I was able to play the Division 2 Private Beta this weekend and could explore the entirety of the given content .
I was able to fully level up my char to level 7 and outfit it completely with level 7 Blues and one level 5 Purple, i also played some rounds of the "endgame" content with several characters solo and in a fullteam.
I have played the Division 1 from beta to last update and i abandoned the Division 1 when it was clear that no story content will be added anytime soon and only new game modes will be added to the game so i am familiar with all the additions up to the new "light zone" and the horde mode activities (which i found quite pleasing but that wasnt the reason i played this game (or wnated to play the game and how it was announced..)
the Good:
- "LAG and connnection issues" right after the very rocky start with literlaly all the issues that made D1 unplayabe at times, i was quite imoressed with UBIsofts ability to deploy a patch that fixde most of the load errors and fixed a good part of the horrible Lag and frame rate drops that were plagueing the d1 game so much. invisible enemies, telefporting enemies, rubberbanding, hit detection lag, all pretty much gone in just one patch.. is nice to see, but i might not forget that we already fixed this in d1 and i have not a real explanation on why it returned in the new game.
- "bulletsponginess of trash mobs in open Pve" is okay ,really it is.. it stil feels like you can only use a special set of weapons but you can manage to get a pair that doesn t suck..
- "new game mechanics "collect and create": i was saying this from the beginning in the survival "patch" in d1.. that should be in the game from the get go.. and here you are collecting stuff and being able to create a set from the parts.. very nice.. i hope the gets way better in the full game..
- Darkzone loss mechanic" VERY GOOD move that you dont lose exp whe being killed in the DZ as a non rogue.. will increase your darkzone population a lot. also the landmarks are okay, just too many random groups that will fvck you up from behind.. its a darkzone not a darkroom
the Bad:
- "enemy scaling" .. just disable it.. really, make them more plentyfull okay , more aggressive okay but leave their health bars (your damage) alone.. in the "invasion" mission o hard you feel like you are throwing cotton balls and not having bullets shot at the enemy.. there is no justrification that shooting with 4 guys at a target takes longer than shooting it alone.. avoid the "hellgate London" desaster where players were actively trying to avoid groups since solo content was so much easier.. to play.
- sluggish movements. i do understand where the devs are coming from but it has some serious side effects.. itrs one thing when you character moves slowly but if the character responses are delayed or sluggish then you have a problem.. i dont know how many times i died because my charcter moved in the wrong direction, could not detach from a cover position or could just not walk away fast enough to not be slaughtered by a bulet hailstorm from "somewhere".also having 4 drones explofe at your positio n in fast succcesstion makes it impossible to do anything else than just die. . same with the enemy with grenade laucnhers , if it sounds like a steam train "cho cho cho cho" then you are doing somehting wrong.. just give them at least ONE second in between the shots..
the Ugly (this is going to be the largest one , there werent many game breaking bugs in the game but a lot steps backwards from what we had in D1
- "No cilvilians".. the random civilians that fled when you aimed at them were not really an addition to the games mechanics but helped with immersion and gave a slight feeling of " there is somethign off"--- now everyone is on patrol and carrying a gun. thats not immersive.. that started to be annoying.. every corner there is a firefight with greens vs reds. not good.
- "no private insides".. in D1 you could go into peoples homes and see the abandoned homes from inside.. i used half a day to look for any private home or building that you can go into thats not either a parking lot or a coffee or pffice building.. but i couldnt find one..
- "Trash collector".. i collected pretty much every item out there until i came across a patrol that was carrying ressources by themselves..so i asked myself hat is the benefit of me bringing them somehting? overall i wsa hoarding things that i stil do not know what they do in real life , so maybe a small tutorial pop up would have clarified this (for use later in the game" if you did not want t spoil to much.. but thats just my feeling that i did something tedious and useless..
- "texture loading time is bigger then my walk past time".. iespecially when you are on console , your environment is not updating fast enough and you end up running through a grey slluggish abstract hell of not yet loaded textures, especially annoying if you are looking at text.. blurry mess instead of a readable sign is really breaking the immersion
- "some guns are better than others".. okay they are situational but some guns i feel you guys have been putting on a backseat since they have been good in d1 and are now not "optimal" to use.. shotguns are really in a bad spot and can be outgunned by pretty much any other rifle class. while rifles, (the bane of existance in d1) are pretty much quite a shotgun with more reach.. also snipers behave horribly.. and only the 700 and carabine models are working as a sniper while the fast firing snipers can easily be replaced with better results with a rifle class gun. quick scoping is still way more rewarding due to the auto aim than ADS, rendering sniper scopes almost useless at this time. Also LMG are THE goto weapon for almost everything since they are the only ones that can take down more than one guy with a belt while with other guns (apart from rifles) you will have to reload.. i found the combination single shot rifle and LMG the best working one
- "enemy diversity" Err no.. yes i know there is a difference between the mad woman that runs towards me with a stun baton and a mad guy with a shotgun buy counter wise its not really much of a difference..i still have no clue how the faction i am just fighting is named since i hardly can make out any difference , especially in dark areas.. its a bit tooo like to each other. so it still looks like the same guys all over.. even the black tusks are oddly similar.. the last man batallion at least wore white stuff so you could disinguish them. in d2 all enemies look and feel similar. no "cleaner" type of enemy that looks distince , but maybe they are coming later .. maybe currrently they play too similar to be distinguished.
- "special weapons".. there are blue weapons that do a similar jor even a better job that those signature weapons.. if i headshot a yellow bar enemy with my anti light armored vehicle sniper then this guy has to be dead.. end of discussion..or at least have a small sliver of health left.. but a direct hit taking down only half of the armor bar is not working. nope..
- "Mission variety" basically every mission or encounter can be solve this way: get in, pull aggro get out, wait outside and kill those who come after you. rinse and repeat.. stay back and have a healing drone .. every .single...mission ..
and now to the biggest of all flaws, the MOTHER of all flaws, happily alive since D1 first day:
UBISOFT! you forgot to put in a STORY? .. inwas hyped when divison first came out and could not wait to find out about the virus and its shadowy figures in the background, hunt them down, gather clues and complete elaborate riddles and search for clues around the map and ask survivors and more.. instead we got a mark on the ground that snapped into an arrow that told you where to go next .. until you found the next mark -.- the scene in the subway was like from metro series where you could visit an image of the past and find a clue in old cttv footage and so on.. a treasure hunt for grown ups with enemies to fight and secrets to unfold.. instead we got a diashow ending thats more open than a 24/7 shop and nowhere to go to get the story going.. instead we got game modes after game modes even with clues that the original story progression was completely different and that story missions had been abused as "incursions" to mimik "end game content". -.- Having experienced that we already got a re-used story mission with technological highly advanced full electronic soldiers with robotic support reminds me of the last man batallion and the falcon lost incursion. .. a pain to play , worse with friends and those guys we are figting should a ctually be in charge of the operation since they seem to have a better equipment than 4 gusy with ripped shorts and some electronic gadgets and very limited access to guns and ammunition. if my char would have the same amount of grenades for the signaure launcher, would speedrun solo the invasion mission, sunday morning at 6 o clock after coming home from the club, compeltely hungover.. backwards with my hands tied.,..
over all: it still feels shallow and empty, repetitive and bland.. the weapons feel powerless , the enemies doesnt seem to care getting shot or even staggered unless you have them almost die already, and the heavy armored guys fortify this feeling of "not doing the right thing" since there is no feedback that your shots actually have some impact on them unless the first armor parts drop off.."
plus Cathegory:
your UI and menus suck a bit. if you have to look right top corner to inspect a player, (which also sucks since you cant "tap him and then post him, he will have to stay in close range to be able to text him" and then have to look at the bottom left corner to get to the " view profile" button, this is bad design.. also your screen boundaries need to be adjustable.. your screen is bigger than my screen and i need to size it down to see the edges .. -.- plus FOV slider.. why isnt that a standard yet? -.-
Too lazy to read small text/post? :-- Promising, but we shall see.---
Things That Worked:
- Not a lot of stuttering. My connection was pretty smooth, although there were others who disconnected from the game. (Not sure if connection issue?)
- Less bullet absorbing enemies. I got to level 5 or 6 and found the enemies to be decently hard. Although solo play is a bit unbalanced when running into groups of enemies.
- AI. Finally I get to see enemies fighting each other. (Not sure if Division 1 had this, I think so?) Also the JTF/Civilians finally get to deal some damage. Finally. (From like maybe 2 encounters.) Enemies like to flank and counter a bit more, which is nice.
- Bosses seem less bullet sponge. Like way less.
- The new settlement thing system seems kinda cool, like an expanded safe-house thing which is nice. Didn't really do much with them, but they were okay. Have to see how they fit into the flow of the final game. They could chop up the rhythm of the game which may be a meh thing.
- Weather. Finally it's not just shades of grey and white snow. There are even deer roaming around. (Awwwwww.)
Meh:
- Weapons feel more "realistic." The weapons feel more distinct and such. But, there were perhaps some weapons that clearly were better.
- Texture loading. Some times it worked and other times I got blobs of grey. Overall, ehh.
- Missions feel better. (Played in groups that constantly pushed the objective.) Things felt more balanced. But like about, you can cheese some of these missions.
- Grenades. - Enemies have some cannon arms. Like they should be playing football or something. It's okay, I guess. (Although this was based off 3 grenades thrown at me.)
- People randomly disconnecting at times and rejoining. (Their name is still there, but they are disconnected.) Don't know if that is a user end problem or a game problem which is why it's a meh.
- Abilities. Most likely just a beta feature as many skills were locked, but skills seemed more offensive minded. Also, recharge rates were meh on the drone. A bit faster might be nice, but it was okay.
- Armor and health. Personally, the armor feels nice with the health. It's a nice balance to the new AI. But, maybe makes us slightly bullet spongy? It was okay. Not great, but not terrible either.
- UI. I feel like it has improved slightly, but still feels like a holdout from Division 1.
Things That Didn't Work:
- Scopes. (Only found the basic x12 scope on the hunting rifle.) I feel as if the scopes have not changed a single bit. Still clunky and thick.
- World seemed empty. The streets were full of things to do. But maybe some building stuff would be nice, although this is a beta so...?
- Lots of red explody things. I probably couldn't throw a pebble without having a gas can explode. (Just personal preference. Explosions are cool, and so are the fire effects.)
- Mission Variety. Hopefully there's more story missions that don't involve running around and shooting some particular person that's run away from us. (Don't really know if this is a valid point. After all, this is The Division and there are guns on the cover art so....)
Overall, most aspects are better then the first division. But, there seems to be a lot of holdouts. (Which makes sense.) The Division 2 Beta offers a lot of things that are better than the first one. But two hours and a Beta doesn't give enough evidence to support that The Division 2 is better than the first. -- Promising, but we shall see.---
In my opinion / experience:
The Good
* The game itself. I love the Division. In all my years of gaming The Division is one of my all time favorite games ever. I love the gameplay, open world and RPG element. Thank you for the masterpiece that is The Division video game series.
* Beautiful visuals / graphics.
Before playing the Private Beta I was worried that the game wouldn't look as good as the first Division. But I was wrong. It looks great. I love how it looks at night when it rains.
* Sniper rifles finally go into automatic scope mode without having to press an extra key.
While I have read a lot of people hate this new feature I for one love it. For me it is so much better than having to click on an extra button to get the scope like in the first Division.
* Movement.
Yet another thing most people don't like, but for me the movement is just fine. Never had any problem with it whatsoever.
* Replayabilty.
I love how replayable the game is. After doing the missions the first time on Normal mode, I went to replay them again on Hard mode and it was like a whole brand new experience. It was like playing the game for the very first time. This also applies to to the Level 30 character that we also got to play as well.
* The Hyena's.
I love their look with the gas mask and baton. Really cool.
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The Bad
* Performance problems.
Of course there are performance problems. I do realize that this is a beta right?
Of course there are performance problems. This is a beta after all. So I'm not b------g here. Just saying that I experienced low frame rates. In addition to a lot of pop-in.
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The Ugly
* Not being able to upgrade my Standard Edition to either the Gold or Ultimate
Due to being on SSI, I only get paid once per month. Which is on the 1st of each month. After paying rent and bills this month in February, I was only able to afford the Standard Edition so that I could play the Private Beta. Hoping that when I get paid again next month on March 1st I could pay extra money to upgrade to the Gold Edition or even Ultimate so that I could play 3 days early before March 15. Only to find out from Ubisoft that an upgrade option is not possible. Very disappointed in that. As I was willing / able to pay the $50 balance on March 1st to upgrade my edition.
"- "no private insides".. in D1 you could go into peoples homes and see the abandoned homes from inside.. i used half a day to look for any private home or building that you can go into thats not either a parking lot or a coffee or pffice building.. but i couldnt find one.."
I think this is because the beta is in a non residential part of the city. There were plenty of buildings to go into.