I'm having a blast (Gaming)

by Kahzgul, Thursday, March 10, 2016, 20:09 (3183 days ago) @ CruelLEGACEY

I caved and bought the Division yesterday. Thanks to a perfect storm of events (late evening nap + sick daughter who wouldn't sleep for more than 20 minutes at a time) I ended up playing the game from about 1am-5am, so I'm starting to get a feel for how it all works. Some initial thoughts jump out to me (mix of positive and negative):

Hope she feels better!

* No story is better than a really bad story

Destiny has taken plenty of knocks for its lack of story or character development, and rightfully so. While the Division clearly makes an effort to establish characters with motive and personality, and have you develop a relationship with them, I've already found myself wishing the game had a Destiny-like void in that department. The writing in the Division is that bad. I'm talking worst of the worst, overblown dialog that flipflops between painfully cliche and utter nonsense. Making things worse is the fact that the player character never says a word, never reacts to anything these idiots are rambling on about. I've already begun skipping cutscenes because what little info they communicate about the plot just isn't worth sitting through the horrible dialog and voice acting.

I strongly disagree with your assessment of the Division's story. The voice acting is actually very strong (even the detective from Arrow delivers some fun lines, and he normally just chews the scenery), and as you move deeper into the plot, it becomes engrossing. Yes, the initial set-up is thin, at best. No, you don't really care about the people you're thrown in with at the start. But then it gets better and better and better. Start collecting the cell phones and data drives. Watch the videos you unlock as you play. I found one that foreshadows some of the endgame enemies (I assume) and holy shit are they some scary mo-fos. Also found some CCTV footage of the "rioters chasing down a couple of civilians" that makes me want to kill them all on sight. The game as excellent atmosphere and does a very strong job of pulling you in, bit by bit. I've come to like these characters around me as I see them more and more. They have personality and depth. I don't know where the story is going right now, so I can't say that the plot has arc or not, but I can say that I'm getting more and more into it the more I play. I'm looking for the collectibles not because I want to get all the things but because I really want to find out what happened to these people!

And then there's the main character: you. This character needs to be voiced, and it's a crying shame that they didn't case some voice actors here. The silence is deafening from the main guy. It's a major oversight and is jarring every time someone talks to you. Huge missed opportunity there.

Anyway, don't skip the cutscenes, even if they seem stupid. If you never watch them, you aren't even giving the characters a chance to grow on you and you're limiting your own enjoyment of the game.

* This game NEEDS to be played with other people, which they make easy to do

So far, I'd say the combat in the Division is passable at best. Sloppy shooting mechanics, boring weapons, bullet-sponge enemies. I played a couple missions solo and was this close to putting the game down for good. Luckily, the game features easy-to-use matchmaking that you can use to put a squad together at any time. Playing with a group makes all the difference in the world, IMO. While the shooting isn't great, the environments are designed in a way that really supports squad coordination, flanking, and setting up cross-lanes of fire. Shooting the guns still doesn't feel good, but there is fun to be had in figuring out how to position everyone in your squad to effectively deal with the floods of bullet-sponge enemies.

Again, the Division features great matchmaking that you can use to join a group at any time, for any activity. From the mission select map, I hit the "matchmake" button and was paired up with another player looking to do the same mission I had selected. As we were running through the streets together towards the mission waypoint, a 3rd player was warped into our group, then a 4th. We played the mission together as a 4-man team, and after it was over the squad leader set a new waypoint on our map (for the next available story mission) and we just kept rolling together. We'd stop and do little side events as we came across them, then continue on to the next story mission. Missions start and end seamlessly; the squad is never broken up or warped to different parts of the map. Missions end in such a way that you just leave the area and are back into the main patrol spaces.
Overall, I found it to be a smoother and more well thought out co-op experience than Destiny. You can matchmake to do any activity you like, then leave the group or keep playing with them without ever "bouncing back to orbit" or any similar breaks in gameplay.

I like playing solo, but you're absolutely right that playing with a team is way more fun. Very different experiences. In a squad, you can play more aggressively, charge the enemy, flank them, explore areas more quickly, and really gang up on the bad guys. Solo, you have to play it slow, snipe from range, and use lots and lots of cover to stay alive and in the clear. Solo play feels sort of "resident evil" -esque to me whereas squad play is left 4 dead. Except the enemies are shooting you the whole time. Oh, and the AI for enemies is GREAT. The "rioters" are terrible at tactics and just kind of stand there and shoot at you, sometimes out in the open, sometimes behind cover. The cleaners move in a group and then spread out to form a line while melee guys charge you, but damn, the military guys (I've only seen them once and they were much higher level than me so I tried to run) flanked cover to cover, laid down suppressing fire, and used angles to get better shots. They also double-tapped me once I was downed to prevent a revive, which none of the other guys had done. All three factions (okay, I'm assuming this about the military guys) improve their AI when a commander unit is on the map (they have a star next to their name and are usually yellow health bar guys). You can actually hear the commanders yelling orders like "throw a grenade" or "lay down suppressing fire!" It's awesome. Take that guy out and the enemy AI becomes disorganized again. SO. GOOD.

One nitpick: I hate that I have to fully reload the game map when I initially join my buddy's team. It's the exact same map. We're standing in basically the same place on that map. I get that I am changing servers, but come on... the whole world has to be reloaded? It's only weird because there are virtually no other loads in the entire rest of the game. Once you're in, that's it... seamless gameplay until you quit. Or join a group.

* This game is an impressive example of big-team production

While I generally find Ubisoft games a bit hit and miss, the one thing they consistently do very well is present an impressive package. Even if I don't end up enjoying the game, I love booting up a new Ubisoft title just to see hundreds of thousands of man-hours and millions of dollars up on screen all at the same time. The Division is no exception. The amount of detail in the world, weather effects, animations, sound design... it's all a bit staggering. It doesn't capture my imagination the way something like Destiny does, but there is still lots of artistry to the way New York has been realized and put together. It makes me wish that the story was better... the setting does a good job of making me feel a bit melancholy. I really do feel like I'm walking around a torn-apart New York. If the rest of the narrative weren't so ham-fisted, it would be a very powerful experience.

Yeah, it's a spectacle to be sure. And it's full of details I didn't expect. Not only are lots of the buildings accurate to actual NYC, but when it snows things frost over, the lighting is gorgeous, there are lots and lots of fun chatter lines from NPCs, and the game world is constantly generating random encounters as you roam the streets.

Just some initial ramblings off the top of my head. Anyone else playing it? Thoughts?

A final note about the guns: They feel great to me. I absolutely love the marksman guns (SCAR-H feels like a true DMR, whereas the M1 feels like a semi-auto sniper and the - I forget the name, 5 round bolt-action gun - feels like a proper sniper rifle), and the differences between ARs, LMGs, and SMGs are becoming more pronounced the higher level I get (currently level 10). initially every gun was basically the same gun, but now the guns I get have more extreme feels. I'm really excited to see how different everything feels in the endgame, but I'm also super enjoying the development process of getting there. Because you can custom mod every gun (and remove and save those mods for later), the game has none of the loot hoardiness that Destiny has. I don't need to save X gun in case of a future buff or because I'm not sure if I like the perks on it better or not. I just swap to it, swap my mods, and see if I like it. Same with active skills. It's so easy to swap and check that it's not a big deal at all. I really feel empowered to experiment, which is a pretty opposite feeling to how Destiny seems to me, where I feel like I'm punished if I'm not running the optimal thing all the time (this may change in Division endgame, so stay tuned).

Also, the enemies stop feeling bullet spongey if you play at or below your level and play solo. Almost every enemy I face who is at my level (actually the level of my gun), he dies to a single sniper shot to the head (2 shots if it's an armored purple health bar guy or maybe 3 for an armored yellow bar guy).

While I generally think the UI is glorious, there are a few oddities that I don't understand: Weapons show DPS as a primary value in list view, but in side by side comparison that value isn't shown. Also, the DPS value increases dramatically when you add improved accuracy mods to your guns, but not stability mods, which seems odd. I imagine it's not a true number but just an estimate, which further makes it odd that this is the primary metric in list view. I guess they needed to use something. It's also weird that only one person can use a resupply box at a time and creates an unnecessary bottleneck in missions where there's no reason for one. I heard they fixed that for the starting laptop people were complaining about, so maybe they fixed it for resupply crates too? I'll have to check.

Speaking of which: Players complained about a thing and Massive fixed it within 48 hours of the game's launch. I'm VERY excited to see that level of response time. They're not just listening, they're actually implementing changes to solve problems. Unlike a certain space-magic based FPS where Thorn still dominates the competitive meta... but I digress. It's honestly WAY too early to make these comparisons. Gotta wait until I see how the endgame shapes up and see what long term stuff Massive does in terms of balance and patching. Destiny had a bunch of patches in the first weeks, too, iirc. It's just so hard not to compare the experiences.

Lastly, from a purely game design standpoint, I LOVE how Massive has set up the character skill progression within the game. You really have nearly total agency when it comes to the order you unlock skills in and how you spec your guy out. It's really smartly done and is giving everyone a very different experience of leveling up. Good stuff!