The Division 2

[Falconeer]

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?

[schild]

not on steam

not getting it

whew that was a rollercoaster

[Velorath]

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.

[Hoax]

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.

[lesion]

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

[Trippy]

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?)

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.

[Trippy]

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.

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.

[Trippy]

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?

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.

[Riggswolfe]

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

[Yegolev]

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

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

[Trippy]

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

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).

[disKret]

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".

[Trippy]

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

[WayAbvPar]

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.

[Trippy]

Also they better have a survival analogue at launch or I shall be mighty put out.

Won't be there at launch

[Velorath]

Already bought the buttcheeks fully spread package

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

[WayAbvPar]

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

[schild]

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

put that on the box

[Trippy]

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.

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.

[Rasix]

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.

[Trippy]

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.

[Hoax]

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

[Strazos]

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. 

[Surlyboi]

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.

[Strazos]

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

[Falconeer]

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).

[Fabricated]

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).

[Velorath]

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.

[carnifex27]

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.

[ezrast]

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.

[Rasix]

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.

<----

 

[Strazos]

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

[rattran]

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.

[Lucas]

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).

[01101010]

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...