The Division - Tom Clancy Presents Ubisoft's Tom Clancy's The Division, By Ubisoft

[Dewar]

I think it's to the highest level, or maybe some sort of weighted average. I know that with two of us at 15 (one of whom was party lead) and two at 25, everything we were fighting in encounters and side missions was skulls to me. Missions, on the other hand, don't seem to scale much. 

[Griddlelol]

I guess my fears have mostly been confirmed. It seems like it's a decent game, I just don't really have time or other people to play with. I was interested but I should probably pass. Not having people to play with is the main reason I quit Destiny.

 

I should clarify, that I really want to get the Division, I just don't think I'll get my money's worth from it.

[Quak0r]

Normal open world stuff and normal difficulty missions scales to the group average and hard mussions to the highest player in the group.

[Badfinger]

I stayed up late enough that it is affecting me this morning fiddling with gun loadouts and One More Turn style extraction runs.

 

I'm both an idiot, and that speaks to how the game's grabbed me.

 

I still havent finished a challenge mode in three days, though. I think people are walking into it expecting a little climb in difficulty rather than a sheer cliff face. It's everyone's perspective, but it felt like there were times when I was the only one doing appreciable damage. Part of the reason I spent so much time tinkering with gun loadouts afterwards.

[Wrestlevania]

Speaking of being an idiot; can someone explain how the stat adjustments work in the equipment screen?
 
Because those green numbers you get when highlighting an unequipped piece of gear rarely seem to stick once you go ahead and equip it.
 
And it's confusing the :poopemoji: out of me. 

[Dragonfliet]

There are a ton of things going on with stats, as they interact with your other stats. It almost always works as expected, but sometimes just confuzzles me. I'm honestly having a hard time trying to figure out if I should increase base damage, or get +3% against elites, or some other kind of garbage (so many guns and mods have like 5 different factors to take in), so I just try to get the maximum dps while accomodating my playstyle (mostly assault rifles + snipers, though I didn't have a very nice run with an m249 with a +53% extended clip (so 153 bullets in the gun) which was awesome. Enemy spawn points became ridiculously easy).

 

I took full advantage of spring break and played nearly 30 hours and got to level 29, though only a bit of darkzone play. I think I'll get to 30 before I head back into the deadzone and start working on that whole....thing.

 

This game is a little annoying, but has the same kind of annoying/claws into your brain mix that Destiny did. So...that is great and a problem. At least there is more content than Destiny, so i've never felt like I was grinding.

[complexmath]

Yeah, I've had good experiences with people, so far. The best have been wandering the Dark Zone alone, like a fool, and a tense moment in an extraction zone with a group of 3 leading to an invite, and some excellent running around with random cool people. 

 

The game is a bit scary when you realize you might need to group with strangers, but I've found people to be pretty decent, on the whole (well, except for roving groups of griefers, from time to time--ugh). 

 

Question: does anyone know if the game levels enemies to the party leader, or just to the highest level member of your group?

 

I believe Normal mode levels to the lowest member of the group and Hard mode levels to the highest.

 

Also, if you're having trouble with a Mission, take a look at the map and think about whether you'd be better served by moving the encounter to a different area. Many of the final battles have multi-level maps with an array of cover options, and position and movement can be the difference between a party wipe and an easy victory. You can often run past a few enemies and up some stairs or whatever to move the encounter rather than sticking it out in the open area where you started.

 

Also, the multiplayer functionality is really well done. Playing with friends that you can talk to on voice is always preferable, but grouping with randos is surprisingly good. Use the matchmaking functionality early and often and don't fret too much if your friends  have leveled past you.

[ByDefault]

Played a couple of hours so far, feeling the same hooks claw their way into me like Destiny managed. Playing on the Xbox One where my friends list is much smaller though which means so far there's hardly ever been a case of someone else being on at the same time as me. Anyone else here on the XB please feel free to add me: By Default.

Would be nice to populate the world map a bit more with other players. 

[complexmath]

Yeah I wish the PvM portion of the map had a handful of other players on it. It would make the experience feel a bit less lonely. I do recommend hitting the Dark Zone though, as it provides the type of multiplayer experience you're probably looking for.

[itsamoose]

I've been playing this since it came out with some friends, and we've all made it to about level 24.  I've enjoyed the game in broad strokes, the shooting is satisfying and I'm enjoying the structure of the game much more than I thought I would.  I highly recommend playing this game with friends, or at least using the matchmaking features as running the content alone can get a little tedious.  The game is at it's best when it feels like you're playing a single unit RTS and constantly having to adapt to the absurdly tanky enemies with constant position changes.  I do have some reservations and complaints about the game, and for the most part these seem to be the function of some very old design ideas in place, and my getting the sense that sections of the game where designed in a vacuum.  If you don't mind dealing with some older design ideas, and some rather confusing/counterproductive elements the game is quite enjoyable.

[Shibboleth]

I usually hate games which include shooting hundreds of enemies (e.g., Uncharted), but The Division has been pulling me in for some inexplicable reason. I matched up with a random person at level two and we've been playing together ever since. He is Japanese so we can't really talk to one another, but we've managed to communicate quite efficiently through dancing.

 

And I've liked the design of many of the underground levels so far; there's some really awesome scenes which make your character seem incredibly tiny. The worst part of the game has definitely been the Napalm Production Site... That entire mission must have taken four or five hours. Killing Joe Ferro at the end sucked! We ended up kiting him to the upper floor of the building and getting him to the middle of one of the long hallways. A person at one end of the hallway would shoot for ten or fifteen seconds, run out of sight, and then another person at the opposite end of the hallway would draw his attention. It felt cheap but at that point we just wanted it to be over.

 

The Dark Zone seems to have some potential for fun. I haven't run into any interesting tit for tat situations really, but it's still early days. I did get shot in the face during my first extraction attempt, though. There must have been twenty enemies running around, and out of no where another player group joined the situation. They decided to kill us since we were low health, but the environment enemies just ended up killing them, too.

 

How is the crafting for everyone? I've just been deconstructing all the items I have instead of selling them, so hopefully it pays off later on. The crafting recipes I have aren't really any better than my current items unfortunately.

 

I'll definitely keep playing for the time being. I'm level fifteen and it hasn't been *too* repetitive. Hopefully the missions stay interesting as I continue.

[juv3nal]

I did the silliest thing the other night. There was a named enemy I found while free roaming that killed me a bunch of times (he was at par level with me, whereas everything else in the region was 3 below) so I did a bunch of kiting to kill off all his entourage. Then I resorted to shooting him a bit, then running the long way around an entire city block so I could get a few shots on him from the other side before he could figure out where I was to shred me apart with his machine gun and repeating that process like 4 times before taking him down. I don't think he dropped anything good, but after dying to him 4 times in a row trying to take him on head on, it was most satisfying. Take that stoopid AI.

[Quak0r]

Presented without comment:

 

[Dragonfliet]

So I'm at lvl 30 and have been running around the dark zone. It's fun, and I hope I run into some folks that want to do likewise. Daily missions are good and fun, though I imagine I'll get sick of those quickly, but the Dark Zone still entertains. The latest patch means there are always going to be enough aholes trying to kill you. 

 

Still, I'm wondering about endgame content ala raids.

[Quak0r]

*elevator music intro*

 

If you want to draw the attention of an enemy NPC away from a party member leave cover and shoot at that NPC.

 

*russian electronica outro*

[juv3nal]

finallly squared away all the collectibles because im ocd like that. my stats (~70k dps, 60k hp, 10k skill power) are nowhere near some of numbers I've read spouted from some other lvl 30ers so I guess I need to get on that loot grind next. As I understand it, as someone with nil interest in pvp/dark zone I'm meant to be doing the dailies plus hard mode UN mission now..?

edit: also it shames me to admit it, but it was only upon getting to level 30 that my curiosity overcame my laziness and I googled what the heck that number is below your ammo count

it's the number of rounds in your other equipped (non sidearm) weapon

[Badfinger]

can't stop playing this game.

 

embarrassing number of hours in it in the what, 3 weeks since release?

[Quak0r]

Same here, I'm playing every minute when I'm not writing my thesis. The only problem is the easier the content gets as my group improves in gear and play style the more obvious it gets how bad this games politics are, ugly even.

[Dragonfliet]

Same here, I'm playing every minute when I'm not writing my thesis. The only problem is the easier the content gets as my group improves in gear and play style the more obvious it gets how bad this games politics are, ugly even.

Seriously. It is one of the most disturbing and childish political positions I've seen. 

[Vasari]

I'm level 24 now and rapidly losing patience with this game.The missions are really fun, but there's so much crap between the missions that I'm nearly ready to give up before the endgame. After completing a mission you need to be at least one level higher for the next mission. And that means spending half an hour doing side missions and encounters which are the same crappy repeated objectives in every zone (and don't even think about doing side missons/encounters from previous zones, they don't give enough experience anymore to matter!). Once you've done enough side content, you can trudge your way out to the next safehouse to unlock the travel point and hear some terrible dialogue from the side mission giver in that area. Imagine if you couldn't go directly to the next story mission in Destiny without doing a bunch of patrols first? It's really frustrating that there's so much Ubisoft Open World Design between the best parts of this game.

[Badfinger]

It sucks to try to just ignore it. I have advocated not doing that in the past, and now I'm just gonna because it benefits me and I don't like how hypocritical I am, but this is just a joy to play.

 

We were running an instance with like 11 people yesterday because omg this game is broken in some fun ways.

[juv3nal]

imo, you're probably going to want to do some extra side missions anyways just to unlock abilities/ability mods/talents to play with.

[osmosisch]

It sucks to try to just ignore it. I have advocated not doing that in the past, and now I'm just gonna because it benefits me and I don't like how hypocritical I am, but this is just a joy to play.

I'm just not going to buy it because I know I'd do the same. Self-defence against cognitive dissonance.

[TychoCelchuuu]

Seriously. It is one of the most disturbing and childish political positions I've seen.

As someone who doesn't have the game and who probably never will because I'm past the time in my life where I can grind in a video game without grinding my teeth in real life, could you say more about this? I'm always interested in the stories of huge fuckoff AAA games, especially when they're downright evil like it sounds like The Division might be.

[osmosisch]

I assume it's pretty much this:

https://killscreen.com/articles/the-perverse-ideology-of-the-division/

 

But I'd also be interested in hearing you expand, Dragonfliet,