Tom Clancy's The Division

I played the original Division when it came out. I typically play things solo, so I found the entire thing a long boring slog, although I did it got better after a few patches. However by that time I had already completed the campaign and no interest in finding out.

That said, I just downloaded a copy of the "private beta" which gives me access tomorrow and Saturday. My work schedule is completely fucked, but if I get the chance to play some, I'll let you know my thoughts.
 
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Solo is a heavy grind, it does have matchmaking however so you can ping their server and hope someone else is on the same mission as you are if you have no friends.

As far as Division 2 goes, I fucked around in it a couple hours tonight and... eh? It's pretty much the same game, just with some mechanics tweaks and in DC in summer instead of New York in winter. The thing about only gunning down dudes isn't true, the factions I've shot so far have a fair percentage of women in them. The only thing that raised my eyebrow is that the first NPC you recruit for your base is a STEM genius young black woman doctor with an arabic last name. The only thing she was missing on the bingo card was a girldick, and I wouldn't be but so shocked if that was a later reveal.
 
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Varg Did Nothing Wrong said:
Can we talk about The Division 2 here? Because I have a contact who's been playing the closed beta and he says that

1. the enemy faction is almost entirely white guys
2. nearly every friendly NPC is a woman, usually a colored one
3. if there is a male friendly NPC then he's almost always getting yelled at by a strong independent womyn of color
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With the amount of shit they caught for the Rikers faction, I wouldn't be surprised. People freaking out about escaped inmates being bad guys while not batting an eye at the NYC Sanitation Department becoming a terrorist organization was one of those loose hope in humanity moments for me.
 
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Man, are you kidding? Ton of people shrieked over how you were gunning down the working class - never mind that they were burning people alive. The whining about all the black people you shot (note that every single faction has at least three voice and skin sets, white black and Hispanic, but their "blackness" came down to wearing hoodies in the middle of winter...) didn't relent either.

As long as Ubisoft don't go down the EA route and paint themselves as pioneers, I don't think this kind of diversity is bad really. Ever since AC Unity they've had a wide mix in their enemy and support NPCs.
 
Hm, I played the beta only a tad. But def saw more than just white guys during the shoot out, haven't met the female NPC's but the male NPC I met was a black guy who seemed like the techy type. I also gotta say, I did like the enemies weren't bullet sponges and went down fairly fast.
 
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Okay, I played a few hours of the Beta and... I kinda hate it.

See, in the original Division, while it was geared to playing with other people, you can do the entire campaign solo. It's tricky, but I know it was doable because I did just that (pat myself on the head, what a good boy am I). This one however has made it explicitly clear it is going to fuck you up repeatedly if you play solo. I'm a level three character and I'm constantly being one-shot killed by assholes with grenade launchers. And these are level 3 enemies as well so its not like I should be out of my league here.

One thing of note is while the enemies aren't as bullet-spongy as they were in previous games, neither are you.

Further, I don't know if its just me, but I'm having a hell of a time even seeing the enemy half of the time. While the new scenery is really nice looking in a dystopian post-apocalypse sort of way, it makes locating enemies a bit of a chore. The original Division's enemies were easy to pinpoint, usually being characters wearing reds and oranges in a backdrop mostly consisting of blues and greys. Here though it all meshes together so half the time I don't even know where the enemy is until they start shooting me from behind my cover.

Next, this is a Ubisoft game and I'm experiencing the usual gamut of Ubisoft glitches. I've had the Beta soft crash on me three times thus far, I've had a character spawn behind a wall and then die with an key to advance to the next part of the mission, therefore rendering the whole operation moot, and I've had doors that refuse to open and open doors refuse to let you through unless you back up 5 yards and attempt again.

Also for the whole Woke aspect everyone is chomping at the bit about... c'mon people, this is fucking Ubisoft. Being surprised by it being woke is like being surprised a tuna sandwich tastes like fish. The NPCs I've met thus far have all been not-white characters (I think the only white guy I've met was the quartermaster and he doesn't even have a character), half of them were women. So if this is a thing that bothers you, you've been forewarned. Thankfully though it hasn't been hammering people over the head, but I'm sure someone will be offended by something later on and chowderheads like The Quartering will have something new to sperg about for a week.

One upside though to all of this, while you're only allowed to only make a randomized character in the Beta for some reason, I was able to hit random just enough times to create my own post apocalypse Travis Tritt. And yes, in case you were wondering, your character is once again a mute murder machine who communicates in cutscenes purely by smiling and nodding before going out and gunning down people in the street. Y'know, to bring peace and order back to a lawless land.

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tl;dr - The Division 2 is a pretty open sandbox game that goes out of its way to fuck you up if you dare not play co-op. It's 90% built okay, but with a few glaring glitches that mar the overall experience. This can hopefully be patched up before full release, or in AAA gaming standards, three months after the game's release. Expect it to be on sale for about $20 come Black Friday.
 
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I dunno about it fucking you over if you don't play in co-op, I soloed some shit and came out quite alright, including the grenade launcher guys. Infact, I was kinda wondering if I've gotten too good because of Division 1 or if the combat was too easy. Also, I think with how it was easy to pin point enemies in Division 1 was because they wore bright colors or this grey background, here with how lush and colorful the scenery is they will blend together since they do wear somewhat more bright looking clothing.
 
The tired cat said:
I dunno about it fucking you over if you don't play in co-op, I soloed some shit and came out quite alright, including the grenade launcher guys. Infact, I was kinda wondering if I've gotten too good because of Division 1 or if the combat was too easy. Also, I think with how it was easy to pin point enemies in Division 1 was because they wore bright colors or this grey background, here with how lush and colorful the scenery is they will blend together since they do wear somewhat more bright looking clothing.
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Yeah, after my wee bit of a tirade, I decided I wasn't going to DSP it and call it quits. I went back at the demo and tried looking at it in different ways, experimenting just how much I can manipulate the AI and how far I can pull the boundaries of a fire fight so it is doable, but the game and the grenadiers do make things a bit annoying, but I suppose that's there to prevent people who would prefer to snipe from a distance (like me).

Combat notwithstanding, has anyone else been noticing the sound mixing seems to be a bit off? I'm having a lot of times where my guns are falling silent in the middle of a firefight, or characters getting stuck in an audio loop. Best one was when I had an ambusher charging at me and continuously screaming "FUCK YOOOOU! FUCK YOOOOU! FUCK YOOOOU!"

I'm just under 5 hours with the demo and it's... eh. It's not absolutely terrible, but at the same time this feels like standard fare Ubisoft open-world shooty game.
 
I will say, I'll give props with the Dark Zone, since when you enter it, you'll see a rating for each landmark thus knowing how much of a challenge you'll face, plus it'll also mark what gang is located at said landmark. So, you def can be more prepared and not wonder into a place loaded with high level dudes from a faction that you know is more better advanced than the others. But the draw back is that it seems DZ is much smaller and it's spread into three locations with each on in it's separate area. Plus, I did like the outpost idea where you can get yourself another safe zone which is also loaded with loot. Also, yeah the sound mixing def gets glitchy at times as I had one guy repeat the same line of dialogue four times.
 
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The confusing thing about Division 2 is that the demo has disabled the ping powers. Y'know, that super fucking helpful feature from Division where your HUD would highlight hostiles who are otherwise a bitch to spot when they're crouched behind a car at dusk? That's probably my biggest aggravation with the demo, I'll be walking down a street and nearly in the laps of a bunch of gang members before I can actually spot them, and I spend a solid minute in every fight trying to find where the last fucking guy is hiding so I can shoot him and keep going.
 
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robobobo said:
The confusing thing about Division 2 is that the demo has disabled the ping powers. Y'know, that super fucking helpful feature from Division where your HUD would highlight hostiles who are otherwise a bitch to spot when they're crouched behind a car at dusk? That's probably my biggest aggravation with the demo, I'll be walking down a street and nearly in the laps of a bunch of gang members before I can actually spot them, and I spend a solid minute in every fight trying to find where the last fucking guy is hiding so I can shoot him and keep going.
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I was watching demo gameplay earlier and noticed they also disabled most of the gadgets. There's no way that shit isn't ready a month before launch so the only reason I can think of is that they want to tease the players who got free codes because a real "beta" would enable everything for testing.
 
Motherfucking cunt, my private beta invite got swallowed by a spam filter and I've only just seen it.

Cockblocked.
 
You really missed nothing, if you've played the first Division. It was basically just a tweaked version of the first game in a different city.
 
That's the reason I'm excited about it though, lol

Ivr done basically everything in Div1, trophies and commendations included, so having a legitimate 'reset" of sorts has sparked up my interest. It's also the reason so many of my hours were ploughed into the Survival DLC.
 
Open beta this weekend, 1st to the 4th of March. Three story missions, five side missions, access to the dark zone, level 8 cap.

New level 30 mission as well, showing off the Black Talon end game faction, along with some abilities that weren't in the private betas.
 
I wasn't mad at Division for wokeness, although it was eyerolly. They even had a stupid phonecall recording of some kid coming out of the closet to their parent. The main thing I'm wondering, is everyone still ugly as fucking sin? Even compared to their own voice actors?

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