I enjoyed them. I did feel that some of the end fights caused me to get pinned down a bit more than was strictly entertaining, I did try to experiment a bit with skills and stuff to let me close with the enemy more but found that to rarely be viable. This is not a problem, particularly, but something I ran into note the less.
I know people have complained about how most bosses are the same, just "ordinary" enemies with more health, and while I agree somewhat with that I still think there is enough variety in type, at least, to work for me.
One fight I enjoyed was the fight with Larae Barrett. The layout of the area allowed me to change position and make use of the terrain to my advantage, while still keeping a good pressure up at all times. I came out of that fight feeling that I had succeeded through my wit and agility (more or less).
By contrast, I did not enjoy the final fight with Bliss. When I had managed to use the fight mechanichs to take the armour plating off the helicopter, I still had to run around like a ferret on fire because whenever I stopped to engage it, I would get swamped in bombs and ground enemies. That fight was just tedious. I would have preferred a two-stage fight, where I would take the helicopter down with the provided mechanics, and then had to fight Bliss on the ground. "Face to face", so to speak. That would not necessarily have been easier, but less tedious. Less "run run run run shoot run run run shoot dodge roll dodge rolll run run run shoot".
So, gear in this game comes in a number of tiers.
I keep forgetting the names of the tiers, so I'll just use the colours instead.
There's gray, the lowest quality, through green, blue, purple, gold and teal.
All weapon models can be found at all levels and in all colours. This is something I would like to see done differently.
Specifically, the weapons have different prefixes to them, which denote certain deviations from the norm in the shape of somewhat different stats and other behaviours.
However, it seems strange to me to come across a "First Wave" weapon, which I interpret as something brought in by the first wave of Division agents and thus supposedly a very advanced piece of equipment, in gray or green quality.
I would suggest limiting certain weapon prefixes, and the accompanying effects, to certain ends of the quality spectrum. I don't have a comprehensive list of all the prefixes, but stuff named "Classic" or "Hunter" for example belong in the gray / green end, while "Custom" and "First Wave" belong in the purple / gold end.
Yes, this is mostly a cosmetic change, but in my view the characteristics of the more advanced weapon types seem pretty wasted at gear that would be deconstructed any way, and in the case of the multiplayer areas this would make it a bit easier to see if a player has some special gear or not.
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Another thought about gear: The stuff that is included with the DLC costume sets.
I bought one of the sets, and it came with matching guns and backpacks. Unfortunately, this gear was lvl 4 only. I think it would be a good idea to include craftin blueprints for the items as well, one for each at green lvl 10, blue lvl 20 and purple lvl 30 (or tweak that as needed). Why those quality tiers? Simply because that would keep them from being directly overpowered, to avoid any feeling of "pay-to-win".
(I figured I'd use my old thread instead of making a new one, to avoid cluttering the forum)
I had a thought about the new PvE stuff mentioned in the "Conflict" trailer, specifically the High-Value Targets.
There is not much information in the trailer, but I'm speculating that this is what is put in to fill the place of side missions.
I'm making the assumption that these mini-bosses are not just released into the game world, but that we will have to accept the bounty before they can be triggered to spawn. If this is the case, that is probably a good thing if they are as challenging as they seem from the trailer. I get the impression that they are made to be a bit more difficult than the normal side missions. Having them skulking about in the open world for us to stumble into unprepared might be more of a nuisance.
That said, I wouldn't mind seeing a few more open-world roaming elites as well, to spice things up.
It remains to be seen how the system actually works, but it seems as if it could be a decent end-game PvE activity similar to the repeating side missions in Watch_Dogs: Bad Blood. I'm hoping for this, at least. I'm also hoping that there will be a bit more variety among these bounties, and not just a dozen or so randomly repeating ones. Som procedural generation would be nice.
I've been thinking about the PvE environment. It's really well made for the most part, and it seems a great waste to funnel all players away from it.
Also, before I forget:
There are promises about changes to how loot drops - how often it drops, what sort and so forth. That would be great.
Usually when I run into a roaming PvE elite pack, I get maybe one or two drops after killing nearly a dozen enemies, with usually two purple elites and one gold elite in the mix. These drops are never gold quality. Never. If I'm really lucky, I get maybe one purple. When I run a story mission, I get maybe five green+ quality drops throughout the entire mission (that's on hard mode), most of those from the end boss.
I think all enemies should drop something. It doesn't have to be guns or gear, it could be just a medkit or a bit of ammo. It could also be some white quality loot like a mask, kneepads or a gun.
This is not just because I want more loot (all of that would be deconstructed anyway), but because of realism. If I kill a dozen guys and loot their corpses in real life, I would expect to find at least one marginally useful bit of gear on each one. Admittedly, this is not something I have real life experience of, but it seems reasonable.
Also, when I fight a gold elite and they drop nothing, that just seems weird. I think all elites should have a significant chance to drop green loot or above, with gold elites guaranteed to drop something purple at least. Again, the gear level and other specifics could be adjusted as needed.
And finally, I would like it if enemies had a slightly higher chance to drop the type of weapon they are using. When a sniper drops a shotgun, or an LMG gunner drops a marksman's rifle... if you had that gun, why were you shooting at me with something else? And where did the gun go that you were actually using?
I realise that a lot of these changes would require quite a bit of code going into the enemies, but I figured I'd just as well make the suggestions.
The only thing I dislike is when you have a group of rouges and you kill 2 out of 4. While your chasing the other 2 the ones you killed can comeback and shoot you in the back and go rouge again. They could add a rouge radius or something to prevent that so I your in that circle they can't shoot you would be nice but I know that's not going to happen.
I have very limited experience with the Dark Zone, which is why I haven't commented much on that. All I know is that any attempt at balancing that part of the game is going to be very complicated, because there are so many factors involved - not just the rogue system.Originally Posted by churst21 Go to original post