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

Hmm. It kept asking me for an activation code. I tried clicking past it but it wouldn’t do anything. Maybe I’ll tinker more today with it. Thanks all for the info. 👍

You need to log in to uplay account (web for me) and add the open beta to your profile.

Restart the uplay client and it should be there to dl.

Loved division 1, beta is all i wished for and more so far. Double clicking ui menus can die in a fire though.

Ooooh! I had my uplay logged in and stuff yesterday but was trying to get into the beta with the shortcut thing my Epic store created. Now I went directly into my uplay and it’s downloading from there fine. Thanks!!!

EDIT: got in and so far it’s amazing! Nothing says Badass-Superagent like Jorts! Maybe the full game will have some tubular Mom-Jeans too! Which are sadly making a comeback among those damned kids today.

The world building in Division is some of the best I’ve ever seen. The attention to detail is tremendous and really sets the scene quite nicely. Having said that I still have to consciously make an effort to stop and enjoy it once in a while because I get tunnel vision looking for the little glowy things (boxes, backpacks, bags, etc) among all the interesting scenery…

As I stated upthread, Ubi’s physical world builders are just absolutely the best. When I play the Division 1, I’m saddened that its amazing, detailed environment won’t be used again for something better. And when I played Watch Dogs two, I was sickened at the weak game Ubi built around its amazingly detailed San Francisco.

You know, maybe if it brought game prices down and allowed some positive iterative design, I wouldn’t mind games that reused those kinds of remarkable assets. Hell, Ubi itself did a good job recently here with New Dawn.

I think it would have been cool if they used NYC again, maybe build out the map more, and set it in a different time of year like two years later. You could even keep all of the same safehouses and stuff, and add a few new ones.

Show how the world has progressed from your actions in the first game, as well as the characters, and your base of operations. Maybe have the streets looking a bit cleaner, or have a quest chain about them trying to re-start up some public utilities and/or services.

You could have grass and plants starting to come up through the asphalt and stuff due to lack of maintenance, and set it during a lush season like summer, for a very different aesthetic - swap out the grey, snowy weather, for sun and saturated colours in essentially the same map.

You could update the lore with what happened to the factions from the first game - maybe the prisoners disbanded after you killed their leader, and just became random hoodlums. Maybe the public services flamethrower guys eventually laid down their arms and joined the rebuilding effort in a tenuous peace with your people, after you took out their crazy-ass leader.

I’m sure the new map will be just fine, but just once I’d like to see one of these games build on what came before in terms of setting, rather than feel this pressure to give consumers a “big new shiny” by creating an all-new map.

It is certainly something which the Yakuza series usually manages to nail with the use\re-use of Kamurocho, based on real-life Kabukichō, across the series’ story\timeline. So I’m not adverse to game developers reusing their time consuming, master-crafted "worlds’. It just has to be executed well, and not overdone to the point of being worn out, so it doesn’t come across as just a business excuse to cut development time and costs.

Yeah they have some really good art design. Even all the way back since Splinter Cell Chaos or the recent Wildlands, they really know how to do good open world maps. The weather effects are awesome in D2… the first time in a rainfall and then fog while in the Dark Zone was so awesome. Was sniping rogue agents and moving around… really built the atmosphere!

Compared to Anthem… this open beta seems to be really complete. You can just tell based on the loot and mission design how much farther this game is…even compared to something like Destiny 2. Just much more complete design.

Ubisoft have really got on top of iteration. The smart thing is to play every third game or so :)

I’m currently on mobile and too lazy to type so I’m crossposting my thoughts from GAF:

Played the Invaded mission with my buddy last night and we both had tons of fun. Also, the heavy demo spec (with shotty and grenade launcher) is da baws. Combat encounters felt way more dynamic than in the first game. AI constantly tried to flank and surround us, remote cars and drones were an actual danger we had to pay attention to and the feeling of slowly creeping around the arena to get better angles on the enemy was a welcome change from the turtling that worked so well in the first game. Initially I was a bit disappointed that scope attachments don’t work like in first person mode Wildlands but this plays nicely into tailoring your kit to fight at specific ranges. I’m pretty sure I’ll play shotties in the final version.

Locational armour on enemies also seems like it’s a new thing? I don’t remember being able to destroy the armour plates on enemies in the first game (only played first two months). The fact that the final mission featured only a few purple and elite enemies was also a welcome change but that will likely change on heroic versions of the mission s.

New player armour mechanic is also a good change, shooting feels a little better than in the first game. Loot at lower levels is also more interesting, and I’m hoping endgame sets and stats are better thought out than they were in the first game in the beginning, but from what I’ve seen on the loot in this endgame mission things look promising.

I have to echo the edgelord UI sentiment though. The menus I can deal with, but I really don’t need to see the geometry of my character model in the middle of the combat. Visuals are already cluttered enough and I hope Massive provides us with options to turn some of these elements off.

In any case, I plan to go balls deep into this game. Sekiro will have to wait.

I’m also pretty sure I will practically live in the DZ lol.

Overall the beta impression were extremely positive, double so because I’m going into this knowing what to expect based on the first game (which left me a little underwhelmed). And I even managed to hit all the beta goals for extra skins and attachments.

I played it for a couple of hours. It was OK. But I found the setting depressing and grim. I kept thinking - when is Gearbox coming out with Borderlands 3? Because that would be way more fun than this depressing, modern-age(ish) shooter. The UI is a mess. I kept looking for the recordings I found, but I couldn’t find them.

On my 1080ti I was getting some weird hitching. Sometimes as long as three seconds. Hope that gets fixed before release.

I’ll probably pick this up, but that’s mostly because I don’t have anything else new and shiny right now.

Had a lot of fun playing this weekend. I played through most of The Division solo when it came out a few years ago, so this weekend was the first time I ever played co-op with 2 buddies for a couple hours. Nice surprise to see the difficulty ramp up in some places - even early in the game with this beta, we had some challenging moments and needed to be really careful and thoughtful.

It’s surprising how similar the game is to the original in some ways, but it’s been long enough since I played it and it does enough different that I’ll probably get this on release.

We did run into a lot of bugs in the beta though - especially around weapon sounds not playing. But they have that listed as a known issue fixed in the final game, so hopefully that’s true.

Rumor has it that Gearbox is announcing Borderlands 3 at PAX East (March 28th-31st), and that it’ll have a pretty short time window between announcement and release!

Ooh, I hope it’s true.

Well I mean a biological agent has killed a decent chunk of New York and seems to be spreading rapidly to other population centers. Survivors are being preyed upon by rival factions of murderous gangs. Basic resources like food, water, electricity are getting harder to come by. “Grim” kind of goes with the territory.

Yeah, but Far Cry New Dawn’s post apocalypse world is pink! Maybe The Division 2 should have taken place in South Beach?

It worked for Dead Island. Nothing makes you forget the apocalypse faster than killing women in bikinis in the sun.

I really don’t need to deal with the bugs of a Division 2 when 1 is perfectly fine at the moment. All the weather effects in 2 I think is in 1 as well. The snow in New York will build on the clothing until you are completely in white. And the fog and mist. Just wow. I wandered the DZ just to see weather effect, it is the best out of all Ubisoft games I played.

It is kinda like MS Office: when 2010 is perfectly fine, do I really need 2019?

PS: the one thing I really want them to fix, the bullet sponge mechanic (for you and enemies), is not on the card. It would be a design triumph to have a one-shot-one-kill game built into a loot chaser.

Are you serious?

For a PvE game yes, PvP hell no! Can see the stats now:

Sniper Rifle
+141% Headshot Damage

PvP Bonus
+1000000% Opponent Rage Quit Bonus

One shot one kill mechanic would completely invalidate the loot chase aspect of the game.

Why do I even have to explain this?