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  1. #1

    Constructive feedback from a long time D1 player that is now wait & see on D2

    I made multiple characters in division one and in the last year played it a ton. I loved all the updates and changes that were made to really flesh out the game and provide variety and fun content. So going into the beta I had certain expectations and I would like to share my thoughts on the beta and feedback. I'm not going to discuss any bugs or glitches. I was originally over the top excited for this game and that went from excited to luke-warm to disappointed as I played thru so I went from thinking I was going to upgrade to the top level Xbox digital edition to a cancel. Now I wait to see how long it will take to get back to at a minimum where the previous game left off.

    The startup screen and the menu: Terrible. This is a looter shooter and you made it difficult to delete the mass of items I was looting by changing the mark as junk option to mark as favorite. There is no reason for this. You also hid the share option in a menu tree. Why? This is the equivalent of swapping the gas and break pedals on a new car model just because you wanted to do it, I wanted to just dive into the game but instead had to stop to do a self tutorial on your new convoluted menu system. Then explain it to every new person that joined. The flash bang grenade startup screen combined with the difficulty in finding anything in the menus start the player base off already irritated. Then you start getting the continuous stream of help requests and realize that not only do you need the forums to help find where the hell the disable option is located but that every time you DC you have to re-toggle it again. What is my crit chance with this weapon? No clue as it's hidden deep within the bowels of this VCR edition menu! Yes it is there but it isn't as simple to get these details as it was in the last game. I saw one comment from Ubisoft asking what the player liked about the menus so I put the same question to my friends. It was a unanimous "nothing". I think we now know why streamers weren't allowed to show the menus before the beta. You know it's bad so just put out a tutorial video & let's move on.

    The graphics/visuals: Daytime mode outdoors is excellent. I really enjoyed it. However go into a building, underground, or anywhere at night and you can't see anything. The enemies can but you cannot. I've seen posts of people praising this stating you just have jack up the settings on your TV and it becomes playable but that is just plain stupid. Please fix this. I went back & forth from D1 to D2 beta to make sure I wasn't just imagining things or maybe it was the snow conditions that accounted for that extra brightness but that wasn't case. Every part of D1 was brighter and easier to see. In the endgame mission it was so dark most of the time the only thing that looked different were the mini tanks. The enemies could've been just about anything because there wasn't any definition to them other than the slight glow indicator and a dark outline. The grafitti was lame as well. Also went back & forth between the games matching visuals and I know it's very minor but indicative of the detailing and in D1 it was clever, unique, realistic and impactful. In the D1 beta it feels like kids started to but stopped mid stream painting on the walls as most of it is unreadable and the stuff that is there lacks anything of impact. Please at a minimum address the brightness so we can full time appreciate the visuals.

    The story: I was sucked in right from the start with D1. I was a special agent working to save New York from a bio terrorist attack. I worked with law enforcement and the military/JTF to quell gangs of looters, escaped criminals, vigilanties and rogue agents trying to capitalize on the disarray. I know a lot of people don't care about the story but I do and I can't stand where this is going. Leading up to the beta we were told DC was on the verge of collapse into civil war so we were there to help save it. Ummm.. nope that isn't it at all. Basically the concept is that there is no more law enforcement or military. The governement is gone and we are now working to consolidate what supplies are left for a local warlord and her people. They play over a loudspeaker that they have no room so no one is welcome yet we need to basically steal from the remaining citizens to provide food and weapons to this warlord and her people. That isn't how it is being portrayed but you could easily uproot this story and place it in Afghanistan if you want it to be more realistic. If the government, law enforcement and military are all gone why would we be doing this? The factions lack any flavor compared to D1. The story sucks. I'm sure some people like this but the concept that 6-8 months after the plague we are all that is left of government infrastructure is a joke.

    The characters. UGLY! I at least want my character to not look disabled. I don't need anything special but I just assumed they would look at a minimum as good as in D1. Instead you give us social justice warriors meet characters from Deliverance. I thought it was lame how limited it was in D1 character creation but all you did was dumb down the characters and add tattoos. You know the saying about lipstick on a pig? The beta brought little in the way of clothing interaction as well. In D1 I went back and counted. I have 146 hats. I found myself exploring the environment as much to get more clothes for my character as to get gear. Then I focused on key frags to unlock chests to get the gold level sets, weapons skins, emotes and backpack skins. The beta gave us almost nothing to play around with here and after 4 of us hit 40 hours of exploring one person found one pair of sweatpants. This makes me feel that clothing will basically be loot box items. I really liked the setup in D1 and it was so well done with clothing that alone made me play more. The beta combined with lack of website info makes mee feel that it's not something to enjoy in D2. Please provide info as to how this system will work and if there is another beta provide more to work with to drive customer interest. A huge chunk of time spent in the Anthem demo was playing around with paint schemes and it really drove up interest in the game.

    Guns/equpment. They all look nice but the mods are a pointless joke. Thanks to the menu it's difficult to figure out what gear you even want or need and lack of info on what is/will be available makes me think this will be much less diverse than D1. Are the talents random as many streamers claim or are they fixed based on the gun model itself? No clue and no way to find out. If it's really only random roles on armor and guns/mods are fixed then this is encroaching on Destiny 2 territory. The rifle class sucks. Too much recoil. The only way to use a sniper is to not use a siper scope. Basically I want to know if there are going to be more gun options than we had in D1 and if they are random rolls. So far I've only seen the Sig and the S1? I like the 3 piece sets but due to the lack of any really viable buffs/talents I've seen my character lacks a sense of feeling powerful to the point it gets ho hum tedious and not worth even bothering with most guns. It didn't take long to just not even care what the perks were and remove all the mods which in hindsight is terrible and means that the gear isn't adding to the experience but detracting from it so there goes the desire to farm.

    Endgame. I never liked the dark zone despite playing it a lot and I never liked any of the PVP modes so I'm here for the PVE. Raids, challenging missions, the underground, survival. That sort of thing. This was the real killer for the bulk of my friends. I rewatched an interview with Julian and went back to the website to review what info you have on the endgame and it sums up that the beta showed us all the endgame minus the future release raid. The endgame is redoing the missions on a harder difficulty setting against different enemies (same as D1), the dark zone, and the character specializations. The specialzations were of limited value and I really didn't care to even use them. Tactics and teamwork accomplish more faster and with less hassle. Underwhelming was the common theme. The artillery turret was of little to no value on hard mode because the AI enemies won't sit still to wait for the slow shooting low damage lob shot to land. The healing mine was cool. The incendiary grenades were nice but pretty much everything else about the specialists was at best ho hum. It's just an extention of the awkard equipment usage. A seeker mine that doesn't seek. A pulse drone special abiltiy that you have to target and lock on manually is of no real help as you are pausing combat to try to use this garbage. Enemy drones that are one shot artists are the D2 version of D1 shotgunners. Annoying and stupid. I liked the EMP variable and improved enemy AI but hard mode with more than 2 people wasn't very fun at all. It became a tedious defense fight against mostly invisible enemies because of the extreme darkness and one shot mechanics. Removing the underground and survival without any content replacement pretty much sealed the deal for me. I'm not going to continuously supply forward operating bases for the warlords troops as the endgame as follow up videos and info make it sound that the checkpoints or whatever you call them are one of the biggest endgame activities. Specialista are not an endgame boon. They are there but don't bring any excitement to the game. Again this screams Destiny 2. The chatter from Ubisoft was endgame endgame endgame yet there is no more here than vanilla D1 and significantly less than D1 has had for more than a year.

    Conclustion: The base of what could be a great game is here but it certainly isn't a great game at this time. Fix the brightness. Provide a tutorial on the menu system. Provide detail on the guns and gear system including a list of perks and what is and isn't random. Provide detail on character customization. Tell us if there is anything else we haven't already seen for endgame. Give me more reason than the beta did to find this game interesting. I'm all ears.
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  2. #2
    DarthBell - You make some valid arguments, but this is the BETA release and the developers deserve some slack. If the full game releases and has many of the issues you bring up, than I believe Div2 will have some serious issues going forward. With respect to this BETA, I do agree with much of what you are saying and I'm a true lover of DIV1 and want the DIV2 to be even better!

    I'm Keeping my fingers crossed!
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  3. #3
    Originally Posted by AOD_ihaveur6 Go to original post
    DarthBell - You make some valid arguments, but this is the BETA release and the developers deserve some slack. If the full game releases and has many of the issues you bring up, than I believe Div2 will have some serious issues going forward. With respect to this BETA, I do agree with much of what you are saying and I'm a true lover of DIV1 and want the DIV2 to be even better!

    I'm Keeping my fingers crossed!
    Beta yes. But at this stage the game is done. And while we did only get a slice, we still don't know how much content there is for the PvE endgame...
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