The Division

[darklordsarumon9]

Greetings all. After a quick impulse buy I found myself to be the proud owner of The Division on pc. Im just gonna jump into this & share a few thoughts.

Character making - very standard selection of both male & female white, white model 2, african american and asian template. You can add tattoos & scars. Was expecting a bit more.

The 'campaign' mode - Goes up to level 30. Pretty fun leveling. Story is what you would expect terrorists this, mutated ebola that, good guys turn bad mischief. Getting max (story) level of 30 can be achieved within maybe 10 hours if you rush missions. There is a base of opperations where you'll need to gather supplies which fuel expansion of the medical, tech and security wings. What really shines in the story is the collecting of intel. There are 263 assorted pieces of missing person data, phone recordings, crashed drones and more to be found that really make you feel for the general public as they struggle to survive the dollar bill flu. Most enjoyable part of the single player for me was hunting these down.

Life after level 30 - Once you've hit 30 its time for the real grind. Where The Division shines and falls into absurdity is the Dark Zone, a free for all PVPVE area. Better loot can be found inside but must be extracted since its contaminated. Extraction is a somewhat simple matter of calling in the heli, waiting the 90 seconds for it to arrive, killing a few guards that spawn then placing your loot on the rope. Simple enough until rogue agents come along. You can at any moment 'go rogue', aka pvp. So while you wait for that heli a group of four guys can come along, kill you and take half your loot. Invintory space is limited to nine items in the Dark Zone. When youre killed by rogues you drop all your items, half become public loot available to be taken and the other half are private which sit there until you reach them. Going rogue is a fun idea in theory but usually ends up with lots of low level players being camped for items. The zones feel empty most of the time like there should be more mobs/have quicker spawn timers. Biggest problem with Dark Zone isn't the random rogue killing you it's Division Tech. High end crafting materials which are highly sought after and just as scarce. Vendors sell high end crafting blueprints for both Phoenix Credits (end game currency) and Dark Zone money but you need Dark Zone rank to acquire them. The best gear becomes available for purchase at DZ rank 50. Lots of complaints of that being "too hard" to achieve, I played mostly solo and was able to make rank 54 in about 35 hours.

Non DZ end game - Phoenix Credits baby. End game currency that drops from named mobs or after completing story missions on higher difficulty. The grind for these is the worst IMO. Named mobs will drop 3 or 4 credits, while daily missions will award 15-30. These can be run as many times as you'd like but only does the first completion of the day award the extra credits. When all end game blueprints cost 80+ credits the grind takes hold real quick.

(final notes to be added later)

[j-rodd123]

the dark zone is easily the best part. completely disagree with ur first part, there's no real story, all the story missions/encounters are exactly the same, and the collectables are BRUALLY boring to collect. if i didnt have friends to play this game with me i wouldve shot myself in the head, imo the dark zone PvP stuff is where it shines, everything else is meh at best

[Poison-]

The end-game is pretty non-existent as there's no real reason to grind for better loot. I've stopped playing for now and will come back once there's new content.

[j-rodd123]

same when i hit 30 and finished all the achievements i helped my friends a bit in the dark zone and havent touched it in a week

dont think ill be buying DLC either, only free stuff

[Red Blaster]

I still enjoy it, although it has kind of gone stale for me after 100% completion. My time is largely phoenix credit grinding, DZ trolling and just general exploration at this point.

There is actually a really deep storyline, but it's kinda hidden in the 300 or so collectables which is kind of dumb because nobody does collectables anymore. After I grabbed them all I set aside a few hours to listen to everything in order and it paints a pretty good story, I'd recommend it if you're interested.

What kind of build did you guys go for? Initially I went as ballanced as possible ending up at like 1800 across the board (Firearms, Stamina and Electronics) but I recently decided to respec into a pure stamina so that nobody can kill me lol

[j-rodd123]

i went for balanced too. i cant recall those stats as i always just remembered the DPS/health, what are yours via that metric?

[Red Blaster]

Originally Posted by j-rodd123

i went for balanced too. i cant recall those stats as i always just remembered the DPS/health, what are yours via that metric?

My balanced build was something like 107k DPS (with the high end AK/Cadeuceus or whatever its called) 60k health and 25k skill power but even with that I'd step into the DZ and dump endless magazines into people and seemingly do nothing - which is my biggest issue with this game.

I think it'll be interesting to see how character build trends will change this game though. Initially most went for as high of DPS as they could get, but now it seems like everyone is going for really high health to negate the purpose of high DPS.

[_Zenith_]

This glitch thing kind of pisses me off.

I do not play the game, but I wouldn't be a dick like the devs are trying to be and punish gamers by finding a glitch in their game and recording the event for others to witness.

I'd understand if the glitch was game-breaking, but a simplistic glitch that the devs should have weeded out does not call for punishing someone else for finding it.

[Red Blaster]

Speaking of Division, I haven't touched this game in about a month..it got too stale and repetitive for my taste.
Although I might need to go check out that new Incursion thing and see what it's all about.