1684

It’s also kinda blah that, so far, every named weapon or piece of gear I’ve been rewarded for leveling up (in the “watch leveling system) has been worse than my current weapons or gear.

1685

The named Classic M1A Baker’s Dozen at season level 57 is awesome though.

1686

I could complete that sentence with almost every feature in Division 2, unfortunately. I like the gameplay, but most of the skills are blah. The specializations are blah. The loot is blah. The watch level-ups are blah. Most of the player choices are just blah.

They’ve made some big improvements since release in particular with skill builds, which are viable now since skill power actually increases the power of your skills now (crazy idea). I still feel like they need to rethink how the do stats on gear and customization, though. Playing as a skill build, I think the game feels like utter garbage once you start hitting certain difficulties. SMG laser beams from 150m away that instantly shred my armor whenever a bullet hits me are no fun. And the guns feel like absolute crap when you’re not focusing your gear there. I’m usually not one to complain about bullet sponges in games (I find the TTK is way too low for my tastes in most shooters) but when you have to expend 60+ rounds into a trash-tier red enemy to bring him down combined with the whole one bullet and I’m almost dead kind of thing? It just feels shitty.

Depending on my skill loadout, gameplay for me devolved into tossing out an effective skill every 20-30 seconds and then just feeling useless until the cooldowns came back up. The game needs more active skills to use, not a fire and forget thing every 30 seconds. A good example is the Demolitionist’s mortar turret, which is one of the few skills that I felt like I was actively playing my character as opposed to a skill-based pez dispenser every 20 seconds.

If I were making the game, I’d take away the concept of +weapon damage entirely. Every single person should be able to do respectable damage with a gun in a shooter like this. I’d change it so “Red” stats were more about increased accuracy, stability, reload speed. You could do something similar with skills, where you’re keeping the idea of reducing skill cooldowns and increasing duration of them as opposed to making them directly more powerful. You could also do it so that you get active skill slots based on skill tier. So if someone is running around with 6 skill tier, you they could have 4 skills equipped whereas someone without any would have the default 2.

I just want some interesting choices in this game and it’s nearly devoid of them in any manner. The gameplay carried it for me for a while despite that, but as I described that really starts to break down and fall apart at a certain point in difficulty. Taking dozens of rounds to kill a red enemy when a bullet or two annihilates you just feels really off in a game like this. I’m supposed to be this highly trained Division agent with access to crazy technology and some jackass holding a SMG sideways 150 meters away kicks the shit out of me almost instantly?

Anyway, at this point I’ve almost completely soured on the game. It was okay, but man it could just be a whole lot better, IMO.

1687

That’s been one of the big irritants since day one, though it’s one that is shared by more than a few shooters. Many games position you, the player, as some sort of super soldier, yet turn around and do stuff that makes you feel like a green draftee. Gear? Your government and military service make you buy it! Specific types of gear? Through some magical force your weapons get better over time, even though they are the exact same weapon! The same magical force changes the ballistic qualities of bullets to somehow make the rate at which they are fired affect how much damage they do–two identical bullets end up doing vastly different amounts of damage just because one is fired one at a time rather than in a burst.

But yeah, the whole elite soldier vs. gang banger dichotomy is ludicrous. I realize all of this is part of balance, and a game like this needs a lot of that sort of symmetry and zero-sum manipulation to keep on track, but it just makes me question the value of this sort of game design in general. It’s getting old and shop worn, even though I still like playing these sorts of things mostly, I’m not sure for how long.

1688

Using the Hard Wired set is the only effective remedy for this.

1689

Yeah, that’s the one I’ve been using. Due to the mechanics of it it kind of further limits what skills you want to use as well. At least that’s been my feeling. You really want to take advantage of how it resets cooldowns. I wish it could recharge hive charges or something.

Hard Wired and a lot of skill haste got my cooldowns pretty low, but the more effective skills like the seeker mine are just fire and forget. Makes you notice that when you taking the shooting part out of the game there’s not a whole lot of game left, imagine that. That’s what made me think maybe skill tier should allow you to equip more skills, or at the very least there needs to be more active use skills like the Mortar Turret or the chem launcher. Things that you can use fairly consistently as opposed to just popping a cooldown and waiting.

1690

Anyone on PC in the QT3 guild want to help/get the rest of the hunter masks for DC?

1691

I should probably try and complete my set of DC hunter masks. So yeah, I’m theoretically interested. (‘Itsatrap’ in-game.)

1692

Are you in the QT3 guild? I have 5/8 keys. Need to do the 4 hunter one as well as 2 others.

Just tried helping 2 random people and our group of 3 got rekt by the 4 hunters that appear at once.

1693

-run around the Christmas tree summon 4
-shoot out the light and salute the flag for 1
-jumping jacks in west Potomac pool for 2
-shoot out window targets for 1
-press 2 buttons racross courtyard DUA for 1
-press computer in underground and run out to Washington memorial pool to shoot a hanging light for 1
-press computer visit 3 gravesites across monument neighborhood to summon 2

forgot one: shoot out the windows in order on the masoleum

1694

My current set ups:I did a LOT of farming for a specific Red/Offense Rifle/SMG build, with the M1A as the main weapon. Maxxed critical chance and high critical damage, high weapon damage, some key targeted skills on my gear. Got it to where instead of running and screaming when a big named boss came in in the end of a mission, I stood there like Tony in Scarface screaming “Say hello to my little friend” and take them down with my rifle. Mainly playing at Challenging. My brother and I both put similar builds together and have been mostly successful, though there are some missions that are always going to be a PIA.

However, I missed my skills, so for fun I’m creating a specific HW build, with China light chest piece with Skilled and Short Circuit on my backpack. With Skill at Tier 6, I can throw out seekers, then when I set up my mortar it immediately resets the seekers so I can throw those out immediately again. I have a 1 in 4 chance of a skill kill resetting the skills again, or I can kill my mortar, immediately throw out seekers, which then immediately resets the mortar, etc. Throw in shooting, even though I can go to to to with big named yellows, and I can do a LOT of damage while playing solo. My coop partner/brother still plays his red/Rifle build and the two of us are having a lot of fun wreaking havoc on DC.

BUT - I have to say, at this point, the best part of the game is the coop nature with my regular partner. It’s a really good game for coop. I’d actually quit when we hit level 30 GS500 and had been there a while, there was no loot or gear better than what I had so the game became repetitive. A loot and shoot with no loot. Jumped back in with WONY. Enjoyed it so far, doing the manhunts, but I can tell it’s getting kinda repetitive again. We don’t do raids or DZ or timed runs, etc.

That said, I have easily gotten my money’s worth. Hundreds of hours.

1695

There is a veritable tonnage of different loot for different specs from different manufacturers, compared to something like Anthem. I suspect that there is only so much different in real-world backpacks and guns that they all sort of blend together.

1696

That was fun.

1697

Ok, I still don’t understand Exotics and crafting. This latest update supposedly allows you to reconfigure Exotics, and upgrade lower level exotics. But at the crafting bench, the recipes all require the specific weapon at a certain gear score level. There are no gear score levels any more, though, so, wtf? How is this supposed to work?

1698

Those are the old blueprints, I think. They existed before. I think the new ones are at the blueprint vendor by the crafting table.

I haven’t played and checked myself, but I believe that’s what I recall reading in the notes.

1699

M1A nerfed 40%

There are no gear score levels past 30. The NPC next to the crafting bench sells the blueprints.

1700

I bought the blueprints, though. Didn’t make a difference. I’ll check again later though. I could have not given it enough time to register, or something.

1701

The Div2 reddit channel is filled with min-maxing tryhards going berzerk. Then again, Massive appears to have learned absolutely nothing from the road leading to 1.8 in Div 1 (which left Div1 in an OK place).

1702

They cost me 30% skill damage by flat removing a weapon talent from the game again ><

1703

And I don’t get it. Massive, if there is a meta gun out there that is just fine but maybe does a teensy bit too much damage to your precious NPCs, how about fucking trying something OTHER than nerfing the damage??? Like, make it rare. Real rare. Or make it have even slower reload. Or something.

It’s like the NPCs are running Massive’s number’s department.

Or we could just say “Massive is one of those dipshit dev houses that attempts the Sisyphean task of trying to balance for PvP in a primarily PvE game” and call it good