f13.net

Gameplay looks fun: http://www.viddler.com/v/d420adff?secret=26954636

Game looks pretty good when you can script everything that happens.

It's a logical cross-over between the "survival" model and special ops forces I guess. Though I'm not sure if they can make a FPS-MMO that is fun, content rich and balanced. And PvP poorly applied ends up making it a griefer's paradise.

Could well be fun, looks good, but there's a lot more detail needed. And most of the existing examples have been fail.

So wait, this is an MMO? I thought it was more action RPG with a co-op option?

From what little I've seen, there seems to be open world PvP, which would at least seem to imply open Day Z style servers, which falls into the gray "kind of an MMO" area at minimum. But who really knows at this point.  Have they said anything about a PC version yet, does anyone know?

according to joystiq (http://www.joystiq.com/2013/06/11/ubisofts-e3-2013-conference-details-the-division-rabbids-invas/). Which would be good, because it was probably the most interesting title to me.

Oh good, PC. Now I don't have to think about buying a console to play this interesting looking title.

This does look interesting though I'm still not quite sure what kind of game it is. Co-op RPG? MMOG? There's definitely meant to be PVP and co-op/raid/dungeon style PVE, and it's pretty. Maybe it's Zombie APB?

I think that counts as too "magical" for the tech fetishists attracted to this sort of spec ops feel. Though it did have a group heal so not sure how they explain that.

Impromptu PvP encourages the idea there's a pool of other players in the world. So quite possibly the APB model of multi-player zones and low population counts per zone instance. Probably needed to keep the server responsive. Could be as restricted as a hostile team joining your game in progress but that way lies grief.

I recall drifting past an explanation that the world of the game has suffered a disease epidemic transmitted by touching money. And it seems expected that people would grab their guns and revert to banditry and savagery in such cases. Does allow the enemy to be using gunplay as well though.

I think this looks great (yeah yeah scripted) and it's the one game I've seen so far outside of 'Watch Dogs' that I am really interested in.

It bugs the shit out of me when devs show people walking on their trailers.  That doesn't happen, ever.  And if you force players to walk they won't last five minutes in your game.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pb6W-SZkjC0

"What is it? 'We call it an online, open world RPG game."'  :drill:  :drill:  :drill:  :drill:  :drill:

"There are no quest givers. You start the game with 72 hours worth of food/water and a couple mags. It is then up to you to go out and  find more supplies, ammo, & loot."

Per usual, interviewers are asking stupid questions, but reading between the lines the Dev makes this sound more RPG than MMO. Which is fantastic. FANTASTIC.

Winter 2014 however.  :heartbreak:

Sounds like a somewhat GW2 style event system which could work pretty well in a shooter context. Scaling content capped at 4 person teams it sounded like, though how you enforce that in an open world will be interesting. The idea of resource constraints to drive pace sounds great.

I still get nervous every time I hear someone with a nordic accent (I assume) talking about open PvP zones though.

If it doesn't quickly devolve into DayZ-style bullshit, color me interested. And Winter 2014 could mean Jan/Feb. I'm ok with that.

This is another one of the many many ideas that sounds cool if not for the fact that other human beings will be playing it with you. Look forward to getting teabagged by WeedLord_Bonerhitler atop his mountain of discarded water bottles.

I don't understand what they're doing with world changes.

Well, there will be the inevitable 2 weeks of f13 groups for the handful of people who suck up the full price at launch.

Game looks amazing, but the trailer fell apart for me when the map pulled back and showed the other groups...even with pve only seems like it might be really exploitable. Stuff like this and Not_Halo would be so cool on a private or semi-private server.

+1 to Threash, the walking in the demo was making me nuts.

I watched that Rev3 trailer with the guy talking, and it sounds like there are three kinds of zones - social zones, pve zones and 'dark zones', where dark zones have both pve and pvp missions in them. If you stayed out of the dark zones entirely I think you could avoid pvp.

I'm not normally a fan of shooters, but this looks amazing... Damn you all for giving me hope.

Don't worry about it, you'll forget about it (as will we) by the time it comes out.

Besides, Hex is beating it to the market and that's a title for everyone.

I have no interest in card based money games. I have interest in FPS based Multiplayer and MMO's. Its almost like someone said MMO's would be moving this way.

I don't know any of the words you just said.

I will translate for you.
Not hex not hex not hex not hex not hex not hex not hex not hex not hex not hex. No hex in my future. blah blah blah not hex.

My hope is the other people are a optional. The world and physics are interesting to me I might accept occasional the ME3 co-op style of multiplayer. My interest is directly related to how infrequent that's a requirement though.

More like:


Nope.avi

This game isn't for you. At least not the game they are pitching to us at this point. Having other people be part of the world and part of the content seems to be part of the whole point. Now I'm sure they will hear a lot of this and they may pussy out of having a game where you can run into other players and be "forced" into pvp somewhere in the next 2 yrs and it won't surprise me in the slightest but it will be a shame.

Isnt this more apropo for Post-apoc/survival shite anyways?
I always laugh when people complain of this, because really, that's exactly the way it'd be in RL.  Errr, maybe that's the problem - RL sux.

It is set in America so I guess an epidemic leading to a massive rise in heavily armed bandit gangs is a realistic scenario.

I don't mind PvP. But without controls it will end up like Day-Z, kill counting snipers on every rooftop looking for opportunistic kills.

What you did there. I see it.  :awesome_for_real:

I've been looking to get into an FPS again, this could be very fun. (I hope its not too console-y with aim-assist crap). Winter 2014? Not likely this coming January, but we can hope!

2 years ago

Open World PVP game coming out! Fuck yeah can't wait!

Now

This game would be fun if it didn't include people...

Thats only because game devs suck at balancing PvP. I still welcome open pvp games.

Game devs don't particularly suck at balancing PvP as much as players excel at fucking it up.

When you have millions (atleast you hope to have) players all trying to find a way to beat the system (or just the opponent) you are bound to find ways that a few (pvp) devs haven't thought of. Add to that the fact that in some cases (like some console games) there's no real incentive for the devs to put too much work into a game that has already launched...

Cluttered environments, surprise attacks on people engaged with PvE challenges and weapons with a ranged alpha strike is unlikely to be good PvP.

A good PvP game would have balanced sides, classes, initiative and terrain. In other words all the other team based PvP games. That said I don't mind if they have it, but if they cripple the game for it or make progression require mandatory life in "dark zones" then not so much.

PVP is about creating unfair advantages and exploiting them. Hitting a flag cap point with more people/by surprise, etc. But this usually isn't fun for me when the unfair advantage is more than temporary. This is exactly why this title looked really fun right up until the "better get this new rifle back to base before you lose it" comment combined with "players attacking us!" bit. Open world PVP with some level of item loss? Nope.jpg. I'm too old for that to be fun to me, it just seems stressful.

Just doesn't seem like it's for me, which is a bit sad since the coop pve part looked at least moderately fun.

Part of the problem I have with PvP is that I like to get immersed in the game as intended. With a co-op, you can generally set the mood and enjoy it more like the people in the demo were (sans walking).

But yeah, online pvp is about deconstructing the game and turning it into exploit everything to win.

I'm with Sky on this. If it's PvP, then it's an FPS and that's fine but only if it launches after I'm bored with Titanfall.

But if it's some type of persistent action RPG, then I hope for co-op mulitplayer against PvE, or the kind of multiplayer Skyrim we've wanted instead of the MMORPG we're gonna get.

Uh, so that Joystiq article redacted their whole "It's coming to PC" part, as of right now it's confirmed for consoles only.

That's only if you like fair fights in predictable circumstances. A fair number of us prefer unfair, imbalanced fights that can dynamically break out anywhere, anytime.

Sure, some people adore seeing how much they can stack in their favor before battle starts. Helps them avoid having to compete.

I still think they're a noisy minority though, and this game looks like it has a pretty chunky budget to win back.

Sorted.

Honestly no dev should give a fuck what players who don't want to play with other players most of the time think about pvp gameplay types or their multiplayer game in general. At least if I were making multiplayer games that's how I would look at it.

Aaaaand fuck this game then.

Conversely, maybe they should wonder why people avoid the pvp cesspit.

Surely there is room for a co-op friend-based lobby shooter where Scold can't jump up from behind a dumpster and scream SURPRISE COCKFAGS and wipe everyone with the uber gear he's hoarded.

Because they've made that game about three thousand times now.

Also, don't mistake disdain for playing with shitheads who will use every option up to and including cheating to win, with not wanting to play a game with other people.

The original Rainbow Six games had some great FPS co-op, if you want to try that. Of course, the team-vs-team games were fun too, but those are optional if you can't handle the heat. ;)

Ahem. I pride myself on being a good liberal feminist.

Surprise, cockpeople.

I'll hold out hope it's coming to PC but they don't want to confirm yet so as not to dilute the all important holiday consoles sales that this E3 was really about.


Kinda gotta if you're going to try and monetize those systems. Funding doesn't come on the backs of masochistic sheep who stick around en masse to accept their flogging from the relatively few cockpunchers who achieve alpha status.

You are all right. You guys are truly the pulse of the mass market.  :oh_i_see:

The only pvp there will ever be is play2crush and Eve Online doesn't exist. The fact that people are even bothering to try to play a game like Wushu instead of the many bland but functioning pvp free games out there is another outlier.

In fact DayZ/WarZ don't exist and are shit with no appeal to anyone even though clearly this game is most directly aping those games, must be because they suck and have no merit. Or wait must be so they could make them but without the stupid cockpuncher catering. Or they are making DayZ/WarZ for the shooter-bros but everyone knows they hate pvp so better keep it out of the game.

... you think this game is based on a desire to capture the massive active player bases of games like Day-Z and Eve?

(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/868747/claptard.gif)

Not what he said.

This forum is absolutely not the pulse of the mass market. But where I think you're veering from reality is that going by population numbers, the pulse of the mass market is far more casual than this forum, not more hardcore.

This game may be targeting a small hardcore pvp player base, but if that's the case then they should probably keep the itemization pretty flat, because open pvp + item loss + high gear scaling usually ends pretty fucking terribly.

I did some reading and it looks like it will have PvP zones, with firing an extraction flare possibly putting you "on the map" as someone trying to escape with goodies. There were also some suggestions it might not be very MMO based. I would not be surprised that if you are soloing you have a local instance so you can get the "survival" experience, that you peer-to-peer host 4 player group games which the content scales up to and that there are larger capacity servers for the PvP part. They were certainly very keen to talk about the "seamless transition" from one mode to another which could support that view. But the information is pretty hazy.

I think this is the model we'll see more of. Influenced by things like ME3 where the majority of the game is single player, or possibly co-op, but it has "extra features" that are online and group based. This allows the single player to feel like a tale of survival with a story and solves the problem of what happens on launch day when there's a hundred people camping the police station. Also reduces server costs and means they don't need the massive amounts of content required to keep an MMO audience happy.

So exactly what part of this:

• Big AAA published
• Big branded
• Huge development budgeted
• iPad player supported
• Designed for the multi-billion console

Do you think is targeting the nobody but people here have ever heard of Wushu player?

I get you think there's some indictment of "hard" games. But PvP in The Division is not a rant against Dark Souls. There's legitimate and long proven challenges with making PvP mainstream outside of the broshooter set or the continual surprise by just how many hardcore players want to continually lose until they start winning in the MOBAs.

Both of those types revolve around balance teams, balance stats, and sessions. Its not that pvp isn't mainstream, just the diclwad version of it.

for those (myself included) who'd like to see a PC version.  I read somewhere that Ubisoft would look at PC release if this petition passed. 

https://www.change.org/petitions/ubisoft-release-tom-clancy-s-the-division-for-pc

also the discussion regarding sniper rifles and open-world pvp - what if sniper rifles don't exist in this world?!? :p

Oh dear, is there anything that exists between a Day-Z/EVE gankfest and fair-fights arena/team shooter? Gosh, I wish there was an ocean of space between the two, instead of devs being forced to pick one or the other absolute.

Open world is a gankfest with some humorous attempts to have NPC "crime" systems which never, ever, work... Salem probably being the latest example. Or you have it regulated at which point your in arenas and battlegrounds. What are the systems that are halfway that have worked?

Most open-world PvP servers develop organic player justice ('you attack me,  that will mean war between our clans') that works for all but those without any defenses or leverage, so trying to hard code an arrangement that will just be pumped for loopholes is stupid. Give new players a good 'flee' ability, something that works well but can only be used in an initial fight vs flight choice (not in the middle of a fight if it turns out badly for them), and you've got them covered too.

... no, they don't. Because the attackers have the initiative, can be anonymous, can log off if cornered and protecting noobs is dull.

It might work in Eve, in a game where politics and the possibility of permanent loss to your faction exists, but in most others? Only in a game designer's fantasy.

When playing DayZ. my fiancee' would ask me "How can you play this game? I get so nervous just watching!"

I responded, with a slight grin "Baby, I don't have a vagina."

If you motherfuckers don't like that style of game, don't go all "WAH fuckin' WAH! Nobody likes it or plays it!" Sure, there are a fuck load of idiots and cheating fucks out there. DayZ died, in my book, because any idiot with 10 minutes spare time could become a scripter.

The best PVP in games I have played are impromptu fights. Huge scraps at TM in Wow, chance encounters in Shadowbane at a rune spawn, running into another group of fucks in the middle of nowhere in DAYZ and fighting for your lives, Generator captures and holds in PS1, Ultima Online dungeon scraps, Neocron Outpost battles. Battlegrounds are fun to compete in, but lack the heart and intensity of a real fight.

Fuck a fair fight. My dad always taught me there is no such thing in life.

There are people out there that enjoy permadeath/item loss(full loot)/suspenseful PVP play. We know we are the minority. But the hundred thousands of EVE / DAYZ players show that there is a market.



ashrik your avatar is bad ass.

You know that we're talking about a game, right?  You know why humans created games, right?

Yes, but life mixes in with games and games mix in with life. Some people want games as realistic as possible. I don't get in any fights in real life, so I simulate the adrenaline rush using open PVP games.

Anyway, just my way of saying that I'm bored of 8 on 8 shooter fights.

I gotcha.  I think I misunderstood the earlier post. 

My take: I think what pvp players want most is class balance rather than a 'fair fight'.  The best adrenaline rushes I get in pvp are when I 'beat the odds'.  Nothing like winning a fight where the odds are against you.  I want to fight in a world where all of the classes are balanced.  I'll take my chances with the circumstances of the fight being fair.

what he said minus lazy sexism

Yeah, my bad. I'm kind of a sexist dickhead sometimes. My apologies to the ladies I have had the pleasure of gaming with on here :) And the ones I haven't ! And to my fiancee'!

I was all over the place, I'm not sure exactly what I was rambling about.

Meth.  Not even once.

Cocaine's a helluva drug.

More variety is good, people like different things.

But if you are launching or planning funding for a game it becomes a question of numbers, Does open-PvP bring the numbers or reduce them. It's not an accident that Eve, an aggressively PvP game, has concord space. Same reason this game will have clearly defined PvP zones.

It would be really interesting to see Day-Z's activity numbers, but PvP makes sense in that game because there's not really much else to do.

Slay, you and I and the rat of our merry little gang had a shitload of fun.

But. And this is a big but... You know how much it sucked when we ran afoul of the script kiddies. That is now and has always been my problem with open PvP. People are fucking retarded and will resort to any and all lengths to win even if it's just a game.

Fuck those guys.

Private Servers with strong admin powahs is where it's at for online gaming.

It took me years to remember I hated random online fps after having such an amazing experience playing with a hardcore clan competitively on private servers (bf1942). Like, if you're a designated pilot....your plane is there for you to actually utilize instead of having to hide from snipers while tards on your side keep grabbing it to smash into a tree, etc.

Maybe someday they will design a game AI that can fight just like a real person, that would pretty much solve every pvp problem ever.

Except the wolves would call it "n00b" PVP because they can't hear the QQing of the dearly departed sheep.

Throw some random dialog generator with "haxor!", "you noob ill pwn you next time" and You are good to go.

Open PVP brings all the e-peen to the yard, but then a lot of players leave when they find out that they aren't the virtual John Holmes they thought they were.

Open PvP brings far more griefers/cheats than good players.  I imagine that's the primary reason why we don't see more of it.  Good pvp accounts for a small minority of the mouth-breathing asshatery that is observed the moment open pvp is brought to the table.

Or like Nebu said, they cheat.

The same people keep repeating this. wolves sheep etc etc. Yet to see any proof or evidence of it.

UO, Salem, Day-Z, most of the korean MMO's... you are not looking very hard.

Hay look, this conversation again.

If you expect much beyond a rehash of the same MMO discussions we've had for 7 years, you're sadly mistaken.

LOL, hows that sand investigation going?

MMO haven't changed, why would you expect the the MMO conversation to change?

I have to admit that I giggled a little when Bloodworth complained about repetition. 

Sorry MrB. 

Trammel.

But you keep on keepin' on.

You know better than to say that word, Sky.

Shame on you.

I think people are pretty right about the wolves and sheep bit.  The problem is that the games DO attract the people who want to feel badass but don't have the ability to be so in games that don't let them prey on the less defenseless.  Planetside 2 and World War 2 Online don't have sheep, for example.  But once a game introduces classes or activities which can be described as "PvE" these players necessarily are less apt at PvP because their in game progression is going towards other activities.  Wolves like to prey on these people.

You can get around this on the level of a group, but it is very harsh on the level of the individual and particularly a casual individual.  When I was playing EVE in a mainly industrial focused corporation we had an entire defense division of the corporation that kept our trading routes clear, scouted for potential pirates, all the things you'd expect.  On the level of group play, this is a really interesting dynamic and adds a lot to the game.  On the level of an individual who wants to start playing the game as a miner or crafter, they are going to get popped by pirates 10 times a day with no recourse.

Edit: I almost forgot to make my actual point - I'm wondering if some game can manage to replicate the competitive nature of a game like Counter Strike or even Call of Duty with the open world stuff of a game like EVE, etc.  I feel like it would have to have minimal if any PvP power curve, and have progression focused on the PvE side of the game.

Trammel was well prior to anything resembling the modern MMO selection (and the modern MMO playerbase) existing, where people have a full range of games to choose from and aren't shoehorned into games that don't suit their playstyle. Had fuck all to do with wolves and sheep, had everything to do with people who wandered into UO despite the fact that their true preference was for a PvE MMO that hadn't yet been offered. It's about as relevant to this argument as the unladen airspeed of a swallow.

Awwwwww...

Aren't puppies cute?

Stop pissing on the carpet you lousy mongrel!

It's not just PvE attracting a wider audience with a more middling PvP level, though that is a factor. It's also that PvE games tend to want to have interesting skills, power progression and people already engaged in PvE content when they get ambushed. Really every attempt to have shared mechanics in PvE and PvP have tended to fail. So you either have crap PvE (most of the Asian games) or have PvP as a separate environment (WoW, GW2).

Eve is probably PvP that works because it has player structures that give meaningful factions, alliances and repercussions. The problem is the time investment required from the players to make such a system work is pretty intense. An Eve fleet battle can go on for a long time and is often going to be pretty boring even before you consider the logistics of empire building.

My point is more that if PvP is not progression oriented, then Wolves have less of an inherent advantage (because they are specing for PvP).  One of the things that makes things like Counter Strike or CoD balanced is that there isn't progression (or at least in CoD minimal).  Imagine if the guy farming his ore/metal, whatever, could whip out his gun and be equal to the guy hunting him, or at least very nearly so.  So, the progression would mainly in your chosen PvE path (crafting, farming, mining, smithing, whatever. These things could (hopefully) be tied to things like base building, housing, etc. And your combat capabilities would be have little to no progression, with some craftable stuff giving you slightly better/different weapons or armor. 

That's pretty much what GW2 does. You start off with a rusty sword and a cotton shirt in PvE but when you click the PvP button you are suddenly level capped and in competitive gear. With WvW being a middle ground. And of course people in WvW or a PvP match know that both sides are there looking for a fight.

It's almost unarguably the way to go, but it's also incompatible with open world PvP where the two domains over-lap and the attacker has a lot of ability to skew things in their favour before the fight starts.

Well, I don't mind if an attacker skews things in their favor before the fight starts.  I'd be much more concerned about my ability to fight back.  If he sneaks up on me, well, fair enough.  If he starts shooting at me and he has level 100 shooting me in the face skill while I have level 5 shooting in the face skill because my points have gone into mining ore really efficiently, less cool.

As long as your combat power is relatively equal, you could easily imagine a group going out and doing some resource collection, and being able to pull out their guns and fight back fairly if some gankers show up. 

I was more thinking of watching them do a PvE encounter and then attacking when they are low health and have aggro. Not to mention the specs and builds are likely to be different, and forcing people to mine in groups sort of gets rid of the point of a lot of PvE content.

You are both right in a way. The biggest issues at the core of a lot of these complaints (I think), is the continuing attempt to blend pvp and pve. There isn't any particularly sensible reason for it that I can see - unless we are talking about world building exercises ala EvE - but we continue to see attempt after attempt after attempt. What is even worse, is that most of the time this is coming out of a DIKU or a DIKU-lite, and this layers on another level of absurdity: trying to shoehorn player versus player combat into what had originally been a co-operation focused game paradigm.

If you can't kill someone relatively quickly 1v1, than you make it a 4v1, or a 10v1. Any merger between pvp and pve has to work for solo play as well as group play. Even makng progression equipment based isn't much of an answer, there may not be a big difference between tier 1 and 2 but what about tier 1 and 3 or tier 1 and 5?

One thing that has been proposed many times when designing open PvP MMOs has been to have a chance to have big punishments inflicted on those who break the law. A few games have been attempitng this road, first that come to mind are Wizardry Online and Archeage (not sure how it works in the latter), EDIT: Age of Wulin/Wushu. Point is, lots of people like the concept of a world that has uneven chances at PvP, not only given from the ability to start a fight whenever you want (meaning the defender is unaware, afk, in a PvE fight), but even due to the disparity in power or numbers. Lots of people like to have a world where unfairness can be part of the equation, as long as that unfairness is organic to a dynamic world where there can be consequences for such unfair actions and activities.

I think EVE is a good example of that, to a degree, but I am thinking more of games that have a big risk and reward system in place when it comes to open PvP. Meaning, by killing other, lower level, unsuspecting players, you can take their stuff and completely ruin their playing experience. But you can also go to jail and have your character locked for several hours.

In short, I think considering that open world PvP with sheep and wolves is a kind of environment that many seem to like, it wouldn't be a bad idea to code some systems in so that you CAN absolutely be the asshole and try to make your way through crime and stealing, but every time you do so there's a chance you get busted and get your character completely locked, and your account debuffed, for ten hours or so.

The problem with many open PvP games so far is that there's really no consequence whatsoever in being a douche, especially when being killed means nothing to you, but means a lot to those you are hunting down. I think it would add a lot in some sandboxy PvP games if people still had the option to be mean wolves, but had to face harsh consequences for that from time to time (and if you go to jail, your victim gets his/her stuff back, courtesy of the local police).

Has there ever been an anti-PK mechanism that hasn't been outwitted by the players or mostly meaningless in practice? Honest question. The last one I remember reading was Salem and that was ghastly in practice.


What percentage of the player base hold this position is an interesting question. But I'm pretty sure most people who argue it have visions of themselves firmly on the "wolf" side of the equation. There may be some who like the idea of being mostly on the receiving end of PvP inequality, for the challenge and excitement, but I doubt it's that many.

I am sure you are right that there are more wolves cheering for the wolf vs. sheep style of gameplay, but I am one example of "honourable" (  :awesome_for_real: ) sheep who love the thrill of a dangerous world, and the chance to overcome the odds (while still succcumbing at it most of the times). I like my open PvP games to be on the "survival" side of things, and I like to be the underdog while still having chances, through game mechanics and careful play and organization, to overcome.

I also like the idea of risk vs. reward and what bothers me (even though they are still my favourites) about open PvP games is that too many of them are just about ganking for the lulz (but with no reward), or ganking for profit/loot (but with no risk). I'd say EVE comes the closest (but not there yet) and there's room to develop on those premises. Jail time and account-wide timed debuffs to offenders with a higher or lower random chance to be "busted" based on the security level of the zone you committed the felony are just some that I'd like to see explored. That way you would have to pick your targets and decide to invest in a specific gank because you know the reward is gonna be big (victim has plenty of loot to take/reputation to leech), while still knowing there's a chance the plan will go wrong because of external factors ("bad luck", as Mr. White says in Reservoir Dogs, that's the life of the criminal) and that will really hamper you.

EDIT: mostly spelling.

If you ever come up with a way to do this that isn't defeated by logging out and playing an alt, let me know.

I did a few years back and posted it on these forums. 

1) Allow one account per IP. 
2) All characters on that account have the same surname. 

It's not perfect from a business standpoint, but it would minimize the alt account griefers.

If you had an effective/harsh anti-pk mechanism, then the griefers would just wait until you cast an AOE on mobs and jump into it.  Boom- harsh penalties on the PvEers!  The griefers have always and will always win in any pvp setting. 

I'm always a bit leery of IP based solutions.  It causes problems for legitimate users (e.g. family members who want to play together) while still being generally avoidable for people who are willing to put in a bit of effort.  There are probably half a dozen different public or unsecured networks in a three block radius from here I could use for setting up dummy accounts.

Not to mention this means 1 account per university in most cases.

No matter what mechanical system you put in place, people will find a way to abuse it.  The only thing that can really police it well is heavy moderation, and no company is going to hire the man power needed to actually kick/ban griefers.  A heavily modderated DayZ server is probably the best you can hope for.

Did you propose this before the 100's of cheap proxy services made a 1 account per ip unenforceable.

Also if you are allowing multiple characters per account are you going to punish every char on the account? Or hope the players are going to provide the mythical player justice? Maybe you pk with 1 char all the chars on your account go red?

You guys are like the fucking GOP.  You ask for an idea and then bitch about it.  If you have a better idea, I'm all ears. 

I think the best you can hope for is a surname per account.  It won't limit multiple accounts, but it will limit the ability to use mules for griefing.

All your ALTs are debuffed (account-wide) while one of your other characters is in jail. You can still play the game (with other characters) but you suffer a penalty. It could be a family penalty, as in Nebu's idea, or a morale/angst debuff as one of your friends got caught. Severity of the debuff varying depending how many of your alts are serving time. Point is, even if you log out and jump to your second best character who is still max level, max gear, etc etc, the debuff would make it about one level lower than he/she/it is. Does not prevent you from playing but affects you greatly. Think about it next time.

PKing should be a valid playstyle and I also think it should have rewards (stealing victim's stuff is just one idea), but it should have serious consequences when it goes wrong.



EDIT:


TERA solved that as everyone has a PvP switch. This idea has been explored before, but somehow they got it right so please read on. Basically, to attack people you have to turn on your PvP switch. That makes EVERY other player red to you which means your attacks will hit mobs AND players alike. This allows you to be a Player Killer. But if the switch is off (default) you cannot hurt other plauers. So basically, the switch is NOT meant to protect yourself from being harmed, it is meant to prevent you from harming other players accidentally. There is really no way you could hurt an innocent player, and at the same time everyone can attack you at any time if they want to (by flipping their own switch). Also, when you flip your own switch you turn red, so everyone can see you are out to kill. It's very simple but it works perfectly. Sadly, TERA has no rewards nor penalties for open PvP, so the whole thing is a wasted in that game.

Some cooperation trailer (pc/console + tablet).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=rcNB1_bGG5w

Also Division on PC announcement:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=3F-Xu1S9wv0

Hotness right there.

Excellent.

yay!  PC!

Now I'm definitely in.

I can safely go back to not giving a fuck about next-gen consoles for now then.

Fuck yea!

And here.

And here too!

You people are actually attempting to play this? Disappointed in all of you.

Or we've watched a couple videos about it and are interested to see how it turns out. It's not out for another year at least so I don't think anyone is putting down money on a preorder right now.

Tom Clancy's The Division is going into beta in about 10 days.

It's a cover based MMO, kinda a Destiny in NYC.  It's on the PS4/Xbox One and PC.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0kaj-eqqsE&feature=youtu.be (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0kaj-eqqsE&feature=youtu.be) Series of 4 video that leads you to http://ubi.li/e9v3u (http://ubi.li/e9v3u) (For US people who don't have a package for these outfits)

Some gameplay videos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSmqGGJy7UY (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSmqGGJy7UY)

I'm going to reserve judgement and pre-ordering until after the Beta. The 2013 reveal video made it look awesome, lots of stuff has been scaled down and the graphics might not be as good as the teaser, I'm just hoping it's not another Watchdogs.

I too am waiting for the beta. The dark zone tear harvests may be glorious though.

We have a thread for this, you lazy bastards.

I'll wait till I hear more first before getting excited about this. Signed up for beta for PS4 and hope they are letting everyone in for stress testing ah la Star Wars BF. I was all gungho for that, and it turned out to be shallower than most of the girls I have dated.  :why_so_serious:

I am turned off by the idea of human bullet sponges. Not that I expect realism, but when the setting is pretty much contemporary and weapons are those of our time, having to shoot a human "boss" with three other players for more than 5 seconds just doesn't feel right.

That said, I am definitely curious and interested. I have been frothing over this for two years and it's only now that we finally learnt more about it that I noticed this incongruence.

Wasn't this announced the first E3 where they unveiled the PS4?

http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=23335.0

Yep.  You are correct, sir. 2 and a half years ago.  

merge bump

I have fond memories of that... the game held such promise. I am very interested how much they dumped out of the game... going by the few videos I have watched recently, A LOT. This will either be an ok shooter or generic shooter with NYC backdrop. I'm betting the latter.

This game is like some unholy joining of memes. Military masturbation with 50 dkp minus.

edit: or maybe just a mundane Hellgate London with more guns and a boring setting.

Live action trailer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKK30kJWVnA

This reeks of a project nearly killed by feature creep, that has since been gutted and redesigned and bulldozed into release because of sunk cost fallacy.

This sounds like every MMO with a budget of more than $10 million.

You know, the thng that looks the closest to this gameplay (and feature) wise is Defiance. Let me rephrase it. The Division looks scarily and terribly like Defiance. Which wasn't even a terrible game. Just one that had the longevity and he substance of a frappuchino.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fW6kehLgXdY

Comparison of current vs 2013 E3. Meh...

I think I was interested in this initially, but this has become such a non-game that I don't even know what it is anymore.

Hipster shooter.

My hopes for this have indeed been diminished but I'll still give it a go for a little while. At the very least, I'll get a couple of Radicalthon entires out of it.

I have managed to find some fun in Destiny, I am sure I can do the same thing with this.

ooooooooooh ic

Source: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2016/01/22/tom-clancys-the-division-interview/

Anyone in the beta(demo) they are doing right now? Opinions?

After SW: Battlefront beta let me down, I am not keen on purchasing this site unseen.

I think only XBOX ( :why_so_serious: ) started yesterday. But PC starts today. In Europe, it's around 1pm. So I will post my first impressions in a few hours.

My impressions after a couple hours and doing the one story quest they have available on mostly hard difficulty (Which seems like a huge red-flag to only have one story quest).

1. For a cover based shooter they have not made using cover as seamless as they should. They have all these cover points indicated and you have to run up to it. Hit the cover button and then peep over to shoot your gun then hope for some reason you didn't detach from the cover and if you want to find other cover you have to run to it instead of hitting the cover button to automatically get to the next cover. Also if you vault on top of something your pathfinding is likely to spin you in circles trying to get down while you get shot 56 times and then let you jump down.

2. Someone in your group will have a hot mic and you will be forced to hear the monstertruck commercial version of everything the NPC's say. I need to turn off voice I think.

3. It looks pretty.

I confirm my initial impressions: it is a better Defiance, but the gameplay is 100% Defiance. It's not necessarily a bad thing, Defiance gameplay wasn't bad it was simply too shallow and too short. In these regards, it's impossible to judge where The Division stands since the beta only lets you see a very small portion of the whole, but as a Defiance clone it certainly is a giant step forward in aesthetics, setting and polish.

Bonus: the dark zone (PvP). It is a lot of fun for now, but it will take a few days to see if people find a way to ruin it, or the design will fall apart somehow.

FTFY... minor points.  :why_so_serious:

As of about an hour ago, the dark zone on PS4 is a complete shitshow. Roaming packs of over-geared assholes in the same parties are ganking anyone that enters or tries to get gear airlifted out.

I like it though. So far. Despite the fact that the only things they got right are Madison Square Garden and the post office across the street from it. The rest of the city looks like a google maps version of it. The fact that they couldn't license some of the buildings like the Empire State and Chrysler doesn't help either.

All that said, I will still get it because I like the storyline so far.

I got my nice, sorry but you didn't preorder so no beta. But we'll let you know. I'll keep an ear open since Surly seems to not mind it.

He liked Destiny, though, so his opinion is suspect.

As did I, for the most part. Birds of a feather and stuff.

Oh, carry on then.

Schild should like this, it's got Diablo'ish style loot. Then it hit me...This might actually be Hellgate: NYC.

It kind of is Hellgate:NYC. Hopefully it fares better. The shooting isn't as crisp as Destiny's but it is fun once you get the hang of it and start getting better gear.

Hellgate and Diablo though are about hordes of enemies that you vaporize with the blink of an eye. This is the opposite; a few human enemies here and there that absorb your bullets as if they were made of candy wraps. In Hellgate you feel like a god, here you feel less effective than an actual, real life gunman.

I'm enhoying it though for what it is. An action MMORRPG set in modern times. Cool take.

Once you start to get better guns, it gets easier. With my current loadout, I'm one and two-shotting most dark zone mooks. (With the glaring exception of that climbing gym across the street from the rooftop LZ.

SPOILERS!!  :why_so_serious:

We take a break from this apocalypse in progress for nature's call...

http://i.imgur.com/n5NlnOQ.gifv

Wha...?  Is that a dog squatting and taking a shit? :ye_gods: :facepalm:

I like how some animator had to waste a day or two on that, including the particle effects or whatever used to make the actual shit coming out.

Dogmeat doesn't crap once.   :awesome_for_real:

Did the poop just magically disappear? It's kind of hard to tell from that clip.

Yeah it kind of just melts into the pavement.  Too bad that rat in the background isn't dragging around a slice of pizza.

Listen, if we're going to have a realistic post-apocalyptic setting, some shit's just gotta be done.

Like all dog poop in the winter in New York, it sinks into the snow, waiting for an unsuspecting passer-by or twelve to step in it and track it across the city.

As for pizza rat, all of his cousins are out in force.

1. The minute you see the cover indicator you just need to hit the cover button the attach to it. You're detaching from it because you haven't changed the setting that detaches you on moving backwards. You can move cover to cover by finding the cover you want and holding the cover button.

2. Mute them in group management

I wonder how bad the cheating will be on the pc version.
https://www.reddit.com/r/thedivision/comments/43jr61/pc_version_will_be_plagued_with_cheaters/

Defiance had the advantage of the relatively poor graphics and low architectural density making content creation cheaper. Combine that with beta being a thin slice and I suspect there's a good chance it will release content light.

Plus defiance, warframe and destiny all have plots that allow for game progression and mob variety. An epidemic and sudden collapse of society doesn't seem to have nearly the same scope. Even increasing difficulty by having large opponent counts will start to break the sense of realism, those games have enemy empires to explain the endlessly refreshing enemy hordes.

... I guess inevitably it's going to go zombie. Or it thinks it can sell on the PvP?

I think plot is fina and will be fine in The Division, what I have seen is promising. What worries me is variety: you have a level progression curve, but your enemies are only gonna be humans all the way up. Not sure you have much wiggle room with that. For what is essentially a MMORPG I believe that will be a problem, shortening longevity.

The plot is awesome for a one-off. I too am worried about longevity though. Where do you go after saving the country from the brink of apocalypse?

How does Destiny keep up the interest (does it?). Loot? DLCs? "Story"?

A combination of all three. Or at least it did before it went into maintenance mode.

Whoa. It did so early? I thought that at least on console was a huge success. If it isn't, then it's clearly not a business or gameplay model anyone should imitate. Unless... Warframe is still doing great right?

Warframe is still doing very very well yes in terms of player numbers on steam. No idea how it is doing on Playstation.

Its in the Football Manager, GTA5, TF2, Civ5, Rocket League, currently popular survival sandboxes & currently popular AAA RPG's tier.

Which means its ahead of: old Counterstrike, f2p mmo's, whatever roguelikes happen to be big atm and moba's that aren't DOTA.

Boston?  :why_so_serious:

Destiny was great for awhile for me. I got my money's worth... didn't grab Taken King because I was barely playing at that point. I don't miss it nor do I regret buying it. However, that is going to be the last game I play without a preview, in terms of shooters. I was in the market for SW: Battlefront when I saw the teasers and trailers, but changed pretty quick after playing the preview weekend (no, that was not beta so I am no longer going to call them that).

Still curious about this game, but not going to get suckered into a $60 purchase for $20 worth of content because of 'new shiny.' I enjoy PvP to an extent, but once that becomes all the game has to offer (with little to no story), then there is no way I'll spend that kinda cash - not when I can play Warframe or Planetside 2 for free.

Destiny only went into maintenance mode only recently. And it's probably because they've pulled resources for Destiny 2.

As for this one, it'll be the first game I've actually payed for in about 18 months. I'm ok with throwing some dough at it.

You are not helping me NOT buy this.

Destiny 2?! Wasn't Destiny shit at launch because it was a work in progress for the ages?

No, Destiny was shit at launch because people had built it up to be Robot Jesus and it was merely a solid shooter with a lot of MMO elements thrown in.

From what I've seen I'm still going to give it a go.  It also gave me an excuse to finally upgrade my vid card.   :awesome_for_real:

If for no other reason, I'll buy it because they managed to work in the Talking Heads' "Life During Wartime" and they did it beautifully.

Destiny had a lot of potential that was just not followed up on at launch. It got a bit better with the DLCs, but Taken King was actually pretty great - interesting environments, a coherent story, nice set pieces, and boss fights that required actual thought and coordination. My group and I actually ended up doing all the challenges in the King's Fall raid, so we definitely got our money's worth.

It will forever pain me, however, that Bungee never did anything with the ships - they could have made a minigame or something out of them like they did with sparrow racing. Maybe they're saving actual ship content for Destiny 2.  :oh_i_see:

Just found out that this and Black Desert are getting released 5 days apart. Poop.  :uhrr:

Another worrysome trend for me is not that the Dark Zones are a KOS mayhem, but actually quite the opposite. Basically, it doesn't pay to attack other players because a) you don't know what they are carrying and if it's worth getting 'rogue' over what could be a silly green weapon. b) it's easier to get said loot from mobs than players. c) when you attack another player you become a HUGE target visible everywhere across the map and when you get killed for it d) you lose money and XP. So in short, after the initial chaos of the beta, I tend to see it becoming a place where people just go get loot from mobs and rarely attack each other simply becaue the risk does not ever justify the reward. I hope I am wrong because the afore mentioned paranoid chaos is what makes the Dark Zones special, but I am afraid there won't be enough incentives to kill each other as opposed to simply get in line for your mob run and quietly deliver at an extraction point where everyone else is doing the same.

You must have been in different dark zones than I was... It was pretty split between rogues and people waiting for a good opportunity to go rogue.

I didnt have near the amount of fun playing I thought I was going to. I was considering pre-ordering but I'm not so sure anymore.

No I am sure it was split. I am just saying there's usually a very different behaviour in betas and released games, especially after the first week madness is over. The Path of least resistance usually emerges, and in this case I am not sure it is "try to kill everything with some loot" as the consequences for failure are potentially bigger than the loot (you can even de-level and lose access to your already equipped gear).

One review mentioned that the best PvP loot is on vendors using dark zone currency and levels. Since you lose both of these when you die as a rogue it's another incentive to hunt rogue agents (which is at least thematic) over becoming one. In practice though once people have extracted any gear they wanted out of the dark zone the player motivation will be boredom and griefing.

It's a pretty threadbare mechanic to keep PvP action flowing in any case.

How does this work in the game? Do you go into the Dark Zone and if you kill someone just wandering around you become marked? Then if someone finds you and kills you, that someone gets XP and stuff, but is not marked because you were?

Then say that person kills a few more marked people, gets more stuff. Then that person decides to kill my guy, who is not marked, for the laffs then that person loses that stuff?

If you kill a rogue agent or a manhunt target, there's no repercussions on you. So go ahead and kill all the rogues you want. The second you kill a non-hostile agent though, you're marked.

I spent most of last night dropping rogues at every chance I got. It netted me enough cash to buy the godly weapon Caduceus. After that, I was a one-man wrecking machine with the few exceptions of ambushes or four-on-one fights against rogues that were equally equipped.

That said, if you think that there's not enough impetus to go rogue, I merely point to this thread (https://www.reddit.com/r/thedivision/comments/43pftu/quit_trying_to_fix_the_dark_zone_because_youre/) and laugh and say, "some men just want to watch the world burn..."

Dark Zone is a PvP zone. When you enter the Dark Zone you know shit got real from your character slightly hunching their shoulders. Dark Zones have rank brackets, which means players are funnelled into the same bracket by means of difficulty and restricting access to DZ loot crates. The keys to open these crates are dropped by DZ mobs. In a group the "Finder's Keepers" rule applies to DZ loot. DZ also has a DZ Rank, which you gain with DZ XP, and its own currency called DZ Funds. DZ Vendors deal in DZ Funds. You lose both by dying as a Rogue Agent.  Friendly fire is not on if you're in a group, so if you want to kill your group members you need to leave party first. If you kill another player you turn into a Rogue Agent. Group members close to you also turn into a Rogue Agent. Rogue Agents turn red and their location marks appear on the map for everyone in the zone. Rogue Agents have a bounty on them. They are also visible through walls if closer than 100m of people. The more people you kill the higher your Rogue Stage, which goes up to 5. If you survive as a Rogue Agent for 5 minutes you get a reward, higher the Rogue Stage the better the reward. The timer starts over if you attack a player. If you reach Rogue Stage 5 a Manhunt side mission starts in the zone for everyone with you as the target. Again, survive for 5 minutes and you get your own bounty as a reward. How much DZ XP and DZ Funds is lost dying as a Rogue Agent depends on your Rogue Stage and how much you have. You also drop all the DZ loot on your person upon death no matter if you're Rogue or not.

Example: Guy defeats a bunch of Rogues ambushing him.
https://youtu.be/vgyFprEMmYY

It's actually all very casual considering you can respawn 150m away in a Safe House and run back to the fight in less than a minute. Death really is a no-big-deal in this game and no one should discouriage themselves from venturing into the DZ. Granted such a PK-flagging mechanic does have expected shortcomings, such as a non-flagged player deliberately standing in the crossfire of his Rogue Group friends so whoever they are shooting at turn Rogue and easily killable. Since you can sprint forever in this game you have the option of running away if you see potential or obvious PKers coming your way. Why sprinting is not limited or linked to the Stamina stat for that added "REELISM!" is a bit mystical, but I reckon it is a consolitis symptom. The beta DZ instance had a player limit of 12 supposedly, but I don't know if that is true. I read that there is a way for two groups to deliberately get in the same instance, but don't ask me how. I know you can get in a fresh instance by using the Matchmaking function (LFG, then leave party).

I got to put 10 hours into the beta. I spent this time wisely by collecting all the intel achievements (Echoes are cool) and talking to random people about how the game is alright. There was no "hot mic" icon to show you if you're broadcasting and Push-To-Talk is off by default. I expect this to be tweaked later. The most positively surprising thing for me, and I haven't heard anyone else mention this, was multiple-monitor setups working out of the box. Triple monitors works without having to go into Video Settings once, with no GUI elements missing, and the fact that you can play with double monitors with the secondary acting as a dedicated map screen is really cool and yet unheard of. The vast majority of devs neglect Eyefinity type resolutions completely. At least the Titanfall people fixed the dissapeared minimap after the second DLC.

I am (sort of) Legend

(http://i.imgur.com/NBop029.jpg)

Younger me thinks this would be fine. Older me doesn't have the patience to put up with griefers and their super toys. It was the main reason I left Vanilla WoW PvP server.

The Safe House respawn area has three exits. Griefers can't camp all of them.

Also there are rumours of an Open Beta in two weeks thanks to a supposed Italian Xbox page leak.

There is going to be a HILARIOUS amount of cheating in this game. Ubisoft has no idea what they are doing when it comes to things like this.

I would approach this one really cautiously. It MIGHT be worthwhile on consoles, but I would lean towards waiting until after the first content patch/release/expansion hits.

There is no difference than any other pvp game out there though.. People still constantly cheat on CS and how old is that game.  I'm not being defensive, but I'd be more worried about the lack of stuff that beta testers had access too then if they were running anti cheat on a beta weekend. 

I don't know if you are serious or not. This is going to be like Diablo 1 cheating.

Basically if it isn't a complete game cheating doesn't even matter.  I can do the pve stuff while waiting for them to patch pvp. 

PvE depth is the other concern though, unless they take the game in some weird direction I don't see how encounter and loot diversity plus a probably small and static over-world map are going to keep game-play engaging.

After seeing some stuff about the map it's not as small as it seems though.  There's only one fast travel spot and there are no vehicles so it's going to feel big enough. 

http://tomclancy-thedivision.ubi.com/game/en-GB/news/detail.aspx?c=tcm:154-237962-16&ct=tcm:148-76770-32

Demo weekend coming... Feb 18.

For anyone getting this that lives in North America, you can unlock 4 skins for free by going here (http://ubi.li/e9v3u) and entering the code AGENTORIGINS.

This is what you get:
(http://i.imgur.com/5OY1gwO.jpg)

Cool. Thanks.

Works in Europe too!

That had its entire story thrown out shortly before release and came out as the most disjointed WTF random missions strung together for reasons it was no longer possible to grasp game.

Must depend on where you are in Europe. GAME has one of the skins as a pre-order bonus, so some Europeans get rejected for the code that gets all 4.

Apparently, I was able to get it but my friends in my same country or even city weren't. I don't know what to think, at this point I wonder if it had anything to do with what language were your cookies set on on the UBI page, or the language of your browser. So, huh.

http://tomclancy-thedivision.ubi.com/game/en-GB/beta/index.aspx?ncid=1628-3502-5748--2-odsocmed-17-23-TCTD_RCH_--1-4-11-0216

Demo client is up for downloading on all platforms. No clue about Europe, sorry...

I was able to join the open beta from Europe through U-Play.

Just log into U-Play and then it's kind of hard to miss.

Oh I preordered through Steam and today it let me download the open beta client no problem, so looks like it's gonna be alright.

Just an FYI that if your friends are getting the season pass they get those skins plus a few more. Here's what comes with it currently:

-Survivor increased carrying capacity

-NY EMT bonus to healing

-NYPD increased ammo capacity

-NYFD bonus to fire resistance

-Hunter bonus to shotgun damage

-National Guard increase to armor

-Hazmat Suit increase to exotic damage resistance

I'll see if I can find good images of the additional ones.

Boom. http://imgur.com/a/Ppquh

Digging the firefighter suit.  :awesome_for_real:

This game feels good. Not sure if it feels Full Price good.

Rolled into the DZ today for the first time in the open beta and there're two rogues just hanging out at the quarantine gate, waiting for anyone to come in and lighting them up.

I toss one of the new suppression turrets over their shoulders and catch them in the crossfire. Four other people come rushing around the corner and help finish them off.

Stupid bastards.

Well, I just tried to extract 1 item from the DZ. A bunch of mobs rushed me at the end and other players helped out. Of course, some (unflagged) guy ran in from the direction that the mobs were coming from and I hosed him down, thinking he was another mob, flagging myself rogue in the process. The friendlies then understandably cut me to pieces. Hmm...

I played a bit of the beta yesterday and it's not bad but it's not worth $80 CDN.

They should just remake the APB beta and not fuck it up on release. Rename it "Tom Clancy's Cops 'n Robbers", keep the ARPG loot system, shovel $$$ into hats.

Is the design of the dark zone as stupid as it appears to be?

I tried this out tonight on PS4. From the looks of it, once you attack someone you go red and you get a countdown timer until you turn normal again. Basically once you turn red, anyone can kill you with no remorse.

The thing is, I was in an an area rolling around with random dudes and an organized group was there, they'd flip red, kill some people (me included usually) and then be gray in a short period of time.

You'd often get in the scenario where you turn a corner and there's the group of 4 dudes, standing there, not red for whatever reason, and they light you up and THEN they go red.

Then you'd respawn, go back out there, kill some NPCs and there was the same group of 4, not red, who would kill you and briefly flip red.

Repeat forever. Is that really how it works?! Come on.

Yes, that is how it works. Basically, after the first time they kill you, you should play cat and mouse with them the next time you see them even if they are white. Also worth mentioning that if they kill you, they turn red long enough for you to go back in the zone and hunt them back.

With al that said, there's actual risk vs. reward involved in turning red which is not so obvious in your first few hours in the beta, as you lose way more cash AND experience when you die as a red, so I am not sure people will be so trigger happy in the actual launched game considering every time you kill someone for loot you could get a shitty item and in return risk being killed and lose money, experience and even levels (which means you access to some of the items you already had equipped)

Is it just me, or does this game have the clunkiest set of non-intuitive PC controls (inventory, character, etc) I've ever seen?

Killing an agent nets you what? 85 seconds of rogue? Respawn and run all the way back, yeah I can see it. My first DZ experience was me running after some rogue agent at half health. He engages a group of mobs, I kill him along with another guy who jumps into my fire. I go rogue for like 13 seconds and he turns on me. So I jumped away and killed him then hid in a truck in a warehouse. Ran to 2 extraction zones and helped out a few players and even rezz'd one, then left to go run the Garden on hard mode with a buddy. The 20 minutes in the DZ was pretty damn fun and full of paranoia so that probably sold me on throwing some money at it.

I tried this today. It's fun but they've made some boneheaded moves. Number one for me? I can't name my character. It probably doesn't matter to you guys but my character name is my username for Uplay? WTF?

Their chat interface is awful, it reminds me of Defiance. No clans/guilds?

No clans/guilds as far as I know.. It's not an MMO, I didn't see the reason for one personally.  I think they just want you to use the Uplay friend list for most of it.

As for the game, I ended up ordering it. 

I was pretty meh on it the entire weekend but ended up logging in every chance I could.  Good enough for me.

Just got out of running around with 2 buddies in the DZ for about an hour or two. Cleared a few building with some yellow mobs and got 2 extractions with some blue loot. Last 15 minutes, got chased but a group of 5 rogue agents, all lvl5 rogue and 1 with a manhunt on him. We end up at an extraction with 3 other people - the rogues came through like a wave and just mauled all of us - 2 of the agents waiting ran off, me and my buddies tried to engage but were gunned down pretty quick. Actually, all 4 guys shot sticky bombs at the helipad and 1 of my buddies flew over my head from the explosion. I then got shot and melee'd to death.

And now I am out $60...and have to wait 2 weeks.  :awesome_for_real:

Yeah I played it for a couple of hours and forced myself to stop, cuz I like playing as fresh as possible at launch. 

Ran afoul of a squad of three rogues last night several DZ levels below me and none sporting anything better than a blue primary. The first tries to light me up and I drop him immediately. His boys try to flank me but I'm geared out in all purples and the Liberator as my primary.

It basically went down a lot like this... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0yEWvLRE4Q

Fucking asshats.

Had fun, hit lvl 8/11, much more fun with friends.

You can change your UPlay name. Your friend's list is your guild.

I know you can change your Uplay name but if you read interviews they tout how this is a deep RPG as well as a shooter, yet, all 4 of my characters would have the same name. By RPG what they really mean is "we have some skills in the game and you can dress up your character."

Anyone have an opinion on if PC or Xbox version is better?  I played the Xbox beta and it would seem a mouse would beat the the controller hands-down.

I really don't understand these questions. PC is million times better. How could it be any different?

PC is also more susceptible to hackers - the trade off I guess. That is probably the only drawback. I'm running it on the PS4 because I am lazy and like couch gaming.  :awesome_for_real:

You trade superior graphics and controls for dealing with hackers.

I'll take that trade.

Players are asshats regardless, limit their ability to cheat and be bigger asshats.

I would, too, but I'm incapable of playing anything other than fighting and racing games with a controller.

Why is all the hype for this game so DZ-centric? I enjoyed exploring the city and thought the PvE missions were well-done and unique (also, loot). The Dark Zone was a cute diversion but there are a billion other shooters I'd play before spending any significant amount of time there. Are you guys actually buying this for the competitive multiplayer?

The SP is solid, but... it's nothing amazing. I spent about half my time in the Beta (probably played about 6-8 hours in total) poking around in the DZ because I wanted to see how it played - since the "SP/PVE" is much of the same thing we've done a million times before. Also, all of the hype about the DZ loot being "the best loot is in the DZ", so it seems they're wanting to really incentivise it.

I spent Friday and Saturday doing the PvE stuff and trying to find all the trinkets (phones, folders, echos) with two characters. So I had my fill of the single player part. Even had a chance to play with my buddy and noticed the mob density increased and their behavior altered slightly. It was pretty solid for being such a brief demo. Nothing at all against the single player part. DZ was just a little more intense and had more chaos which I found pretty interesting since I haven't been into PvP areas of games since basically Planetside (circa 2003).

To me, this game won't last much. I want to play it for a while, enough not to get bored and fall into too much repetition, and I am gonna enjoy the exploration of New York in a setting I really like while at it. That means I am gonna spend some time in PvE, which seems very easy and relaxing, while also following the story which is a pleasant bonus, and then engage in some PvP when and if my friends are around or if I want a change of pace and I'm just looking for some unpredictable action that sometimes leads to memorable moments. So, not much investment in one side or the other of the Pv* equation, just looking to enjoy a new game that plays smooth enough and seems to offer at least a couple of different game modes.

I think people are ignoring the PVE part because IN THE BETA they blast you with a "carry this from A to B and OH YEAH you can only walk at a snails pace and have to put it down a few times to fight off waves of attackers that are announced over a PA system" quest. If they put THAT in the beta, what do they actually consider to be bad quest design? The sky is the fucking limit here.

Basically, I enjoyed it, but not enough to need to buy it on release. I'm not in competition with others nor do I feel a need to rush to the endgame, so with that in mind, I'm personally happy to wait and see. I'll probably pick it up the first time it goes on digital sale on PSN so my wife and I can both play at the same time using the one purchase via family sharing - even though it'll probably be a month or three before it hits a first sale.

If you're thinking of buying this for PC, try Green Man Gaming.  They have it on sale for 28% off.

Must have been a 24 hour sale, or something as it's $59.99 currently.

You can get the gold version for $67.50 using these steps (https://www.reddit.com/r/GameDeals/comments/44oo5y/gamesplanet_tom_clancys_the_division_gold_edition/).


What billion other shooters have something similar to the Dark Zone? I don't think it fits under the traditional classification of "competitive multiplayer".

It's basically Open PVP areas, which I don't think is new.

Yes, but there are conditions that govern that area and how you impact those around you.

It has a shallow, piss poor design. What games don't have that? The shiny is going to wear off in like 9 days.

I'm waiting until the first PSN sale. By then the game should have evened out or be a complete clusterfuck.

It is not extra-new but it is not "what games don't have that?" kind of old. Why don't you people start listing the games, especially shooters, that have that?

It is basically an open factionless PvP area with inventory looting. Other than the recent wave of hardcore survivals, what other games have it?

And the shine is gonna wear off in 9 days the same way it does from EVERY game these days. Some of you might have a go-to game that you have been playing for a year or two, but other than that every fucking game lasts a couple of weeks at best now. It's not a matter of design anymore. The offer is too large, the amount of new games every week is overwhelming, the prices have been going down, our salaries have been going up, and our attention spans have shrunk to dangerous levels and the only games that stick around are those that sink their hooks somewhere in the soft subconscious matter in the back of our individual brains through an undiscolosed combination of pretty blinking lights and dopaminic sounds which is different for everyone.

Sounds about right.

Unique doesn't equal compelling. If I wanted to shoot at people I'd play an arena FPS and if I wanted to get ganked by assholes with better gear than me I'd play Ark or Rust or whatever the state of the art is in multiplayer survival ball-kicking simulators these days. I guess I can see the Dark Zone being an interesting middle ground for people who enjoy both of those things. I was just surprised that I seem to be the only one that thinks the PvE was more fun.

You're not the only one.

I much prefer the PVE areas and the potential of the story line to the dark zone. I just have a feeling that at some point, the two will intertwine. You'll have to run a few missions into the DZ because that first wave of agents that went either missing or KIA are now the original rogues hiding out in there.

"The best loot is found in The Dark Zone."

So if you like to PVE and want a leg up, you'll have to go into the DZ to get some better/uber/whatever gear, anyway.

After watching some of the beta footage I can't even remember why this game interested me at one point.

But since it's as close as we are getting to a Western MMO it will be very interesting to see how they keep the content fresh and handle progression. Because given the expensive to create environments and realistic setting they've made it about as hard on themselves as they possibly could.


But this only really motivates if there is PvE progression to use that gear on.

There is. If you get that high end shit in the DZ, you'll now through the mobs in PVE.

Yeah, I can't see how he missed that.

The "Year One" season plan announced. All the coming DLCs, Patches and Expansions (some of it paid, some of it free) have been unveiled.

Here's a video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_qUtFkdPEk

And here's the official page: http://tomclancy-thedivision.ubi.com/game/en-gb/news/detail.aspx?c=tcm:154-241886-16&ct=tcm:148-76770-32

(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3584773/DIVISION%20year%20one.jpg)

Well crap, I'm getting interested in spite of myself.

So how does the PvE part stack up? I'm that weird guy who likes story in MMOs, and who finds combat mechanics to be far down the list of stuff I care about (by which I mean that the mechanics are just the stuff I learn how to do to further the story  -- I usually don't care if combat is "jerky" or whatever, as long as I can figure out which keys to hammer to kill the current Whamadoodle).

So is the story/graphics/gameplay interesting?

Say, compared to Dying Light (which I liked).

Everything is a bit more ho-hum than Dying Light. You can't use a grappling hook or chest-kick zombies off ladders. If you could it'd be "press and hold Q to chest-kick angry masked guy" while he waits at the top of the ladder.

I mean the gunfights feel good but the rest of the game is solid meh.

Story is gripping if you have 1995's Outbreak playing in the background. No, that's a lie. I am a liar.

Fuck Dying Light. I finish almost everything and I didn't finish that.

I think I loaded the game up twice. Played it a bit once normal singleplayer...then jumped on multiplayer with friends, which promptly ruined the game entirely.  :oh_i_see:

stealthedit: I'm referring to Dying Light, not The Division. The latter is waaaay better with friends.

This is live in about 3 hours if you have preordered.

Been live since about 7AM Eastern if you had a physical copy.

Yeah but I don't need no stinkin' physical copy!

1 hour on the nose. I'm sure it won't work right. I can't believe I installed UPlay. What a crock of shit.

This doesn't seem like a bad game.

I wish I had it on Steam though.

Looks like their servers and/or UPlay just shit the bed.  Remind me again why I'm playing a Ubisoft game?  Fucking fake Frenchmen. :awesome_for_real:

Severs are proper fucked.

Ubifucked.

The servers are probably housed in the dark zone. :oh_i_see:  Press F to shit on Ubisoft's fat, French faces. #ubishit

Maybe someone should Tweet Ubisoft or something and ask them if they tried turning the servers off and on a couple of times.

What's up with you and French people?

I was about to buy this on the off chance it wasn't a complete clusterfuck at launch. *sips coffee*

Still waiting on the disc to be delivered so I'm good with shit blowing up.  :awesome_for_real:

Tom Clancy's Line Simulator (https://imgur.com/gallery/R1mHi60)

Reminds me of LoTRO. People would stand in neat orderly lines to collect slow spawning quest resources at launch.

What an utterly amazing clusterfuck.

Well... I mean it is supposedly Black Friday in game... right?!

Oh thank god this is Ubisoft. Urge to buy rapidly fading.

Everything was back up within an hour and the servers have been fairly stable since then.

It wasn't even that long.. I think it was like 30 minutes and everything was smooth after that.

I wonder if it's a NA thing. Playing in EU at the moment, with zero problems. ZERO!

Still waiting on UPS to get here!  :ye_gods: :awesome_for_real:

I ended up hitting the preorder button on PS4 at the last minute. (May as well get the extra shit if I'm buying anyway, amirite?). By the time I got home from work on release day, there was a Day 1 patch (like Fallout 4, I've seen people suggest) and then I was playing. There's nothing amazing about the gameplay, but it's very moreish for some reason. I fucking love the fine, tiny details in the environment. I'm a sucker for that shit - it's like when I first played Max Payne 1 on release.

The environment for me is worth the purchase. Have you heard at some point somewhere the noise of someone taking photographs? You look around for the sorce, and you notice a woman taking photos from one of the second floor windows of a nearby building and murmuring "oh gotta document this!". When you look up to her and inevitably point the gun at her, she gets scared and disappears inside turning off the light.

My favorite moment so far has been a woman telling a man in the BoO that they both have needs and that she's willing to be "there for him." It's probably one of the most New York things about this game. Mid apocalypse and someone's trying to get laid.

For what it's worth, The Division broke some UBI sales record.

http://blog.ubi.com/the-division-sets-new-sales-records/

Played about an hour of it.  Servers seemed fine and it looks fantastic, but this just wasn't doing it for me.  Oh well.

I love the fact they ramped up the difficulty on the hard mode dungeons. Beta, we rolled slow and smooth through the Garden 3 or 4 times. Now? There are way more times my group members get downed and we wiped 3 times on the final rooftop boss fight. So much more enjoyable to have a challenge.

Still haven't quite figured out tanking yet. Definitely not tanking in a traditional sense.

I would assume the tactical shield is a big part of it. And HP gear. But, are there any taunting skills?

Shield get shredded extremely fast when mobs are a level more than you and you are focus fired on. HP gear has to be essential which tends to gimp you in the DZ. DPS is king in the DZ it seems and HP stacking just lags behind since it can cost you your own DPS - unless you get lucky with the loot drops which buff stam and firearms. I'm only level 9 on my one character I play with a set group so I am not disheartened - will have to explore this more when we hit 30.

Is there a guild/group/club for F13ers for this? Or is this just a friends list thing?

No guilds yet... I'm on PS4 with a couple buddies from Chicago.

I believe I can fly...

http://youtu.be/xC6853227c8

 :drill:

I love when the cleaners blow up from their tanks being hit. Never gets old.

Those guys are the best. I see that gout of flame and think, "yeah, he's done, next target."

Well, I did think that until I got to the next tier dark zone...

This game must be doing well if it's getting my console friends at work excited. They've been trying to get me to join them in Destiny, but for the life of me I can't do FPSs on a console/controller. Guess I'll give the PC version a shot.

It's a weird mix of good and terrible. You'll sometimes hear the exact same line from different NPCs one after the other or a recycled mission briefing for a sidequest. And then you see the photographer thing Falconeer mentioned.

Missions on normal are ridiculously easy--just running around a boring map shooting boring enemies. On hard enemies become a huge threat and you actually have to use cover well.

Most fun/frustration I've had so far was in the DZ ungrouped. The mechanics are actually great, and mixing never losing what you brought in versus never being able to keep what you can't protect feels 100% fair. It would definitely be too easy if it wasn't open PvP.

The little launch related DLC has rustled my jimmies quite a bit. I got the free pre-launch AGENTORIGINS stuff just fine after half a day of waiting for it after entering the code into UPlay, however, following instructions to enter the pre-order DLC codes just lead me to the message "This promotion is not available in your region." Another non-US friend claimed he couldn't get it either. Now what the fuck, Ubisoft? Granted, some guy on Reddit claimed they knew this was an issue and they were working on fixing it, but I have not found an official statement, and if they do fix it, it will probably be too late since these items are useful the following few levels or so after reaching Manhattan. If you're playing the game and trying to catch up with your friends you won't want to use the DLC gear soon anyway.

For some reason the pre-order codes have to be entered into a redeem page and you get the real codes afterwards to your e-mail, if it would work. I don't understand why they couldn't be just like the AGENTORIGINS codes that you throw into UPlay product activation. I'm alright with skins and the UPlay rewards you get in exchange for upoints, but pre-launch DLC content always comes with concerns and troubles like this. You never exactly know what you're getting, you just bite on the marketing and hope you won't be missing out, but I can't even get that much right now. And don't get me started on the Season Pass exclusive content bullshit.

So, is there any lore reason for the bullet sponges? I just watched some streamer shoot a humanoid roughly 2000 times in the head without it dying.

Because it's an RPG, not a shooter.

He was probably just fighting a cyber vampire.

It's Tom Clancy's Destiny, yeah. The Borderlandsesque focus on guns and armour reflects that too. Elite mobs do have an armour layer and not everyone knows to switch on explosive bullets.


Despite my launchday DLC gripes I think the game is alright and even impressive on quite a few aspects. All the envirionments are pretty and detailed enough to already convince me of a second playthrough at some point and the news about the sales record being broken gives me confidence the game will not die after the first month.

It would be nice if it didn't require a full mag to kill a generic baddie. Somewhere between what it currently is and the traditional one-shot-one-kill Rainbow Six games would be good.

(http://i.imgur.com/E6kLste.jpg) (http://i.imgur.com/v0skVwr.jpg) (http://i.imgur.com/dh30NVl.jpg)

Also turn off in-game voice activation oh god please

Boom.  :heart:

Glad I'm not the only one.  I saw the same things on streams and it really turned me off to the idea of playing this.

While I didn't do any high-high end content in Destiny, I never felt like regular enemies were bullet sponges except for the ones with shields (which makes sense because ..... shields).  It's just hard for me to see the fun of putting two clips just to kill one guy (at least that's what I was seeing).

Conceptually, it was very annoying to me too. Before I got the game I really disliked the idea. After a while, and liking everything else, I just stopped caring: weapons have DPS and gem sockets, on top of bonus for "(magical) powers" and HP. Hell, there's even stuff like defensive values vs "Exotic Damage". It's an RPG not a real shooter so I just enjoy it without asking too many questions. It works for me.

That's a great way to describe it.

I'm having a great time in coop doing the missions and the Dark Zone from a gameplay standpoint. But like mentioned, they could've increased the low level baddies by 10x and made them just die right away, and then give the bosses purple armor or whatever. It's more fun mowing down hordes of people (see Destiny) and then spending time on the boss. 

But, the fucking environments are AWESOME.  And there's tons of details everywhere.

Seconded.

Step 1: find aquarium
Step 2: Step 3: find watermelons

How do they plan to keep the game fresh if they're limiting themselves to no science fiction or fantasy ideals at all? I mean, surely killing a normal human that's wearing a slightly different parka/uniform is going to get old after a while, right?

Like killing orcs and whatever doesn't get old?  If the game is engaging it doesn't matter.  Right now I am having fun and the way the mobs look are probably at the bottom of my concerns for the game.

Fair point. I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

Casually playing this about an hour or so a night so far. Finished unlocking my three base wings and reached lvl 8. Not in a huge rush to 30, and the completionist in me refuses to push the story behind opening the three wings until I've collected all of the collectables and finished all of the side-missions in the zones at or below my level. Keeping me hooked for now  :awesome_for_real:

I'm f13Gets on Uplay. Still below lvl10, so if you are too feel free to send me an invite if you want to group up.

Luckton on uPlay here.

The soundtrack for the game is great, but I find myself muting it and playing the Deus Ex: HR soundtrack in the background anyways.

Apparently this game is breaking some sales records. I'm glad, as it's a decent game and I'd like to see it evolving.

Punishing. If I had to sum the game up, that would be the one word I would use.

It's interesting how the dark zone calls back to an earlier age of video games. If you die, you will likely lose half a level of dark zone experience. If you die as a rogue you will likely lose a level and a half. You will lose a ton of dark zone currency (lots more if you are rogue). There is no good reason to go rogue currently; Other than boredom (And it can be pretty fun if you have a group decked out for ganking.)  This also leads to a lot of people trying to get in front of your guns to get shot so the person will get the rogue flag, which leads to some hilarity.

Somehow I'm enjoying it though. I think it will be very interesting when the masses meet the cat-asses in the dark zone in a week or two.

I'm nowhere near 30 right now, but from what I've seen on YouTube, read around on various forums, and how the DZ is laid out on paper, the system they have right now of risk vs. reward is pretty decent. The contaminated loot mechanic encourages group play to keep NPCs and PvP flagged peeps at bay, while also giving everyone a common goal to help overcome the risk of "going rogue". You're right that in a week or two it'll get worse as the top-end players will band together to flog new people coming to the zone, but by then they may have made some more balance changes.

I'll say one thing; these Massive guys working at Ubi are pretty quick on patching up stuff and responding to feedback. At least, so far it seems.

I predicted that the Dark Zone would have been pretty devoid of PvP unless they change the mechanics, and so far this is exactly what is happening. In the beta, when things didn't matter, everyone was shooting everyone. Now? After three days spent pretty much only in the DZ I have been shot.... zero times. ZERO.

As Furiously said, there are no reasons to go rogue other than shit and giggles, which will inevitably happen but considering the penatlies won't be that common. I don't feel like getting myself flagged (and then ganked) just because someone has a "some" loot I can't see in advance, considering everything drops loot in the DZ. Why would I attack anyone and put myself at risk of losing rank and money for what could be a green or even a grey drop?

As harsh as it sounds, to make it worthwhile they should do it so we can see what kind of loot (rarity) other players are carrying because that is what would trigger the risk vs. reward mechanic. Otherwise, the risk is not to have too many PKs, it is to have none.

I would expect any PvP players will grind for competitive advantage first and then tears later when they are capped, bored and need someone to use that gear on.

Does losing dark-zone points disable your ability to equip some dark-zone gear or is the level requirement check just on purchase? That might make a difference.

I've watched some game-play, hiding behind cover then popping up to take some shots at ideally distant shapes doesn't look that fun. I guess console gamers are more used to it, though it wasn't something destiny needed.

Yes, losing dark-zone points disable your ability. As stated, at the moment attacking anyone in the Dark Zone has pretty much only drawbacks and very few, eventual, advantages. This is echoed by this article for example:

 (http://kotaku.com/the-division-s-dark-zone-is-definitely-a-work-in-prog-1764822722)
Sure, life at level 30 might be different, but the design and the way the risk vs. reward mechanic is tuned in this build strongly discourages PvP-ing in... the PvP area.

Maybe for organized gank squads the risk/reward factor may be different, but for the lone wolfs out there? Nah, lone wolfs only do it for the lulz.

http://i.imgur.com/l7B6I4B.gifv (http://i.imgur.com/l7B6I4B.gifv)

 :drill:

I'm fine with the penalties for going rogue at this point. If for nothing else, the tears of wanna-be gankers. The whining of the "killer" class is pure joy.

Having the problem of discouraging PvP in the PvP area doesn't have much to do with the "killer" class entitlement though. Sounds to me like their design needs some adjustments.

You might want to re-check this. I was able to keep using everything I had made and bought when I hit 50 after I died and de-leveled below 50.

You are right. I stand corrected. My mistake.

Read some news that as a new IP it broke a ton of records. Is it another treadmill game with content to be consumed or does it have repeatable systems that are thoughtfully considered as end game content?

Prettiest Treadmill Q1 2016
End game is muy sparse-o right now. Basically it's either scaled-up missions you've already played or running around the PvP-flagged area where most people just farm NPCs. :drill: :drill: :drill:

Bird tokens and division tech boxes scattered across the pvp zone are end game.

Had some guys running at me firing their weapons, so naturally I fired back...only to find that I was the one who went rogue, not them.

Someone did the same later...what I found was that they were purposely missing. I thought they were just terrible shots.  :oh_i_see:

Apparently this has earned 330 million dollars in five days. I'm liking it, but damn.

And IGN gives it a 6.7/10.

This makes it worse than:
Star Wars Battlefront: 8/10
Evolve: 9/10
Street Fighter V: 8/10
Assassin's Creed Unity: 7.8/10
Halo Master Chief: 9/10

Guess Ubi forgot to payout the monies this time around?

Hahahahahahhahahahahaha!

I know, right? They do themselves no favors when they do this kind of shit.

Too bad it takes approximately 24hrs to actually get in the game once you start it. Geezus loading screens.

Fucking Battlefront?

I put an hour into that and never went back. Payola confirmed.

I lasted about the same during the open beta.  Without the space battles, which was my favourite part of BF2, it's just another generic shooter with a Star Wars skin.

I like it, it has a STALKER vibe with an awesome NYC skin.

They can always open up more of the Island or flesh out more the buildings in expansions.

I'm giddy for survival mode.

Completely random side tangent question:

Just had this random thought at work today, about how pretty much every single game with even the faintest hint of a connection to Rainbow 6 has "Tom Clancy's" attached to it, and I had to stop and wonder.  Why the hell is his name attached to this thing. WTF does this game have to do with Tom Clancy?  Does his estate get royalties for every copy sold because it has his name on the box (considering he died almost 3 years ago).  I mean, I understand about milking a name for marketing, but sometimes you have to wonder...

It's because Ubisoft bought Red Storm Entertainment which Tom Clancy co-founded (and they also worked on the game) so they have the rights to use his name on games.

Still trudging through. Developed a strategy for doing stuff:

1. Go to zone safe house. Unlock the house, reveal side missions from the liaison and encounters from the situation board.
2. Run around the zone doing the side missions and encounters while on a path to the story mission(s) of the zone (if it has one).
3. Grab intel on the way, else wait till done with side missions, encounters, and story mission(s). All intel for a zone gets revealed on the map thanks to BoO upgrade.
4. Do story mission(s).
5. Get dat intel.
6. Move on to next zone in level of difficulty.
7. Go back to step 1.

Working so far. Just need to gather up the intel in Clinton and I'm done with the west side zones. Then it's on the east!

Have not been to the DZ yet. Just no desire right now.

Dark Zone is actually quite fun, there's more of an "unsure" vibe in there when you never know if someone's going to go rogue on you. I thought I'd hate it but I'm really quite enjoying it. I'm not interested in going rogue on people, but I sure as fuck enjoy hunting down rogues. I'm not in the capped (level 30) tier yet, but I expect that in there it'll be a bit different. Falc is looking for a different game when complaining that there's not enough PVP in there. Still, I've been killed by rogues and had my shit stolen enough times that I'm quite happy just sitting at the top of my tier with solid gear for a few days before moving up. I'm getting fond of the phrase "try it on, cunt" on an open mic when some dickherd starts pointing his gun at me.  :drill:

There are plenty of COD games out there and even Destiny's Crucible if you want unfettered PVP. This is something else that's actually quite different. If you're bitching that it's hard to see what people are carrying so you can't decide if they're worth ganking, then welcome to the point. There's a risk/reward for rogues. If you want a larger chance of getting blues, etc, from Rogue play then go PVE some named mobs with others then go rogue on those players. It's not UO, and it's not even really a "PVP zone" so much as a "danger zone."

(http://goldenageofmusicvideo.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/archer-danger-zone-video.jpg)

Yeah, right now at 30 it's rare to see any legit rogues. I might just do it to make things interesting for others because hell if I'm grinding DZ ranks.

I also recently picked up armor with credits for headshot kills on it. I only have to kill about 66 enemies to make 10k, which I don't actually care about. I care about the pop-up above my character's head saying I just made 150 credits for ventilating some reprobate.

It's not the "PvP area" though. The main thrust of the dark zone, lore-wise is that that's where the already lax laws apply less. Trust no one because they may go rogue and betray you. It's not a free-fire arena zone where everyone gets to kill everyone else willy-nilly. There are still rules of engagement and consequences to being an asshole. You want to pop off at randoms? Cool. Just be prepared to get your shit wrecked if you can't take on all comers. Make your decisions wisely.

Sadly, it's becoming a playground for bullies and teams of bullies rolling alts to twink and circumvent the penalties of dz rank/funds/key loss. I've been rez'd after being killed by mobs only to be executed as I got up and had my shit stolen 3 times already in the past 2 days - all while being taunted over comms. Frustrating since I was solo, but part of the game I accept. Of course these are the same fucks that bitch to UBI and Massive about the DZ rank penalties being too severe. This will zone if going to devolve into groups of twink bully groups and nothing else in a few weeks.

At least I don't need to get anything out of the zone since equal or better stuff can drop outside of it.

I watched (most of) Angry Joe's video review of the Division last night, and I wasn't aware of how viciously rogues are punished at the top levels. Or how badly the endgame currency drops have been nerfed on the named at the top tier. It's like Falc's article was a point-by-point list of the review. Looking at it, I have to agree with Falc now that I can't see much point of going in there at cap. I'll go in to poke around, no doubt - but I can see this being a game to dip in and out of once I hit cap and play with the drip-fed new content rather than a MMO to play obsessively. 

Omg I love this game already.

If for no other reason than your quote could have appeared as a paraphrase on UO Stratics 100 years ago  :awesome_for_real:

It's definitely home to the people who have raised their MR and magic to 100. The only problem I have with it are the people who are hacking and have 1000.

Heh.

Finally had a chance to check it out. Even on my aged rig it works well. And I really enjoy the game play.

Of course, I haven't gotten into the areas of the game where other players can screw up my life  :grin:

But they just don't. You don't even really have to ever go there. This whole "other players screwing my game" is a strawman here. The Division has pretty much no PvP (which is A problem), and if you find a few overgeared bullies, just change instance.

Having decent fun with this. I like the detailed environments, and the cover and shooty bits feel pretty good in some missions (though Destiny has better actual shooting mechanics). I've had some fun in the DZ as well, though I can typically roll with a steady group.

It's been a while since I've played an ubisoft game; apparently I can import my Steam friends to ubi. I pinged a bunch of folks that I imported.

Nice. That's promising. I haven't really followed the game closely, and barely skimmed pages here. Just needed a new fix, and this was the best option. Gonna cost me some hardware $ though :-)

Very true and I concur, it is a strawman. However, it still and always will irk me to see that stupid ass behavior. Even PvP is fine, but this is really dependent on gear and who gets the drop on whom. But that's on me.

You'll be happy to know that I got ganked three or four times by an overgeared bully who talked a lot of shit in voice comms yesterday.  :awesome_for_real:

So I left the DZ and didn't bother with it again.

If they didn't patch this, you could have just changed instance as I said.

Did I miss something? Where is this option?

Go to a safehouse (EDIT: one of the Dark Zone safehouses/checkpoints), hit "matchmaking". You wll be grouped with some random people in a new instance. Which, even if you don't really want to group, means 3 less potential enemies, so not a bad idea to begin with. But if you really don't want to see yourself grouped, just leave the group right after joining.

I'm still having a blast at this.

Couple buds and me were able to trio down the Challenge last night and it was HARD.  Quite rewarding though.

They do need to be a bit more rapid response for some very clear exploits. I have a feeling they're basically leaving stuff until the April patch, but they really shouldn't (like the decision to let you kill these yellow bosses that roam the map, but if you don't kill their minions at the same time, you can reset the map and they respawn, to the tune of 3 PCredits and 2 purple items per 2-3 minutes).

If you are playing this game expecting 400 hours of content, you're going to be let down.  But for 100 hours? It's chock full of stuff to do.

I guess they should probably implement a Deathmatch/Team Deathmatch arena skinned as training exercises.

Regarding Rogues, as has been previously said, there is no PVP in this game.  Being a Rogue is (a) accidental or (b) because you want to be a dick.  There's no (c) because I want to fight fairly and get a reward.

I do think that they should massively increase the reward for surviving though.  Maybe keep it as it is but implement a Blackmarket dealer who shows up when someone gets a manhunt/infamy level and if they make to that guy, he's got some crazy deal to give them based on how many players they killed or how long they've been rogue and gives an extra reward.  Like, here's 10k credits for every minute you've been hunted, now survive!

I also agree that they shouldn't show up on the map. Minimap/pings, but not the main map.

Patch is addressing the easy farming of NMs.

• Named NPCs will no longer respawn after being killed in the Open World. This will prevent situations where players were able to kill a same named NPC over and over again.

full list:
http://tomclancy-thedivision.ubi.com/game/en-GB/news/detail.aspx?c=tcm:154-242994-16&ct=tcm:148-76770-32

Looks like it addresses most of the complaints.

LOL. Looks like the oncoming storm on reddit and the forums. Can't wait to see all the shit this breaks. I'm not down on the game, just aware of how patches and exploiting and bitching goes.

They're closing the loot cave. Of course people are going to bitch  :awesome_for_real:

Now that they've got the people in they can start ramping up the grind to retain them for longer.

I was reading stories of keeping a main with darkzone level 50 and twinking out their PvP alt with drops so that the rogue hit to darkzone xp is a non-factor. It will be interesting to see what happens once the honeymoon / farming phase is over for the power-gamers.

That open world farming thing is super dumb. Like there's a loot grind, no shit, but it's not really necessary and doesn't warrant spending hours farming the same NPC. For now it's fun just getting together with folks and fucking up some bad mens.

The daily missions also give enough grindypoints to get a new weapon/armor schematic every day give or take, and I'm already almost out of sweet yellow shit to craft. Those guys chain-running missions at 8 minutes a pop are messed up. Have fun not having fun, dudes!

_{These goddamn kids today.}

How much of the game's PvE content is gated if you are a solo player that occasionally PUGs?

None.

Yea just learned that myself. I thought the missions with "Find Group" hovering over the entrances were group-required. I was going to lament, and then PUG. But just now I decided to push forward, sauntered right in and solo'd to completion. Well, on the third try anyway  :wink:

Thanks.

I've solo'ed everything up to 27 so far, and I don't believe anything stops you from getting to 30 and finishing your BoO on your own. I'm enjoying the missions from a story/exploring perspective, which I think is the intention while leveling. Of course you can group, but good luck getting a PUG to slow down while you look for a weapon crate stashed in the corner of the room that's not on the main path to finish.

Plenty of time to group up for hard/challenge modes at 30.

Guess I should farm bullet king tonight....

He drops ok loot. Probably decent enough to crutch you to 30, and break/sell stuff for monies. I think he killed me once after I finished doing the Times Square mission, but I never thought anything of it.

I was thinking it's probably the last night for quiet DZ runs.

My plan is to play with my wife until we hit 30 and "finish", then come back sporadically when they add more content. I've got a "solo" character that I play at my own pace when she's not around/up for playing. Once the "campaign" is finished, though - I don't need to play it daily like World of EverQuest. Plenty of other games out there, after all!

Why is the patch making me download 30GB+ aaaa?!

Forever in our memories...

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CeJMxLcW0AAjKvu.jpg)

That is a lot cooler* after finding out it's not fan art.


_{*nerdy cool, not actually cool}

I have a free Division download key from an Nvidia card purchase if anyone wants it. PM me.

Edit:    Spoken for!

Hit 30 the other day. Still cleaning up the last two zones, but I've maxed out my base and just need to do the final story mission at the UN. LMB guys are assholes.  :why_so_serious:

I have a promotional code for Division (to be redeemed here (https://redeem.geforce.com/en-us/) but for Amazon really). PM me if interested.

Shame all these promo codes are for fucking uPlay. I will literally never get the DLC because they aren't Steam codes.

It wouldn't matter because you would still need to download, install and launch the game through UPlay.  There's no way around it even if you buy from Steam.

I actually think it's annoying having it on Steam..  It means I have to have Steam and Uplay open. 

Buy it from UPlay then?  I bought my key from Greenman Gaming for about 33% off a few days before release and it was UPlay only.

Actually, if you buy it on Steam it downloads and installs it and updates it through Steam. It only uses uPlay for authentication.

About having uPlay and Steam open at the same time, honest question, what is the problem with that?

It's another 10 megs of useless code hogging up my RAM!  :mob:

#JustPCMasterRaceThings

I was afraid of getting an answer like that. It's 1988 all over again I see.

I think when uPlay first came out it was pretty heinous. Poorly coded, didn't interact with the actual game(s) let alone Steam very well.

Honestly it doesn't bother me that much; was just channeling other people's expected rage. For what it does these days and how well it does actually play with Steam, it's gotten a lot better. Getting free shit from doing in-game achievements is actually pretty cool.

And it takes like a few more seconds for that stuff to log in and authenticate! 

I play the Division via Steam and yes it logs into my uplay account (and uses my username for my character name in the game?!?! not only lame but a security risk), but it's actually pretty fast and I don't see the uplay interface. I don't think it even loads? On install it shows up to get your account authenticated.

OMG! :mob:

Finally finished the game "so far". That Bliss chopper was a tough nut to crack (or maybe I just need more Stamina gear  :why_so_serious:), but it's just high end gearing up and out until they start pushing new content. Went ahead and grabbed the season pass; I could see myself enjoying this for longer than I had anticipated, and the plan they have laid out for the year looks decent enough.

I remember when I tried to activate and patch Splinter Cell: Blacklist back in the day.  :ye_gods: :ye_gods: :ye_gods:

uPlay was hardly noticeable for this.  I just had to remember which user name this one actually used.  Apparently I had two, and I picked the one without Splinter Cell: Blacklist on it.  :awesome_for_real:

StoneMountain64 joins The Division (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYYUBBewEvk)

 :drill:

That made my fucking day.

How the hell are you supposed to use these radial menus with m+kb?   :ye_gods: I finally just heaved my flashbang so it'd auto select the fragmentation grenades.

I gave up and bound my grenades to number keys.  I could always pick every other grenade but the frags lol.

Or CTRL+# keys.

There's supposed to be news out today detailing the first content pack for next month: Incursions.

From what's been said so far, we're getting some MMO staples:

- New end-game dungeon mission(s).
- Item sets
- Loot trading (not open item trade, mind you. Just loot dropped in the instance your squad is in at the time).

Crafted and obtained my first high-end item. Went with the Jones and rolled a Vector SMG. I don't know for sure if it's a "god-roll", but it's working out great so far.

Talents: Deadly, Fierce, Self-Preserved.

Enjoy it before it gets nerfed!

Why? It's not the best weapon in game.

SMGs will almost certainly get nerfed.

Or they could at least make LMGs/shotguns more appealing.  :grin:

For those interested, here's a decent roundup of the Incursions patch coming this month.

http://teambrg.com/the-division/division-patch-1-1-incursions-special-report/

Hitting a little bit of a burnout wall now. The DZ is great and all, but I hate the risk of douchebag players being douchebags. Unfortunately they've gated all of the good shit there, and since it's an open non-instanced area, the good spots are being farmed by the harcores, and the PvPers wanna gank for shits and giggles. The superior gear being locked away at DZ lvl 30 is stupid; I can farm superior gear all day long from PvE missions without breaking a sweat. If they want me to farm DZ credits, ok sure, but also get lvl 30? What a waste. The DZ lvl 50 high end gear makes sense.

The daily hard missions are a nice touch of Phoenix Coins, but I don't like how they're limited to just two a day. The challenging mission requires at least a good amount of high-end gear loadout, so unless you're being carried, you're just banging your head on the wall here.

They need to take a couple pages from the WoW playbook; if people want to farm Phoenix credits running missions, let them. Hell, make it so that you have to be a group of 4 to get the credits, at least then you're matchmakers being put to use and people are getting game-time in. Also, let the rare-spawns outside of the DZ respawn at a faster rate than it is now. They can also drop P.C.s

I run in a group of friends, 3 total. We can take down Lexington. We just tried Russian Consulate and barely got past the first room. Shotgunners are just fuck stupid - takes me 3 full reloads of dumping crits and headshots to take one down while they can literally 2 shot me, from across the room, while I am in cover. I am sitting at 61k health and 61% armor. I'd rather deal with the shitbags in the DZ ganking me.

I waited to flip over to level 30 until after I had hit DZ50.  Made the transition a lot easier and I got to avoid the level 30 DZ until I was over-geared and ready to fuck shit up.

I'm at 24 now, but haven't hit DZ yet. Cleaning up everything around it though. I'm approaching this uncharacteristically as a completionist. The scenery is just too gorgeous to not want to see all of it.

But when is a good time for DZ? I don't understand your sentence about DZ50 before flipping 30. I assume Dark Zone has its own progression, but is it such that you gain DZ points in DZ but don't gain XP? And how does that help you avoid level 30 DZ?

Sorry for the dumb question. I literally have done no research outside of the game. No theorycrafting, builds, optimizatons, nadda. I feel like the moment I try to optimize a session, I'll be out. Old MMO problem I had: the moment I  knew how to do something, I lost interest :-)

You obtain DZ XP, just like regular XP (so don't throw away those +Bonus XP items just yet when you ding regular 30!). The thing is that unless you're running with a good squad, the DZ is harsh as fuck before you hit regular 30. If it was broken up more and had PvE or level restricted zones so that high level people couldn't come down and harass lowbies, then an item progression system like they have works better. As it stands, all of the pinks are meaningless to someone who's finished the game outside the walls, aside from maybe tuning your build for min/maxing your stats and bonuses to relevant skills and such.

I cleared the game same as you did; cleaning up everything and enjoyed everything. And they really could do more outside the DZ to make PvE have more repeatable/enjoyable meat. Right now they're doing the typical post-game launch schedule; add new high-end challenging-as-fuck content for the hardcore people to chew on (i.e. Incursions).

Ah great thanks. Will keep plugging away.

They need wanted posters daily, a roaming boss with minions causing problems in an area. Just give an alert saying there is a trouble maker in a section of town, but don't give a marker and have him/her roam the streets. Easy to make, daily PvE repeatable... 5 PxC and a drop.

Got the high-end schematic for an extended magazine for my Vector. Feels a lot more comfortable now with 2x the ammo capacity per mag, and the +7% crit chance isn't bad either  :awesome_for_real:

I like it. Reminds me of CoH. I'd spend most sessions just looking for trouble then.

I kinda do here too. Just amassing a horde of resources revisiting resource drops every log in and shooting what gets in the way. It's no flying/flame throwing like my archetypical super heros from DCUO and CoH, but it makes up for it in its rendtiion of Manhattan.

Huge crafting nerf incoming in 1.1 patch (est patch day April 12):

http://blog.ubi.com/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-divisions-1-1-incursions-update/

Beat me to it  :awesome_for_real:

Guess I need to get those cheap mats processed up to High End this weekend. Though as much as the forums and subreddit are on fire over the crafting changes, there's a chance they may not go through. No notice was given in the state of the game addresses they've made in the last few weeks about them; to spring them on to everyone without warning may just be a litmus test.

On the other hand, in light of the DZ item realignments (which makes me rescind my earlier complaints about the system should they go through), it may be Massive's way of trying to either funnel more people into the DZ, or at least make those that just want to farm missions all day for mats pay a higher price for not committing as much risk to getting their rewards. Additionally it makes the item level curve run a little longer, which probably will buy them more time for new players that haven't maxed out yet to generate new content over the coming months.

Aside from the crafting though, the notes look great.

Worried about this. Once you start making people do shit they don't want to do, they'll get up and leave. Feels like they sold a bunch of season passes and now decided to make Mr. Bone's Wild Ride. Forced conflict never works. DZ should be an option, not the goal. And I am not opposed to the DZ since I am almost 40 on one character and 24 on another. Just saying.

I think the DZ is a goal, not necessarily the only goal. They're going to keep adding PvE content; these new daily/weekly assignments and the new incursions are just the tip. The sky's the limit right now as they put the game to market with really just the bare necessities for a multiplayer action RPG/shooter. Eight-man mission/incursions, the "wanted" poster idea you mentioned, and more of NY to explore.

It sucks for those that signed on early and now they're realizing they need to stretch out their goals a bit due to having a lot more real data to analyze with what real players are doing, but I would assume that's the nature of the beast at this point. An argument could be made that should be doing the opposite, a la Diablo 3: make loot drops more frequent, give all kinds of ways to fix items, get items and enchant items. Bliz also nerfed RNG by killing some useless stats and generally making average drop more useable.

Here's another really dumb question about DZ? It's it full on free PvP? Or is it more solo stuff but with crazy tough mobs? Or can you choose?

Open pvp zone and you drop whatever you looted in the DZ, which can be picked up by other people.  You can choose if you want to attack other players but you don't have a choice if they want to attack you.  If you attack a friendly player, you go rouge and can have a bounty placed on you.  There are tougher mobs there, as well.

For fairness, when killed in the DZ you drop all the stuff you just looted in the DZ, but only 1/3 of it can be picked up by other players. The remaining 2/3 are gonna stay on your corpse and can be retrieved by you with an old-fashioned corpse run.

Ah, I didn't know that.  I've only gotten up to rank 17 so I haven't been in there much.

Beware of the killer camping your corpse to take the rest of your stuff by killing you again right after you've retrieved it!  :awesome_for_real:

I think we are all aware that the PvE stuff will get eaten through in a day or two and we'll have another month before anything else gets released. It's just the way the players have come to dominate the world. There is stuff to do in the world on the PvE side, but it is hardly 50%. PvE side is dictated by what the dev team puts out, the DZ is primarily player created situations - which change constantly. I'm not down on the game, but we've been down this road many times and it always concludes the same way.

I'm still enjoying the game a lot, but seeing the new content is for hardcores, crafting nerfs and so forth I fully expect it to turn into the same old grindy, cock-punching bullshit when I hit 30 and finish the first week or so of "things to do at max level". At that point, I'll stop playing entirely and go play a different game. Same old shit.

 :roll:

I played a solid 20 hours or so in 3 days and have not bothered launching this since. This game has less stickiness to me than launch World of Warcraft.

Corpse runs, item loss, and corpse camping? Holy shit who needs an EQ Emu server?? Love it! All the old skool charm with a way out!

Ahh yes, corpse runs.  Miss those dearly.

(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/82533/5rNXq50.gif)

I find it fun when playing with my wife in co-op missions. Solo, the veneer wears thin quite quickly.

Same. I have around 70 hours invested in this and I am still playing, but never alone.

http://tomclancy-thedivision.ubi.com/game/en-GB/news/detail.aspx?c=tcm:154-245982-16&ct=tcm:148-76770-32

Clarification on the crafting changes. The changes are real, but what wasn't in the notes was that every lvl 30+ named mob will now drop a HE piece of loot 100% of the time. The crafting nerf was as theoried; they needed to stretch out the game some more and encourage more mission/incursion/dark zone antics.

Also, the new incursion is "so hard" the lead designer and lead economic balance dev have yet to beat it. Whether that's hype talk or not, don't know, but I'm looking forward to something new.

Different strokes for different folks I guess. The game is surprisingly sticky for me, which is weird for me considering I had zero knowledge or care for the game until it launched. Never even bothered to click this thread until that point either. Wildstar didn't grip me as well as this game has, and I was hyped as fuck about that game.

Depending on how things pan out between now and WoW Legion, I may just delay my return to Azeroth.

Well if the grenade spam on the vid about incursions is any indication, you'll experience the Wildstar floor of doom soon enough.

Going live tomorrow. Get those mats converted tonight!

And my first daily DZ mission is: Kill 10 LMB soldiers.

Who only spawn in DZ05-DZ06.

 :uhrr:

Besides the silly daily I got there, my mission log was chock full of stuffs to do today. As it says in the notes, you now get a daily DZ, crafting, and PvE task to do, in addition to the daily hard/challenge mission rotation.

You also get a weekly meta-mission to do that includes a little bit of everything. Was surprisingly easier to get 40 Cleaners in the DZ for my weekly than 10 LMB. And a nice haul of loot thank to guaranteed HE drops to boot.

Have yet to tackle the the Incursion. Will probably try it Friday on my day off. Apparently the trick to beating the APC boss is the old "pick up the bomb from the trash mobs and run it to the boss to blow" trick.

EDIT: Because ubi wants to show off how big their budget is how much they care about this game, here's a fun little video they did to get you involved in the weekly meta-mission. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ah9eZpFMLY)

So yeah...tried my hand at the Incursion. What a :uhrr:. I mean, I read the commentary on the subreddit and other news posts, but I had to see for myself. And they're right.

Aside from that, Massive is quickly learning firsthand the lessons that the devs of other similar games before them learned from their own similar and same mishaps. Interest for the game by and large is declining quickly, although most people still have positive thoughts for the game. They want it to succeed, but good god, how many times must we go down the trail of bones before devs can get it right the first time around?

Devs are trying to make amends by giving everyone 150 Phoenix Credits on the house this weekend. Make sure you've got less that 850 by Friday.

150 Phoenix credits gets you a passable blueprint. Doesn't fix the shitshow of a disparity between those that tried to play legit vs those that glitched the incursion, got a lot of high end and set gear and are now running rampant in the DZ because they're bored assholes.

The 1.2 update is arriving next Tuesday. Devs are hoping for redemption with this one; it's make or break time.

https://youtu.be/y-YqSs-2qOw

Edit: Grammar after 15 hours awake is  :awesome_for_real:

Still not gonna fix enough. I have a feeling that the next incursion is gonna be a similar slam-your-dick-in-a-drawer experience to Falcon Lost. Additionally, they're adding a new grief mechanic in the DZ where you can roll in and cut the rope to the extraction helicopter.

The cheating has gotten so bad that the cheaters are complaining about other cheaters.

All that said, I'll still check it out because the alternative is Overwatch and well, fuck that.

I've read that things have gotten better in the DZ since they started upping their detection game along with ban-times. My biggest grief with the DZ is loosing XP to rogues; fuck that shut. If I die to mobs that I couldn't handle. fine, take my XP as a charge. But loosing progress because some dick is being a dick? Forget it.

That said, you're not wrong about incursions being a bit too hardcore. Hoping for patch notes that address that.

As usual, we are at the opposite sides of any spectrum. While nothing turned me off more than cheaters and exploiters, if you didn't lose anything when you died in the Dark Zone than the whole area couldn't be any less interesting to me. It's a Risk vs. Reward zone and it's meant to to change the careless approach of the rest of the game, where dying means absolutely nothing, to better fit the setting and to present a different kind of challenge. If you remove the consequences of dying all you have is just another arena shooter.

Cutting the helicopter rope, that's cool.

Then at least make the reward worth my time. Running around the zone getting countless and worthless purple/blue drops with the occasional yet still inferior in ilvl to what I have gold drop for hours on end is silly. If I wanted to grind like a Korean, I'd play an actual Korean MMO.

Right now I'm a bit too strong for DZ01-02, too weak for DZ05-06, and the loot from DZ03-04 does nothing to help improve me into getting into 05-06. Hoping this gets addressed with 1.2.

Losing XP in the DZ is fine. Not like it affects anything in the long run other than your ability to buy blueprints...which means crafting... which means ballbusting grind. Really thought gaming was past this bullshit Korean grinder model. That is really what turns me off. That and the fact there really is no real risk at going rogue - they lose a slight bit more XP and coin but that's it. Again, stupid. Now they are adding more ways to be an asshole in the DZ which is going to lead to more grind because some chucklefuck decided it would be funny to cut the rope on extraction. All that means ultimately is that you are just going to have to babysit the extraction or wait till the very end.

Not to mention they hired BroShooter Higby from Planetside2... game has soured pretty quick. At least I got my money out of it.

Except the rewards for going rogue far outweigh the risks at this point. There's absolutely nothing to stop you from shooting some poor asshole in the back, taking his shit and then running away and hiding until your timer runs out. Or worse, using the portable shield to glitch your way out if shit gets too hot. Going rogue because you're bored shouldn't even be a consideration, but it often is.

Pretty much the only reason since loot drops are complete dogshit.

That too.

Though, I will admit, my first piece of set gear fell off a mook guarding a DZ supply drop.

Apparently my hopes have been addressed. (http://tomclancy-thedivision.ubi.com/game/en-GB/news/detail.aspx?c=tcm:154-250975-16&ct=tcm:148-76770-32)  :awesome_for_real:

My buddy and I used to regularly play EQ together, I'd go over to his house and we'd have beers and camp Guk or whatever. Wizard + Necro was a great combo for not worrying a whole lot about corpse runs. On the other hand I was the master of sniffing out when things were heading south and finding a nice safe spot to feign death for a bit.

Now, losing levels due to deaths....

Like that time that ranger broke in to the Plane of Hate to set up a base camp and fell asleep. Woke up a few hours later having lost like a dozen levels to constant dying and respawning. I think it was shortly thereafter they put in graveyards where mobs wouldn't spawn or track so you could respawn there and not get fucked up repeatedly.

Agreed. Risk vs reward? There's nothing worthwhile achievable for me in the DZ so there's no reward. I can't compete with the geared griefers, let alone the gangs of them, and the "git gud" crew can go fuck themselves - or each other when they're all that's left in the DZ in a month or so. I go in there a few times a week to do my dailies (mostly to get the weekly done). Sometimes I get ganked by cocksuckers as I zone in. (lots of risk vs reward fun there)  :awesome_for_real: When I run around and do my dailies I don't bother looting anything at all anymore, as calling an extraction calls the local grief-fuckers from all around to gank. The only time I bother is if the daily is actually to extract 3 items. I haven;'t gotten an upgrade from the DZ since a few days after I turned 30. The whole place is a pointless waste of time.



I'll believe it when I see it. More importantly, I'll truly believe it if there's something rewarding for me to do 3 weeks after 1.2 drops, since I expect a week or two of loot Pinata's dropping like candy. If it's back to an unrewarding boring bullshit plateau like the one I'm currently sitting on, I'm done for good. Maybe that's for the best anyway - there's plenty of other games out there that need playing.

Fancy chart someone made based on the changes they outlined in the blog. Spoilered for size.

Encouraging... but with their stupid drop rates being so minuscule, I'm not going to get too optimistic.

Guaranteed means guaranteed. Now it's just a matter of playing the slot machines to get the stat combo you need. What is encouraging is that a lot of the feedback given for 1.1 is going into 1.2. The next drive/feedback is probably going to be the reduction of the ludicrous number of minor stats there are.

They need to do something about the minimums for weapon talents being so buttfuck insane. It stops most weapons from actually being fully usable when you get them (and even by the time you dispose of them) and pretty much completely borks the idea of sidegrades.

Weapon talents need to be respec-able, plain and simple.

Official patch notes:

http://tomclancy-thedivision.ubi.com/game/en-GB/news/detail.aspx?c=tcm%3A154-251907-16&ct=tcm%3A148-76770-32

Rise one last time for the "okay, seriously, if this doesn't work we're done" 1.4 kitchen sink patch!

http://tomclancy-thedivision.ubi.com/game/en-GB/news/detail.aspx?c=tcm:154-271342-16&ct=tcm:148-76770-32

tl;dr - "We get it. You fuckers like D3, but in a third-person shooter. So we tried to get as close to it as possible. Plz come back and play again. We'll be good again, promise!"

The subrredit does seem to be hyping this as the "thing" that will save the game. The devs delayed the season pass plans, created a PTR, and really, REALLY tried to make this thing work. Guess I'll give it a go during WoW downtime.

All NPCs will now have chances to drop High-End and Gear Set items, tougher enemies (veteran, elites) have higher chances to drop.

I actually thought that was the case the entire time. Yes, I like D3.

Yeah, no, the devs were really stingy with loot at launch, as was the case with D3 and other loot-fest games. Glad to see that the wheel can still be reinvented, regardless of how many times it's already been done.

I gotta be honest, this patch makes me want to play again. On it's face, I liked basically everything about the game. Also, it was utterly gorgeous to a degree that I was compelled to play.

Endorsement by schild makes me want to try it.  I'm really enjoying a replay of Borderlands 2 as the conductor of the poop train.

I said makes me want to play again. I still haven't decided if I'm going to give up the hard drive space. It's a behemoth.

Been waiting on this for awhile now. Every post was about how this was on the PTS and how they changed that on the PTS, got to the point I thought the PTS was going to be the only thing they were going forward with. I'll load it up when it drops for my PS4 and see just how good it is, but I am not having a whole lot of faith. Loot aside, there were a lot of other issues that keep punching people in the nuts.

I can't wait till the stuff they pushed back from the season's pass they take out of this past year's pass and put on the next and claim this patch should more than make up for the change in content available.  :why_so_serious:

If you are solo / puggimg do you still have to go into the PvP area to get the really good loot and recipes?

They didn't patch out the bullet sponges did they?

Patch Notes say NPC time to kill has been reduced. Don't know yet if that means they are no longer sponges. Given that ammo capacity has also been increased and magazines are refilled from ammo crates I would assume that running out of ammo trying to kill stuff is still an issue.

They're still sponges, but because they rebalanced player damage output, they don't feel as spongy.

Also, the PvP area is no longer the only avenue to top gear. It's still "a" avenue, but on paper they've done a nice job of revamping the PvE open world and the Undergrounds/Dungeons to make things on par with each other.

I replaced my PS4 hard disk with a 2TB jobber.  Try it.

Hmm, I might actually give this a go again.  Really enjoyed getting to the end of the story and level 30 but hated the fact that I HAD to go into the Dark Zone to advance my gear any further.  A fps D3 is all I really wanted out of this.

That doesn't help with PC.

I kinda wanted to try this but didn't because it sounded a mess. Is it f2p yet, or do I have to buy a box to give it a shot?

Well just played around with it... not seeing much of a change from the last patch 1.3. Dunno. Used to be fun before I learned the game. Now it just feels like the same messy shit.

Buy a box. I've seen it as low as $15 in the last couple weeks. You don't need the season pass unless you really like it to the end.

Nice. May reinstall. But yea, it's a huge install.

Side note: the hell idiot decided Borda was the right font for white text on black background? I had to copy/paste those notes to Wordpad just to read the damned thing. Note to designers: thin fonts are only good in some cases, no matter the trend of the day.

Cats and dogs living together.  Is that a Surface problem?

But really, should I try Division?  I mean, once the price drops.  Because I can always just go back to Destiny.

Put in about 2 hours on this last night just running around the city collecting all the cell phones and drones I didn't get to when I did play. Drops are better; not raining from heaven, but all the drops I was getting were at least useful or side-grades to what I had. GS is by world-level that you can set. I have mine at tier 4 and was getting GS229 drops which is the standard for that tier. So that is a plus.

The mobs actually seem a bit more challenging. The bullet sponginess is still there, but less severe. What really ramps things up is mob behavior. Groups will split and flank you now. I was routinely getting 2 mobs camping me behind side down the street and 1-2 advancing on my position around cover and 1 charging headstrong at me. By the time I dropped the charger, the 2 flankers were roughly behind me and the two in front were pushing forward. I was pleasantly surprised by this and actually died a few times just running around because I got flanked. I might actually load this up more than once a month now. I haven't played any missions yet as I am waiting on my buddies to get talked back into playing. Maybe this weekend.

Once the price drops yes, it's definitely worth messing around with.

It's on sale right now at 40% off through the Ubisoft Uplay store.

40% off full retail. Steam's only $5 more, if you prefer to keep all your games under one roof.

Amazon has it even cheaper right now (https://smile.amazon.com/b/ref=lp_15645135011_gbps_tit_s-3_0082_877d83ee?rh=i%3Avideogames%2Cn%3A15645135011%2Cn%3A15645135011&ie=UTF8&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER&node=15645135011) for just the base game.

Uplay Store is $35.99 and Amazon is $24.99.

You are still required to have a Uplay account (and link it to your Steam account) and there are benefits from playing through Uplay itself like currency you can spend on stuff.

Wish I would have read about the update before I nuked my local install last week. Oh well. Good to know it is better now if I get the itch to go back.

1.4 is really, really good for gameplay.

Now, they need to move the story forward.

The postponed DLC Survival will do that. I'm think January release, maybe December if they didn't have to retool too much from what they may have already done before they had to do the 1.4 kitchen sink patch.

Playing in spurts at the moment leveling a new character. The 1-30 experience is still great. Hell, even the DZ is nice to jump into no and again for loots since I don't have to compete with high-end ballers anymore.

I've been playing this a lot again since the patch. Everything just shits loot all over you now. I'd like to try the incursions but I hear they're just big stupid gauntlets and they're pointless as far as loot goes now.

They (finally) made the incursions more forgiving. More check points/ammo reloads, adjusted mobs a little. Go at least once to check them off your To-Do list.

I tried doing one solo and it was impossible.  Dropped down into an alley with no cover points and I had to blow open a door to get inside a Cleaner warehouse.  There were about 4 guys with bats and shields came running out.  Dealt with them no problem but there were 2 big super elite Cleaners with flame throwers and 5 or 6 others with shotguns and rifles inside.  No cover.  No way to go back up.  I could only run through them and find some cover on the other side but there was no way out so I was trapped. 

Incursions weren't designed to be soloed. While they did make it more forgiving, they didn't nix the "bring three other peeps" bit.

And apparently we're back in track. 1.5 "Survival" patch on their new test server now.

I know everyone hates Kotaku, but I really couldn't find another place that took their Twitch video (https://www.twitch.tv/thedivisiongame) and transcribed it so well. (https://kotaku.com/the-divisions-next-expansion-transforms-it-into-an-inte-1788658818)

tl;dr - New game mode set aside from the normal game where you literally have to eat, drink, stay warm, seek refuge, and survive through Manhattan with up to 24 other peeps. PvP or PvE modes supported. Depending on how long and far you survived, you get phat loots.

So DayZ set in a city and without zombies?  Yeah, no thanks.

It looks kind of interesting to me. I'll give it a try. My main concern is I haven't heard any mention of being able to save your game state and each "run" can take between 1 to 2 hours.

Correct. You live or die by the swor---er, gun. If you bail or die, you're done. Presumably for some X hours of cooldown before you can attempt it again.

Patch is live, and game is on sale again this weekend.

Amazon is shipping what physical copies of the game they have left at steep discounts. $10 for PS4, $18 for Xbone and PC.

I've pretyt much lost interest at this point. The devs are a bunch of well-meaning incompetents, and dropping a side mode DayZ survival sim into my GoW/Diablo/Clancy game with no new content for the "normal" game just makes me shake my head while reaffirming how clueless the devs and their roadmap are.

Apparently the survival mode game is really good and people like it. It's not my cup of tea however.

A persistent RPG / Shooter where the new content is a non-persistent arena mode reeks of desperation.

I played this once and the non-persistent arena was the best part. It was called Warhammer Online.

I just played this game and it's not what I thought it would be. Didn't live up to the hype.

The Division Free "Weekend" on PC, Dec 15 - 18 (pre-loading now). Requires Uplay account.

http://blog.ubi.com/division-play-free-weekend-pc/

The jump in difficulty from World Tier 3 to 4 is annoying high. In fact the game got so tired of me dying trying to complete a Search and Destroy mission that it disabled my ability to Restock back at the base after dying after a while :oh_i_see:

The game shits loot on you to the point now that it's less about getting specific loot as getting well-rolled loot past a certain point.

I literally have probably 3-4 pieces of every single set in the game now outside of a few clogging up my stash.

It's my "shoot the shit with friends while mindlessly destroying waves of guys" game now. It's also very pretty.

I hopped back in to see how things were going and very much this. My bags are full of set items and high-end weapons which I feel like I should keep but don't really have any reason to. But also: useful LMGs and sawn-off shotguns?! dream come true

Really glad they added endgame shit-shootery since the lack of it led to me uninstalling. Aside from the occasional control jank the shooter mechanics are some of the best I've played since, I dunno, Outwars. Or something.

So they've basically taken the D3 approach to the game?

Basically yeah. Loot drops in piles and there are tons of ways to get it. World bosses respawn every 4 hours and there are "world tiers" exactly like D3's difficulty tiers so you can literally just wander around shooting things and get loot without even so much as interacting with a safe house NPC or board or anything.

Incursions have been rendered mostly pointless which is good because they suck. Daily and Weekly High Value Targets are where it's at, and if you want randomized areas (think rifts) you can do that too with Underground and impose penalties on yourself (no radar, remaining ammo in your mags being lost on reload, slowly lowering health, etc) to make it harder for more loot.

The Dark Zone absolutely does not drop the most/best loot anymore which is good because it sucked!

Apparently the Survival mode is really fun since it's the typical battle royale/group survival thing done in many a shitty indie studio title but bolted onto The Division which for all of its failings has a pretty solid cover-shooter system in it and looks amazing.

My understanding is that the Dark Zone is still the most efficient place to farm loot if you can handle the PvP aspects of the game (barring some edge case PvE situations) if you know the best farming routes. However as a dirty casual PvE player I'm very pleased I can slowly but surely improve my gear doing solo PvE stuff (with the occasional PuG daily mission) without needing long play sessions. My only gripe with the current setup other than the jump in difficulty mentioned above is you can't earn the weekly reward without going into the Dark Zone.

The key to surviving Tier 4/5 is that if you're not going for a gimmick build you want 400,000ish Toughness before anything else. Outside of gimmick builds skill power/electronics are there to either barely get weapon talents you want or to fuck up a good build.

Thanks, I'll work on that.

If you get 2-4 piece D3-FENC just use that because it is hilariously good.

If you get 4 piece firecrest going skillpower works but it works much better in groups.

What's the group finding system like? Is it like D3, i.e. push buttan, get group, or is it DaoC, hang around Emain for 11 hours waiting for a mez sorc?

Push a button and it finds a group for you to join, or failing that, it makes you leader and invites people until your group fills up. Players can fast travel to eachother, and for stuff like missions you can port straight to the mission.

e: also while skill power/electronics DO provide a large and useful boost to your skills (when you start getting rid of your random jumble of equipment and start trading electronics away for firearms/stamina you'll miss stuff like first aid healing 2-3 pips guaranteed and your pulse providing obscene boosts) firearms reduces time to kill and having lots of toughness is required to be able to fucking SHOOT BACK at certain points without folding up like a cheap card table the instant you so much as peek out of cover.

You'll notice the difference from 200ish k toughness to ~400k. It's the difference between being able to aim from cover and fire on enemies and nearly dying from the chip damage you take BLINDFIRING. It's the difference between getting 1-shot by a shotgunner or being able to eat 2-3 shots.

Don't neglect your armor value on your equipment. You can go with less toughness if you have armor at the limit (~%60 is the hardcap). Haven't played since they upped the world level to 5, but I only played tier 4 and it was pretty simple with my 58% armor and 300k toughness.

This gear-farming for a game with bad shooting mechanics and no scope for plot extension sure sounds enticing.

I can't even remember why at one time I was excited for this game, I guess because defiance had showed a MMO-FPS was possible and quite addictive but it ran out of money and things to do mechanically fast. Even with ubisoft budget and polish it looks like they still couldn't solve some of this issues of this type of game. In between the real shooters and the howling void that is where MMO's used to exist.

It's not an MMO. And the shooting mechanics are fine except for the fact that it's an "RPG" shooter like, say, Borderlands, so gear and levels matter.

If you want to play an MMOFPS play PlanetSide 2.

I'll try but I probably won't get enough pieces before they nerf it and/or the ballistic shield into oblivion.

There's some other gimmicky builds, and the bog-standard Alphabridge + Pakhan (reroll swift) + nicely rolled LMG melts dudes and lets you solo almost anything but Ballistic Shield is easymode and fun.

Picked this up on the cheap, looking for something shooterish with RPG elements. Any tips/hints for noobs?

Don't rush.

The environment is one of the best I've played in.

IMHO, leave the phones and such until the end when you unlock the police dogs part of your base. Then go through each part of the city and collect them. The stories on some of them are really good and you never get a feel for it if you just randomly pick them up while running around doing missions. They get broken up and you lose the story.

And for the love of god stay away from burst weapons.... holy suck.

Tips from a casual PvE player almost at max item level:

* PvE is very much a cover shooter game (PvP not so much) so learn how to move in and out of cover smoothly, etc.

* Headshots are extremely powerful in this game

* Save your consumables like Canned Food, Energy Bars, etc. to give to civilians in need -- they will give you stuff including the all-important cosmetic items.

* Pistols are very good at lower levels but you probably want to avoid the 2-shot sawed-off shotgun initially cause the range is so poor.

* It's worth it to spend the time collecting crafting resources (Tools, Weapon Parts, Fabric, Electronics) as crafting is a good way to supplement the items that drop from mobs. Do the side missions (light blue/cyan triangles) that reward blueprints if you need some stuff to craft and you can't afford to buy vendor recipes. Once you reach max level when crafting isn't as important as it used to be you'll still be using parts reguarly to get the daily crafting rewards which give you a nice loot box of stuff so it's nice to have a stockpile that you built up while leveling.

* DPS values shown on weapons can be confusing cause they factor in reload times over a 1 minute period. I.e. the displayed DPS value is the total DPS the weapon can do over 60 seconds (including reloads) divided by 60 seconds. So, for example, bolt action sniper rifles have relatively low displayed DPS values compared to some other weapon types but they are often one shot headshot kills on regular mobs which make them extremely powerful if you can consistently land headshots.

* Don't skip any of the optional (non-main story line) missions that reward Base of Operation supplies for the 3 wings -- you do want to unlock wing upgrades as soon as you can.

* Deconstruct stuff you no longer need instead of selling them to vendors. Money isn't really important till you are max level, and even then it's now just a nice to have after they revamped item drops.

* Kill mobs with lightning bolts over their heads ASAP -- they will rush you and make your life miserable if you don't kill them before they reach you.

* Mobs with grenades over their heads are usually the next most annoying since they will force you out of cover.

* The two most annoying boss mobs starting out when you are solo are the ones that walk at you slowly like slow-moving Terminators cause they have so many fricking hit points and they won't give you a breather like some of the other boss mobs that will hide behind cover for a while at times. One has a flamethrower and another has a minigun. Keep far away from them and just wear them down slowly from a distance.

* If you have trouble soloing the main storyline missions you'll want to learn how to use the awkward UI of the match making system. At the lower levels it can be a bit hard to find groups depending on when you play but you can still play while you are waiting for a group so you aren't just standing around twiddling your thumbs (unless you want to).

This is fun (so far). Barstard with the lmgs are a bit of a pita

Game actually told me my pc couldn't run it , updated driver and told it shut up...oh hello newegg how are you? Yes it's been a while , oh I have no idea how all these things got in my cart

Those guys you can just wait out till they need to reload.

Also shooting weakpoints is good.

Cleaners are fucking chumps and minus their engineers and blitzers (who are melee only) they all have "shoot here to instantly kill me or nearly instantly kill me" spots on them.

Their heavies have a big obvious can on their right side (facing you) that is insanely easy to shoot, along with the big tank on their back which is so big you can hit it by shooting next to their heads from the front.
Their other guys are chumps.

Riker Heavies are a bit harder to hit the weakpoint of because their ammo backpack is well, actually directly on their backs- better just to wait out their reloads solo. When you shoot their backpack enough the ammo in it cooks off and they take a ton of damage and do the chicken dance for like 10 seconds.

LMB heavies and shield heavies have their ammo packs hang out to the right when they're facing you straight on and they're fairly easy to shoot. Same as the riker heavies- they'll take usually their entire armor bar in damage from cooking off their backpacks.

So, I tried this again, and apparently I'm awful at it. Last mission in the tutorial took me quite a while to finish. Then I get to the Hudson camp and the first side mission I try (kill some elite), and I'm unable to finish.  :oh_i_see:

Is this just a case of not having gear and not having abilities, so this seems harder than it is? Like one or two seconds out of cover, and I'm just dead. It's somewhat discouraging.

I mean, I sucked a bit too at Warframe initially, but at least you died a bit slower there.

I would unlock your Base of Operations and do the green Medical missions until you have 500 points to unlock the Clinic upgrade which will give you the First Aid skill so you can self-heal without using Medical Kits.

Took me a bunch of times to do some of the earlier missions. I actually like the fact that it's not super easy. Key, I feel, is patience. Sit in cover, let em reload or do something stupid. Pop up, do some damage, don't stay up too long trying to get a kill, pop back down into cover.

Yeah, PvE is not a run and gun game barring some specialized end game builds.

I also have a lowbie character I'm leveling up that I can use to help you through the early missions if you can't find low level groups.

Is the game mostly (leveling/main quest line) soloable?

Yep. Game will ramp up according to group size, but definitely soloable.

Yeah I mostly soloed my way to level 30 with some of the story missions being done in PuGs through the matchmaking system.

Any ability to find each other in game easily? aka guilds/squads? And how does the ingame voice chat work?

Playing this co-op could be fun but preferably not pugging it.

Voice auto-connects in-game once you join a group. However, I play with my PS4 buddies and we just use the PS4 party system. In game works, but we had issues with it as IIRC it has a proximity value to it. As for guilds... no idea.

So, once you clear out a map, what's the best way to level? My map's looking pretty sparse outside of a few missions that I'm too low leveled (13) for. 

You should have at least one side mission to visit the other safe houses in the other districts. You can also visit the other safe houses on your own (don't need an explicit side mission to unlock each one). In each safe house interacting with the board will unlock all the non-side missions and interacting with one of the people there will unlock all the side missions in the district.

Edit: typo

Districts have a lot of level overlap (4-9, 6-14, 10-20) so you shouldn't ever stall.

It's not made explicitly clear and I can't remember exactly what you need to do to unlock the safe house side missions but the general story flow after you unlock your Base of Operations is to do the main story mission in your current district and some of the other missions and that'll unlock the side mission to visit the safe house in the district that's the next set of levels above your current district. Then you go to that safe house unlock all the missions and rinse and repeat.

So while Destiny 2 has been reinventing it's own failures, The Division's finally gotten it's act together. Took a super long and frustrating time, but Massive managed to un-ass it's head from itself.

Gameplay is smooth now, Dark Zone isn't a twitchy gank-fest anymore where you're afraid of accidentally "going rogue", and loot has meaning.

The SkillUp guy that did the really great Destiny 1 review recently published his review of The Division 1.8. https://youtu.be/-zj9yiJ-DzQ

The "new" story content is kinda weak though IMO. It's just audio tapes of the douchebag big bad taunting you and some day-in-the-life records of some survivors.

The game itself is a lot better though.

I kinda want tp find the girl who was leaving voicemails for her grandmother though.

Been playing this a lot the past couple of weeks. It is fun. While it doesn't have the breadth of loot,  the set grinding reminds me of Diablo 3. Scratching the loot itch nicely.

I've heard rumors that this is a lot better. Recommend a purchase?  Destiny 2, I just don't feel compelled to play after one run-through with my titan. Spending more time with Wolfenstein New Order.

It's a good RPG looter cover shooter, with RPG being key as it doesn't matter how good your shooter skills are if you don't have adequate gear for the level of enemy you are fighting. It's also not a game that emphasizes spamming "special skills" like Warframe does.

Edit: cover shooter, that is

If you have a good PC it's also a really pretty game. Lot of environmental touches and impressive lighting/texture/design work.