Wait... (Destiny)

by Kahzgul, Wednesday, March 16, 2016, 18:44 (3268 days ago) @ cheapLEY

As for the gun feel, it's actually really awesome. Not only do the weapon classes themselves feel good (sidearm, shotgun, smg, AR, LMG, DMR), but within those realms the individual weapons do have fairly unique feels. The way that feel is achieved is that the weapons differentiate more as they increase in level. A level 2 MP5 feels almost the same as a level 2 MP7, but a level 20 MP5 is noticeably softer hitting with smoother recoil than the chunkier level 20 MP7. The SCAR-H DMR at level 2 feels like a sniper rifle with a 20 round mag, but at level 20 it's clearly not going to be 1-shotting anyone (more like 3 headshots per kill) whereas a level 20 M44 is a true sniper rifle (bolt action, even) and will dome any red bar with a single round.

The result is that, as you play, you're encouraged to experiment early on as almost all weapons are interchangeable, but as you progress, you find that you like how certain weapons feel to the point where you're just not going to swap them for something with higher DPS because it doesn't handle the way you prefer.

That all sounds terrible, and I'm of the belief that it's really bad game design. I only played the beta, so that's where my opinions of terrible shooting comes from. Sounds like maybe I would actually enjoy high-level The Division play. But at the beginning, all the guns are the same (and boring) and it feels bad, so I'm not going to play it for ten or fifteen hours just find out what high-level play is like. It's bad design.

Last note: There's not cannon about enemies being tougher as a result of the plague or anything like that. Those baseball bat guys are "rioters" who are the most basic enemy faction (all of the other factions' rusher type units have shotguns instead of baseball bats), and in the videos you're seeing, the player is in a full group and is a little underleveled, which is why that baseball bat guy can soak up two full mags from an SMG.

I hope this explains things!

It does, but it doesn't make it any more appealing.

Sorry, I'm not trying to be that fanboy that just shits all over. I'm glad folks are enjoying The Division, and I truly hope some of the concepts from the Dark Zone spread beyond The Division, because it is interesting. If anything else, I hope people really love it and play it for a long time if only so Bungie really comes out swinging with the expansion this fall and for Destiny 2.

You're good; you don't sound like complaining just to complain or anything - no worries there!

The way the guns are, it makes me think they designed them like classes in a fire emblem game. Like all level 1 DMRs have the exact same base stats (this is not true at all, but the feeling is sort of like this), so in my made up numbers world let's say they start with 20 range and 50 damage with a RPM of 200 and then as the weapons level up, maybe the M1 gets +2 range and +5 damage per level while the SCAR-H gets +1 range and +1 damage, but also gets +10 RPM. ***It does not work this way*** but if you picture it in your head, you can see how higher level guns are more distinct from other high level guns vs. lower level guns being more similar.

Each class of gun is really distinct on its own, so there's not going to be any confusion between an SMG and an LMG. One is an always ready, fast reload, short range bullet hose while the other is a high capacity hard hitting medium range support weapon that takes a while to reload. Of course, the RPK-40 is an LMG that feels like a slightly heavier and slower assault rifle, and the MP7 is a SMG that feels like a slightly lighter and faster assault rifle - this is by design. You really can find a weapon that you like, but it takes a lot of experimentation to see what's good. So where you see poor design I see good design. You need to be able to generalize "I like sniping vs. I like shotgunning" (though those two are not mutually exclusive at all) before you can get specific with "I prefer a Custom SRS to a Military M44" because you probably have never seen those two weapons at the same time with the same level. As you play through the game, you are replacing your weapons after almost every mission, so having them be basically interchangeable early on is good - if they weren't, you'd potentially be using underpowered gun A because you like it more than overpowered gun B, which could create bottlenecks in progression.

I admit, twice in my leveling path I had guns that were so great I wished I could keep using them after I outleveled them. At level 8 I had a M1 sniper and an RPK-40 LMG which gave me great flexibility and effectiveness against every enemy I faced. I was really kind of bummed when I got a better sniper rifle and my old one was ineffective. More recently, at level 25 I had a FAL burst-fire assault rifle that was extremely accurate as well as a M60 LMG with 145 rounds in the mag and a 10% chance to instantly reload itself on a kill. I felt like Rambo and was able to solo several levels higher than I was because of how good the guns were. But now I'm 29 and those weapons are all long gone. It's okay though - I've played enough to know what I prefer when two weapons are closely rated, and also to know which combinations work well for me. The evaluation process for me is no longer about pure DPS, but now factors in all of the weapons' perks as well as per-shot damage, TTK etc etc... The weapons have differentiated as I've grown more knowledgeable about using them, and the result is that I don't feel like I need to go online to find an optimizer in the same way that I do with Destiny - this game is far less about twitch reaction and millisecond differences and far more about the element of surprise and minimizing windows of opportunity for enemies (reload time, mostly).

Honestly, you'll just become more aware of the weapon differences as you play, and I feel like the curve was great. Remember, most of the time you're going to be using the best available weapons no matter what they are. If you had a 1000 DPS AR and a 2500 DPS SMG drops, you're changing guns regardless of feel. That's the early game. Remember when you leveled up a whole bunch in Destiny? Higher light level? Okay I'm using that. I've yet to get into the Division's true endgame, but I can safely say that around level 22 was the first time I kept using a gun because I felt like its perks outweighed the diminished DPS. And even that gun was gone by 24.