I haven't played this game since a I quit a few weeks after the release. How is the DLC? I was thinking of picking up both and running through the game.
If you do, I'd suggest picking up the Season Pass instead. It's currently on sale for $20 on the Ubisoft store.
| Origin/R*SC: Ein7919 | Battle.net: Erlkonig#1448 | XBL: Lexicanum | Steam: Der Erlkönig (the umlaut is important) |
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StragintDo Not GiftAlways DeclinesRegistered Userregular
I haven't played this game since a I quit a few weeks after the release. How is the DLC? I was thinking of picking up both and running through the game.
If you do, I'd suggest picking up the Season Pass instead. It's currently on sale for $20 on the Ubisoft store.
Is it PC only?
PSN: Reaper_Stragint, Steam: DoublePitstoChesty
What is the point of being alive if you don't at least try to do something remarkable? ~ Mario Novak
I never fear death or dyin', I only fear never trying.
I haven't played this game since a I quit a few weeks after the release. How is the DLC? I was thinking of picking up both and running through the game.
If you do, I'd suggest picking up the Season Pass instead. It's currently on sale for $20 on the Ubisoft store.
Is it PC only?
Sorry, yeah it looks like that sale's PC only.
| Origin/R*SC: Ein7919 | Battle.net: Erlkonig#1448 | XBL: Lexicanum | Steam: Der Erlkönig (the umlaut is important) |
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StragintDo Not GiftAlways DeclinesRegistered Userregular
I haven't played this game since a I quit a few weeks after the release. How is the DLC? I was thinking of picking up both and running through the game.
If you do, I'd suggest picking up the Season Pass instead. It's currently on sale for $20 on the Ubisoft store.
Is it PC only?
Sorry, yeah it looks like that sale's PC only.
Bummer, no worries though. Thanks for letting me know about the sale.
PSN: Reaper_Stragint, Steam: DoublePitstoChesty
What is the point of being alive if you don't at least try to do something remarkable? ~ Mario Novak
I never fear death or dyin', I only fear never trying.
So, is there anything left to do at gear score 256 that would progress your character in any meaningful way besides looking for gear set pieces and 2% better guns? This game throws such a deluge of upgrades at you all the way to the top and then it just grinds to a halt. I had a lot of fun with it but I wouldn't mind playing a bit more at the cap if there was something useful to do.
So, is there anything left to do at gear score 256 that would progress your character in any meaningful way besides looking for gear set pieces and 2% better guns? This game throws such a deluge of upgrades at you all the way to the top and then it just grinds to a halt. I had a lot of fun with it but I wouldn't mind playing a bit more at the cap if there was something useful to do.
There are some named gold drops that you can try and get but mostly the loot end game right now is farming sets and looking for small upgrades to those sets.
I honestly just enjoy running around shooting things. Head into the DZ and try your hand at just surviving.
I saw a kid get handed a JB poster by who I presume was his parents outside my store today....he tore it in half infront of his horrified parents.....There's hope for our youth yet!
Yeah I actually really enjoy the gameplay. I wish it had less currencies though.
From what I can tell:
You have regular money to buy items (usually of lesser quality) from general vendors
Dark Zone bucks to purchase items from DZ vendors
Intel for HVTs, which you get by completing Search and Destroy missions
Phoenix bucks for ???
Also, you really have to finish all the side missions/encounters in a zone to unlock Search and Destroy Missions? I never bothered to do a lot of these as I leveled, so I just have to spend some time in free roam huh?
Bnet: CavilatRest#1874
Steam: CavilatRest
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Sirialisof the Halite Throne.Registered Userregular
Phoenix Credits lets you buy High End gear... Yet that drops everywhere, so you should probably save it for its most useful function.
Regular credits are for re-rolling armor pieces and buying gold caches if you end up with too much money (which you will from selling the oodles of gold items and set pieces that you end up with). The high end vendor in the back of the security wing will also occasionally have some decent stuff but merchant inventory only resets once a week so you don't spend a lot there.
Dumb Bird Coins (Phoenix Credits) are primarily just for rerolling talents on guns. You can also technically use them to buy some weapons/armor, caches and blueprints but there are some problems with that. The gear/weapons you can buy with them are almost never all that good, very few blueprints are worth buying and spending Dumb Bird Coins on caches is pretty much never a good idea because the cost is high and you can buy caches with regular credits which you'll have a ton of after awhile anyways because you'll be selling a lot of gear to vendors.
Dark Zone credits are used at the DZ vendor in security wing of the Base of Operations and at the vendors in the DZ checkpoints and safe houses. You only earn it from killing things in the DZ and opening caches you extract from the DZ and there are some problems with that. You only get 300-500 from killing things in the DZ and not everything you kill will drop it. You can get a few thousand from caches but those primarily come from chests in the DZ and if your instance is hopping most of the ones you come across probably won't be lootable. Combine that with things costing tens or hundreds of thousands of DZ credits and, well, yeah.
Intel you get from Search and Destroy missions but it isn't really a currency that you buy things with. It's a resource you use to do the daily and weekly High Value Target missions. It caps at 99 which is enough to knock out the dailies but it's nowhere near enough for the weeklies. This is fine though since the weekly missions, especially the harder ones, pretty much require a group.
There's another resource for Underground missions as well that lets you add mission directives (basically mission mods that increase difficulty and rewards) but you build up a decent stockpile before you can even start adding the directives to your missions so it's not a big deal and tbh I'm not even sure why they included it.
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Olivawgood name, isn't it?the foot of mt fujiRegistered Userregular
edited January 2017
So I'm playing this game now, thanks to a gift card I got from Christmas
It seems alright so far? Apart from the tone-deaf story, obvs. Very pretty, good shooting and ability stuff so far
Sure wish the social and grouping system was less clunky. You'd think a game marketed so heavily as this multiplayer experience would be a bit smoother about integrating that stuff
It seems alright so far? Apart from the tone-deaf story, obvs. Very pretty, good shooting and ability stuff so far
What's wrong with the story? It's a bit over the top but you can't generate a city full of enemies otherwise. Sometimes I feel people just automatically go "oh yeah, the story's a bit crap but otherwise it's great" when talking about video games without going into specifics, as if everybody would always agree. I'm not saying they should give the writers the next Literature Nobel but I felt like the lore I ran into and the voice acting created a decent atmosphere.
It seems alright so far? Apart from the tone-deaf story, obvs. Very pretty, good shooting and ability stuff so far
What's wrong with the story? It's a bit over the top but you can't generate a city full of enemies otherwise. Sometimes I feel people just automatically go "oh yeah, the story's a bit crap but otherwise it's great" when talking about video games without going into specifics, as if everybody would always agree. I'm not saying they should give the writers the next Literature Nobel but I felt like the lore I ran into and the voice acting created a decent atmosphere.
I think it's been remarked before, but the story and enemies basically play off stereotypical American fears. A bioterror attack where enemies are the underprivileged (Rioters), prisoners, rogue PMC or rogue Federal sleeper agents? The fact that a large part of the game involve killing off Rioters/prisoners is a bit weird.
It seems alright so far? Apart from the tone-deaf story, obvs. Very pretty, good shooting and ability stuff so far
What's wrong with the story? It's a bit over the top but you can't generate a city full of enemies otherwise. Sometimes I feel people just automatically go "oh yeah, the story's a bit crap but otherwise it's great" when talking about video games without going into specifics, as if everybody would always agree. I'm not saying they should give the writers the next Literature Nobel but I felt like the lore I ran into and the voice acting created a decent atmosphere.
I think it's been remarked before, but the story and enemies basically play off stereotypical American fears. A bioterror attack where enemies are the underprivileged (Rioters), prisoners, rogue PMC or rogue Federal sleeper agents? The fact that a large part of the game involve killing off Rioters/prisoners is a bit weird.
Given that the Rioters shoot at civilians for fun, the Cleaners burn civilians alive, the Rikers literally beat civilians to death in the street and the LMB are conscripting civilians at gunpoint and all of them try and kill you on sight I got over those complaints fairly quickly.
I mean you can try and view this game through a lens of social commentary but it's not a game that is making any attempt at social commentary beyond "if you lock a bunch of people in a place with limited supplies and a bunch of guns it turns out a lot of people are shitty"
I agree that it's extremely unlikely that there was any motivation behind the portrayals, NY after all doesn't really have that many other potential enemies to draw from (at least the Russians didn't invade this time).
It's a really fun game nontheless. And I don't actually find the matchmaking mechanisms to be that clunky (then again, the only other MMO style game I've played was The Old Republic). Somehow I filled my entire stash full of golds though...
Never bought into the crap regarding the enemies in the game.
No one you shoot at is a good person, you get plenty of intel that anyone who has second thoughts within these groups tends to end up dead(or you get burnt to a crisp if you start coughing with the Cleaners).
It seems alright so far? Apart from the tone-deaf story, obvs. Very pretty, good shooting and ability stuff so far
What's wrong with the story? It's a bit over the top but you can't generate a city full of enemies otherwise. Sometimes I feel people just automatically go "oh yeah, the story's a bit crap but otherwise it's great" when talking about video games without going into specifics, as if everybody would always agree. I'm not saying they should give the writers the next Literature Nobel but I felt like the lore I ran into and the voice acting created a decent atmosphere.
Sorry, I just figured you guys had this conversation before and were tired of it. Allow me to clarify:
It's a game where you play as a federal agent who has no rules and answers to no authority and you gun people down in the street for looking suspicious
It's a game where the virus that caused Manhattan to be isolated from the rest of the country is literally spread through money and they never even acknowledge that might mean something
It's a game where your only interactions with the civilian populace are pointing, shooting, or occasionally giving them a can of soda
And most importantly, it's a loot game where your primary enemies are looters. I've gunned mother fuckers down who were looting an electronics store, stepped over their dead bodies riddled with bullets from my light machine gun, and looted the electronics store. The thing you do in this game, the core of the gameplay loop, is literally the thing you are meant to be fighting against
The Division tells a bad fuckin' story
Which is par for the course for all the recent Tom Clancy offerings, really! I had lots of problems with Splinter Cell Blacklist, to say nothing of the upcoming Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Cocaine Cowboys insanity
I get the feeling that Ubisoft (at least their Tom Clancy people) are a bit isolated, like they don't actually know what the political climate is like in America. One of the game's directors straight up said they never even considered there might be 9/11 parallels! No one ever even brought it up! How does something like that happen?
I haven't read the full thread so maybe the conversation has been done to the death before. I just dislike the "obviously everybody agrees that the writing is bad" thing which is IMO lazy and certainly has been done to death. Now that you've made several points about why you feel the story is bad I can see why you think so, which is a lot more interesting.
I don't really agree with your points, though. You could explain a lot of these things in a reasonable way (ISAC relays you data about the rioters and looters, including their previous crimes, and the ones that show as red are murderers and worse while your own looting is legally sanctioned use of your ridiculously broad powers for example), others are gameplay limitations like the limited interaction with civilians. They wanted to keep the focus tight. If you want extra lore there's the phones and drones and laptops but if you just want to shoot men in the face you can do that instead without having to spend time talking to 100 frightened and entitled civilians between combats.
Hell, sometimes there's even weirder things out there - I found an altar to the Great Cthulhu with three dozen bloody rat corpses on it. Which maybe says something about the game - it's not trying to be 100% realistic, just sort of "inspired by real Manhattan" kind of world, a parallel universe where sanitation workers react to a plague by building makeshift flamethrowers and starting to burn people alive. A world that has about as much to do with reality as your average Hollywood movie maybe. And it works for me just fine since I don't really want to shoot 100% realistic people in the face.
You can disagree with me and that's fine too. I'm just saying that the world they've created that's inspired by the real city and the stories in it work well for me as the backdrop of all the shooting, and some of the lore made me grin or grimace or amused me or made me slightly sad, which is plenty enough for what it is.
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MortiousThe Nightmare BeginsMove to New ZealandRegistered Userregular
It seems alright so far? Apart from the tone-deaf story, obvs. Very pretty, good shooting and ability stuff so far
What's wrong with the story? It's a bit over the top but you can't generate a city full of enemies otherwise. Sometimes I feel people just automatically go "oh yeah, the story's a bit crap but otherwise it's great" when talking about video games without going into specifics, as if everybody would always agree. I'm not saying they should give the writers the next Literature Nobel but I felt like the lore I ran into and the voice acting created a decent atmosphere.
Sorry, I just figured you guys had this conversation before and were tired of it. Allow me to clarify:
It's a game where you play as a federal agent who has no rules and answers to no authority and you gun people down in the street for looking suspicious
It's a game where the virus that caused Manhattan to be isolated from the rest of the country is literally spread through money and they never even acknowledge that might mean something
It's a game where your only interactions with the civilian populace are pointing, shooting, or occasionally giving them a can of soda
And most importantly, it's a loot game where your primary enemies are looters. I've gunned mother fuckers down who were looting an electronics store, stepped over their dead bodies riddled with bullets from my light machine gun, and looted the electronics store. The thing you do in this game, the core of the gameplay loop, is literally the thing you are meant to be fighting against
The Division tells a bad fuckin' story
Which is par for the course for all the recent Tom Clancy offerings, really! I had lots of problems with Splinter Cell Blacklist, to say nothing of the upcoming Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Cocaine Cowboys insanity
I get the feeling that Ubisoft (at least their Tom Clancy people) are a bit isolated, like they don't actually know what the political climate is like in America. One of the game's directors straight up said they never even considered there might be 9/11 parallels! No one ever even brought it up! How does something like that happen?
I wouldn't peg that as a story thing though, that's a gameplay thing.
Now there's a bit to be said that the gameplay doesn't completely mesh with the world they're trying to build (i.e. bullet-sponge enemies), but I'd separate those complains for the story it's trying to tell.
It seems alright so far? Apart from the tone-deaf story, obvs. Very pretty, good shooting and ability stuff so far
What's wrong with the story? It's a bit over the top but you can't generate a city full of enemies otherwise. Sometimes I feel people just automatically go "oh yeah, the story's a bit crap but otherwise it's great" when talking about video games without going into specifics, as if everybody would always agree. I'm not saying they should give the writers the next Literature Nobel but I felt like the lore I ran into and the voice acting created a decent atmosphere.
Sorry, I just figured you guys had this conversation before and were tired of it. Allow me to clarify:
It's a game where you play as a federal agent who has no rules and answers to no authority and you gun people down in the street for looking suspicious
It's a game where the virus that caused Manhattan to be isolated from the rest of the country is literally spread through money and they never even acknowledge that might mean something
It's a game where your only interactions with the civilian populace are pointing, shooting, or occasionally giving them a can of soda
And most importantly, it's a loot game where your primary enemies are looters. I've gunned mother fuckers down who were looting an electronics store, stepped over their dead bodies riddled with bullets from my light machine gun, and looted the electronics store. The thing you do in this game, the core of the gameplay loop, is literally the thing you are meant to be fighting against
The Division tells a bad fuckin' story
Which is par for the course for all the recent Tom Clancy offerings, really! I had lots of problems with Splinter Cell Blacklist, to say nothing of the upcoming Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Cocaine Cowboys insanity
I get the feeling that Ubisoft (at least their Tom Clancy people) are a bit isolated, like they don't actually know what the political climate is like in America. One of the game's directors straight up said they never even considered there might be 9/11 parallels! No one ever even brought it up! How does something like that happen?
None of the factions are really motivated by looting though. The cleaners, rikers and LMB all have other motives. The rioters kind of are? But even with them they come across as caring more about territory than looting.
Stopping looting also isn't the job of the Division. If anything that was supposed to be the Last Man Battalion's job initially.
The Division's job in game is to return control of the streets to the JTF, figure out what happened with and stop the epidemic and find out what happened to the first wave of agents.
More to the point though I don't think you could even really classify it as a loot game when it came out. The primary way to upgrade your gear in the end game was either buying things in the DZ or crafting, often both. Good drops from enemies were extremely rare and by far the worst way to try and gear up. It was either crafting, NPC merchants or if you were really lucky and got into an almost empty DZ instance some locked chests in the north DZ would actually be lootable.
Quite frankly I don't think they'd really figured out what they wanted the point of the end game to be by launch and it showed.
Anyways it's since become a loot pinata game 100% because the way it was at launch almost exclusively rewarded only people who played a ridiculous amount and played primarily in the DZ. Some people loved this, most people didn't and the game hemorrhaged players. They spent the better part of a year trying to fix this various ways until a few updates ago where they said fuck it and decided to throw endless loot at everyone for everything.
I mean one of the main issues with the story is that you literally murder people without even giving them an option to surrender. You're basically Judge Dredd. I sniped like 500 people to death just because ISAC made my reticule turn red over them while they were busy shooting the shit with their buddy. What if ISAC had a case of mistaken identity? I just skullfucked an innocent person with a high caliber bullet! And even if ISAC is right, my character never once said "hey, drop those weapons" or anything. Plan A is murder them and Plan B is to murder them and go through their pockets for some new khaki pants. The Division is basically a giant sleeper cell full of people who aren't supposed to form emotional connections because that might interfere with the possible future where they have to be activated in order to murder everyone, and then this game presents that future. See also here.
I mean one of the main issues with the story is that you literally murder people without even giving them an option to surrender. You're basically Judge Dredd. I sniped like 500 people to death just because ISAC made my reticule turn red over them while they were busy shooting the shit with their buddy. What if ISAC had a case of mistaken identity? I just skullfucked an innocent person with a high caliber bullet! And even if ISAC is right, my character never once said "hey, drop those weapons" or anything. Plan A is murder them and Plan B is to murder them and go through their pockets for some new khaki pants. The Division is basically a giant sleeper cell full of people who aren't supposed to form emotional connections because that might interfere with the possible future where they have to be activated in order to murder everyone, and then this game presents that future. See also here.
Some of the late-game stuff hints at you being a psychotic murder-hobo so perhaps that's how it is supposed to be. You (the generic you or you personally) might not like it but I'm not sure if that's an "issue". At one point I listened a voice mail that congratulated a LMB member of just becoming a new father, then I walked to the other side of that same room, grabbed my machine gun and gunned down a patrol of 7 LMB members. Those guys were in army fatigues and had proper combat tactics and so on, I was wearing dirty winter clothes and attacked without warning from an ambush. Maybe I'm the bad guy? I at least looked the part for sure. Or does the fact I'm wearing a shiny orange watch and little kids play around my HQ and watch movies there make me a good guy? Who knows.
Didn't read the article yet, it's getting late here. *yawn* Will check it later.
ETA before heading to bed - one thing that I did find a bit annoying/problematic is the fact you are a silent protagonist so you never really get to choose what you are saying, what kind of person you are. Then again I guess it is a shooter and not a Bioware RPG, though a Bioware RPG in the Division's world could be interesting. Or just very, very dark. As it is, even at best you aren't a very good guy if you pause to think about it, that's true.
I mean one of the main issues with the story is that you literally murder people without even giving them an option to surrender. You're basically Judge Dredd. I sniped like 500 people to death just because ISAC made my reticule turn red over them while they were busy shooting the shit with their buddy. What if ISAC had a case of mistaken identity? I just skullfucked an innocent person with a high caliber bullet! And even if ISAC is right, my character never once said "hey, drop those weapons" or anything. Plan A is murder them and Plan B is to murder them and go through their pockets for some new khaki pants. The Division is basically a giant sleeper cell full of people who aren't supposed to form emotional connections because that might interfere with the possible future where they have to be activated in order to murder everyone, and then this game presents that future. See also here.
Except every single one of those 500 people you sniped would have attacked you as soon as they saw you. Literally the only people you can kill in the game are people that would start shooting at you at the first opportunity they're given.
It's not an RPG that gives you interesting choices and tries to use those choices to make a point of some kind. It's literally just a shooter with a kinda unique if very implausible setting.
As far as the article goes I read that back when it was posted. The problem is it's trying really hard to be insightful about a game that has no real interest in insight.
*edit* Oh and incidentally he states in the article that the rioters are "a majority black" but the reality is almost none of the rioters are black. I was curious about this the first time I read it because the voice acting comes across as basically "generic white guy" so I started checking the faces behind the bandannas. Turns out the rioters are mostly white or hispanic (hard to say since the only thing to go by is skin tone) and I came across almost no black rioters.
It kind of says it all that the most dangerous opponents for The Division are all Division agents "gone bad". Whether that's Rogues in the Dark Zone or the main antagonist, the chances for Division agents to go bad and start killing "the wrong people" are ridiculously high since their job is simply to kill "the right people."
Ubi can maybe rescue this franchise if the sequel has you fighting the Division which has taken over the US in a fascist coup, while your PCs are a Patriotic resistance group who spends a lot of time helping civvies instead of running by them looking for the next "acceptable target" to shoot.
Never bought into the crap regarding the enemies in the game.
No one you shoot at is a good person, you get plenty of intel that anyone who has second thoughts within these groups tends to end up dead(or you get burnt to a crisp if you start coughing with the Cleaners).
The Cleaners are actually the one enemy type I've got zero beef with--that a bunch of garbagemen got hold of so many flamethrowers is maybe the only part that strains credulity, but the idea of a bunch of folks getting together and deciding to just burn the fucking disease out for the greater good? That's terrifying enough to be real
Thing is, it's also the sort of thing that fits better in a more apocalyptic world, rather than "the rest of America is fine, it's really just this one city that's having problems"
The Division would work better for me if it was a full-on breakdown of society throughout the world, or maybe an Escape From New York-style prison island or something, and you were part of a much more loosely defined group with much more limited resources rather than a literal federal agent with this entire support network and magic technology and whatnot
If you're going to be killing looters to take the loot they were trying to loot, then I need to feel more like a survivor trying to make their way in the world to help them and theirs, and less like a soldier enforcing martial law. More The Last of Us, basically
As it is I kind of feel like a monster whenever I gun down a couple guys in hoodies who are just standing in the street and haven't shot at me yet
And yes obviously the game goes out of its way to justify why all the people you shoot are bad people, and we can operate on that perfect certain knowledge because it's a video game, but these games are still written by human beings. I can't just accept that what I'm doing is okay because the game told me its okay. That's not how I engage with these things. I have to judge the actions I am taking within the context of both the fiction and the real world, and in reality the thing I'm doing a lot of right now is shooting guys standing around outside an electronics store and taking their shoes
Which would make total sense if I were a post-apocalyptic murderhobo with no other choice! I would have zero beef with that. But I'm not. I'm Tom Clancy's The Division, and that changes things for me
Never bought into the crap regarding the enemies in the game.
No one you shoot at is a good person, you get plenty of intel that anyone who has second thoughts within these groups tends to end up dead(or you get burnt to a crisp if you start coughing with the Cleaners).
The Cleaners are actually the one enemy type I've got zero beef with--that a bunch of garbagemen got hold of so many flamethrowers is maybe the only part that strains credulity, but the idea of a bunch of folks getting together and deciding to just burn the fucking disease out for the greater good? That's terrifying enough to be real
Thing is, it's also the sort of thing that fits better in a more apocalyptic world, rather than "the rest of America is fine, it's really just this one city that's having problems"
The Division would work better for me if it was a full-on breakdown of society throughout the world, or maybe an Escape From New York-style prison island or something, and you were part of a much more loosely defined group with much more limited resources rather than a literal federal agent with this entire support network and magic technology and whatnot
If you're going to be killing looters to take the loot they were trying to loot, then I need to feel more like a survivor trying to make their way in the world to help them and theirs, and less like a soldier enforcing martial law. More The Last of Us, basically
As it is I kind of feel like a monster whenever I gun down a couple guys in hoodies who are just standing in the street and haven't shot at me yet
And yes obviously the game goes out of its way to justify why all the people you shoot are bad people, and we can operate on that perfect certain knowledge because it's a video game, but these games are still written by human beings. I can't just accept that what I'm doing is okay because the game told me its okay. That's not how I engage with these things. I have to judge the actions I am taking within the context of both the fiction and the real world, and in reality the thing I'm doing a lot of right now is shooting guys standing around outside an electronics store and taking their shoes
Which would make total sense if I were a post-apocalyptic murderhobo with no other choice! I would have zero beef with that. But I'm not. I'm Tom Clancy's The Division, and that changes things for me
It's a small point that is easily missable, but the conspiracy theorist with the radio show does talk about society breaking down across America. I remember Pittsburgh and a few other cities being mentioned.
Never bought into the crap regarding the enemies in the game.
No one you shoot at is a good person, you get plenty of intel that anyone who has second thoughts within these groups tends to end up dead(or you get burnt to a crisp if you start coughing with the Cleaners).
The Cleaners are actually the one enemy type I've got zero beef with--that a bunch of garbagemen got hold of so many flamethrowers is maybe the only part that strains credulity, but the idea of a bunch of folks getting together and deciding to just burn the fucking disease out for the greater good? That's terrifying enough to be real
Thing is, it's also the sort of thing that fits better in a more apocalyptic world, rather than "the rest of America is fine, it's really just this one city that's having problems"
The Division would work better for me if it was a full-on breakdown of society throughout the world, or maybe an Escape From New York-style prison island or something, and you were part of a much more loosely defined group with much more limited resources rather than a literal federal agent with this entire support network and magic technology and whatnot
If you're going to be killing looters to take the loot they were trying to loot, then I need to feel more like a survivor trying to make their way in the world to help them and theirs, and less like a soldier enforcing martial law. More The Last of Us, basically
As it is I kind of feel like a monster whenever I gun down a couple guys in hoodies who are just standing in the street and haven't shot at me yet
And yes obviously the game goes out of its way to justify why all the people you shoot are bad people, and we can operate on that perfect certain knowledge because it's a video game, but these games are still written by human beings. I can't just accept that what I'm doing is okay because the game told me its okay. That's not how I engage with these things. I have to judge the actions I am taking within the context of both the fiction and the real world, and in reality the thing I'm doing a lot of right now is shooting guys standing around outside an electronics store and taking their shoes
Which would make total sense if I were a post-apocalyptic murderhobo with no other choice! I would have zero beef with that. But I'm not. I'm Tom Clancy's The Division, and that changes things for me
Then I guess let them shoot at you first?
I dunno, I feel like you're putting a level of thought into the game that the game itself doesn't actually support in any way.
And I mean that's not a bad thing? If it were real life of course you'd give people a chance to surrender but this isn't a role playing game. The mechanics just aren't there to support that.
Never bought into the crap regarding the enemies in the game.
No one you shoot at is a good person, you get plenty of intel that anyone who has second thoughts within these groups tends to end up dead(or you get burnt to a crisp if you start coughing with the Cleaners).
The Cleaners are actually the one enemy type I've got zero beef with--that a bunch of garbagemen got hold of so many flamethrowers is maybe the only part that strains credulity, but the idea of a bunch of folks getting together and deciding to just burn the fucking disease out for the greater good? That's terrifying enough to be real
Thing is, it's also the sort of thing that fits better in a more apocalyptic world, rather than "the rest of America is fine, it's really just this one city that's having problems"
The Division would work better for me if it was a full-on breakdown of society throughout the world, or maybe an Escape From New York-style prison island or something, and you were part of a much more loosely defined group with much more limited resources rather than a literal federal agent with this entire support network and magic technology and whatnot
If you're going to be killing looters to take the loot they were trying to loot, then I need to feel more like a survivor trying to make their way in the world to help them and theirs, and less like a soldier enforcing martial law. More The Last of Us, basically
As it is I kind of feel like a monster whenever I gun down a couple guys in hoodies who are just standing in the street and haven't shot at me yet
And yes obviously the game goes out of its way to justify why all the people you shoot are bad people, and we can operate on that perfect certain knowledge because it's a video game, but these games are still written by human beings. I can't just accept that what I'm doing is okay because the game told me its okay. That's not how I engage with these things. I have to judge the actions I am taking within the context of both the fiction and the real world, and in reality the thing I'm doing a lot of right now is shooting guys standing around outside an electronics store and taking their shoes
Which would make total sense if I were a post-apocalyptic murderhobo with no other choice! I would have zero beef with that. But I'm not. I'm Tom Clancy's The Division, and that changes things for me
It's a small point that is easily missable, but the conspiracy theorist with the radio show does talk about society breaking down across America. I remember Pittsburgh and a few other cities being mentioned.
Part of the disconnect comes from the fact that the majority of the writing in the logs and other environmental text/audio was outsourced to another studio. There are definitely signs that the writers there realized there were some issues with the game's setup.
A great example is the bios of missing Division agents you collect. If you read them as a lump, you start to realize that the writer had a list of sociopathic personality traits at hand when composing them.
I mean one of the main issues with the story is that you literally murder people without even giving them an option to surrender. You're basically Judge Dredd. I sniped like 500 people to death just because ISAC made my reticule turn red over them while they were busy shooting the shit with their buddy. What if ISAC had a case of mistaken identity? I just skullfucked an innocent person with a high caliber bullet! And even if ISAC is right, my character never once said "hey, drop those weapons" or anything. Plan A is murder them and Plan B is to murder them and go through their pockets for some new khaki pants. The Division is basically a giant sleeper cell full of people who aren't supposed to form emotional connections because that might interfere with the possible future where they have to be activated in order to murder everyone, and then this game presents that future. See also here.
Except every single one of those 500 people you sniped would have attacked you as soon as they saw you. Literally the only people you can kill in the game are people that would start shooting at you at the first opportunity they're given.
You know that because you're playing a video game, but there's no way your character in the game knows that. Hostile NPCs will always attack you in the video game The Division. Real human beings who have committed crimes will not always attack you as soon as they see you. Even in the context of the game you never ask them if they want to surrender, even after you've pumped forty eight bullets into them and they're likely reconsidering their choice to take on The Terminator with their baseball bat.
It's not an RPG that gives you interesting choices and tries to use those choices to make a point of some kind. It's literally just a shooter with a kinda unique if very implausible setting.
Yeah I mean I don't think anyone's criticism of the game is "this is an RPG that gives you interesting choices and then tries to use those choices to make a point of some kind, and also it has a terrible message." Everyone's criticism is "it's literally just a shooter with a terrible message."
[As far as the article goes I read that back when it was posted. The problem is it's trying really hard to be insightful about a game that has no real interest in insight.
That's not how insight works! It's possible to be insightful about something with no real interest in insight, and that's not a problem! Donald Trump has no real interest in insight - does that mean it's impossible to be insightful about him? No! I agree this game has no real interest in insight, and if it did it maybe it wouldn't be a fucking deplorable murder simulator, but either way there's nothing stopping people from being insightful about the game. As it stands, the game's as dumb as a stack of bricks, but we can be insightful about things that are as dumb as a stack of bricks.
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Olivawgood name, isn't it?the foot of mt fujiRegistered Userregular
Never bought into the crap regarding the enemies in the game.
No one you shoot at is a good person, you get plenty of intel that anyone who has second thoughts within these groups tends to end up dead(or you get burnt to a crisp if you start coughing with the Cleaners).
The Cleaners are actually the one enemy type I've got zero beef with--that a bunch of garbagemen got hold of so many flamethrowers is maybe the only part that strains credulity, but the idea of a bunch of folks getting together and deciding to just burn the fucking disease out for the greater good? That's terrifying enough to be real
Thing is, it's also the sort of thing that fits better in a more apocalyptic world, rather than "the rest of America is fine, it's really just this one city that's having problems"
The Division would work better for me if it was a full-on breakdown of society throughout the world, or maybe an Escape From New York-style prison island or something, and you were part of a much more loosely defined group with much more limited resources rather than a literal federal agent with this entire support network and magic technology and whatnot
If you're going to be killing looters to take the loot they were trying to loot, then I need to feel more like a survivor trying to make their way in the world to help them and theirs, and less like a soldier enforcing martial law. More The Last of Us, basically
As it is I kind of feel like a monster whenever I gun down a couple guys in hoodies who are just standing in the street and haven't shot at me yet
And yes obviously the game goes out of its way to justify why all the people you shoot are bad people, and we can operate on that perfect certain knowledge because it's a video game, but these games are still written by human beings. I can't just accept that what I'm doing is okay because the game told me its okay. That's not how I engage with these things. I have to judge the actions I am taking within the context of both the fiction and the real world, and in reality the thing I'm doing a lot of right now is shooting guys standing around outside an electronics store and taking their shoes
Which would make total sense if I were a post-apocalyptic murderhobo with no other choice! I would have zero beef with that. But I'm not. I'm Tom Clancy's The Division, and that changes things for me
It's a small point that is easily missable, but the conspiracy theorist with the radio show does talk about society breaking down across America. I remember Pittsburgh and a few other cities being mentioned.
Part of the disconnect comes from the fact that the majority of the writing in the logs and other environmental text/audio was outsourced to another studio. There are definitely signs that the writers there realized there were some issues with the game's setup.
A great example is the bios of missing Division agents you collect. If you read them as a lump, you start to realize that the writer had a list of sociopathic personality traits at hand when composing them.
This explains a great deal, honestly
And I really don't think a game has to set out to say something in order to say something, or that it's necessarily my fault for reading into it when they didn't bother to themselves. That doesn't excuse the content automatically and it doesn't make it any more or less okay
Heck, I even wonder why they settled on this particular setting when nothing about the gameplay is actually tied to it. Even your abilities don't make any sense. (What the hell is Smart Cover? How does that work!)
(my personal answer is that America is full of anxiety about the future and terrorism and the eventual collapse of society and The Division is pitched as the world's biggest prepper wet dream)
Not to say one way or another but Martial law *is* Actually in effect, and Since you are One of the highest Ranking people currently *in* the Quarantine Zone...
Just, you know, pointing it out... It seems people ignore that fact.
Either way, for me personally? I actually *do* Roleplay when i'm running around the LZ solo, i actually (in my head) shout out to those Rioters huddled over a person (they probably just killed) Telling them to surrender, before they inevitably open up on me and i gun them down...
Personally, yeah, it would've been cool if you could actually sometimes force people to surrender and then have JTF show up and 'take them into custody'.
But in a real life event... What would *actually* Happen? Can't lock'em up, no one to watch the prison, to feed them ect.
What is the *actual* Solution in a real world Example of 'The division'?
A lot of talk about just shooting on sight and how you don't actually give them a chance or what ever, but what would you *actually* Do?
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If you do, I'd suggest picking up the Season Pass instead. It's currently on sale for $20 on the Ubisoft store.
Is it PC only?
What is the point of being alive if you don't at least try to do something remarkable? ~ Mario Novak
I never fear death or dyin', I only fear never trying.
Sorry, yeah it looks like that sale's PC only.
Bummer, no worries though. Thanks for letting me know about the sale.
What is the point of being alive if you don't at least try to do something remarkable? ~ Mario Novak
I never fear death or dyin', I only fear never trying.
Steam: CavilatRest
There's a very outdated list on the first page.
Platform?
It’s not a very important country most of the time
http://steamcommunity.com/id/mortious
Steam: CavilatRest
There are some named gold drops that you can try and get but mostly the loot end game right now is farming sets and looking for small upgrades to those sets.
From what I can tell:
You have regular money to buy items (usually of lesser quality) from general vendors
Dark Zone bucks to purchase items from DZ vendors
Intel for HVTs, which you get by completing Search and Destroy missions
Phoenix bucks for ???
Also, you really have to finish all the side missions/encounters in a zone to unlock Search and Destroy Missions? I never bothered to do a lot of these as I leveled, so I just have to spend some time in free roam huh?
Steam: CavilatRest
To reroll gun perks.
DZ doesn't interest me at all, I hate anything that has even the potential to be pvp. Guess I haven't overlooked anything, then.
Dumb Bird Coins (Phoenix Credits) are primarily just for rerolling talents on guns. You can also technically use them to buy some weapons/armor, caches and blueprints but there are some problems with that. The gear/weapons you can buy with them are almost never all that good, very few blueprints are worth buying and spending Dumb Bird Coins on caches is pretty much never a good idea because the cost is high and you can buy caches with regular credits which you'll have a ton of after awhile anyways because you'll be selling a lot of gear to vendors.
Dark Zone credits are used at the DZ vendor in security wing of the Base of Operations and at the vendors in the DZ checkpoints and safe houses. You only earn it from killing things in the DZ and opening caches you extract from the DZ and there are some problems with that. You only get 300-500 from killing things in the DZ and not everything you kill will drop it. You can get a few thousand from caches but those primarily come from chests in the DZ and if your instance is hopping most of the ones you come across probably won't be lootable. Combine that with things costing tens or hundreds of thousands of DZ credits and, well, yeah.
Intel you get from Search and Destroy missions but it isn't really a currency that you buy things with. It's a resource you use to do the daily and weekly High Value Target missions. It caps at 99 which is enough to knock out the dailies but it's nowhere near enough for the weeklies. This is fine though since the weekly missions, especially the harder ones, pretty much require a group.
There's another resource for Underground missions as well that lets you add mission directives (basically mission mods that increase difficulty and rewards) but you build up a decent stockpile before you can even start adding the directives to your missions so it's not a big deal and tbh I'm not even sure why they included it.
It seems alright so far? Apart from the tone-deaf story, obvs. Very pretty, good shooting and ability stuff so far
Sure wish the social and grouping system was less clunky. You'd think a game marketed so heavily as this multiplayer experience would be a bit smoother about integrating that stuff
PSN ID : DetectiveOlivaw | TWITTER | STEAM ID | NEVER FORGET
What's wrong with the story? It's a bit over the top but you can't generate a city full of enemies otherwise. Sometimes I feel people just automatically go "oh yeah, the story's a bit crap but otherwise it's great" when talking about video games without going into specifics, as if everybody would always agree. I'm not saying they should give the writers the next Literature Nobel but I felt like the lore I ran into and the voice acting created a decent atmosphere.
I think it's been remarked before, but the story and enemies basically play off stereotypical American fears. A bioterror attack where enemies are the underprivileged (Rioters), prisoners, rogue PMC or rogue Federal sleeper agents? The fact that a large part of the game involve killing off Rioters/prisoners is a bit weird.
Steam: CavilatRest
Don't forget the cleaners.
I mean you can try and view this game through a lens of social commentary but it's not a game that is making any attempt at social commentary beyond "if you lock a bunch of people in a place with limited supplies and a bunch of guns it turns out a lot of people are shitty"
It's a really fun game nontheless. And I don't actually find the matchmaking mechanisms to be that clunky (then again, the only other MMO style game I've played was The Old Republic). Somehow I filled my entire stash full of golds though...
Steam: CavilatRest
No one you shoot at is a good person, you get plenty of intel that anyone who has second thoughts within these groups tends to end up dead(or you get burnt to a crisp if you start coughing with the Cleaners).
Sorry, I just figured you guys had this conversation before and were tired of it. Allow me to clarify:
It's a game where you play as a federal agent who has no rules and answers to no authority and you gun people down in the street for looking suspicious
It's a game where the virus that caused Manhattan to be isolated from the rest of the country is literally spread through money and they never even acknowledge that might mean something
It's a game where your only interactions with the civilian populace are pointing, shooting, or occasionally giving them a can of soda
And most importantly, it's a loot game where your primary enemies are looters. I've gunned mother fuckers down who were looting an electronics store, stepped over their dead bodies riddled with bullets from my light machine gun, and looted the electronics store. The thing you do in this game, the core of the gameplay loop, is literally the thing you are meant to be fighting against
The Division tells a bad fuckin' story
Which is par for the course for all the recent Tom Clancy offerings, really! I had lots of problems with Splinter Cell Blacklist, to say nothing of the upcoming Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Cocaine Cowboys insanity
I get the feeling that Ubisoft (at least their Tom Clancy people) are a bit isolated, like they don't actually know what the political climate is like in America. One of the game's directors straight up said they never even considered there might be 9/11 parallels! No one ever even brought it up! How does something like that happen?
PSN ID : DetectiveOlivaw | TWITTER | STEAM ID | NEVER FORGET
I don't really agree with your points, though. You could explain a lot of these things in a reasonable way (ISAC relays you data about the rioters and looters, including their previous crimes, and the ones that show as red are murderers and worse while your own looting is legally sanctioned use of your ridiculously broad powers for example), others are gameplay limitations like the limited interaction with civilians. They wanted to keep the focus tight. If you want extra lore there's the phones and drones and laptops but if you just want to shoot men in the face you can do that instead without having to spend time talking to 100 frightened and entitled civilians between combats.
Hell, sometimes there's even weirder things out there - I found an altar to the Great Cthulhu with three dozen bloody rat corpses on it. Which maybe says something about the game - it's not trying to be 100% realistic, just sort of "inspired by real Manhattan" kind of world, a parallel universe where sanitation workers react to a plague by building makeshift flamethrowers and starting to burn people alive. A world that has about as much to do with reality as your average Hollywood movie maybe. And it works for me just fine since I don't really want to shoot 100% realistic people in the face.
You can disagree with me and that's fine too. I'm just saying that the world they've created that's inspired by the real city and the stories in it work well for me as the backdrop of all the shooting, and some of the lore made me grin or grimace or amused me or made me slightly sad, which is plenty enough for what it is.
I wouldn't peg that as a story thing though, that's a gameplay thing.
Now there's a bit to be said that the gameplay doesn't completely mesh with the world they're trying to build (i.e. bullet-sponge enemies), but I'd separate those complains for the story it's trying to tell.
It’s not a very important country most of the time
http://steamcommunity.com/id/mortious
None of the factions are really motivated by looting though. The cleaners, rikers and LMB all have other motives. The rioters kind of are? But even with them they come across as caring more about territory than looting.
Stopping looting also isn't the job of the Division. If anything that was supposed to be the Last Man Battalion's job initially.
The Division's job in game is to return control of the streets to the JTF, figure out what happened with and stop the epidemic and find out what happened to the first wave of agents.
More to the point though I don't think you could even really classify it as a loot game when it came out. The primary way to upgrade your gear in the end game was either buying things in the DZ or crafting, often both. Good drops from enemies were extremely rare and by far the worst way to try and gear up. It was either crafting, NPC merchants or if you were really lucky and got into an almost empty DZ instance some locked chests in the north DZ would actually be lootable.
Quite frankly I don't think they'd really figured out what they wanted the point of the end game to be by launch and it showed.
Anyways it's since become a loot pinata game 100% because the way it was at launch almost exclusively rewarded only people who played a ridiculous amount and played primarily in the DZ. Some people loved this, most people didn't and the game hemorrhaged players. They spent the better part of a year trying to fix this various ways until a few updates ago where they said fuck it and decided to throw endless loot at everyone for everything.
Some of the late-game stuff hints at you being a psychotic murder-hobo so perhaps that's how it is supposed to be. You (the generic you or you personally) might not like it but I'm not sure if that's an "issue". At one point I listened a voice mail that congratulated a LMB member of just becoming a new father, then I walked to the other side of that same room, grabbed my machine gun and gunned down a patrol of 7 LMB members. Those guys were in army fatigues and had proper combat tactics and so on, I was wearing dirty winter clothes and attacked without warning from an ambush. Maybe I'm the bad guy? I at least looked the part for sure. Or does the fact I'm wearing a shiny orange watch and little kids play around my HQ and watch movies there make me a good guy? Who knows.
Didn't read the article yet, it's getting late here. *yawn* Will check it later.
ETA before heading to bed - one thing that I did find a bit annoying/problematic is the fact you are a silent protagonist so you never really get to choose what you are saying, what kind of person you are. Then again I guess it is a shooter and not a Bioware RPG, though a Bioware RPG in the Division's world could be interesting. Or just very, very dark. As it is, even at best you aren't a very good guy if you pause to think about it, that's true.
Except every single one of those 500 people you sniped would have attacked you as soon as they saw you. Literally the only people you can kill in the game are people that would start shooting at you at the first opportunity they're given.
It's not an RPG that gives you interesting choices and tries to use those choices to make a point of some kind. It's literally just a shooter with a kinda unique if very implausible setting.
As far as the article goes I read that back when it was posted. The problem is it's trying really hard to be insightful about a game that has no real interest in insight.
*edit* Oh and incidentally he states in the article that the rioters are "a majority black" but the reality is almost none of the rioters are black. I was curious about this the first time I read it because the voice acting comes across as basically "generic white guy" so I started checking the faces behind the bandannas. Turns out the rioters are mostly white or hispanic (hard to say since the only thing to go by is skin tone) and I came across almost no black rioters.
Ubi can maybe rescue this franchise if the sequel has you fighting the Division which has taken over the US in a fascist coup, while your PCs are a Patriotic resistance group who spends a lot of time helping civvies instead of running by them looking for the next "acceptable target" to shoot.
They were expecting this to be their Destiny but for a number of reasons that didn't happen.
The Cleaners are actually the one enemy type I've got zero beef with--that a bunch of garbagemen got hold of so many flamethrowers is maybe the only part that strains credulity, but the idea of a bunch of folks getting together and deciding to just burn the fucking disease out for the greater good? That's terrifying enough to be real
Thing is, it's also the sort of thing that fits better in a more apocalyptic world, rather than "the rest of America is fine, it's really just this one city that's having problems"
The Division would work better for me if it was a full-on breakdown of society throughout the world, or maybe an Escape From New York-style prison island or something, and you were part of a much more loosely defined group with much more limited resources rather than a literal federal agent with this entire support network and magic technology and whatnot
If you're going to be killing looters to take the loot they were trying to loot, then I need to feel more like a survivor trying to make their way in the world to help them and theirs, and less like a soldier enforcing martial law. More The Last of Us, basically
As it is I kind of feel like a monster whenever I gun down a couple guys in hoodies who are just standing in the street and haven't shot at me yet
And yes obviously the game goes out of its way to justify why all the people you shoot are bad people, and we can operate on that perfect certain knowledge because it's a video game, but these games are still written by human beings. I can't just accept that what I'm doing is okay because the game told me its okay. That's not how I engage with these things. I have to judge the actions I am taking within the context of both the fiction and the real world, and in reality the thing I'm doing a lot of right now is shooting guys standing around outside an electronics store and taking their shoes
Which would make total sense if I were a post-apocalyptic murderhobo with no other choice! I would have zero beef with that. But I'm not. I'm Tom Clancy's The Division, and that changes things for me
PSN ID : DetectiveOlivaw | TWITTER | STEAM ID | NEVER FORGET
It's a small point that is easily missable, but the conspiracy theorist with the radio show does talk about society breaking down across America. I remember Pittsburgh and a few other cities being mentioned.
Then I guess let them shoot at you first?
I dunno, I feel like you're putting a level of thought into the game that the game itself doesn't actually support in any way.
And I mean that's not a bad thing? If it were real life of course you'd give people a chance to surrender but this isn't a role playing game. The mechanics just aren't there to support that.
Part of the disconnect comes from the fact that the majority of the writing in the logs and other environmental text/audio was outsourced to another studio. There are definitely signs that the writers there realized there were some issues with the game's setup.
A great example is the bios of missing Division agents you collect. If you read them as a lump, you start to realize that the writer had a list of sociopathic personality traits at hand when composing them.
Yeah I mean I don't think anyone's criticism of the game is "this is an RPG that gives you interesting choices and then tries to use those choices to make a point of some kind, and also it has a terrible message." Everyone's criticism is "it's literally just a shooter with a terrible message."
That's not how insight works! It's possible to be insightful about something with no real interest in insight, and that's not a problem! Donald Trump has no real interest in insight - does that mean it's impossible to be insightful about him? No! I agree this game has no real interest in insight, and if it did it maybe it wouldn't be a fucking deplorable murder simulator, but either way there's nothing stopping people from being insightful about the game. As it stands, the game's as dumb as a stack of bricks, but we can be insightful about things that are as dumb as a stack of bricks.
This explains a great deal, honestly
And I really don't think a game has to set out to say something in order to say something, or that it's necessarily my fault for reading into it when they didn't bother to themselves. That doesn't excuse the content automatically and it doesn't make it any more or less okay
Heck, I even wonder why they settled on this particular setting when nothing about the gameplay is actually tied to it. Even your abilities don't make any sense. (What the hell is Smart Cover? How does that work!)
(my personal answer is that America is full of anxiety about the future and terrorism and the eventual collapse of society and The Division is pitched as the world's biggest prepper wet dream)
PSN ID : DetectiveOlivaw | TWITTER | STEAM ID | NEVER FORGET
Just, you know, pointing it out... It seems people ignore that fact.
Either way, for me personally? I actually *do* Roleplay when i'm running around the LZ solo, i actually (in my head) shout out to those Rioters huddled over a person (they probably just killed) Telling them to surrender, before they inevitably open up on me and i gun them down...
Personally, yeah, it would've been cool if you could actually sometimes force people to surrender and then have JTF show up and 'take them into custody'.
But in a real life event... What would *actually* Happen? Can't lock'em up, no one to watch the prison, to feed them ect.
What is the *actual* Solution in a real world Example of 'The division'?
A lot of talk about just shooting on sight and how you don't actually give them a chance or what ever, but what would you *actually* Do?