Tom Clancy's The Division

Sure- one other thing I’d add is that The Division’s excellent grouping system works in survival. If I run into another player warming up at a fire, I’ll often invite them to my party.

Ahh excellent thanks… seems like a good deal

I had such a lukewarm–even negative–first impression of this game in the open beta and now I absolutely love it.

It is amazing how well grouping with randoms works. Someone invited me to their group in the PVE areas and neither of us communicated via mics or text. Yet we had a great time and we were very well coordinated while running missions together for about 2 hours. I’m not sure if a game has handled seamless grouping and coordinated team-play (even without direct communication) this well since Left 4 Dead.

I’ve also been spending a lot more time in the Dark Zone. I love the atmosphere, the increased threat and deadliness of the AI mobs, the many tense moments encountering other players and how my heart races when calling in an extraction helicopter. I was grouped with randoms in the DZ and we had a ton of gear to extract. We started the extraction process which drew a lot of aggressive mobs to the site along with a high-level player that went Rogue and vaguely threatened us. It was like an intense standoff in a movie while the seconds were ticking down. We were waiting to see if this high level player whom went Rogue was going to attack us or cut our loot at the last second all while jockeying for positions of advantage around the extraction site.

Now that I have a higher DZ level I have been considering gong Rogue and attacking other players. I haven’t done that yet since several of the players I have encountered in the DZ have been friendly and helpful and I just don’t have the heart to turn on them. Even in cases where I haven’t formally grouped with players we have informally worked together to take down mobs and extract gear…which is still quite tense since either one of us could go Rogue at any moment and sabotage the other.

I am loving my time with this game.

Also listening to the muffled voices of the Cleaners and shooting their gas tank till it leaks and explodes is as enjoyable as the first time.

This right here is one of life’s simple pleasures and I never get tired of it. I was so bummed in the campaign when I took out the cleaner boss that I wouldn’t see them around anymore but of course they’re still out there, just waiting for me to plink their little tanks.

Nice to hear about your DZ experience, it’s heartening to know that there is fun to be had there. Are you playing on Xbox? I would do a run with you if we can work it out.

I am just so happy to see Qt3 playing and enjoying this game again! And loving to read all of your stories.

Don’t forget, this week is Double Proficiency Cache week… Twice the number of cache to farm!

OK, I was wondering how I ended up with two proficiency caches last night. Anyway yeah, I’m still going strong, play at list a little each day. I’ve got a good setup going, four items from the Strikers’ set and two from the Banshee’s Shadow set give me lots of damage and ammo, and I’ve started using the mobile cover power lately, it’s great in a pinch. But I’m also thinking of my next move, maybe into the expansions or just the DZ. I really should just jump into the DZ, can’t live in fear of a few bad actors. And my gear score is 278 so I can probably take what they’re dishing out.

My suggestion on DZ is to farm at the higher end of DZ - in those areas the enemy AI are pretty strong - you will survive but not a rogue players as they mostly geared for PVP (which means they suck against AI enemy and so they stayed away from the higher DZ levels). You get to farm in somewhat peace.

I’ve been playing on PC unfortunately.

Though I do own the game on Xbox so if I become more active there I would be happy to join up for some time either in DZ or PVE. :-)

I wish my progress would sync between the two platforms…would make this easier.

In that case, add me! rhamorim as in here.

I’ve hit level 24, and that was the wall I hit the last time around as well. It seems like enemies become a LOT more dangerous around this level - am I just getting worse at the game, or did anyone else see this as well?

I didn’t hit a wall like you did, but there were definitely difficulty spikes when I played through this recently. Fortunately it was easy to just do some side missions and level up beyond the recommend mission levels. That’s the way I did it at least.

Cheers. I will add you next time I am at my PC and have UPlay running. I think my Uplay name is something silly like Wr3nch (an old handle that I don’t use much anymore).

I think I am already friends with @divedivedive on the Xbox so I will keep you in mind if I get more active with the Division on the console.

Another pc player here - nihm on uplay… I think?

I added a ton of qt3’rs when it first dropped, but I rarely see anyone online on the rare occasions I play. That’s another thing I miss from the opening month- seeing tons of little icons on my map indicating friends in the vicinity within their own game world.

Friend requests sent to Wr3nch and nihm. ;)

Finally did it, stepped through the barrier and into the dark zone last night. And it went really well, all things considered. In fact, it went fairly uneventfully. I came across enemies pretty soon after entering, found a couple high end items, and made my way to an extraction site, fired a flare. Then a moment of panic as another player character joined me, and I unloaded my assault rifle right into his face. I thought “oh crap, my first time in and I’ve already gone rogue” but luckily it didn’t register as an attack, maybe that doesn’t happen until you attach items for actual extraction?

Anyway, we sort of unofficially teamed up since we weren’t chatting, sort of following each other around. I lucked into a couple of set item drops and headed to a second extraction, more difficult because enemies came at us from all sides, but we did succeed. Then I decided to stop pressing my luck and I bailed out. I’ll definitely be back, though, it’s a much more tense experience than standard PvE. I could see how it could get addicting.

You have to toggle rogue on. Just attacking another player no longer automatically flags you.

That’s a relief. I’ll be more careful in the future, my brain just wasn’t prepared to see non-enemies running my direction, I fired on instinct.

I didn’t know that! I’m thinking I might get back into the Division and maybe drag @tomchick with me.

I think the newer Rogue system in the DZ is much better now and less griefer friendly.

People cannot just hang around an extraction site and shoot you at the last minute. They now have to manually toggle Rogue status and everyone now knows that particular agent went rogue. They may even be highlighted on the mini map. It gives everyone a chance to properly react and prepare for an antagonistic agent.

How does being shot by someone with rogue toggled on differ from being shot by a non-rogue? Me not understand.