TallGuyCalif's Computer Gaming and Entertainment Site

Tag: The Division

  • Lack of gear diversity in Destiny makes it a chore to play

    How can I possibly say there is lack of gear diversity on Destiny, when there are hundreds of items in each category, more than anyone can possibly know, and all of our vaults and gear slots are completely full? Well, I think the current light level scheme and rewards mechanism are forcing us into using just a few guns and equipment pieces, and this lack of choice is annoying and tedious.

    The problem is twofold:

    1. Rewards drop based on your current light level, not the highest light you can be nor on the highest light item in that category in your inventory.
    2. Therefore, you have to always equip your highest light items at all times, thus neglecting gear that would be good (or at least worth trying), but it is a lower light level.

    So this is a different lack of diversity from when everyone was using Thorn and The Last Word in PvP and Ice Breaker and Fatebringer in PvE. Now the entire community isn’t forced into using the same guns, but each individual is. Sure, if you do the raid enough times, you might be able to infuse some of those lower light guns you’re interested in, but since we haven’t used them, we don’t know if it is worth it.

    So I can be 398 on my Warlock, and 397 on both Hunter and Titan, and I’ve been noticing this during this week’s Iron Banner. I started off around 390 on all 3 characters, but had some reasonable guns at that light level. As I get new drops, I tended to use the higher light drops to infuse my known good guns, thus (a) not being able to try out the dropped guns, and (b) leaving others far behind, thus leading to a lack of diversity in my choices. If I wanted to switch to an auto rifle rather than my Clever Dragon pulse rifle, too bad, I don’t have one anywhere near my light level. In other words, I felt forced to use the same guns over and over, and while that worked, I would have preferred more choice.

    How to fix it? There are many ways:

    • The Division’s gear score is one way, and since they don’t have gear XP, it is easy to swap stuff around to try out different loadouts.
    • Make loot drops take into account the maximum light of the character, not just the currently equipped light level
    • Even better, make loot drops look at the maximum light within the category of the drop. So if I have a 395 light primary gun and a primary drops, it would be higher than 395, even if I was being held back by the ghost and artifact. (And no, my ghost and artifacts are pretty good and not holding me back, plus I know how to get then in the Archon’s Forge.)

    So while I’m disappointed at being almost forced to use the same loadout over and over again and am not able to experiment as freely as I’d like, Destiny is still kinda fun and worth playing occasionally.

  • My gaming news, including Skyrim SE, LOTRO, VR, The Division, & more

    Since my hiatus from Destiny has allowed me to play other games, I’ve played lots of them. Since I’ve had all these (mostly) good experiences, I thought I should write it down.

    I’ve spent most of my play time in LOTRO, which I mostly stopped playing when Destiny came out two years ago. I still logged in occasionally to pay my housing upkeep, but I let my VIP payments lapse (in terms of total dollars “invested,” LOTRO is by far my most expensive game, with maybe 5 years of VIP payments, plus buying all the DLCs – they’re good at extracting money from me). I made it to Gondor and did most of the Dol Amroth quests with my level 100 Lore Master, but then stopped. Now that they have tons of new content, I wanted to experience it, since I love the lore and the Tolkien universe.

    First, being in Middle Earth without being VIP is very constraining. Most of the quests are locked off, travel is expensive, and many perks are disabled. So within minutes of restarting, I was paying up for a few months of VIP. At that point, the quests unlocked so I could deal with the baddies in Perlargir and all around central Gondor. Hopefully soon I will hear over to Minas Tirith and experience more of the story.

    The game play came back very quickly, though I’m not as adept a Lore Master as I was, since I’ve forgotten what about half the skills do. The combat is quite boring, compared to Destiny and The Division or even Elder Scrolls Online, but it is a bit more strategic as I can’t just power through mobs, but have to worry about crowd control, debuffs, buffs, etc. And when I try to power through, I aggro a bunch of enemies that run over and kill my poor, squishy LM.

    One of my favorite parts about the Rohan expansion to LOTRO was the war steed combat. I loved that and ended up being pretty good at it. But in Gondor, the enemy density is high and the terrain isn’t well suited to it. However, I still use the war steed, because it is fast and I can mount in combat. Unfortunately, even a light war steed turns like an aircraft carrier in confined spaces, so I’ve died several times trying to maneuver through a narrow passage to escape a bunch of enemies only to become stuck, dismounted, and killed. Also, the rubber-banding effect where the game lets you progress past an obstacle you hit on your war steed only to pull you back a few seconds later is still present. In fact, I had one instance yesterday where I was maybe 5 seconds and hundreds of feet past the obstacle when it yanked me back. It isn’t a game killer, but it is an immersion killer and quite annoying.

    I also played with some VR games (well, really VR tech demos) on my new Playstation VR. It is a very comfortable unit and works quite well. The resolution isn’t great, but you quickly forget about it. I really enjoyed the shark encounter scenario in the VR Worlds Ocean Descent “game.” Even though I knew I was sitting in my chair at home, I was very concerned about that shark prowling around my cage, and when it attacked, I cringed in chair. Very well done!

    I played a little of, and then deleted, Transformers Devastation and Lords of the Fallen. Transformers was a pretty OK action game with some RPG elements. It had a cartoony look that fit the theme, but as I was never a Transformers fan, it didn’t grab me for too long. Lords of the Fallen is an excellent Dark Souls clone that was difficult and very tense. Unfortunately, I have Dark Souls and never finished it, so I’m sure not going to finish this one.

    So in my quest for action games, I went back to The Division. After this latest patch, it is quite fun. They’re trying to out-Destiny Destiny with all the loot that drops. I kill random baddies on the street and they drop top-of-the-line gear (though none better than what I had, so far). Some of the missions and encounters are still too hard to solo, at least for me, but it is a much improved game.

    Finally, I tried Skyrim SE. Since I already had Skyrim and all the DLC on Steam, I got SE for free, which is damn nice of Valve and Bethesda. Unfortunately, Skyrim SE doesn’t support my 3440×1440 monitor. Sure, I could and did edit the .ini file and make it draw at that resolution, but the UI is cut off at top and bottom in that case. (To be fair, the original Skyrim is the same.) It is sad that a new release is so limited in what it can support. Even LOTRO, STO, and Fallout 4 support my monitor with only a little stretching sometimes. In any case, I never played the Skyrim DLCs, so I had thought maybe I’d give it a shot in SE, but since I used mods in Skyrim that don’t work in SE, I don’t want to mess with trying to load the saves, and I sure don’t want to play the whole thing again! So perhaps I will go back to Skyrim some day…

  • Finished Witcher 3 DLC, back to Dragon Age Inquisition

    My poor non-multitasking brain can’t handle playing too many games at once, mostly because I get the controls mixed up, so I tend to try to finish a game, then move on (MMOs excepted). So I just finished the excellent Witcher 3 Blood and Wine DLC, and had to decide on a new game. Finishing the Witcher 3 missions was both good and bad. I loved the game and hated for it to end, but had played it for many, many, many hours. I was in denial for a while, so I backed up to play another ending (I was only able to produce 2 endings to Blood and Wine, so I may have to look if there are more). I found a couple of extra missions that seem to have been unlocked by the ending, but other than that, no more quests. I cleared all the “unknown” spots on the map in Toussant, then went to Velen and did the same. I had maybe 16 on Velen’s map, and cleared all but one bugged bandit camp that just won’t clear. Then I went to Skellige, and found 80 question marks on the map (the map counts them, so I didn’t have to)! And they’re all out in the ocean, so tedious to get to, kill the sirens, grab the loot, become overburdened, and repeat. So I did 4 of them and gave up. Sure, I may come back when all other games disappoint me, but for the moment, I’m done with Witcher 3.

    I recently bought the Dragon Age: Inquisition (DAI) Game of the Year edition on sale for $20. I already owned DAI and one of the DLCs, but buying the 2 remaining DLCs would have also cost $20, so I just bought the GOTY edition, which had a few more goodies. Origin very nicely dropped the 2 new DLCs into my existing game files, rather than making me delete it and download the whole thing, so kudos to the EA Origin team.

    I’ve now started playing DAI’s 2nd DLC, The Descent, and must admit to being a little disappointed. While the surface DAI areas are open-world-ish, this is strictly linear so far, and involves tediously looking for gears to open doors. The combat and banter is still great, but coming from Witcher 3, this feels constraining. I also miss Witcher-Sense – even though there is Inquisitor-Sense, it isn’t quite as good.

    So I’ll work through DAI’s DLCs, but I’m also busy doing Star Trek Online’s summer event activities on Risa, because I want this year’s ship! Of course, I will still occasionally pop into Destiny and The Division when friends are online.

  • The Division looks great, but they really dropped the ball here

    I like Tom Clancy’s The Division(TM) (and, yes, that’s the last time in this post that I’ll use the whole name), and I think it looks really good. The city is modeled and textured very well, and the guns and gear are lovingly rendered (especially the purple beanie and the stylish slouchie, whatever that means). But sometimes, the devs got a little lazy and used a lot of copy and paste. An example is the “Fashion” store in the video below. All the clothing is the same (and ugly as sin). Sure, it is good to reuse textures and art assets, but it’s like they’re not even trying. You can’t tell me there wouldn’t be a little black dress or a red sparkly dress in a fashion store in NYC. If this were just a random spot I wandered into, it might be okay, but we need to go into these stores to get crafting materials, so it is an integral part of the game. C’mon The Division folks, try harder.

  • I like The Division’s Matchmaking

    I’ve had good luck with matchmaking in The Division and think it is very good. I can’t quite put my finger on why I think it is superior to Destiny’s matchmaking, but I think it just works better. In Destiny, I’ve always hated playing with randoms for Strikes, but the PUGs I’ve played with in The Division have been good.

    Perhaps the first thing is that The Division doesn’t force you to group up, at least for the normal missions (which are all I’ve tried). If you’re good enough, you can solo them, though that’s quite a challenge most of the time. If you choose to group up, it is very easy. You can choose to matchmake from the map or from the start of the mission. So far, it has worked very well for me, and I haven’t run into any AFKers, which have been so prevalent in Destiny. In fact, the randoms I’ve played with have been as good or better than I am.

    The only downside of The Division’s matchmade groups comes are the end of the mission. In Destiny, the fireteam is dissolved and you go back to orbit. In The Division, you come out of the mission’s building, blinking in the sunlight, standing around in confusion figuring out what to do next. In other words, you’re still in the group. If you travel to your base or a safe house, you’re still in the group. You actually have to leave the group to get back to your own instance of the world. This isn’t a terrible burden or anything, but it is slightly uncomfortable. I don’t have a great suggestion on how to fix it, either, so it’s something that we’ll have to live with, and that’s okay.

     

  • Had a much better time in The Division last night, but the checkpoint system needs work

    I gave The Division another shot last night and had a much better time. I didn’t experience any annoying glitches, and a friend helped me through that pesky Security Wing mission. That’s a pretty hard mission to solo – they’ve really ramped up the difficulty since the beta, and I’m perfectly okay with that.

    Despite having good fun, I think the checkpoint system is pretty broken. In most games, a checkpoint happens after you reach a certain milestone, but before you start the next phase of the mission or combat or whatever. In The Division, the checkpoint I was stuck at last night was when the JTF person was trying to disarm the bomb in the tunnel and the enemies were already inbound. Each time I died or the mission failed (and that happened a lot), I had just a few seconds before the enemies showed up. Well after failing so many times, I needed a biobreak, but there was no way to stop the action. So I just had to abandon my character to death as he stood there while I took a leak. This is disappointing.

    While I didn’t look for a way to abandon the mission, I did try to run out of the tunnel, but even that didn’t work, because as soon as they killed the JTF agent, the mission failed and I was dumped back to the checkpoint. At one point, I actually quit the game, then I noticed a friend was online. I asked her for help on the mission, because she’s higher level than me and obviously knows what she’s doing (and it’s way more fun playing with her than solo). When I reloaded the game, strangely enough, it put us after the checkpoint, as if the bomb was already disarmed. So I essentially skipped that part of the battle, which is somewhat disappointing.

    So I think the checkpoint design/placement should be rethought a little so checkpoints can give respite. But other than those annoyances, The Division went well last night.

  • Disappointing night in The Division. Going back to Witcher 3

    I had a decidedly un-fun night in The Division, so I rage quit and went back to playing Witcher 3. The first problems were glitches, while the final straw was people.

    After being unable to get to Manhattan on Monday night due to Ubisoft’s servers being melted into puddles of goo, when I started the game last night, I was stuck in Brooklyn without any obvious way out. The missions were all done, so there were no pointers to get me out of the map. Luckily, I found a guide on YouTube that showed the way to go through the streets to activate the final cut scene (and why did that Osprey blow up, anyway?) and get me moved on to Manhattan. So that was the first glitch, but not the most annoying.

    Next, I set up my Base of Operations and started the first mission in Madison Square Garden. Then I got bitten by a bug that also bit me in the beta and has obviously not been fixed: I got glitched into a wall. In this case, as I was evading some enemies, I glitched inside a wall and furniture. No movement I did could get me out, so the baddies walked right up and killed me. In the beta, I glitched into a column in a subway station, and that state persited even after reloading the game (luckily I had grenades so I could kill myself and respawn). So the night started on a negative and got worse.

    Then a friend and someone else joined me in the game, and we quickly proceeded to start the second mission (one that wasn’t in either beta). This was a pretty hard mission, but we were going along pretty well. Then the other guy separated from us to do who knows what, and he was higher level, so he was practically carrying the other two of us through the mission. So my friend and I started dying, then my friend went AFK for quite a while. There was no communications during this time. so I had no idea why everyone abandoned me. So I punched out of the group, decided I wasn’t having fun, quit the game, and went and played Witcher 3 on my PC.

    I presume I’ll try The Division again sometime soon, but I’m pretty sick of it at the moment.