3 days of "end game", bored stiff. | Forums

[Atrayl]

Out of curiosity - and hypothetically - what do you each feel end game content should consist of? What kind of experience are you looking for?

To those already at max Gear Score, what content do you feel best holds your interest? To those not, what kind of experience (both in the moment and to strive for) makes you feel invested?

The basic gameplay loop of any game based around loot should be:

1. Do activities to get loot to become stronger
2. Now that you are stronger, do harder activities to get even better loot to become even stronger
3. New content patches continuously increase both the difficulty of the activities they add as well as the quality of the loot those activities reward

This creates a staircase effect where the player climbs steps (completes activities to get gear) until they reach a landing ("best in slot") where they are ready to start climbing another set of stairs (harder content). The ideal scenario is that a player has just enough time to feel like they pushed through one set of stairs and have a moment to rest on the landing until the next set of stairs are ready.

We should be able to reasonably complete a set of gear for one build while farming the upcoming 8-player raid so that we can go into the next raid with a "finished" build. Players who managed to get fully geared in the first raid will feel rewarded by having an easier time, at least compared to players who did not put in the time or effort to complete a build.

The problem with The Division 2 is that it doesn't allow for this progression to happen at all:

1. The way gear score relates to item power seems to be completely random. Right now, 450 gear is in many cases better than 500 gear.
2. Not having a reliable baseline of item level drop per activity makes some hard activities feel less rewarding than some easy activities.
3. The sheer amount of RNG and the restrictions to recalibration means that getting gear that you actually want, meaning gear that you planned your build around, effectively impossible.

First, you really need to make sure that gear score has some kind of relation to the quality of an item. No, a 476 piece shouldn't automatically be better than a 475 piece, but I think we can all agree that everyone's WT4 450 builds being better than anything in WT5 should not be the goal of the game. I'd aim for a system where items that are 10 levels higher should probably be an upgrade unless you got really good rolls on the lower level item. Certainly using an item 50 levels out of date should never be optimal.

Then I'd cap item level rewards based on the difficulty of the content. Imagine this patch launching with the normal mode missions being hard enough that you needed (on average), say, 470 gear to complete them. So you go around the map doing control points and activities until you get to 470 gear. Then you farm the missions until you get 480 gear, which would be the (average) requirement of the hard mode missions. Then you farm the hard mode missions until you get 490 gear, which would be the requirement for heroic. And, finally, you do heroic missions to get 500 gear. The next raid would be balanced around players being in full 500 item level gear.

Additionally, I would open up the recalibration process such that, through effort, we would eventually be able to completely customize a piece of armor. Say that every heroic mission dropped a "recalibration token," and you used 5 or 10 recalibration tokens to "unlock" additional recalibration slots on your gear. Eventually, with enough time, you would come to a finalized build with all of the stats and talents that you wanted. We would still need to farm the "source" gear to recalibrate with. We would still need to farm the tokens. We would still be playing the game a ton (probably more than we are now, if I'm being honest). But we would know where we were going. We'd have a plan.

Right now I feel like there is no plan when I log in, because all of the gear is so random. It's daunting. There is nothing to work towards. Back to the staircase analogy, it's like climbing a set of stairs so long that you can't even see where it ends. Surely you would just give up at some point, with no goal in sight?

[Lens00140]

Out of curiosity - To those not, what kind of experience (both in the moment and to strive for) makes you feel invested?

Umm, I'd say I was thoroughly enjoying the game as it was pre April 5 patch and to continue enjoying it would have been to mildly change the spawn locations.

After all that has been done in the latest patch it seems everything was cut in half and the enjoyment of just roaming the streets with the nerf on the ENPC's in line with the patch was very disappointing.

The flat and easy feeling the weapons took after the patch is just not reasonable and intelligent anymore

I hope that in a year or two the game has been sorted out cause atm I cannot feel any stable enjoyment, only worry of dramatic changes to the game as I purchased it after playing the beta

[BigUrn]

Why do people complain about endgame content shortly after the release of a new game? Do you have all accommodations? Do you have all phones collectables etc? Endgame content in any game is what you make it

[chris2k30]

Out of curiosity - and hypothetically - what do you each feel end game content should consist of? What kind of experience are you looking for?

To those already at max Gear Score, what content do you feel best holds your interest? To those not, what kind of experience (both in the moment and to strive for) makes you feel invested?

Im finding there is enough gunplay kill x or defend y and the future is laid out with nothing but more of it, which isn't bad but something different would be nice to mix it up an have a wee break from just killing everything

Take castle settlement for instance, it sits there empty, you could set it up to have players clean it up, recruit civilians found around the map to populate it with various duties, collect resources and just give options to build it how wee want to build it, not just one option aka BoO but multiple options.

Basic idea but you probably get it

[Stompsvillerip]

Imagine playing the game for 3 days and complaining you're bored. Ubi don't listen to these posts. Trolls ftl

[Nazwyn]

Out of curiosity - and hypothetically - what do you each feel end game content should consist of? What kind of experience are you looking for?

To those already at max Gear Score, what content do you feel best holds your interest? To those not, what kind of experience (both in the moment and to strive for) makes you feel invested?

For me farming cosmetic items is the most fun in games. I don't really care about stats, but I think making awesome cosmetic sets is fun Like the transmog in WoW..

[GetMused]

The basic gameplay loop of any game based around loot should be:

1. Do activities to get loot to become stronger
2. Now that you are stronger, do harder activities to get even better loot to become even stronger
3. New content patches continuously increase both the difficulty of the activities they add as well as the quality of the loot those activities reward

This creates a staircase effect where the player climbs steps (completes activities to get gear) until they reach a landing ("best in slot") where they are ready to start climbing another set of stairs (harder content). The ideal scenario is that a player has just enough time to feel like they pushed through one set of stairs and have a moment to rest on the landing until the next set of stairs are ready.

We should be able to reasonably complete a set of gear for one build while farming the upcoming 8-player raid so that we can go into the next raid with a "finished" build. Players who managed to get fully geared in the first raid will feel rewarded by having an easier time, at least compared to players who did not put in the time or effort to complete a build.

The problem with The Division 2 is that it doesn't allow for this progression to happen at all:

1. The way gear score relates to item power seems to be completely random. Right now, 450 gear is in many cases better than 500 gear.
2. Not having a reliable baseline of item level drop per activity makes some hard activities feel less rewarding than some easy activities.
3. The sheer amount of RNG and the restrictions to recalibration means that getting gear that you actually want, meaning gear that you planned your build around, effectively impossible.

First, you really need to make sure that gear score has some kind of relation to the quality of an item. No, a 476 piece shouldn't automatically be better than a 475 piece, but I think we can all agree that everyone's WT4 450 builds being better than anything in WT5 should not be the goal of the game. I'd aim for a system where items that are 10 levels higher should probably be an upgrade unless you got really good rolls on the lower level item. Certainly using an item 50 levels out of date should never be optimal.

Then I'd cap item level rewards based on the difficulty of the content. Imagine this patch launching with the normal mode missions being hard enough that you needed (on average), say, 470 gear to complete them. So you go around the map doing control points and activities until you get to 470 gear. Then you farm the missions until you get 480 gear, which would be the (average) requirement of the hard mode missions. Then you farm the hard mode missions until you get 490 gear, which would be the requirement for heroic. And, finally, you do heroic missions to get 500 gear. The next raid would be balanced around players being in full 500 item level gear.

Additionally, I would open up the recalibration process such that, through effort, we would eventually be able to completely customize a piece of armor. Say that every heroic mission dropped a "recalibration token," and you used 5 or 10 recalibration tokens to "unlock" additional recalibration slots on your gear. Eventually, with enough time, you would come to a finalized build with all of the stats and talents that you wanted. We would still need to farm the "source" gear to recalibrate with. We would still need to farm the tokens. We would still be playing the game a ton (probably more than we are now, if I'm being honest). But we would know where we were going. We'd have a plan.

Right now I feel like there is no plan when I log in, because all of the gear is so random. It's daunting. There is nothing to work towards. Back to the staircase analogy, it's like climbing a set of stairs so long that you can't even see where it ends. Surely you would just give up at some point, with no goal in sight?

I truly can not bump this enough. And yes ubi real dude you should listen to ppl that put this much work into a post, not “don’t listen, get good troll posts”

[AnimatedJester]

The Division 1 and Rainbow Six Siege demonstrated already that UBI sticks to their guns. Both games where supported through rough times. Right now I got no reason to believe that UBI is in the business of dropping support prematurely.

But given that Massive promised us changes from Division 1 when they were making Div 2 and those things are still in Game.
- Service selling spam (mostly in Chinese) is still a thing and I have to mute/report about 20 people each time I un-mute general chat to see what people are up to.
- Enemies are still bullet sponges at higher difficulties and we now have had the good builds nerfed (and the reduction of overall ammo from division 1)
- Just like in div 1, our survivability stats mean nothing given we die in 2 shots.
- Enemies are still overly aggressive and some still rush you like Usain Bolt on a track day even if they are meant to stay back
- They nerfed the good skills they carried over from division 1 and made skill builds un-viable....still are even after the changes

And yes I am aware some of the things are being changed like the enemy aggression, but why was this something we DIDN'T get with Tidal Basin if they planned to nerf the viability of Crit Chance/Dmg, HS Dmg. They don't want to touch PvP balancing though.... no.... not until they get info on how the gear sets are working......

I said it in a long winded post yesterday, but this game is far from being raid ready and I would rather them fix the issues currently in game than keep to an april 25th release date.... because if they are having this much issue with scaling enemies past a 2 man party, they are no where near ready for 8 people raids

[MrFisse]

Why do people complain about endgame content shortly after the release of a new game? Do you have all accommodations? Do you have all phones collectables etc? Endgame content in any game is what you make it

That's not content, that's just lazy filler

[hyper---sniper]

Out of curiosity - and hypothetically - what do you each feel end game content should consist of? What kind of experience are you looking for?

To those already at max Gear Score, what content do you feel best holds your interest? To those not, what kind of experience (both in the moment and to strive for) makes you feel invested?

The problem is that there is nothing to keep the interest going ,crafting sucks , mods sucks.. the 6 piece sets sucks .. got lots of 500 items and do not use them as they are weaker / poorer than my 450 gear ?... Farming for higher gear score when they are lower power does not work . I have 500gs bits with 1.5% crit ??.. my 300 gear has 8-12% crit .. I go to craft or mod gear and it is capped to death .. But when i fight the npc they are getting stronger , taking more shots, running faster , and hitting harder ?... Game feels backward at the moment ..I want to farm god rolls , i know you will nerf it all again , I want a mag with more bullets , challenging is hopeless solo with 30 round mags and a pea shooter ..