The only technical testing I’ve done with the beta of Ubisoft’s upcoming game The Division is seeing whether I’ll like it. So far, it has passed that test.
The third-person online shooter, the full title of which is Tom Clancy’s The Division and which I’ve been playing on Xbox One, is designed to at least trick my brain into thinking it’s awesome. It’s got lots of scheduled-rewards systems. We have loot-collecting, character-levelling, stat-upgrading, perk-adding and base-improving. It’s all the “RPG elements” to which modern gamers have grown accustomed, but with Clancy military stuff.
Empty kilojoules at this point, perhaps, but The Division has also got something more nutritious: the killer risk-reward setup of its anything-goes Dark Zone area. In most of The Division, you fight against computer-controlled enemies. In the Dark Zone, you’re suddenly able to turn your weapon on supposed human allies. It’s much more than straightforward PVP — the Dark Zone incorporates dynamics of deception and betrayal, the kinds of things that make modern board games great but rarely show up in multiplayer video games.
The Division, which will be out on March 8 for PC, PS4 and Xbox One, is set in New York City after a Black Friday biological weapons attack made Manhattan a less wonderful place to shop.
The game is billed as an action-role-playing game, and you’re able to go on big missions and side missions throughout a ravaged New York City, moving into more and more difficult neighbourhoods that will test your survival skills as you level up. The mechanics are familiar: it’s a third-person shooter with an emphasis on cover and the use of upgradeable power-ups to do things like scan the area for enemies or pull out a riot shield.
Story missions have you doing things like rescuing doctors in a Madison Square Garden that was converted into a hospital.
If the story missions were all The Division had, it’d live or die based on the quality of its mission design, its cover-shooting system, and on whether an MMO-style loot grind can be as fun with a backdrop of gritty realism as opposed to the more fantastical alien and demon worlds of other similar games.
The Division‘s got more than just story missions, though. It’s got that Dark Zone, which is the the area that sold me on the game. The DZ stretches many blocks north and south of the Empire State Building. That area contains other players and computer-controlled enemies and has its difficulty zoned out based on the player’s distinct Dark Zone character level (which can go up or down).
Human players who are in the Dark Zone with you can be friend or foe. The game doesn’t decide. The players do. If you see a player whose name is white, they haven’t killed any other players recently. They might (!) be a friend. Players with red names have killed others. They have gone rogue. Don’t trust them.
Here I am chasing two rogue players when two apparent friendlies showed up. They were fine. No knives in the back from them:
In this game, you kill enemies and collect loot. That’s how it goes. That catch here is that, in the Dark Zone, everything you collect has to be airlifted out before you get to keep it. You have to go to an extraction point, call in a chopper, wait for it to show up, tie your stuff to it and only then does it go into your stash.
Doesn’t it seem like you’d be pretty vulnerable while attaching your loot to that rope? Couldn’t a savvy nearby player kill you, take your loot and send it up themselves? Shouldn’t you have been playing with a friend guarding you? A trusted friend?
Here’s how that went down for me yesterday. First, I picked off some computer-controlled enemies in the Dark Zone.
I grabbed their loot.
I called in the chopper.
I backed off so that I could kill the computer-controlled enemies who descended on my extraction point.
I sent my loot to the chopper.
Then I spotted this guy trying to put his stuff on my rope. He turned his back. I moved away and raised my gun. Not nice, I know. I was going rogue!
I killed him and took his stuff.
But then I came under fire!
So much for that. I had been too greedy. I went down just as my original bag of loot was fully extracted.
I died, apparently killed by a computer-controlled lurker. The loot I’d just attacked another player in order to get was now resting by my corpse.
No problem. I respawned nearby and did a corpse run to get that stuff back.
And then I got the hell out of there.
The whole sequence of events took just a few minutes, full of familiar gunplay but much more unfamiliar decisions. I liked coming across other human players and deciding whether to help them or turn on them. I felt more devious deciding to betray that one guy than I would have been filling up some morality meter. I enjoyed constantly wondering who I could trust.
In these pre-release times, the understandable tendency has been to compare The Division with the familiar: It’s a little bit Destiny, a little bit Ghost Recon, a little bit Diablo and so on. It does have similarities with those games, but I’m more intrigued by what it’s doing differently. The Dark Zone adopts the exciting lawlessness seen in survival games like Rust and DayZ, as well as other more analogue multiplayer games where sides aren’t defined and trust isn’t guaranteed. Alliances, betrayals, strength in numbers and fear of the unknown aren’t your standard video game back-of-the-box bullet points, but they have rich potential.
Comments
46 responses to “The Division Is At Its Best When You’re Stabbing People In The Back”
Played quite a bit on the PS4 over the weekend, definitely will be picking this up day 1. Loved the PVE stuff and can see it’ll only get better with more loot and skills. Dark zone as mentioned in this article is great, at least after the first night, it was chaotic the first night, everyone just shooting anyone on sight without a care in the world. But slowly people started to work together over the course of the weekend, which I thought was cool.
I also really dig the amount of customization with all the weapons, it’s a min maxes dream, so many ways to tweak your guns (gear as well in the full release). For a loot game I feel the carrot is perfect too. Since there was sort of an artificial max level in the beta at around 7/8, you sort of got a feel for how it would be at max level. Slowly acquiring the perfect mods for your weapon or a direct upgrade on the one you had, made me feel I was always making, even if ever so slight, improvements to my character.
I will say grenades need to be reworked, way to cumbersome to select aim and then throw.
yeah first trip into the dark zone was a nightmare, it was just no rules carnage.
thankfully the server crashed while i was in there.. kept spamming rejoin and was 1 of the first to join back on my server and i ran riot in the darkzone looting most blue items for every item you can have. went back to pve and completed the missions from the beta and went back to darkzone and it was more controlled, everyone had a sense of what to do.
great stuff. looking forward to the full game.
agree on the grenades, took me a good few attempts to to figure out how to select a new type and throw it.
and the font size needs increases for consoles i think.. as we’re usually sat on a sofa not sat directly at a desk.. i could barely read the tips / on screen messages.
I’ve learnt to sit close to the tv now when playing games like this, due to my crappy eye sight. I’ve also bought a super comfy chair that I can pull in close. 🙂
This pretty much. I had the pleasant experience of a group camping the entry to the DZ. No loot drops, just killing. It’s things like this that spoil the game. I had much better experiences after though.
A team of rogues had called in an evac on a carpark, and as we went to ambush them, we got flanked by an additional team of rogues. Needless to say we held our own, but got annihilated.
I have TWO complaints about Division though:
1. LOCALISED MATCHMAKING – Not once did I get paired with fellow Australians.
2. VOICE CHAT – The number of times I could see someone talking, but not here them was too damn high. The solution was for the offender to unplug the headset.
If they sort those out by March, I’ll forgive the massive downgrade in graphics because the gameplay was actually decent – unlike a title they hyped last time..
Good. Take your Care Bear-ness back to WOW. A lot of us like playing a game that is EVE light.
I only ventured into the dark zone once and I love the vibe. I didn’t realise, actually that it was even a PVP area at first. I did meet one guy with a red name/health bar but it turned back into regular as I watched. I wondered about that. It occurred to me that he might have accidentally killed someone and run out the clock until he could be “trust” again. Maybe it was a glitch. All I know is, he wasn’t hostile to me and my gear was extracted with no problem.
I like the Dark Zone but I think it will be the story that sells me on the game. I played Destiny for a year and definitely got my money’s worth, but ultimately I’m not ready for another shoot & loot quasi-RPG at this stage. If I pick it up I can see myself playing through the story then stepping away from it instead of playing for the sake of playing. I don’t think I’ll take the plunge unless I know the solo/story campaign will be worth the entry price.
Once you go rogue you’re on a timer, once that runs out you go back to normal again 🙂 The timer is just above your health bar if I remember rightly. I didn’t notice it at first, but I got killed by a dude and as I was bleeding out I could see his timer get reset when he killed me, then start counting down afterwards. Pretty neat system i think
Betrayals. I’m out. Being too trusting in the past (my 1 attempt at a Destiny raid was ruined by trolls, my friends and I haven’t put the game in since, so I guess the trolls win) has made me so cynical.
So basically, they copied DayZ.
Players can be either friendly or foe, but you won’t know until you have something they want. Then they might kill you, but they might not. Don’t trust anyone.
Dark Zone sounds great, but I already spent 1000+ hours doing very similar stuff in DayZ. Permanently watching your back and never trusting anyone really takes its toll. I don’t know if I can go down that path again.
Hmmm the Dark Zone might be similar to DayZ, but that’s not the whole game here.
Is just a section of the game, you could avoid it entirely if you wanted
So basically, they copied DayZ.
Players can be either friendly or foe, but you won’t know until you have something they want. Then they might kill you, but they might not. Don’t trust anyone.
Dark Zone sounds great, but I already spent 1000+ hours doing very similar stuff in DayZ. Permanently watching your back and never trusting anyone really takes its toll. I don’t know if I can go down that path again.
The difference being what you lose when you die. In this you only lose the DZ loot you have that needs to be extracted. You can carry up to 6 contaminated items before needing to extract the gear, so all of your existing gear doesn’t get taken. Even then all your gear might not get taken, I personally was only picking up what gear I needed so quite often left stuff on the ground.
Well perhaps it’s different enough that it won’t feel rehashed.
Nevertheless, I feel cautiously optimistic.
No Man’s Sky on the other hand, wooooo wooooo all aboard! The Hype Train is departing and by the power of Zeus I am all over that shit…
KOS!
I mean it seems they’ve lifted ideas from it,and I’ve never played dayz but read up on it heaps and iirc there’s no red names to indicate if ppl have been killing other players, and there’s also no computer controlled players in the dayz world with you, and you don’t get your loot airlifted up like that either?
And also most of the division seems to be pve, so it doesn’t seem that similar to me?
I can get what you’re saying not wanting to stress out so much, but it looks like that can be mitigated quite a bit if you play with friends too so….
Finding reasons not to like the division Yeh? I almost don’t blame you, ubisoft aren’t the most transparent company these days, but really they seem quite different to me man
Really not looking to hate on the game at all. I just hope it’s good, because it sounded awesome at first, I’m just keeping my fingers crossed that we don’t end up with another Watch_Dogs.
Yeh I’ve actually found myself not anticipating it too much at all, I want to but big games from the big studios seem to mess up a lot these days, and I’m a fucking cynical bastard because of it. Almost about to finish off dying light with my brother so this would be perfect for us,my fingers are crossed because beta reactions have been promising.
Now dark souls 3 and mankind divided? I’ll be crushed if they are anything but spectacular, the fan boy in me will never die completely!
How do you figure Dayz is just another one of those early access crap titles you find on steam that just uses and exploits early access program so that they’re able to do business without the same liabilities or having to reach and have the quality that is expected and comes with fully finished and released games like AAA titles and they never normally never get past alpha/beta state yet still sold and priced like a finished game which is totally the case with Dayz in fact Dayz was originally a free mod for another game lol which the mod version still is better btw. Let’s be serious here the Division is nothing like dayz in fact it’s so much more and a true AAA title there isn’t even a comparison between both titles.
Now your comparing both games based one minor aspect of the game that is only in one of its modes of play and at same time that aspect is and has been in many online games before Dayz even existed so do your research first because can’t see how players being friendly or foe in a PvP mode was a Dayz thing first lol please tell me you were joking. Plus dark zone alone in Division is better then the whole Dayz game and has so much more depth and going on in it then in the dayz game. You can play the dark zone against AI like you do in campaign, play coop with other players, or go PvP and either play it like death match modes no matter solo or team or be a troll and griefers and betray others. In Dayz while I agree plenty of trolls that make the game even worts then it already is either way there is still nothing but PvP no AI, no NPCs, no mission but PvP and Dayz surely wasn’t first to do that.
I was referring to the original DayZ.
Yeah, will be waiting to hear how the solo and co-op pvp holds up before I dive into this one. DayZ and Rust (and all those other games that promise exciting “trust or betrayal” pvp but really just devolve into shoot everyone on sight because they’re doing the same to you) showed just how these gameplay forms work in practice, and I’ve no interest in that style.
It sounds a lot like The Division is following the “PvP is optional, but we put all the best stuff in there so it’s not really optional” mantra.
I hope not, and that solo and co-op PvE is enjoyable on it’s own.
I’ve heard several quotes from enthusiastic media who got their hands on review sessions saying literally: “The best gear is there, to entice you into the Dark Zone.”
Which, y’know. Exactly what you said: ‘the best stuff [is] in there, so it’s not really optional.’
And screw that.
At absolute best, I’ll play the PVE co-op/solo stuff and spend all that time being vaguely resentful of the PVPers getting better gear for doing what I hate doing.
At worst, without alternate paths to the best gear, I probably just won’t bother.
I guess we’ll see how that all shakes out after reviews.
FWIW, the Dark Zone isn’t a “PvP area” as such. It’s a high level PvE area that has PvP enabled.
Yes, there were plenty of times I was KOS’d. But there were also plenty of times where I teamed up with randoms to take down some tough enemies, we extracted our loot and went out separate ways.
So long as you try to not get stressed out TOO much when somebody does kill you for your loot, it’s not that bad. Besides, in the beta at least, the best Dark Zone gear was from the vendors, not dropped. And nobody can steal that from you.
Enh. Tried the KoS playstyle in DayZ and Nether, tried to get into it, but at the end of the day it’s not the kind of escapism I’m looking for. The PVE seems right up my alley, but watching your back all the time for (frankly, inevitable) human betrayal (plus the technical/design aggravations/imbalances/exploits that other players listed in their review comments, that turn regular annoyances into outright bullshit) sounds like more frustration and stress than excitement and enjoyment.
“Sigh. Oh, and I’m dead and get nothing. Great. Thanks for being a dick, guy,” is kind of the opposite of a good time to me. There’s no excitement, just annoyance and frustration.
I don’t consider getting fucked at the last minute to be ‘rich, dynamic storytelling’, I consider it time wasted.
(Someone on the Internet was a prick? What a shocking twist.)
And that’s just being on the receiving end. I can’t even begin to relate to the kind of person who would actually enact the betrayal.
And yet here I am reading articles and watching videos of guys who are excited to do exactly that. And I can’t understand them. At all. It’s like being transported to an alternate reality where eating babies is the ‘in thing’, and everyone’s really looking forward to Baby BBQ-fest 2016. The fact that the devs and media reviewers are so excited about something that actively repulses me is probably the strongest indicator that that area probably isn’t designed for people like me to participate in at all. (“If you don’t like something… maybe don’t do it?”) So yeah, the plan is to avoid it.
I guess I’m really just hoping that the parts I think I really will enjoy (the base-upgrading, story, co-op exploration, map-clearing, etc) get their own powerful rewards.
I don’t want to feel obliged to go do this thing I hate to get the powerful/cool-looking gear I want to perform better/look better when doing the stuff that I do like.
Every designer worth their salt knows full well that reward systems influence player behaviour. And because that style of PVP content relies heavily on having other people participating (the players are effectively the content), developers frequently try to lure people who hate it, with better gear than they can get doing the things that they enjoy. And that basically foments resentment, in me.
Which is a shame, because the stuff which I like looks really damn good. So I’m hoping they don’t do that. It would suck.
That’s fair enough, there’s nothing wrong with not enjoying that type of play. I’ve played a fair bit of DayZ and I don’t KOS there, and that’s carried through to my playstyle in The Division beta.
I’d honestly be very surprised if the PvE sections didn’t also have good gear. It’d be strange not to. Like I said, even in the DZ, the vendors had much better gear than DZ drops in my experience. To afford that, you don’t even need to extract DZ loot and hope you don’t get shot, which seems to be the main frustration with the KOS. Just hunt Rogues and shoot NPCs in the DZ and you’ll be able to simply buy high-end gear – which nobody can steal by killing you.
In any case, I’m with you and looking forward to the PvE side more. The DZ is just a fun distraction for me.
Well said. I’m pretty much exactly in your camp here. It’s the reason I never really played Destiny, or much of any online game these days other than Battlefield.
By the way……Baby bbqfest? lol…..but I understand the point.
Wall of text aside? Folks in TAY are saying that they didn’t really notice much difference between DZ gear and regular solo/PVE gear, so there’s a better-than-zero chance that my fears are unfounded.
That would be nice. I would be pretty happy about that.
I hope to ease your concerns (or reinforce them) but gear is equivalent. A level 8 blue Scar-L from the “single-player” is equal to a level 8 blue Scar-L from the darkzone. The differences, thus far, are that single player vendors sell green-blue while darkzone vendors sell blue-purple and darkzone enemies drop blues more than single player enemies.
One thing I’m not sure about is that the only purples I’ve seen are vendor gear, but that’s probably some beta decision.
It’s not a perfect solution but you are correct that if you go in the darkzone and try to extract loot there is a good chance someone may try to kill you. But if you avoid loot and extractions and just kill (NPCs or players) for credits and simply buy the darkzone loot, you should be able to avoid most rogues as they focus on extractions and people with loot. But as I said, not a very good solution.
A neat thing about gear is that the raw power of a weapon isn’t too difficult to raise. Regularly find trash gear that is decent.
The rarer gear are pretty much just specialised versions of the gear. They will have the same damage output but have more perk slots. Which will add little boosts like heal you when you get a kill or increase stability after a headshot.
One thing that makes their PvP structure a little more friendly than the likes of DayZ is that one someone goes ahead and kills you they get an actual bounty on their head. The majority of the time I have played so far that means that they will often get their comeuppance pretty swiftly from all players in range.
You still lose your gear but the justice is sweet.
Despite the issues I had with the Rogue system. It is a pretty neat, friendlier version of those survival games. The damage someone can do to you by KoS is pretty minimal (except the rare case where you got a piece of gear way better than anything you own. But in my experience everything was pretty incremental. I would only ever be loosing 1 piece that would have been a small upgrade) so you still get to experience the tension but it doesn’t completely ruin your day.
Similar to the souls games pvp experience.
Definitely will turn some people off, but I would recommend giving the Dark Zone a go. My best experiences of the beta involved hunting rogue players.
When it comes to RPGs for me it’s all about the campaign/PVE not really into PvP in RPGs and I prefer and will play coop multiplayer at most as I feel that suits RPGs better So my biggest concern is whether they gonna have ways in PVE where you can still get the best loot without having to PvP as it is tradionally in online games and MMOs period. For example a player should be able to do special missions like strikes for example in destiny in either solo or coop to get better rarer loot or just like in all MMOs do missions similar to raids with others to get better loot. Division just like many online games and MMOs before it should have multiple ways to find and get the best and rarest loot so that no matter why and how you want to play whether PVE or PvP you have more then one choice to be able to get best loot no matter solo, coop, or PvP. No one should have to PvP if they want better loot that just is bad design and surprising if actually true because it’s not something you want t to do when your looking to be successful as a good and smart design always caters to more then one crowd of people.
Finally got sent a beta code… at 8:30 this morning! Work all day means I doubt I’ll be able to get in before the beta ends, which is a shame because this is looking like it might be really good!
Beta has been extended so you still have a chance!
That’s awesome! Guess I’ll be jumping in tonight then!
Please try not to make people stab people at the back. To be honest this beta is making people turning towards being rogue to abuse quick reward since it is abusable due to the red zone. I’ll just wait until the final release of dark zone and we can start seeing people shit it self coz they can’t easily go rogue with no consequences anymore.
I played quite a bit over the weekend and enjoyed it for the most part.
Liked:
– The darkzone is a really neat idea. a DayZ lite that offers up a similar experience with less risk.
– Character customisation, a bunch of cosmetic only stuff.
– Weapons and Mods are fun to play around with.
Didn’t Like:
– I understand it is an RPG but I didn’t like just how stat driven it was for what feels like a shooter. My biggest issue was the vast stat boosts gear alone can influence. Which meant many encounters where it is impossible to know the outcome. Sneak up on a guy the same level as you and shoot them with your shotgun and 1 hit them. Exactly the same situation with another guy and you only do 1/10 of their health. ( some of this could be due to lag, the servers were pretty sluggish for a good portion of the weekend )
– The Rogue system has some serious issues. I had a situation where two guys tried to kill me in the Dark Zone. I somehow managed to kill them both and survive. They ran straight back after respawning. (no longer rogue as it resets on death) and just followed me waiting for a good time to both focus fire on me. I knew they were going to do it. But I couldn’t do anything first otherwise I would go rogue, and I had some decent gear that I didn’t want to have to fight off rogue hunters to keep.
– Another problem is accidentally going rogue when working with other players. Occasionally a team of 4 players would be rogue holed up in an alley way. with 6 or 7 other players hunting them down. At the mouth of the alleyway with 7 people all shooting down it and strafing to avoid fire often ends up with a few stray bullets in a friendlies back. Most of the time the group you were with understood the accidental state. But that doesn’t help other users approaching the encounter to just blow you away.
This is even worse if one of your friendlies dives into your shotgun blast which happened to a friend of mine. He was completely downed and our party went into rogue status. The guy my friend accidentally hit understood it was an accident and crawled over to us to revive him. But because we were rogue we couldn’t. I wish we could have gotten him up and negated our rogue status.
This isn’t very fun, particularly when you are running the dark zone solo. It pays to stick with other people but accidentally going rogue is a bit messy. I would like to see a friendly fire toggle ( You already have friendly fire turned off if you are in a party ). Where if you have it turned off you can only shoot PvE enemies and rogues. Then if you want to go rogue you just have to flip it off.
– The PvE encounters got pretty samey pretty quickly. I hope with access to more abilities in the full release will help this.
Overall I had a good time, particularly when running around with friends. The dark zone is a neat idea. Players wiriting the narrative definitely helps and creates situations better than any possible scripting ever could. I think it will help the longevity of the game a lot. I love the customisation but wish your survival was a little less gear reliant and the gear focussed more on customising your play style.
One more serious problem, the stash is too small. 38 backpack, 30 stash and 30 extracted. 5 rounds of extraction fills the extraction stash and it is advisable to not carry anything in backpack into the DZ as your private items drop on the floor on death but you can pick it up after.
Now my stash is all blues, equipped yellow, blue and purples. Need bigger stashhhhh.
Backpack space goes up with better backpacks, I also wouldn’t be surprised if your stash increases with missions from the base.
Hopefully it does, maybe once crafting is in game I’ll be dismantling those guns for parts instead. One problem is even mods are considered as 1 item, technically you can cheat so save space by adding unused mods into guns that you put in the stash which effectively save space.
I probably played around 16 hours on PS4 over the weekend. Hit level 8 and Dark Zone rank 12, so essentially did everything I could in the beta bar purchasing the Gold weapons from the DZ safe house.
Likes:
– Graphically and atmospherically, the game is stunning. No, not up to the E3 2013 levels, but very nice.
– I’m very impressed with how well the game ran, particularly for (a) an online RPG and (b) a Ubisoft online RPG.
– I personally really enjoyed the mechanics. The enemies weren’t as bullet sponge-y as some of the initial videos made out, though some of the yellow tier enemies could take a little too long.
– The loot and progression system is really solid. Initial impressions are it’s less grindy and actively hostile to the players than say, Destiny. Obviously that could change in the full game. Weapons and mods are good. Player perks and talents are fun. Having the cosmetic gear separated from the stat gear is great.
– The Dark Zone is, in theory, incredibly fun.
Dislikes:
– The world does seem a little sparsely populated. However, AngryJoe and dev streams have said Ubi deliberately toned down the NPC and especially roaming NPC spawn rates to encourage players to PvP more for more efficient testing.
– The game is fairly light on content – I know it’s “just a beta”, but I really do hope Ubi have a good end-game content plan.
– The Rogue system needs a little reworking. Firstly, they should definitely have the initial hostile-but-not-Rogue status (i.e. the “shit, that was an accident” status) a different colour to full on Rogue. I quickly learned the difference after killing an agent I thought was Rogue but actually wasn’t, therefore marking me as Rogue.
Due to the Rogue timer resetting on kills, and the limited DZ size in the Beta, you basically ended up with two extremes: either nobody goes Rogue because it’s too hard to evade legitimately, or Rogues just found easy to cheese camping spots. For example, near one of the entrance checkpoints, there’s a roof top which is literally accessible by only one ladder. The amount of Rank 5 Rogues I’ve found up there just mowing down people who tried to kill them.
I think they need to strike a right balance with the Rogue mechanic – too easy and you just end up with DayZ style KOS griefers. Too hard and nobody wants to go Rogue, meaning you never encounter that mechanic. FWIW, I never went Rogue apart from that one accidental time. Focused more on NPCs and Rogue-hunting.
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Overall though, I’m incredibly impressed. Still being cautious though, as I’ve been burnt by betas before with Destiny.
I know that ladder and area you are talking about and the funny thing is that the system is perfect. People are just too greedy on both sides.
I climbed up there and died. I then found some strangers and said “hey lets not go there and they’ll come down” (they had 300+second timers). Sure enough they got bored waiting for free pleb kills and came down and we mowed them down.
It is Tom Clancy, it is surprisingly tactical. If you have trouble with shooting friendlies, maybe dont shoot? control your shots, withdraw a little bit, dont chase that carrot of killing rogues so hard. Patience. Be the hunter grasshoper!
It’s actually an intelligent system. yes going rogue makes you a target but its not that easy. including the annoying re spawn timer you get dying as a rogue its a well balanced system.
I played all weekend finished all the pve and attained the best guns and gear (yellow and purp) i spent most of my time solo in the DZ with a mic and found a lot of players wanting to join up and hunt or be hunted. when you realize that dying isn’t the end of the world you get less annoyed with it. if you want phat loots just extract in the quieter areas.
tldr, its a smart (and absolutely beautiful (XB1)) game that makes you think how you play people as well as the game.
I found a few people on Xbox didn’t seem to realise other people could hear them when they use game chat.
I’m assuming that’s what it was as others couldn’t hear my team when we were using party chat.
I spent a good chunk of the weekend playing this on PS4. Managed to finish the mission and side missions on the Friday night then ventured into the Dark Zone for the rest.
The Dark Zone is fun but unless your in a group I found other groups with 2-4 players would happily go rogue. Not a nice feeling getting shot in the back. The Dark Zone just felt empty and I was struggling to see/find things to do without shooting other players. I guess this is the point but a few challenges wouldn’t hurt like an encounter with a high level AI where everyone fights to kill, then fights for the loot.
Overall I am looking forward to playing the PvE and jump into the PvP to get better gear etc but definitely going to have to find an online group of Aus players for the PvP. Its good to hear they are going to populate the world a bit more as it did feel quite empty for the size and constantly hitting the edges of the map.
loving it so far except that both maps are seemingly completely devoid of mobs you can go whole blocks without anything at all to shoot.
stupid stuff gamers do #143: what I dont understand is why AFTER you attach the things to the copter someone lobs in a grenade and causes a mass shooting, AFTER everyones got rid of these loot so its virtually a waste of time … seriously gamers are stupid.
One small technical thing that blew my mind when I realized what happened.
I joined a friends group but it said it was full and would change phases in 30 seconds. I expected that in 30 seconds I would hit a loading screen and be taken out of my darkzone lobby and into my friends darkzone lobby.
It did change what lobby I was in but it didn’t take a loading screen, it seamlessly changed lobbies while I just kept walking down the street.
I was amazed at how seamless the instance/phase change was in the Dark Zone. I wish other games had that effortless feel to it.
Side note: the game chat fidelity is amazing (on the Xbone anyway). I was in a group of 3 that ran into another group of 3. We were sizing each other up with bullets about to start flying when we switched from party chat to game chat. The clarity was fantastic. We spent a few minutes having a chat with the other guys laughing and talking about previous battles we had. We went our separate ways without a drop of blood spent 🙂
The beta was way too short. I got all items weapons and armor completed everything in a day