f13.net

https://www.pcgamesn.com/tom-clancys-the-division-2/the-division-2-confirmed

Stick a fork in TD1; after two more free updates, it's done. E3 '18 will have a bunch of new info. Will be interesting to see if they continue with the plot from the first or if they start fresh with a new scenario.

I hope they continue the story from the first — that asshole is still out there somewhere.

I wonder if he practised saying that with a straight face.

LOL. This.

What he means is that the old game does not produce revenue so they have no funding for those "stories and experiences". The only way to get the funding is by selling a new game.

I got my money's worth out of the game even with me not really caring about the PVP shit.

I still play a lot of D1, I want to hunt down Keener.

Same here.  As long as they keep the servers open a few more years for the people that want to keep playing, then having a sequel shouldn't be a problem.  They just closed down the Demon's Souls servers recently (you can still play offline) and that was released in 2009.

I don't see where the story could have gone next, so I guess a total replacement saves them from answering that.

Plenty of places to go.

Keener is on the loose. His shit plan to use the virus maker tools notwithstanding, he's still in possession of something that someone smarter and more capable could do worse with.

The president is dead, possibly due to a coup attempt and the hunters that show up in Survival and Underground are probably Division as well, sent in to clean the mess started by the First Wave agents that went rogue.

To quote one of the vendors, "There's stuff".

Yes, the virus could be a wasteland creator... other cities could be reduced to warzones using it as an excuse. But at the end of the day that just means creating a new set of extremely expensive detailed city maps and more "bad men" with bullet sponge behaviour (got to support the RPG progression) to shoot with the same weapons (since time cannot have moved too much). I just don't see the openings for positive impacts on the gameplay.

On that, we sort of agree. But I never wanted much of a change in gameplay, just more story.

Could use some more varied loot and better drop rates as well. I really like Survival- hope that stays around and gets updated.

I'm kinda betting money they'll probably make a city or world more open/vertically interesting, like Ghost Recon Wildlands or something like that.

Survival is the thing that kept me playing. It was like Day Z in a snowstorm.

Would like to see more in the character development area. I don't think we need classes per se, but having more options for skills/augments would be nice.

When does TD1 price drop?

Ubisoft has it on sale regularly.

Teaser trailer is up along with a gameplay trailer from E3.

http://www.ign.com/videos/2018/06/10/the-division-2-teaser-trailer-e3-2018

http://www.ign.com/videos/2018/06/10/the-division-2-control-point-gameplay-demo-e3-2018

The action has moved to DC, six months later and gone full-on Deep State.

Looks like they've just polished the systems of the first game up. If they understand that the game needs to shit decent loot all over you like how they made The Division 1 after like 4-5 months when everyone started quitting, it'll be fun.

There has got to be something wrong with a society that believes a biological attack will automatically lead to societal collapse, urban survivalism (rooftop farms? what?) and armed civil war rather than people trying to work together to rebuild. Or that a small group of armed individuals will be the secret to resolving the situation. It's like a conspiracy theory mash-up.

And if you are going to have the collapse of society and civil war then what narrative value did the virus have, it would be more impactful if society went to hell entirely without it. Maybe some new drug that made people prone to violence and capable of taking 300 rounds to the beany to be put down so at least there was some foundation for the gameplay.

Gameplay looks much the same.. nice maps, boring gunplay and that annoying fake team-work banter. It will be somewhat interesting to see if they have solved the issue with content being exhausted much faster than they can make it, and progression being interesting.

That looks fun.

CAN'T stand the fake RL voice comms. That shit is jarring.

I'm with you on this.

The alternative "real" real-world comms would not have been safe for television, and you all know this  :grin:

I'm excited for this, but at the same time it's hard to think about game beyond 2018 at this point as my WoW itch is getting scratched with a new expansion in two months.

But I'm sure I'll be needing something new around the time this comes out next year.

True enough, but I don't like the attempts at mixing the RP and RL language.

Looks like the Division, D.C. - which we discussed when the first one came out. After the other big shooter game sequels took a dive, I'll sit this one out.

It's a Tom Clancy story so there's like a pile of factions literally just waiting around for the apocalypse in this world.

I hope they get the loot right. If that happens, I will play the shit out of this.

God willing they learned their lesson from their experiences with the first game and make it basically rain loot. They've changed how sets and bonuses work a bit looks like.

Now to find out if the team developing this one is the same team that did the live patches or not.  I'm banking on not since studios never seem to learn this lesson.

From what I hear, it is that team.

Additionally, to keep people playing the original, they’re giving out rewards for competing objectives in the current game that can be redeemed in Division 2. Probably mostly cosmetic shit, but I’m down.

Though it's kind of sucky you aren't playing the same character you were in The Division.

I need to jump back on and see the new objectives. I burned myself out pretty badly on the weeklong GEs and haven't played for several weeks.

The private beta is running now.

Is it still the Division? Yeah. Is it a better version of that? Fuck yeah. If the full game will be reflective of the changes I see in this? I'm in.

This is what I needed to hear. You should be in Discord.

What are the most obvious improvements? I liked the first one enough, and I am afraid I will like it less without snowy New York. What's improved?

not on steam

not getting it

whew that was a rollercoaster

Don't know if I'll buy Division 2, but I'm still pretty ok with a future where Steam maybe doesn't have a near total monopoly over digital game sales. Especially since nobody even uses the social functions of Steam anymore.

I hate having to remember which games I have where. Why would I want to have to use bnet, uplay, ea's thing, etc ? its bad enough twitch has given out a shitton of free decent titles that I needed to go through and figure out because I was starting to buy them on steam.

Improvements that jump to mind: the mod system seems a bit more interesting with upped drawbacks for each positive trait. There is a wee bit more PvE content in freeroam, and enemies are slightly more varied (more weak-point action too). Mostly it feels like another coat of polish on the original. This is fine because the original was as solid as my titanically chiseled abs.

The story doesn't make any fucking sense and the beta content was basically "rah bad guys" but whatever. All the story I need is a machinegun in the first hour of gameplay, so 5/5 here's your Pulitzer you horrible shits

Well crap I didn't realize I had gotten into the Private Beta until late last night and then of course the servers went down for maintenance for a while (why on the last day of beta?) :awesome_for_real:

So I've only played for like 3 1/2 hours total but unfortunately I don't really have anything good to say about the game. I've been waffling back and forth about whether or not to get the game at launch. I've mostly been of the wait-and-see mindset but recently I've been edging back towards getting it sooner rather than later after watching some of the videos that have come out recently. Now that I've actually played a bit of it, though, I'm back to going to wait a while and maybe get it after it goes on sale, if they fix a bunch of stuff.

The main issue for me right now is the game is causing me eye strain because of the fucked lighting system and UI graphics. So unless they do something about that I can't even play the game even if I wanted to. Right now the game is really really dark in a lot of places. Maxing out the brightness setting does help a bit but then the game looks washed out and is also too bright in the non-dark areas. The UI also has this fucked up blurry mode (chromatic aberration) at the start every time you switch the UI display which not only is fucking up my eyesight but also causes a delay with everything in the UI cause you have to wait for that effect to disappear before you can see what the fuck is being displayed. There's a setting that can supposedly turn that off on the PC (seems to be missing on the console versions right now) but that doesn't work in the Private Beta. The flashing chromatic aberration blurry text effect is even used before their seizure warning screen which is like some sick joke on their part.

The blurry UI toggle I'm assuming will be working on launch but there's a crap ton of other UI issues as well. However the bigger issue for me though is the aforementioned lighting system -- that's going to be a lot harder to fix, assuming they are even going to try. There's lots of other technical issues as well which doesn't bode well for the state of the game at launch, even given that the Private Beta version is likely at least a couple weeks behind the current build so some of these issues have already been fixed.

For example the game also does not run well on my GTX 1080 (non-Ti) at 1080p. The world is much more detailed than the first one but unfortunately that's causing some pretty choppy frame rates in places with my system unable to keep a minimum of 60 fps. There's no game-specific NVIDIA driver for this game yet so maybe that might fix some of this stuff (though it is an AMD/Ryzen-sponsored game so who know how much work NVIDIA will put into this).

As for the actual gameplay changes from what little I've seen so far they've been meh.

The armor/health change, while I guess is more "realistic", basically makes your health bar pointless as you'll lose a huge chunk of it even if an enemy just sneezes on you. So I'm not sure why it's even there. And on mini-bosses it's really hard to see their armor state since they overlay a white segmented bar over a very light yellow health bar. Also I couldn't figure out in my brief time playing how to replenish my armor kits except by picking them up in the field as I couldn't find a place in your Base of Operations (which is confusing as fuck to navigate) to refill them. Which basically meant I avoided doing anything in the world if I was trying to get to someplace specific since I didn't want to use up any of them in random encounters. Which is probably just as well as the constantly respawning civilian execution spot right outside the Base of Operations became annoying after doing it the first couple of times and I just bypassed it afterwards.

Parts of the city also feel way too post-apocalyptic, as if the city's been mostly unoccupied for decades, rather than presumably months or at most a few years (there's very little story in the Private Beta so they don't explain in-game how much time has passed since the original). I.e. large sections are totally overgrown with plants and many building interiors are totally smashed up like this was set in the same universe of The Last of Us (minus the zombies) or something.

I really don't understand these complaints. We've been dealing with multiple separate game launchers on the PC since the dawn of graphical MMOs. And with non-MMOs you don't even have to deal with these publisher-specific launchers most of the time cause like Steam they all support regular desktop shortcuts to directly launch the game. I.e. I don't need to care that The Division 2 uses Uplay cause I can just double-click the desktop shortcut.

Some of the differences/improvements:

The section of D.C. TD2 is set in is supposedly modeled 1:1, unlike TD1 which took a lot of liberties with NYC.

There's more "world rebuilding" in TD2. In TD1 you really just improve your Base of Operations. In TD2 there are Settlements (which are sort of halfway between your BO and a Safe House) and other points of interest around the city to improve.

Enemies are supposedly less bullet-spongy in TD2. Didn't play enough to test that myself.

More enemy variety including new human enemy types and non-human types (drones, robots, etc.).

The mod system is totally different as lesion mentioned.

There will supposedly be more end game content at launch.

There are new end game Specialization classes to work on when you cap your character level.

Did they improve the social aspects? It felt super hard to play with people and meet new people in the original game to me.

I think improving social aspects involve making it harder to play with people.  :oh_i_see:

I didn't even try it in TD1. The only game in which I can stand to group with other people is Warframe.

Not from what little of the game I saw. There's still the same slightly cumbersome matchmaking UI/system for story missions as in the first and again you only see other people in the "hubs", not out and about in your same copy of the world (not surprisingly). They did add something where players can call for help in some situations and you get an audio alert when that happens but I couldn't figure out how to respond to those (map UI didn't show anything) so everybody seemingly just turns that off (popular question on Reddit was how to disable that cause the alerts came up so frequently).

In the safehouses where You can matchmake for missions - there is also something like "answer to the call".

Open Beta coming March 1st through 4th. Not clear if you have to explicitly sign up for it or not.

https://forums.ubi.com/showthread.php/1998066-The-Division-2-Open-Beta-Announcement

Already bought the buttcheeks fully spread package, so I am hoping they don't fuck it up as badly as the last launch. Also they better have a survival analogue at launch or I shall be mighty put out.

Won't be there at launch :awesome_for_real:

The Ubisoft store is selling 6 different versions of the game so I can't even figure out which one you bought.

Which ever one was $125. Because I am a moron.

put that on the box

For the Open Beta blurry UI is still in (still can't seem to turn it off), UI scaling still doesn't seem to work (a bunch of stuff is too small for me even when "on") and there doesn't appear to be way to turn off the shitty pointless text drop shadows that just make all the larger text blurry as well (this is separate from the "chromatic aberration" blurry UI effect).

So the game is still a no-go for me.

This seems alright. It's better than the first at launch. Might be worth buying, but I don't really find loot progression in a modern era shooter to be all that interesting.

This game definitely won't have a Tonkor.

The Demolitionist's "special" weapon is a grenade launcher but all specialist weapons (sniper rifle, crossbow, grenade launcher) can only be used intermittently so no you can't spam nades like you used to be able to with the Tonkor (Warframe's grenade launcher) before they nerfed it with self-damage.

I use Tonkor basically every mission (21% per my profile). I miss Ogris being good.

I liked it enough, and it has the added plus of being in my backyard. Almost literally, as it looks like the playable area (as displayed on the beta map) cuts off a block south of me...but it includes my bus stop.

I'm not much of an explorer usually, but I could see myself futzing around, just checking things out. Now, to get my friends to not/not buy into the PS4 version.  :oh_i_see:

Yeah, I had a sad because D1 at the latest update stopped about 13 blocks south of me. Woulda been awesome if we'd gotten at least all of Manhattan, but they couldn't work that out.

So...anyone getting this on PC? I likely am, though with my schedule playtime will be inconsistent.

I absolutley will, but this one time (first ever?) I'll wait for the inevitable markdown which usually comes after a few juicy content patches. Win win. )And the only reason I can control my compulsion to buy on day 1 is because I am knee deep into Apex Legends).

I'm getting this on PC.

I played in the private/open/tech betas and it's basically a better version of the first overall.

My only beefs are that armor segments on armored enemies can be hard to target (the point of the big changes in combat) and see in a proper clusterfuck, the armor-based health system for YOU can be kinda frustrating/annoying since instaheals are gone and the AI is largely improved, and at end-game in the betas the enemies were a bit too skill spammy.

Other than that, it's more of what I liked and feels a lot more polished. It ran perfectly well on my system but I've got a fairly high-end system (1080, 2700x).

I'm undecided so far, so unless I hear some glowing things about this game when it launches I'll probably wait for a sale at the very least.

Don't know if I'll play it, but I got it for free with the cpu I used part of my tax return for.

Getting this (and DMC5) for free was what sealed the deal on finally upgrading my 6-year-old graphics card, so I'll at least be giving it a shot.

<----

 :awesome_for_real:

I'm going to play it, if for no other reason than to explore a dystopian version of my current hometown.

You can just go outside for that.

whoa, whoa....I've started playing this: beside the current, silly amount of crashes, I'm quite overwhelmed. So much stuff to look at, loot, explore. Quite a lot of content right off the bat, IMO. Anthem simply pales in comparison (and yeah, it's only "take one" on the genre for Bioware, but really it's an embarassment now that you can compare the two).

What are you on about? Can we not start the comparisons...

I really think he has a point. In fact, I agree with him wholeheartedly.

Game has been rock-solid for me.

Let me explain a bit more in detail:

- Anthem undoubtedly has more evocative landscapes: impressive ruins, lush forests, they really nailed the big, "alien world"  mark. I love it.

On the other hand, I'm impressed by the attention to details that Ubi put on the ruined landscape of D.C. The rubble, the broken furniture, every object seems that it *belongs* there. Actually, there's even TOO much of all that: it almost overwhelms you and you almost feel fatigued by looking at all that stuff while, at the same time, you're on the lookout for lootable containers.

- Anthem, on paper, is "funnier" at its core when it comes to the pure combat/shooting sessions (almost there once more bugs are squashed and more balance is achieved), I prefer it to TD2: TD2 is ye olde cover shooter, still with an impeccable (at least in its initial form) execution. It shows that these are Devs who are on their "take two" on the genre, no matter the whole other side of the coin when it comes to monetization, cash grabs and whatnot.

- IMO, UI and HUD are better in TD2, at the moment.

- The activities TD2 offers at release are more and better; Character customization is better, itemization, equipment customization (not talking about aesthetics, Anthem is gorgeous when you look at your Javelin) is better.

- Hubs/Safe zones: I actually enjoy Fort Tarsis, and I hope Anthem devs push the envelope a bit on that. They played too safe. TD2 potential is better at the moment with the improvement possibilities etc., but I'm still at the beginning stages.

As a DC resident, it's amusing to roll up streets that look familiar at times. Granted, the names of hotels and businesses are not the same due to licensing and such, but they were clearly paying attention when building things out.

And they're clearly going to expand that map north at some point. They pretty much stop at I or K St NW (or maybe it's New York Ave NW?), but there would be plenty of things to include from the further reaches of the NW quadrant of the city, such as the National Zoo. Also, not sure if they go all the way out to the Pentagon yet (close enough to sensibly include), or perhaps they go south to include the airports and military bases.

Yes, Pentagon area/building (They call it "Pentagon: The Last Castle") will be explorable later this year (episode 2 of the "Year 1" pass).
-----------------
By the way, I'm sure that the usual feeling of repetitiveness will creep in as I play more and the "honeymoon" comes to an end: recognizing enemy AI patterns, dynamic events playing out almost the same way etc. but the core gameplay is pretty solid and varied enough.

Yesterday I finished the first "real" mission at the Grand Washington Hotel (solo), and the shooutouts were pretty intense and rewarding (not as much as loot goes, for now, since I'm only lv3 :P). AI is not entirely brain-dead either. Personally, yep, I took a risk in purchasing this immediately, but I think that it's safe to say that it can be considered a solid Day 1 purchase if you like the genre.

The game has been solid - no performance issues, no client or server crashes. Sometimes the movement gets a bit wonky when trying to get on or off of a piece of cover quickly (ie - when melee enemies charge in unexpectedly), but it's forgivable and largely chalked up to user error.

I do wish, however, that more of the buildings were open for exploration. For instance, most of the State Department building is closed off (though a fictional piece of it serves as a safe house), and it even has a sign out front saying it's a catholic church (?!). There were just certain details they seemed to have purposely gotten wrong for no reason, but 99% of users will not notice.

Performance wise, beside some bugs they still have to iron out, the only problem I met is frequent crashes when playing with Direct X 12 turned on. When DX11 is enabled, game is much more stable.

Oh, since I never played it, I found a deal and purchased The Division 1 gold edition for only € 9  :awesome_for_real: . I'm just at the beginning, but it's interesting to notice the difference approach to the "newbie" experience: D2 really feels like an "advanced version" (and more difficult) in every aspect, and I like it (graphically wise, D2 feels better to me but oh NY, you're so pretty during winter  :heart:).

They really kept the attention to detail strong which is great, and little things like having to shoot locks from weird vantage points to get into certain places is a nice touch. Exploration feels a bit more rewarding and the collectibles aren't barfed up on the map like in D1.

The biggest problem I've seen so far is having a party of angry assholes spawn directly on your face if you're in the "wrong" cover position and proceed to gun-fuck the player almost instantly. But damn, minor frustration in a sea of solid rooty tooty loot-n-shooty.

Having finished Anthem's campaign just before this launched I have no desire to go back to it even if flying is cool as hell. The loot/mod system is much more involved, hamster pellets are plentiful, and AI feels a bit improved so it's not a cakewalk. Plus motherfucking murder fashion out the wazoo.

Been playing it- it's good!

This was my biggest beef with the first one. The fidelity was -almost- there, but in a place like midtown Manhattan, the ability to enter more buildings would've been amazing.

That said, this is my daily driver right now. I've gotten to world tier 3 and the AI is frustrating as fuck. The flanking and variety of enemy tactics is making me play a lot smarter than I usually do.

Well, I gave Anthem a month to get their shit together. Played slow, smelled the roses, heard all the NPC stories, explored all the things, and I still do enjoy the game setting immensely.

And now I can't play because I keep getting random dropouts from loading into the game because of some Pilot Data load error. Which apparently I'm not the only one.

So yeah, gonna give this a whirl. Do we have a clan yet?  :grin:

Yeah, I really regret the Anthem purchase now. I can't put Div 2 down, and BioWare appears to be falling apart.

Having a blast with this. Rage quit yesterday after getting blinded, foamed, and set on fire all at the same time by some street mobs. Realized later that open world encounters can scale up to heroic if you do enough activities in the same area, and happened to stumble into the wrong place at the wrong time.

Things I like-
The AI is a LOT smarter. Super aggressive, flanking, even charging. No more sitting back, playing it safe and plinking them away 1 at a time.

A lot more to do in open world. Control points are the hubs, and all the little executions and convoys and such feed them. It is a pretty cool system.

Seems like a lot more total loot, and many items feel effective at top level.

Very pretty, with some amazing animations. I have had numerous laugh out loud moments when I touched off a grenade sack or landed an explosive at the right time. All kinds of rag doll fun.

Lots of cool nooks and crannies in the world, and shittons of little loot bags and crates everywhere.

Dislikes/Needs Improvement-
I want exotics. Lots of them. There are very few, and I haven't seen a single one other than the pre-order low level ones. Some are craftable, others drop in challenging + missions (I think), but they are seriously grindy to get.

Anything having to do with managing gear and inventory fucking sucks. Give me filters, show me possible sub-set combos with gear I own, let me sell it on the street...if you want to come even remotely close to optimizing with current gear you have to dig through SO MUCH SHIT. I would pay serious money for 3rd party solutions to all of this crap. It is just a goddamned slog.

No survival mode. Easily the best and most fun thing to do single player in TD1, and they left it out at launch. That is criminal .

The big tanky mobs are still WAY too bullet spongy. I would rather have them 1 or 2 hit me and be able to take them down with a magazine or two, rather than the 5-10 it takes now. It is stupid and time-consuming, and you get almost nothing for bothering.

Some of the gadgets are hot garbage. I mean unplayably, unforgivably  bad.

The specializations are interesting (especially the skill trees), but they are buggy as fuck and don't have a good enough payoff considering how rare the ammo is and how goddamned hard the weapons are to use properly (aiming the crossbow from cover, I am looking at you in particular).

The missions vary WILDLY in difficulty. Spent more than an hour on the last fight on Roosevelt Island in a HARD mission with 4 people. It was unbelievably difficult, and there are 2 difficulty levels above that. I can't even imagine it on heroic. Just swarms of mobs coming from all over the place, with tons of cover so they can easily flank you without being noticed, with a mini-gun overseeing everything. Nightmarish.

All in all I am having fun. Have plateaued in gear- can run WT5 hard missions solo (although some of the boss fights are dicey) but can't farm challenging yet, which makes finding top gear pretty hard. If you are on PC, you know my name...friend me and look me up. I am usually running solo or with a single buddy, so have plenty of room for teammates.

I have yet to use the FireFly or the Shield, like at all. Firefly seems like an alpha strike weapon that I mostly use frags for. Shields look from the youtube videos to be fairly useless as they get shredded in higher tier play of a cover shooter.

Otherwise, I agree with everything you just said.

I've found the big tanky mobs are cake if you splash 'em with the chem launcher first to melt that armor and then light 'em up with an LMG.

I've completely had to change up my play style of assault rifle/sniper rifle that worked super effectively in almost every encounter in D1 to having to be a lot more situational with gear load outs.

That said, yeah, the lack of survival at launch is the thing that makes me saddest. Though I'm still trying to figure out how they'd make it work in the middle of summer.

Heat waves/CAT 5 hurricane would sorta work.

I usually use a flame turret for the big guys...slows them down for a few moments, and does some damage. I might check the chem launcher out and see how different it is.

Still loving it, though not putting in as much time as I would have anticipated; I'm trying not to burn out, and I'm really taking my time when playing solo. Also, I'm trying to start branching out in my gear setups - it's so difficult to not default to marksmen rifle / assault rifle. Also going with the shield (middle one which allows rifles) and drone (for healing), though I started with the scatter seeker mine (worked alright, but easily replaced with normal grenades) and pulse (um...useless with such a long cooldown). I used the drone bomb in beta and was disappointed, and was similarly disappointed with the chem launcher (though you get more shots at least).

If you see me online (PC Master Race), send me an invite or something.

Healing Chem Launcher and Self-Revive Hive have served me well for the leveling process. Lets me focus on assault and defense attributes and such.

Stacking Hard Hitting makes elites a cake-walk.

I run the turret for CC and distractions with either the revive hive or the chem heals. Recently started using the yoga flame turret and holy fuck is it fun to light rooms on fire... I'm waiting on getting to 30 and getting enough skill power on mods to make the firestarter chem launcher a thing so I can napalm areas of denial - but for now, the flame turret is enough - though the range keeps in a CQB device or a small area of denial in the open world.

Oh and I hate getting chewed to pieces in the sewers scavenging for keys. Those god damn chainsaw maniacs are a nightmare. However, I do like their look and style with the electrical tape wraps and the chains.

The only good special weapon is the grenade launcher. The 50 Cal Sniper Rifle is literally worse than a new unique marksman rifle, and the crossbow is pretty meh for the ammo you get. The grenade launcher at least- can accurately hit several guys at once to the point where with 4-6 ammo or another demolitionist you can literally erase an entire spawn's worth of enemies when they all rush in- or if someone can get a bunch of guys together long enough for you to bombard them.

Also yeah it's almost tiring to go through all of the loot. I kinda want better sets- the current 3 sets in the game suck.

I like the crossbow a lot - it has a small AoE if you time everything right you can take a few npcs. That and the healy mines are wonderful at keeping up with dmg.

Free weekend starting tomorrow. Preload (40 gb) already available. Also, the game is discounted at $40 everywhere, but for some reason it's $30 on the stupid Epic Store.

Thanks for the heads-up. Going to check to see if the game still gives me a headache and eye strain.

Edit:
Epic is running a summer sale right now (which ends tomorrow June 13) where games >= $14.99 have an additional $10 off any other discount courtesy of Epic (developer/publisher isn't losing that money).

Well, it's slightly less shitty than it was before but still giving me eye strain. Decisions, decisions...

Have you tried anti-reflective glasses? That, plus actually prescription lenses pretty much solved all my eye strain/headache issues I was having a few years ago.

https://www.allaboutvision.com/cvs/computer_glasses.htm

I'm familiar with them and I contemplated getting some when I (finally) updated my prescription near the end of last year. However with my new single vision glasses I'm normally still able to stare at a computer screen all day every day without any problems like I have in the past so I haven't bothered to get a pair of computer glasses yet. It's only some games like The Division 2 that will cause me eyestrain so I blame the games not my glasses for the issue. E.g. games that abuse depth of field and have shitty motion blur will cause me eyestrain cause I will naturally try to refocus my eyes to fix the blurriness that the game is intentionally putting in.

And come on back, CAUSE WE'RE GOING BACK TO NYC, BABY!  :drill:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdAeRnlxa-E
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkGmNf7wNc4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vMmJJOHmC8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vt2m-BSfA7w

It's great news. The only thing I missed in the Division 2, which is good and better than 1, is NYC.

So, basically what started in the Division 1 with "Diablo 3-ing the fuck" out of the game comes to a climax with this expansion. They're fully embracing seasonal events, paragon level infinite progression, and an item overall to make things better.

I'm actually pretty psyched. Maybe I'll get that year one pass after all.

I enjoyed what was going currently- the big rework looks good.

The problem was the lack of build variety because the loot was insanely fucking confusing and the item budgeting they used made some build types useless. Building a defensive build was pointless- you did no damage and survived maybe 2 seconds more of direct fire because of it.

I don't like the game enough to go back - I was sold on "no more bullet sponges" and the game still had the same sponges from the first game.

If you're interested in taking the base game for a spin, apparently it's $2.99 across most platforms right now.

Even on Heroic the enemies are far less spongy than they ever were in Division 1. Fighting Hunters on legendary in Division 1 involved literally a whole 4-person team shooting them in the face non-stop for like 3-4 minutes. I've deleted bosses on Heroic missions in seconds with a good team.

New York was a disappointment. Two missions in Coney Island and that was it.

They've got all the resources from the old map, take the time, drop that shit in the new engine and let us travel back and forth. I'd love to see what happened to New York once summer hit.

I wanna put a bullet in Keener, hope they don't squirrel him behind a raid.

They probably will, as at the end of the Coney missions, he's basically telling you to go fuck yourself.

I want an expansion that lets me play as my original D1 agent if I want and I want to drop a fucking building on that bitch.

Apparently, we're getting our wish.

https://www.ubisoft.com/en-us/game/the-division/the-division-2/expansion/warlords-of-new-york

It's not the original D1 map, it's lower Manhattan, and shit hasn't gone too well for the Division as Keener has fucked a lot of shit up down there.

This looks like a good summary of what's coming:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2rVYqyVlRE

And a free "weekend" from February 27 to March 2:

https://www.ubisoft.com/en-us/game/the-division/the-division-2/free-weekend

They should probably have made the free weekend AFTER the loot changes. I mean, that's the game any converts would be playing?

Servers exploded.

Edit: apparently they've been struggling all day but you can get in with enough tries and patience, though they are going down for maintenance in a little bit:

https://forums.ubisoft.com/showthread.php/2194438-Maintenance-March-3rd-2020

Warlords of New York update is out.

a 42.31GB update.

Shieeeet son!  :ye_gods:

Jesus, that is pretty big

That is no update. That is a stealth uninstall and reinstall of the whole game. Fascinating.

If I were to try this again and have the base game, all I need is the new $30 xpac to unlock all the playable content, right? There was a year1 season pass for sale, but it's no longer on the store.

Well you missed the $3 sale so the game is now $7 more expensive but the Ultimate Edition for $60 has the Year One pass + extras.

Edit: I.e. you would need to pay $30 extra to get Year One pass + Ultimate extras (+30 for Warlords expansion). That's still cheaper than the Year One pass was when it was originally released (was $40) and available but you are paying for a 2nd copy of The Division 2 (for $10) if you do the above.

Okay, I think I understand now. This helped: https://forums.ubisoft.com/showthread.php/2187402-What-are-Seasons-in-the-Division-2-Warlords-of-New-York

I owned the base game from the launch, but didn't buy the season pass year 1. So season pass year 1 is now free for anyone who purchases the expansion. The $30 expansion cost unlocks all past level content apparently.

Starting in a week, quarterly seasons will begin and are free. However, players can buy a season pass to let them get a bunch of other stuff. The new pass doesn't appear to be on PS store yet.

Okay, lol the twist is really stupid. Season concept is neat though.

Yeah, the twist had me, ohnobabywhatisyoudoing.gif. It didn’t make sense in the universe.

That said, the ride was fun and being back in New York is the best part. They need to connect the maps.

I liked the NY missions, and the seasons stuff may be interesting (I like having goals to chase). Still extremely fucking annoyed that I bought the Year One Season Pass specifically so I would get Survival as soon as it came out. Now I have purchased an expansion and no sign of it.

I am slowly getting a feel for how to sort loot, but I will never understand why they don't add some tools to make it easier to sort/compare. The UI is horrible for inventory management, and that can be laid directly at the feet of consoles. At least I got to shitcan 95% of the crap in my stash when I hit level 40. Running through the re-cal library after every mission or 2 is keeping my stash manageable too. Once I get that mostly maxed, then I can really start to keep an eye out for god roll stuff.

The UI change to display the core attribute on gear in the list panel is nice but it would be nice to also be able to select a specific attribute to display (e.g. crit hit chance) there in addition.

I'm enjoying the game a lot but I'll like it a lot more when they fixed the insanely fucked up health scaling that makes enemies in 4-player groups on anything over hard have Divison 1 levels of bullet-sponginess.

Despite Massive being extremely quick to patch things that benefit the players, we're likely going to have to wait a long time for some of the issues introduced by WoNY to be fixed as Massive is in the process of moving offices and Sweden is on the verge of starting their shutdown.

I'm almost done with the pre-WoNY story content and then I need to decide if I switch to NYC or wait for Massive to fix things or maybe just do 30 - 40 and then stop.

Spoke too soon, Massive did make some major “balance” changes for the patch tomorrow.

https://forums.ubisoft.com/showthread.php/2205470

And by “balance” they mean making the enemies even tankier for solo and 2 man groups but easier for 4 man groups. I guess that’s progress?

At least they addressed the ridiculous support boxes.

Edit: oops it’s tomorrow not today (got confused cause there was maintenance this morning as well)

I played a bunch of the first Division, but did not play the second one yet.  I just remembered I had that UPlay subscription and downloaded this. Should I just make a level 30 character and start the new content, or should i play through it from the start?

Play from the start. The story's not bad and watching the settlements develop is a good prelude to Warlords.

I'm really enjoying the ways they've added to do content still. Seasons, Leagues, Manhunt, etc, are all basically just giving you reasons to re-run content but duh that's the point of the game and it works.

The changes to health/damage have helped a lot but Heroic/Legendary are still broken to various extents. The respawn-limitation on Heroic really doesn't make it fun.

Polarity switch is the one exception IMHO. I gave it a try, but it was way too fucking game-y and frustrating. Spent about 90 minutes trying to accomplish one of the goals (kill 5 consecutive positive, then 5 consecutive negative), and finally gave up in frustration. Turned it off the next time I logged in and haven't looked back.

Polarity Shift was stupid and more frustrating than fun.

I threw together a crit/crit-damage SMG/LMG build stacked entirely with red skill mods running Blinder Firefly/seeker mines for CC/making people leap out of cover and I almost feel like I can kill stuff efficiently outside of evaporating in a warm breeze.

On challenging I can kill a non-heavy yellowbar in a single magazine from the SMG- and this with 4-man group scaling. Team comp definitely matters though- because if I go with randos and get a team full of DPS-only people it entirely depends on how good people are at prioritizing targets if it's over super fast or if it's repeated wipes. The best rando teams I've gotten were on Heroic where I frequently was the DPS guy between someone running CC, someone running healer, and someone with the right gear to run a tank-shield build. Anyone with an EMP focused build can trivialize any invaded or BTSU mission because those fuckers entirely rely on having an army of warhounds and drones and other bullshit to run over you with- so if an EMP-spec guy can keep the warhounds/drone spam/etc down I can keep repeatedly breaking the ammo belts on heavies while mag-dumping them to death because my damage output is so high.