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  1. #1

    RIP skill gap, Good PVP players will get bored quickly!

    My thoughts on The Division 2 private beta.

    This will include both positive and negative feedback so fanboys who don’t like any criticism of their favourite franchise should skip to the next post.

    Now I am a huge fan of the franchise clocking in well over 1,400 hours of play time in TD1.

    I am a PVP player. The PVE to be honest will always bores me as the AI is too predictable and offers little to no challenge in terms of tactics and skill. I don’t really care if AI goes from 30k toughness to 50k, they play the same and after 40 hours in the game any decent player will know how to beat the AI.

    If PVE is your thing that’s ok, this is just the opinion from my PVP standpoint.

    The way I play is to grind PVE to get my loot. I will play constantly until I get a top tier build. Then I will go into the DZ and play PVP hijacking every agent I come across to improve the build to max levels, never wanting to do anything PVE based again.

    Things I loved about TD1 was how much skill there was involved. Clutch med kits with the talent combat medic for increased amount of health, on the move to receive less damage, having predatory on a pistal to finish players to get health over time... These things to name just a few, allowed good solo players to take on teams of 2,3 or even 4 based on your superior skill and in depth build/game knowledge.

    Over the years the Devs kept on decreasing certain things to lower the skill cap. Thus making it harder for solo players to have the big skill advantage they had based on their skill.

    This on top of friendly fire being introduced equaled with the 2.0 rougue system meant that a very skilled 4 man team would have to put up the ‘DZ Police’ turning up in numbers to kill you 20 vs 4.

    Before 2.0 was introduced if the whole server turned up, and you had a good organised team, you could no doubt fight them officer and over again until your team ran out of med kits or ammo, forcing you to dip and move to survive the timer. Due to people accidentally going rougue and therefore ultimately they of course ended up fighting each other allowed a team to bottle them in and watch them all shoot each other before you ran through them all.

    Too often after 2.0 rogue systems was introduced you would get the entire server grouped up, all emoting and waiting for players to go rougue, just so they could effectively multi group and get cheap rouge kills.

    The major flaw I see in TD2 is without any real healing skills, and the time to kill being reduced so much, that the skill cap required to kill players is lower than ever!

    Literally get the drop on an agent, point shoot, and they’re dead in seconds before they can really react. Solo manhunts can RIP on consoles for sure, as nobody will be able to survive or run from a squad or 4!

    Also I found if a player is about 15m away, if you poked your head around a corner and let yourself get shot until your armour was destroyed, then go back into cover to heal, players will push to finish you off... Only for them to get around the corner to find you had fully healed, and then kill them easily as they were now in the bad position, maybe let them run into a grenade, or place a turret down so two guns shred them once they turned the corner. It just felt a bit cheap.

    I would like either instant heals whilst moving to stop people pushing with the advantage to find they get punished when going for the finish. Or Heal over time, so that the player with the advantage pushing gets rewarded for winning the early exchange and pressing to finish the player off. Both these ways would still stop the ‘chicken dance’ and would be a massive improvement over the beta healing.

    I think the DZ also needs much more frequent weather dynamics. Heavy rain might help solo players to get the drip on 2 or 3 players at an extraction for example. Bad enough for them that they have to flag before going rougue giving their element of surprise away. Maybe solo players shouldn’t have to flag to go rougue against people in groups, maybe they could simply shoot ?!

    I also hated the NPC status effects or how many they have, and hated the length of time shock lasts!! Sometimes you would be shocked from nowhere, this stands you up out of cover, lasts for an eternity and you often get shredded. This on top of runners with shock batons, too many NPC’s with RC cars, and of course suicide bombers... Again Solo it is incredibly tedious getting shocked as this equates to insta death in the DZ anyway.

    Obviously there were loads of bugs. Getting kicked from servers, getting stuck in walls, rougue timers not going down, sounds glitching, if in a group and killed as rougue when coming out of the checkpoint, not getting the 5 or 10 seconds you’re supposed to get when leaving the checkpoint, this equals being killed instantly by the turrets, then waiting another 30 seconds before you can get back to help your team.

    However I would hope that a lot of this will have been covered by loads of our feedback and these things can be fixed before launch.

    The movement is a little slow, again this with the quick ‘time to kill’ makes it easier for less skilled players to hit players narrowing the skill gap further.

    Despite all of this I did enjoy a lot of what I played. Having to be more tactical when pushing, having to actually use cover is indeed a big step in the right direction over the ‘chicken dance’ in TD1.

    I felt the guns were far easier to control even in TD2 vs TD1 even with top tier mods equipped. Feels good for console players to be far more accurate... Yet again though... This without hardly any healing or skills, or clutch med kits, slower player movement & time to kill being so fast, also makes it easier to kill players. Thus RIP skill gap!!!

    Effectively I feel the game has been over simplified to please poor players who complained, and ultimately lets down the hardcore PVP players.

    Without this I think the hardcore player base who played TD1 for years will get bored after the first 6 months or so and they will drop off onto other games.
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  2. #2
    xVaypa's Avatar Junior Member
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    Dec 2017
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    16
    Good write up. I share many of your opinions but I'm less concerned about the idea of skill gap and more with "was it fun? did I enjoy it?".

    I didn't like the pacing and feel of combat. The low TTK + the absence of burst healing + the janky movement + the cumbersome skills really didn't deliver me the same rush as I got from Div 1.
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  3. #3
    Well stated, and completely agree. It is hard to put it all into words, but there definitely feels like something is missing/off with the mix of pvp combat. I dont want the chicken dances of D1, but this feels like you cannot really outplay people that much. If they have even the basics of aim they end up doing too much damage with a teammate for you to make very interesting plays. Skills feel like they can only be used proactively for all real use because everything in D2 from a use/movement perspective feels like I am lagged. (I dont mean actual fps or ping lag, but just all use mechanics seem like they are delayed more than they should be)

    Shooters need to be quick on reflexes and the game shouldnt hold us back because of spotty movements, delayed skills, slow weapon swaps, sticky movement mechanics, etc.
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  4. #4
    As a PvEer for the most part, I am not surprised to hear we are so squishy. I suspect that once most PvPers get the hang of the TD2 system, it will A) be an utter nitemare for primarily PvEers like myself and B) quickly become boring for PvPers like you.

    Hopefully something will be done. I suspect we'll all be begging for chicken dance back a week or two after the game is released. :P
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  5. #5
    Kaptein_Pyp's Avatar Junior Member
    Join Date
    May 2012
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    South Africa
    Posts
    23
    Originally Posted by Tiny_Nutz Go to original post
    My thoughts on The Division 2 private beta.

    This will include both positive and negative feedback so fanboys who don’t like any criticism of their favourite franchise should skip to the next post.

    Now I am a huge fan of the franchise clocking in well over 1,400 hours of play time in TD1.

    I am a PVP player. The PVE to be honest will always bores me as the AI is too predictable and offers little to no challenge in terms of tactics and skill. I don’t really care if AI goes from 30k toughness to 50k, they play the same and after 40 hours in the game any decent player will know how to beat the AI.

    If PVE is your thing that’s ok, this is just the opinion from my PVP standpoint.

    The way I play is to grind PVE to get my loot. I will play constantly until I get a top tier build. Then I will go into the DZ and play PVP hijacking every agent I come across to improve the build to max levels, never wanting to do anything PVE based again.

    Things I loved about TD1 was how much skill there was involved. Clutch med kits with the talent combat medic for increased amount of health, on the move to receive less damage, having predatory on a pistal to finish players to get health over time... These things to name just a few, allowed good solo players to take on teams of 2,3 or even 4 based on your superior skill and in depth build/game knowledge.

    Over the years the Devs kept on decreasing certain things to lower the skill cap. Thus making it harder for solo players to have the big skill advantage they had based on their skill.

    This on top of friendly fire being introduced equaled with the 2.0 rougue system meant that a very skilled 4 man team would have to put up the ‘DZ Police’ turning up in numbers to kill you 20 vs 4.

    Before 2.0 was introduced if the whole server turned up, and you had a good organised team, you could no doubt fight them officer and over again until your team ran out of med kits or ammo, forcing you to dip and move to survive the timer. Due to people accidentally going rougue and therefore ultimately they of course ended up fighting each other allowed a team to bottle them in and watch them all shoot each other before you ran through them all.

    Too often after 2.0 rogue systems was introduced you would get the entire server grouped up, all emoting and waiting for players to go rougue, just so they could effectively multi group and get cheap rouge kills.

    The major flaw I see in TD2 is without any real healing skills, and the time to kill being reduced so much, that the skill cap required to kill players is lower than ever!

    Literally get the drop on an agent, point shoot, and they’re dead in seconds before they can really react. Solo manhunts can RIP on consoles for sure, as nobody will be able to survive or run from a squad or 4!

    Also I found if a player is about 15m away, if you poked your head around a corner and let yourself get shot until your armour was destroyed, then go back into cover to heal, players will push to finish you off... Only for them to get around the corner to find you had fully healed, and then kill them easily as they were now in the bad position, maybe let them run into a grenade, or place a turret down so two guns shred them once they turned the corner. It just felt a bit cheap.

    I would like either instant heals whilst moving to stop people pushing with the advantage to find they get punished when going for the finish. Or Heal over time, so that the player with the advantage pushing gets rewarded for winning the early exchange and pressing to finish the player off. Both these ways would still stop the ‘chicken dance’ and would be a massive improvement over the beta healing.

    I think the DZ also needs much more frequent weather dynamics. Heavy rain might help solo players to get the drip on 2 or 3 players at an extraction for example. Bad enough for them that they have to flag before going rougue giving their element of surprise away. Maybe solo players shouldn’t have to flag to go rougue against people in groups, maybe they could simply shoot ?!

    I also hated the NPC status effects or how many they have, and hated the length of time shock lasts!! Sometimes you would be shocked from nowhere, this stands you up out of cover, lasts for an eternity and you often get shredded. This on top of runners with shock batons, too many NPC’s with RC cars, and of course suicide bombers... Again Solo it is incredibly tedious getting shocked as this equates to insta death in the DZ anyway.

    Obviously there were loads of bugs. Getting kicked from servers, getting stuck in walls, rougue timers not going down, sounds glitching, if in a group and killed as rougue when coming out of the checkpoint, not getting the 5 or 10 seconds you’re supposed to get when leaving the checkpoint, this equals being killed instantly by the turrets, then waiting another 30 seconds before you can get back to help your team.

    However I would hope that a lot of this will have been covered by loads of our feedback and these things can be fixed before launch.

    The movement is a little slow, again this with the quick ‘time to kill’ makes it easier for less skilled players to hit players narrowing the skill gap further.

    Despite all of this I did enjoy a lot of what I played. Having to be more tactical when pushing, having to actually use cover is indeed a big step in the right direction over the ‘chicken dance’ in TD1.

    I felt the guns were far easier to control even in TD2 vs TD1 even with top tier mods equipped. Feels good for console players to be far more accurate... Yet again though... This without hardly any healing or skills, or clutch med kits, slower player movement & time to kill being so fast, also makes it easier to kill players. Thus RIP skill gap!!!

    Effectively I feel the game has been over simplified to please poor players who complained, and ultimately lets down the hardcore PVP players.

    Without this I think the hardcore player base who played TD1 for years will get bored after the first 6 months or so and they will drop off onto other games.
    Please watch the following vid
    https://youtu.be/fLaORLVEDFA
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  6. #6
    Why would GOOD PvP players stop playing? Just coz it not DIV1?

    There is thing call griefing and some HotShot YouTubers think that THEY ARE BEST PVP when they kill "non PvP" players when they spawn in.
    DIV2 is cold shower reminder what is PvP...and what is griefing.
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  7. #7
    Stew36o's Avatar Senior Member
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    Jan 2013
    Posts
    713
    I think there is a confusion in your mind between player skill base gameplay .. and building broken and or superior gears/build ... an lesser player could destroy better player with a broken and op build talents gears in division 1 and still will be able to in division 2 unrestricted DZ were normalization wont be a thing ... that's said I also played a crap ton of division 1 and broken gears glitch and exploits as kill the fun for me since I refused to copied the last broken build new hot **** ...


    What you seams to fine enjoyable is the major flaw of division 1 ... now you have to be more carefull and more tactical one of the change I want to see is been able to slightly moove while repairing armor ... also d2 servers were so unstable and buggy it was hard to grasp the balance
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  8. #8
    Sparhawk122's Avatar Senior Member
    Join Date
    Dec 2016
    Location
    Australia
    Posts
    568
    Not too fussed. Most of the good PvP players will be playing battle royal games instead anyway.
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  9. #9
    Originally Posted by Sparhawk122 Go to original post
    Not too fussed. Most of the good PvP players will be playing battle royal games instead anyway.
    My point exactly.
    Claiming to be HC/Good PvP player and spawn killing "non-PvP" players..That is HC griefing not PvP.
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  10. #10
    I pulled back this response quite a bit:

    I'm loving the new PvP experience.

    To me the fallacy is in thinking 1 player should be able to easily take on 4 opponents.
    -It doesn't promote group play.
    -It exponentially gets worse when you have 4 of the "solo" players ban together to form a group (which you know happens all the time)
    -And quite frankly it's the reason a lot of players don't go to the dark zone. It's the reason some of us quit playing The Div 1 all together. Absolute power turns players into griefers.

    I thought the beta felt good in the dark zone. I died a lot, sure. But I think there's a gross misconception on what a good player and one that has grinded so hard he can take on 4 casuals actually is.
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