Gaming The Division Has Turned into the Perfect Christmas Game

"...complaints over the problem with hackers and .. that the game didn't have much of an endgame..."

Like every MMO ever, then :/

 

Delta connectivity issues are still happening, randomly, worldwide.
Purchased yesterday, played the intro missions and now it stick with "Delta C-0-1234 error"

Got a ticket raised with DoobieSoft, Hopefully I won't be asking for a refund, It seems alright when it worked.

 

Tried the free weekend trial of this a couple weeks back and in comparison to the pre release demo, performance was much improved on my i5, 970SLI setup.

Also was very atmospheric, wandering around a deserted night-time Manhattan in the snow, wind swirling around you.

Found the shooting mechanics and the AI opponents quite horrid though, so it still won't be a purchase for me I'm afraid as the single player part is pretty lightweight and I'm not really interested in multiplayer thesedays (now too old and too slow )

 

And therein lies one of the issues with the perception of what makes a game good and how to make it better.

I love the Division and play it regularly (over 500hrs played), but while I agree with your assessment that the 1.4 (and subsequent 1.5 patch) have very much improved things, I couldn't disagree more on the Survivor mode. I detest this mode with passion. To me, it's slow, dull and frustrating. If this is how the game had been released I wouldn't have played more that 5hrs.

The underground is fine and entertaining at first, but it ends up as a repetative slog. I still haven't made it to the 'end'

As you mentioned in the review 'hackers' have been an issue and is one of the reason I avoided the DZ. I loved the idea of the DZ but to me it's another waste of time. Instead of being a zone where you risk all trying to extract that bounty you found, it's ended up as a griefing zone.
Hardly anyone is playing the zone with the original purpose. 9 times out of 10 you will get hunted down by a group of players with 'god powered' setups who have no interest whatsoever in any of your gear or even collecting new gear. They are only there to 'kill' other players and ruin their fun. I've even had it where I have revived other players or helped them take out the bosses only for them to turn round and shoot me after.
Each to their own and all that, so I let them get on with it and avoid the zone.

If you are still reading this, you might wonder why I play it then. The truth is that the PVE zone is now so much more fun since the patches.
Introducing a level system to the Open World was a great idea - the higher the level you play it at, the tougher the enemy are.

They have also scaled it so that it takes into account how many of you there are playing together at once. When playing solo (pre-patches), it used to be extremely difficult to take out a gang of enemies because they were setup for multiple player encounters. Now when solo, the number / strength of enemy is geared to there only being one player.
This has been a game changer for me, it's gone from being incredibly frustrating to a lot of fun.

There are now 15 named bosses in the open world that you can hunt down (these have a higher chance of droping the better gear). I love going on a named boss run taking out all 15 in a session - you get masses of gear, especially if you run from one to the next as you encounter the random street gangs too.
There are Daily / Weekly missions to run and some of the campaign missions which you can re-run will now randomly drop special 'named' pieces of kit - you are also supposed to be able to get these through 'caches' which you earn whilst playing

TLDR - The patches have made the game so much better - I hate Survivor Mode / the DZ but the new Open World is great fun (each to their own opinion). The game caters for the amount of you playing and your skill level. Enjoy it, because you really can now.

 

I don't think it's an issue, I think it's great that they've made a series of different ways to play the game that are all rewarding.

 

ive played the division since the open beta and for me its greatest appeal is how crisp and responsive its combat actually feels, that and i actually enjoy experimenting with builds. 1.4 and 1.5 were indeed the much needed "fix" especially after the horrifically unbalanced 1.3. 1,6 I believe is meant to completely overhaul the DZ but ive not heard news on how or what it will change.

 

i bought this for £12 on my ps4 at the same time i dropped £30 on season 1 of destiny. not touched the latter since. managed to grind to 229 in about 3 weeks before the big rebalance then quickly refreshed my gear, and again when survival hit. i do love the game, it's combat is satisfying (moreso after the big rebalance) and seems well balanced but i still have worries about it's long-term survival. i don;t play with either of the expansions but while gear is easy to come by now, the right gear is a pain to find. also not convinced by the incursions - both pre-and post-balance i've tried these, sometimes with great teams that use voice and mostly with randoms and i've never won one, but also never felt i was missing anything as they don't drop anything better for all the effort. survival sounds fun but underground never interested me and 3rd expansion is meant to be a wave mode (something that i love) but until season pass is very discounted i'm just not interested - running base game missions gets me same loot and, thanks to fun combat, is not usually a drag.#

edit - just like to add that dark zone is ********. novel idea but in practice if you even tag a player with a shot everyone kills you and takes your loot, and rogue players can run up to you and unload a shotgun in your face before you can defend yourself, take your loot and have rogue status fade before you respawn and they kill you again, but if you attack them first you're the rogue. loot isn't even better than missions - it's fun if you get a team that dashes through the elite enemies to rare loot boxes then extracts but it's 90% frustration.

 

My mate has been moving house so no gaming over Xmas really. Did squeeze in a few hours of Dead Island with another chum though.

We used to play this, then I got annoyed at it. Apparently they have addressed that so I may give it another chance. Shame, 'cause she's a beaut Clark.