[Megathread] The Division 2

[SirCowdog]

Yeah, I'm without power at home so I'm basically done now that I've missed out on the last of the apparel event. Summit remains a huge "miss" for me, and since realistically that's all we've got (as non-raiders) in the 8ish or however many months since WONY released, and the rest of the game has...not really improved in any meaningful way otherwise (outside of cosmetic mods and neutral gear mods, those are good!), I'm probably gonna call it a day.

I'm lucky I got this free with my GPU, though I did buy WONY and the S2 season pass, but I'm absolutely done with Massive and this nonsense. Not worth the time and frustration anymore. There's still a ton to like in the game, but I just can't deal with the nonsense anymore and the direction they've taken it is not up my alley.

I think what it comes down to is that the devs somehow confused tedium with challenge. The entire overarching theme of NOT giving players things in order to coerce them into either repeating content ad nausem, or playing specific game modes, is just asinine.

Combine that with the utter and complete failure of the Darkzone to mix PVE and PVP, and the failure to step into the raiding scene. It's just....uhg. If the moment to moment shooting wasn't so good, this game would have bombed as hard as Anthem.

I REALLY hope that if they ever attempt a Division 3, they keep the movement, cover, and shooting, but cut away everything else and design from the ground up. Ditch the idiotic attempts at PVP. Stop trying to turn a small-squad looter into a raid progression guild-based game. Just focus on the PVE story, matchmaking, looting, and variations of those: Underground, Survival, Incursions.

[Nutri]

What makes you think that after 2 disasters the same company suddently makes an awesome third game?

Their cycles prove they just dont have it in them (content wise, gameplay/aestetic is superb) to nail this game. Maybe if a different studio is attatched, else they wont get a single penny from me. Just read back in this topic alone and see how all of you go from highs and lows in such quick succession - with the lows being a lot more present, not because of moaning but because the game just insn’t what it could/should be due to the direction - or lack of - it is taking.

But Massive got a big hardon by having James Cameron choose them to make the Avatar game so anything Division related will be put on a giant side-track until Massive is done with Avatar. They can then slap the ‘The Studio that brought you the Avatar game’ on their website and pretent to be a big deal in game land waiting for the next sucker to go down the rabbit hole with them.

They’ll probably make Div 3, get huge sales in the first few weeks by hyping it up and saying ‘it is all better now and we learned from the first two games’ only to see the dumpster fire burn again 6 weeks after release when people get into the endgame with the same gigantic player dropoff div1&2 had. Initial sales numbers will be great, the game is labelled ‘a success’ and they’ll put it on life support again.

[Aliven]

What makes you think that after 2 disasters the same company suddently makes an awesome third game?

Their cycles prove they just dont have it in them (content wise, gameplay/aestetic is superb) to nail this game. Maybe if a different studio is attatched, else they wont get a single penny from me. Just read back in this topic alone and see how all of you go from highs and lows in such quick succession - with the lows being a lot more present, not because of moaning but because the game just insn’t what it could/should be due to the direction - or lack of - it is taking.

But Massive got a big hardon by having James Cameron choose them to make the Avatar game so anything Division related will be put on a giant side-track until Massive is done with Avatar. They can then slap the ‘The Studio that brought you the Avatar game’ on their website and pretent to be a big deal in game land waiting for the next sucker to go down the rabbit hole with them.

They’ll probably make Div 3, get huge sales in the first few weeks by hyping it up and saying ‘it is all better now and we learned from the first two games’ only to see the dumpster fire burn again 6 weeks after release when people get into the endgame with the same gigantic player dropoff div1&2 had. Initial sales numbers will be great, the game is labelled ‘a success’ and they’ll put it on life support again.

I actually think about picking Destiny 2. Played on launch, little content light but the gameplay and feel were much better than division.

[Nutri]

I actually think about picking Destiny 2. Played on launch, little content light but the gameplay and feel were much better than division.

I thought about that too actually. But apart from the base game I never bought any of the xpacs. It’ll be a bit costly to buy into the latest xpac :-/

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Just checked, even with the Halloween sale it’ll be €67 for Shadowkeep/Forsaken/BeyondLight. Bit steep just to give it a try.

[Witchblade77]

I actually think about picking Destiny 2. Played on launch, little content light but the gameplay and feel were much better than division.

I've actualy been playing it last few days, wanted to do finish up the first 2 DLC's they released, since they are removing them in like a week, and i DID "pay" for them (it was with wow gold to bnet balance, but still)

combat feels so freaking good but outside of that the game is even more of a mess then Division 2 in some ways.

case in point - it starts you off at gear lvl 750. soft cap is 900. in order to level up your gear, you kinda have to do all kinds of stuff, except most things outdoor? scale to 900+ as long as there are other players around, at least on planets that are getting vaulted. I couldn't even do the mission that I was given, because its in open world mission and enemies kept one shotting me, while anything I did to them resulted in no damage and string of "immune, immune, immune". I'm stuck with instanced stuff only and upgrading through that is a slow process when its the only thing you can do. I can't even really participate much in a holiday stuff, outside of what little candy drops for me when doing my instanced missions for the campaign. just unlocking the descriptor for engrams that are still dropping cause drifter's season is still active was a pain as it requires participating in a sort of world event... where everything was scaled way WAY above me. I got lucky that there were a bunch of other people doing it and after dying too muhc while being 100% innefectual, I just hit by the rocks near enough so that completion registered, but couldn't even do anything.

couple that with the reason why I'm doing this in a first place - cause they are removing content? content that happens to be a bulk of currently available f2p version? sometimes i look at bungie developers and they actualy get me to appreciate Massive.

[Nutri]

I've actualy been playing it last few days, wanted to do finish up the first 2 DLC's they released, since they are removing them in like a week, and i DID "pay" for them (it was with wow gold to bnet balance, but still)

Thats Shadowkeep / Forsaken going into the vault? Sooo, then I wouldnt really have to buy those until get back into rotation right?

[Witchblade77]

Thats Shadowkeep / Forsaken going into the vault? Sooo, then I wouldn't really have to buy those until get back into rotation right?

no, those are staying since they are still paid for content. Original story campaign "Red war", curse of Osiris and Warmind are going into vault along with associated planets. a lot of people paid for those, and while i didn't mind them being eventually made f2p, that they are basically removing the bulk of free content is just.. not great at all. and if you are asking what's left to play for free? almost nothing, in game that is already not super content rich. so in order to have SOMETHING to play, they pretty much want you to buy Shadowkeep/Forsaken/beyond light.

[SirCowdog]

They’ll probably make Div 3

What makes you think that after 2 disasters the same company suddently makes an awesome third game?

The only way I realistically see a Division 3 being successful, for players, is if Massive keeps their art, level design, and environmental team on the job, but completely replaces every other developer who's worked on the previous 2 games. They need to have developers who actually understand RPG balance and loot fairness. And they need better writing as well(although admittedly that's a trivial concern compared to the gameplay).

If Ubi keeps massive as they are now, then Division 3 will be just more of the same slow trainwreck.

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no, those are staying since they are still paid for content. Original story campaign "Red war", curse of Osiris and Warmind are going into vault along with associated planets. a lot of people paid for those, and while i didn't mind them being eventually made f2p, that they are basically removing the bulk of free content is just.. not great at all. and if you are asking what's left to play for free? almost nothing, in game that is already not super content rich. so in order to have SOMETHING to play, they pretty much want you to buy Shadowkeep/Forsaken/beyond light.

This risks getting off topic, since it's a division 2 thread. But...

What's the logic behind removing that content? Is it somehow harming the game? I don't understand why devs would turn off content like that.

[Edge-]

And given what's going on with the Avatar game being pushed to 2022 (timed with the movie), I don't think we're going to be seeing a second full-scale AAA game in production at Massive anytime soon.

But I wouldn't be sad if they farmed it out to Red Storm!

What's the logic behind removing that content? Is it somehow harming the game? I don't understand why devs would turn off content like that.

IIRC - reduce install size, keep people from getting spread out too thin, get rid of older content that no longer narratively makes sense.

[SirCowdog]

But I wouldn't be sad if they farmed it out to Red Storm!

I think if RedStorm made a fully open world PVP version of The Division, reimagined away from the PVE side of things, it has potential. I don't know how qualified they are to work on PVE. Did they do any of that in D1 or D2? Or was that generally Massive's part of the workload?

IIRC - reduce install size, keep people from getting spread out too thin, get rid of older content that no longer narratively makes sense.

I guess I can see the logic of that. Although I think it would have beem better if they'd put in a bit of work and converted all the obsolete content into a singleplayer story campaign or something that could be downloaded and installed separately rather than just closing off acees entirely.

I know they don't have the resources of a major publisher anymore, though, so maybe that wasn't feasible.

[Edge-]

I think if RedStorm made a fully open world PVP version of The Division, reimagined away from the PVE side of things, it has potential. I don't know how qualified they are to work on PVE. Did they do any of that in D1 or D2? Or was that generally Massive's part of the workload?

Honestly I'm not a PvP guy in games anymore, but I'd be real curious to see what they could do working on the game and creating some PvE stuff. For some reason I thought they did quite a bit of work on TD1 PvE but as I was poking around to confirm I guess not. Derp.

I know they don't have the resources of a major publisher anymore, though, so maybe that wasn't feasible.

And, I'd imagine, not remotely cost effective. I think this is honestly a result of them never planning to support D2 for this long (moving onto D3 instead) and starting to run into issues with their older design.

Which reminds me...I think it was Massive or one of their lead devs that was like, openly taking folks temperature about an offline, story-based Division spinoff on his social media account. And I'm just remembering how insanely down for that I'd be, especially if like, they made it into some kind of proper offline schlooter with a repeatable endgame and shit if they're feelin ballsy. Man I want those games.

[Nutri]

This risks getting off topic, since it's a division 2 thread. But...

What's the logic behind removing that content? Is it somehow harming the game? I don't understand why devs would turn off content like that.

Important to note is that the content isn't removed permanently. It'll be rotated in/out the 'Vault'.
One of the goals was to reduce the install size by rotating content that doesn't have high participation numbers. To not just simply cut it out and delete it, they'll put it in something they called 'the Vault' for X time, and when reintroduced something else will go into the Vault in it's place.

To quote on that, full link below:

The stated reason for the Content Vault will be unsurprising to regular players: the game is too big for Bungie to efficiently maintain. "We’ve been adding approximately 25GB of content each year to Destiny 2 since launch," explains Bungie. "Those sizes not only stress hard drive capacity but also push the limits of patching capability. That also makes the time to generate a stable update for the game after all content is finalized, tested and ready to go balloon to literal days instead of hours."

By way of an example, Bungie reveals that the Warmind campaign accounts for 0.3% of the time played in the recent Season of the Worthy, despite the Warmind expansion accounting for 5% of the install size. The upshot of this, Bungie says, is an increase in bugs, such as the recent issue that barred progress through the Felwinter's Lie quest.

Source: https://www.pcgamer.com/bungie-plans...s-too-bloated/

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Back on topic, didn't Redstorm only do some bits and parts on Division? I'm not sure if they can carry the entire game by themselves.
IIRC they did get some praise during Division 1 and the 1.7 patch which brought the game back on track for a lot of players. But that being said, it's probably 'easier' to fix/adjust something than building a game from scratch. Not to downplay 'fixing' a game, but there's a difference in modding a car as opposed to designing a car from scratch on the drawing board (to use a silly metaphor).

[Witchblade77]

Important to note is that the content isn't removed permanently. It'll be rotated in/out the 'Vault'.
One of the goals was to reduce the install size by rotating content that doesn't have high participation numbers. To not just simply cut it out and delete it, they'll put it in something they called 'the Vault' for X time, and when reintroduced something else will go into the Vault in it's place.

To quote on that, full link below:


Source: https://www.pcgamer.com/bungie-plans...s-too-bloated/

---------------

Back on topic, didn't Redstorm only do some bits and parts on Division? I'm not sure if they can carry the entire game by themselves.
IIRC they did get some praise during Division 1 and the 1.7 patch which brought the game back on track for a lot of players. But that being said, it's probably 'easier' to fix/adjust something than building a game from scratch. Not to downplay 'fixing' a game, but there's a difference in modding a car as opposed to designing a car from scratch on the drawing board (to use a silly metaphor).

this reasoning is a bit shakey to me, when you consider how many multiplayer games have been running without having to "vault" content for far longer then Destiny 2 has. when they bring it back - are they going to charge for it again? (yes I know it was eventually made free, but some of us did pay for it)

there are some things about Division that annoy me. like making a separate game instead of expanding on a first one. having all these fun system added to Division 1, only to start from scratch in Division 2 and make it worse (sorry but Underground > Summit) but... so far they don't seem to be removing entire swaths of available missions to play either. so /shrug.

speaking of annoying, polarity shift again... (next week) one of the best changes they made from first game is ability to enable and disable these modifiers instead of being stuck with them.

[Nutri]

https://www.ubisoft.com/en-us/game/t...zation-station

That took em long enough. Nice addition but the required materials sounds like a pain, why 4 different types of materials..? They are so scared to just give players something (i.e just make it credits/“phoenix credits”), everything needs to be a sluggish time consuming chore.

[Coldkil]

https://www.ubisoft.com/en-us/game/t...zation-station

That took em long enough. Nice addition but the required materials sounds like a pain, why 4 different types of materials..? They are so scared to just give players something (i.e just make it credits/“phoenix credits”), everything needs to be a sluggish time consuming chore.

I am finding myself in a position where even cosmetic events are not dragging me anymore to play. Genshin Impact came and basically swooped all my interest, plus i'm getting ready for Shadowlands.

The optimization station is a good addition, but we're really reachin the point of "too thin, too late". Hell, even Summit for me lasted like 2 weeks to get it done, and now i have zero interest to play.

[Nutri]

I am finding myself in a position where even cosmetic events are not dragging me anymore to play. Genshin Impact came and basically swooped all my interest, plus i'm getting ready for Shadowlands.

The optimization station is a good addition, but we're really reachin the point of "too thin, too late". Hell, even Summit for me lasted like 2 weeks to get it done, and now i have zero interest to play.

With SL around the corner I doubt I'll boot up Div again myself too.

This is another oddball of Massive. The Optimization Station has been asked for quite a while now and they didn't want to do it. This feels like a 'in case of emergency, break glass' implementation just as it felt when it got introduced in Division 1. The main difference compared to Division 1 is that back then you paid with credits and Phoenix Credits, a resource you obtained from the DZ - chests and drops. This was pretty easily farmed, and also quite fun to do since the DZ in Division 1 was just pretty damn cool - even by playing it as a PvE mode by dodging players.

This new station requiring not 1 (additional) resource like Phoenix credits but four different types of resources is just plain annoying especially the daily/weekly project materials since that'll just straight up puts a hard cap on the number of optimizations you can do. Run out of mats? Cya again tomorrow! In Div1 you could grind it out in the DZ if you felt like it. Now it's just gated pretty hard.

Every optimization will require a total of 4 different resources to complete. The cost of every optimization increases with every tier:

Item-Type Deconstruction Materials – these materials are gained from deconstructing other gear of the same type. Only high-end, Exotic, and Gear Set items will give this material.

Control Point/Landmark Materials – you can earn these from completing Control Points in the LZ, Landmarks in the DZ (they will always be uncontaminated), and the higher floors of The Summit. The amount yielded per activity scales directly with game difficulty.

Faction Materials – these can be found from enemies of the various factions. The amount of this material that drops also scales directly with difficulty.

Project Materials – these are materials gained from completing Daily and Weekly projects (PvE and PvP). Weekly Projects will give substantially more materials than Daily Projects.

[Coldkil]

Yeah, just read about it. I'm just not wanting to give them credit anymore than they deserve. The game plays good, is fine to look at and i have had lots of fun. But they costantly fail in fixing the two major issues - the loot/reward structure and actual content. I mean, it's not that there's nothing to do or that the weekly events are not fine, but they're not substantial.

Making a somewhat odd comparison, it feels like WoW was all about a new dungeon every 3 months you do until you get all the new 3 items, and then it's all holiday events. It's fancy at the beginning but gets old very soon.

[Witchblade77]

there I was getting all excited... and then they gated it behind projects.... sigh.... I guess they don't want to make recalibration station completely obsolete.

[Edge-]

https://www.ubisoft.com/en-us/game/t...zation-station

That took em long enough. Nice addition but the required materials sounds like a pain, why 4 different types of materials..? They are so scared to just give players something (i.e just make it credits/“phoenix credits”), everything needs to be a sluggish time consuming chore.

Nice it's coming, but it's way too late and there's not enough "game" around it to make it attractive IMO. Don't get me wrong, I could stand to get godrolls on all my items on my sets...but I don't have a reason to as they're all darned close and functional anyways, and there's nothing I want to do with them that I haven't already done. And projects? Are they adding more, or will we be forced to do DZ projects etc. if we want to farm meaningful amounts of that currency?

They've really shit the bed when it comes to planning the updates for the game. Manhunts are nice, but they don't keep people around like actual new content does.

Edit: Looking through more...

https://www.reddit.com/r/thedivision...november_2020/

TU12 seems to have no new content at all, just a new manhunt. The usual "new weapons, new brands etc." stuff too.

Challenges seem like they're slowly, slowly bringing in features from Underground though still with no longterm progression like Underground had. Not bad, but once again shit that should have been in at launch.

Yay for achieves for Summit I guess?

Guaranteed targeted loot at checkpoints in Summit ain't bad and some of the other improvements are better. But again, shit that should have been in at launch.

ALWAYS SHOW MASK AND THE INVENTORY EXPANDING TO 150 SLOTS ARE LEGIT THE BEST PART SO FAR.

They're fixing mod sorting and you can filter by time, because again, these updates are rushed as fuck without enough of the team working on them.

They haven't touched NPC balancing since TU9.1...everybody believes them, but nobody believes that NPC balancing hasn't been altered unintentionally since then.

Man, I just can't even get excited for this shit. And I still find myself want wanting to play, and jumping in, sometimes because the running around and the shooting and some of the skills and the picking up of loot is good at its core!...and then I remember how frustrated I am with literally everything else pretty much : /

[SirCowdog]

GameyDaddy(youtuber) made an interesting point in a recent video:

What if they're dropping the optimization station now, so that when they drop year 3 expansion that raises the gear and level cap, all your existing gear won't go to waste because it can be scrapped into mats for upgrades.

I'm not sure I completely agree with it. But it did bring up an interesting possibility of taking the sting out of all your grind being reset with a level cap increase.