The Division 2 - Make Washington D.C. Great Again

I played D2 first, but after hearing everyone in the D2 forums go on and on about D1 my brother and I tried it. BTW - I only play PvE which means no Dark Zone. We’d leveled up to max (before NYC DLC) at the time.

There were things I liked about it, and things where I really missed the interface improvements of D2. However, what really kept me from spending a ton of time in D1 was the lack of loot. I remember finding a clever and hidden way to get up into a 3rd floor window and into an entire floor of a business, with multiiple rooms, closets, kitchen, etc. And there was practically NOTHING in there. Mainly a few pairs of pants and a hat or two. I couldn’t believe I’d found this secret big area and no weapons, no armor, basically nothing.

And it was there pretty much that way everywhere. Just not much loot to explore and find.

I enjoyed the battles, the gun play, but I never could find what was “better”. In the forums when I asked, OK, what is it all of you are talking about that makes D1 so much better? the answer was basically the Dark Zone is better and the replayable sewers.

D1 is better because it has Survival. Division 2 is an overall improvement but this is a glaring omission that kind of kills my interest in playing anymore.

Yeah, I just couldn’t get into D1 because of the scarcity of loot and thus it killed my desire to really explore the map. Maybe if I played D1 first I would have enjoyed it more.

THIS. Survival is like a different interpretation of Battle Royale. You can pick PvE or PvP, PvE is more cooperative. There is no artificial circle but the closer you get to the centre the better the loots are so there is still pressure to move.

D1 isn’t strictly “better”. It’s that D2 was disappointing as a sequel that isn’t working any better.

It’s like D1 was a high budget, very ambitious game, that massively under delivered, and came out with lots of compromises.

D2 is a repackage built on the same stuff, but aiming much lower. It hits its goals better, but those goals already started as less ambitious. It’s just a side step that does some things better and some other things worse. And generally feeling less significant.

My complaints about D2 are mostly technical. D2 has a worse performing, worse looking engine, with worse models, worse animations and the most downright terrible implementation of some effect like local reflections and TAA (and worse LOD and other things). D1 doesn’t have these problems and locations look generally much better with a significant higher level of polish. It looks better, performs better, plays better. And it’s absurd that a game that comes out after instead of showing purely technical progress shows this kind of regress. It doesn’t make any sense.

Then yes, D2 is better designed with loot and some mechanics. But it ends up feeling just an exp pack to D1 without the same charm and polish. It also didn’t seem as well supported post-release, probably because it also under performed even compared to their lower expectations (they even recently canceled some update that was already announced).

Division 1 went through serious growing pains and spent years learning from their mistakes and improving the game. Then Division 2 launched and ignored every single one of those things. So many things they learned the hard way and then just screwed up all over again. Really bizarre, it felt like the D2 dev team was in total isolation and wasn’t aware of anything about D1 except the original design document or something.

Imo, the real problem is that D2 shouldn’t have existed.

Develop D1 as a platform, use D2 as a major update to all systems, then add D2 content as paid DLC.

That way you aren’t forced to reinvent the wheel, but worse, just because you have to excuse selling it again.

Even D2 itself is structured poorly. There’s an end game tacked on the main game, and a separate end game for the expansion. It doesn’t make any sense and it’s confusing where different players mix and there’s some sort of adapting system.

Division 1 was in such a good place when 2 came out. It was baffling to see the second game run into the same problems they’d already solved in 1. And the content add-ons weren’t on the level of survival and underground.

I was just about to buy the New York expansion during Ubi’s winter sale to give this game another shot. After January 6th I wasn’t feeling it anymore.

I didn’t enjoy D1 very much when it came out and didn’t ever go back to it. I got D2 and did like it for a while playing almost only solo. So I should go back and play D1 now that it’s been spiffied up a bunch?

D2 did ignore much of what D1 eventually figured out. That being said, the game was really fun, and for all of its issues did a bang-up job of giving us an even more dysfunctional DC than we got in 2020!

Barely.

…and so it ends not with a bang, but a whimper. The resolution of the last manhunt target turns out to not even have a cutscene or anything for a major character since TD1.

More content is coming later this year.

We see the ongoing conversation in our community and we understand that you are eager for news of what lies ahead for The Division 2.

Today, we are thrilled to confirm that there will be additional content for The Division 2 released later this year! It is your continuous passion and support which enables us to continue to build upon The Division 2 experience, and we cannot thank you enough for that.

Some of you had noticed that Title Update 12 was originally meant to be the last major Title Update for The Division 2, but thanks to your continued support, we are now in the early stages of development for fresh content to release later in 2021.

While it is still too early to go into more details today, you won’t have to wait too long, as we will share more as soon as we can. In the meantime, we again want to send a heartfelt thank you for your continued support throughout the Division 2 post-launch period. We cannot stress enough how much this means to us.

We also want to take this opportunity to update you on a few issues currently present in the game. An investigation into the crashes affecting many of you is ongoing with the highest priority, and we are also close to finding a fix for the missing volumetric fog and screen space reflections on PlayStation 5. We will let you know when we have a date for both fixes.

Until next time!

/ The Division 2 Development Team

The original plan was to end the story with the current patch. This is a live service game released about two years ago. WTF.

I never completed Division 2, and frankly, am not interested in the level grind w/ either Division title. I just loved roaming around the virtual DC and previously NYC completing missions.

Is the NYC expansion for D2 worth the 9 bucks? Do I have to be leveled to a certain extent, or does it scale to the player level? I wouldn’t mind revisiting NYC w/ the new maps.

EDIT: NM! I was able to use Ubi Coins to reduce the expansion to about 7 bucks so I’ll just roll with it.

I just picked up Warlords of New York for $9 myself - haven’t tried it yet, but I figured it was worth a go. The New York environment of the first game was definitely more interesting than DC.

Just have 2 manhunt targets left and I can be done with this game.

The NYC expansion is definitely worth a few bucks, if you like the core gameplay.

I’m already digging it. I’m biased, as I’m from the area, but NYC is a much more engaging environment than DC. There was an option to boost up to level 30 in order to travel to NYC, so I just went for it.

The NYC in winter that they crafted for the first game was such a magical and haunting experience. Almost unfair that they set the bar so high; overgrown DC in the summer couldn’t compare.

Yeah, the atmosphere in the first game is superb. DC is still pretty good, but the first one nailed it.

In TD1, if you get modestly lucky or just are persistent, you will see NY in foggy snow at night. THAT is beautiful.

Yo still playing TD1 here, no desire to grind all over again in TD2.