Tom Clancy's The Division

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

Here is the E3 presentation for gameplay in The Dark Zone. The Division will be out March 18th 2016.

 

I'm curious if the anything goes mentality will limited to this zone, or if its an option you can turn off to turn on your own team. As excited as I am for this game, this is a big turn off... especially if the Dark Zone contains the best loot in the game. It will be like Destiny, where only the really close knit best teams will have all the good loot, and you will be stuck with subpar loot because you don't have enough trust worthy people to play with. While Ubisoft's CEO said you can do everything in this game solo... that doesn't change the fact that in this Dark Zone, you may encounter a team of 2 or more that can take your stuff because you are solo. I'm hoping for Watchdog like options to prevent this from happening.

Click here to view the article

[Strider Hiryu 2,704]

Well it makes sense a game like this would have an area that would require groups, I mean they are going for the MMO feel here. However, like you I'm not hip on this anything goes mentality. You're really going to have to make sure you're with a team a people you really trust especially if you're going into a Dark Zone and you can loose your gear if you're killed.

 

Shit dude with my new job and schedule we could tear this shit up when the game is released. I mean we can two man Nightfalls in Destiny and I honestly don't think these will be much different difficulty wise. We'll just have to make sure we're at least 2-4 levels higher then the mobs we fight. Plus when Sledge switches to working at home we'll have a third man for this (and maybe a fourth if my old co-worker decided to get a PS4 for this game as I'm one of the only people he knows getting it).

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

True.. but I'd generally welcome the extra help from randoms. But this type of thing just facilitates trolls and assholes. We'll def have to be on our guard at all times when randoms come in. Although it would be fun to sneak up on a larger team and take them out after they did all the work. After two manning the nightfall with you, I think we can defeat the gaming world no matter what gear we are running.

 

EDIT: Beta coming first (and possibly only) to Xbox One... seriously? Someone is behind the times... Once COD moves their timed exclusives to PS4, its time to wake up.

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

 

Here is a new trailer for The Division.

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[Strider Hiryu 2,704]

 

 

So yea, based on these impressions I'm pretty much sold on the game. With the beta taking place in two weeks I'll make my final judgement once I play it but I honestly think this game will be what we expected Destiny to be (gameplay wise). I can honestly say I'm hyped for a game for once.

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

I watched a crafting video along with these. I like the blueprint system, and I like that crafting is more complementary rather than a grindfest. It seems its mostly use to duplicate attachments for convenience. The Beta takes place in 2 weeks for Xbox One, last I looked they didnt mention the PS4/PC beta yet. Hopefully its not too far off.  

[Strider Hiryu 2,704]

XBone users get it a day early so it starts on the 29th for PS4 and PC.

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

My only concern is 15 main missions. MGSV had around 40. I hope there is a lot to do outside of side missions thats not PvP involved. If this game gimps on PvE in favor of PvP I'll be disappointed. If the Destiny model becomes a trend, I'll only buy Mass Effect and Borderlands games, because I can trust those series.

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

 

Now that I've seen how the healing skill works, I definitely want it. It seems health doesn't regenerate automatically unless thats only becasue its on a harder difficulty. It will def make managing heals a priority.

 

EDIT: Watching the health bars, I see that your HP slowly (very slowly) regens for the health tier only. So once you're critical, you'll only regen the 1 of 3 bars without consumables or a healer.

[Strider Hiryu 2,704]

My only concern is 15 main missions. MGSV had around 40. I hope there is a lot to do outside of side missions thats not PvP involved. If this game gimps on PvE in favor of PvP I'll be disappointed. If the Destiny model becomes a trend, I'll only buy Mass Effect and Borderlands games, because I can trust those series.

 

What do you expect from an MMO based game? This isn't along the lines of WoW, GW, FFXIV, and what not when it comes to missions/main quest lines. 15 main missions is pretty sizable imo considering the games premise and type (this is what the second MMORPG based shooter we've been given, Destiny is really the only other one I can think of). It's been said that there's plenty of side missions to play and Ubisoft is pretty good at releasing DLC (both paid and free) and at a good rate (if there's more then one DLC planned). The thought of paying for more content is something I really don't like (then again I pre-ordered the Gold Edition so I have the season pass) but it's the way games are going and if the production values and gameplay are solid in the base game I'm more then willing to throw the extra money down (well I already did but meh, I have higher hopes for this game then I did for Destiny). Plus who says this next ME is going to be any good? Depending on who you ask most fans will say ME3 completely sucked (but we've covered this already in the ME3 topic from long ago) and I know more then a few people who were disappointed with the last couple Borderlands games (and Gearbox's track record as of late hasn't exactly been stellar).

 

With the way healing works one person in a squad is always going to have to go Medic (luckily we can change on the fly which is really nice). No running with all DPS and zerging the enemy (which I like, a lot of MMO's are breaking the holy trinity and I really don't like it. Every group makeup should always consist of a healer and tank or a healer and three very well geared DPS).

Edited January 19, 2016 by Strider Hiryu

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

I personally loved BL1 and 2. I didn't buy Pre-Sequel because it felt like a last minute money grab before the old gen went out. I can't remember much about the ME3 topic... but I know 99.9% of the hatred is becasue the ending and not because the overall game.. the game play itself was amazing along with the missions. I remember I didn't take issue with the ending despite the outcry. Can't please everyone TBH. I haven't played anything from BioWare that has left me feeling ripped off (including the 3 months of SWTOR I paid for).... when it came to ME3 I enjoyed it because of the subtle choices I made in 1&2 affecting the 3rd game... The ending wasn't happy or epic... oh well. If the ending sucks (which I thought was fine) as long as I had fun playing it, that's what matters to me.... which is what Destiny failed at for its endgame. If I looked back at that topic I bet I said something like that.

If they are all as long as the last video I posted, I'll be ok with it. Unlike Destiny where you can finish missions in 5-10 minutes skipping a bunch of junk mobs with ease... I'm still burnt up about that. Its really not the number of missions but how long the overall arc takes to complete for me.


That's interesting about the Holy Trinity, is it newer games that are breaking it, or current games drifting away from it via updates? GW2 started out with no trinity and promoted itself as such... and so healing and tanking were quickly deemed useless and full glass cannon was accepted as meta because you could dodge and rely on blocks/reflects to sustain. Now that they've introduced raids, they require a tank and a few healers which got some people butthurt, but its only for raids and the rest of the game is still glass cannon.

There is definitely a more cautious nature to this game, which I like... even though that guy was trying to go balls to the wall and got downed or close to down state several times being reckless. I'm definitely interested in the sniping, the shotgun didn't impress me, but I'm sure there are better shotguns than that pump with wooden furniture. I'll have to get my hands on the beta to decide if I like SMGs or ARs better. The consumable menu was interesting, there seemed to be a lot, but we only got to see the drinking water adding 20% bonus damage to elites. He slipped up there because he said he had to cut the skills menus out. I'm curious if his personal heals were actual consumables or just a small heal on a cooldown.

[Strider Hiryu 2,704]

It's mostly newer games breaking it now. FFXIV still requires the Holy Trinity for new content (aka Heavensward content (3.0 and up)) but you can zerg the hell out of old content with three dps and a healer or three dps and a tank if the tank is smart and doesn't pull the whole dungeon (good god I've run with to many tanks who thought they could do it and died so many times because of it). Then again all content in FFXIV is designed with the Holy Trinity in mind (Light Parties always require a Tank, Healer, and two dps. Full Parties require 2 tanks, 2 healers, and 4 dps (this can be played with accordingly). Raids are currently 3 tanks, 6 healers, and 15 dps) where as games like GW2 were designed not to rely on the Holy Trinity to start out with (something a lot of people liked which is why GW2 has such a huge player base). Plus GW2 allows for self healing abilities whereas only healers/monks/warriors can do that with base abilities and no cross class abilities in FFXIV (potions are not reliable since they're on a 1 minute cool down and at max only heal for 1000 hp if your lucky (I have 14411 hp on my Ninja (http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodestone/character/5065472/, you can take a look if you want that's her lodestone page) and she's damn near max item level (she is max level but our dungeon requirements are based entirely on average item levels)) and that's barely any hp at my current content level where one hit can take nearly 3k health off non-crit).

 

Oh I loved ME3 but it's just funny that a lot of people hated it. I have my reservations about Andromeda (more so since some high level staff working on it left Bioware recently) but I'm still looking forward to it. The Pre-Sequel is the one that was getting a lot of hate on the Borderlands side, at least by what I've seen. I heard good things about the first two but I never got invested in them because the whole Cel-Shaded art style hurts my eyes and imo sucks to look at (and I'm usually the guy who preaches graphics don't make the game but in this case I had to agree that they do).

 

I'm assuming a lot of the low level missions will be short and sweet but more or less because you won't be taking on enemies that are that powerful and higher based missions will be longer. Who knows the difficulty might ramp up based on the number of people you play with (that missions could be that long and hard based solely on the fact that they were playing as a full squad), which is a feature I wish they pushed more in games these days. We really won't be able to tell till we get our hands on the beta (due to all the blackout restrictions youtubers have on what they can show). I didn't watch the whole video, just bits and pieces, but was he healer specced? If he was his heals were probably skill based but if he wasn't I'm sure his heals were most likely consumables. We really won't know again until we get beta access.

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

One of his squadmates was the healer, saving his ass most the time. He would pop a personal heal that would get him to the 2nd tier of his health when he was on his last bar at times (to where he would have to not take damage to regain the full 2nd bar). I think they did mention scaling... funny you say that. Its odd how its not utilized very much. Its definitely not a new concept. I remember scaling as far back as Diablo 2.

 

Thats interesting about the Pre-Sequel, I'll assume I was right in thinking it was just something they tossed together to make some quick cash off those that didn't upgrade right off... I found it odd how fast it came out after it was announced. It didn't have much hype behind it either... much less coverage after it came out. Cel-Shade worked for that game. I'm not a big fan of it either... but for its humorous cartoony nature, it went well. The thing about BL was the insane amount of guns it had... you'd be hard pressed to find someone with the same exact exotics you had. Of course there was away to duplicate them by dropping it and dash board power off real fast so you could share them with friends without losing it yourself.

[Strider Hiryu 2,704]

Could be he had some points in the healing tree, I know they said we could mix and match skills. That or everyone could have a small base heal that they can use. Who know. I think developers are too lazy to implement scaling in their games these days. I remember it back in D2 and I know of only a handful of other games that do it. It's sad really since it's an awesome way to ramp up the difficulty when you have a few friends to play with but also give you the option of soloing it by dropping difficulty down (yea it's a cheap way of making things more difficult but it's a nice feature in games that push the single player aspect but allow for co-op play).

 

From what little I've seen of the Pre-Sequel (some twitch players I follow used to play it) it looked like an awful game that wasn't well thought out. You could tell it was a last minute push to make money off of the old generation consoles by catering to those who were too cheap or just outright refused to buy the new generation. I've been debating buying BL 1 and 2 for awhile now because my old roommate loved the game to death and tried to get me to buy it when we still lived together (sadly I couldn't afford it being a poor college student and what have you) and I'll admit the game was quite humorous. I just can't get over the cel-shaded graphics though (I played ZOE2 even though it had cel-shaded graphics but that was mostly because I loved the ZOE series so I sucked it up and it was actually a really good game).

Edited January 21, 2016 by Strider Hiryu

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

 

a better view of the skill trees.

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

BETA thoughts:

 

This open beta is heavily neutered from anything I've seen in videos. You only get access to 2 skills on the medical tree, and the first skill on the other two trees. You can't even look at perks and other abilities because they hit you with scramble vision on the menu.

 

Open Wold PVE

Not much here. You get one main mission for the medical branch and some side missions that are really a quest chain of uneventful investigation leading up to a decent encounter. There are also some random encounters that vary in degree of length. The main mission was relatively short. You moved through 4 different sections fighting off enemies leading up to a boss. Playing it on hard made the end reward better, but the loot drops during the mission seemed marginally better if it was at all. The enemies were a lot tougher and more aggressive however.

 

Walking through the city you can stumble upon random bad guys, but there are actual locations marked called encounters. I think you can frequently get these from a situation board in your base of operation, but I cant refresh these in the beta. Some are as simple as taking down a few guys, others consist of helping a task force secure an area (kind of a horde mode). A few get interesting as they have a timer on them. These start out as unoccupied rooms with scanners you must search for and activate. When that is done you have to make your way across the roof tops to upload the data... of course enemies stand in your way while the timer is running making things a bit intense. These were probably my favorite encounters.

 

Since I'm a completion junkie... I'm probably having more fun with the beta than I should. There are a bunch of collectibles laying around from intel files to survival guides. Now that I've cleaned the map of everything to do gun battle wise, I've been exploring picking these things up, and finding random echos. I even managed to find some blue armor in a subway crate in a dark corner. There is also FASHION! the GW2 in me came out running open world with a friend... we'd be on our way to a side mission only to see an apartment door open. That means looting time! You can go into certain places and loot fridges, kitchen cabinets, closets, dressers, and file cabinets for random items including fashion ware. Hats, Pants, Shirts, Jackets, and Boots are all cosmetic options that have no bearing on stats. There are gun camos too but I haven't found any yet. We spent a few hours just looting for clothes losing sight of our objective. You can also gain items like these from NPCs in need... they come up to you begging for a med pac or random consumable. They'll drop you a cosmetic or a shitty piece of white equipment. Its a gamble.

 

The Dark Zone

Its only the beta, but there wasn't as much douchery going on as I thought there would be. Thats because you're making yourself a huge target going around killing other players. The loot in this game works like Destiny. Only you can see what loot dropped for you. Killing enemies drops loot for everyone, but the quality may vary between players, that doesn't change in the dark zone. The only way other players can tell that you have loot is by a yellow satchel that hangs under your normal backpack. There is no indication on what is in it. Once you kill someone you are marked red on everyone's mini map for an allotted time, and players can also see you through walls. You make yourself a massive target. If you're going to go rogue, the best time to do it is when people are extracting, that way you can hook your loot and secure it before you are killed. This is also why you should never extract with players that aren't in your party. Extractions alert everyone in the area, also marking it on the map. The chopper takes a full minute to get to the site, and then lowers a rope to hook your loot bag on. You have to hold square to do this and it takes a good 3-4 seconds to complete the action. Any number of things could go wrong at this point... The place my group extracted was on top of a parking garage. (There are designated extraction areas, you cant extract anywhere you want) We had a clear vantage point over the entrance to the top floor in case someone decided to come up and try to be hostile... but just watching an entrance doesn't always work as one poor solo player found out. After we extracted our loot successfully, a solo player ran up to perform his own. My buddy wanted to kill him, but I decided against it since he was a lower level than us and probably had nothing of value. He gave us the surrender emote to let us know he just wanted to extract and we started to leave... next thing we know he was downed, so we run back up only to see 4-5 elite NPCs have spawned and were tearing him up. I quickly revived him and we took them all out for some more loot. It was an interesting experience clearly to keep you on your toes from corner camping vantage points while you extract. I definitely would not recommend soloing the DZ. Killing NPCs gets you levels, and technically you could just do that and collect the DZ currency they drop... but if good equipment drops it would be hard to pass up, and dangerous to extract. Oh aslo, your DZ bag can only carry 6 items so you're going to have to extract regularly whether you like it or not.

 

Weapons

Assault Rifles: Not a fan... mag is way too small and runs out quickly. Long reload times that could possibly be helped by later attachments.

 

Shotguns: Once I got the semi-auto, I was tearing it up. Really good for CQC. There are enemies that have baseball bats and golf clubs that will rush you. They do A LOT of damage if they hit you so its imperative to have a good close range option. In the DZ these rushers were ultra aggressive and fast.

 

SMGs: I picked up a Vector and I am loving it. More so than the shotgun, but that's because its a higher level quality than the shotgun I had. The mags last longer than ARs and you get the same range about. I wouldn't be surprised if they got a range nerf TBH. They still would make a good CQC if this happens. While they melt enemies fast, they don't have the stopping power that shotguns have. A shotgun will make someone do a full second of stun.

 

Sniper Rifles: High damage, very slow rate of fire. You can't run this with a shotgun, they both fire too slow, You'll have to roll with an SMG if you want to snipe.... or just snipe with a marksman rifle.

 

Markman Rifle: Screw ARs, this is where its at. They have close to the damage of sniper rifles, but a faster fire rate and bigger mag. reload times are slow like ARs, but 2 body shot kills, one head shot kill more than makes up for it. It also suffers the same drawbacks as snipers as the 3rd person ADS reticle widens massively while moving.

 

LMGs: Haven't had one drop yet.. but i imagine they do some heavy suppression. I suppressed a few enemies with my SMG and its a good tactic for letting someone else flank. Or to bull rush if you're solo. They wont come out of cover when the suppressed indicator is up. Its like a heavy handed stun.

 

Pistol: Pistols are pure crap so far.. but with reason. They are your backup weapon and they have infinite ammo. Really low damage.

 

The attachments alter the stats of your gun to varying degrees. Optics better your zoom, but also add critical damage % gains. Grips do similar things as well, but extended mags suck and are pointless. They only give you 1 extra round for every weapon type except SMGs which give you 2. You're better off with the heavy spring mag that increases fire rate. If you're gonna use extended mag, it would only be worth it on a shotgun for that extra round. Suppressors only decrease your threat level... not really sure what that is yet. Maybe its aggro.

 

Skills

Like I said you only get access to a few skills. Your Base of Operations help you upgrade these skills. Doing missions and collection parts will help you do this in the full game. The first skill on the medic tree is the only one you can upgrade in the beta. Its basically vision pulse from BO3/pulse scan from Battlefront. The upgraded versions add modifiers. The one I went with added critical damage when hitting marked enemies. This was actually a really nice perk tbh. Giving everyone a DPS boost is never a bad thing. The first aid skill is going to be hard not to have for any player. While you can have consumable med packs, you can only carry 3 at a time. First aid lets you heal yourself or drop an AoE on teammates to heal them. I saw that you can upgrade the AoE heal to revive downed teammates without having to be near them which will be very useful for a dedicated healer. The sticky bomb was ok. I really wanted to try the seeker mine, but its locked for the beta which really disappointed me. I didn't bother with the riot shield, it seemed pointless since there is plenty of cover provided during gun fights.

 

Thats all I can say for now. I can't wait for this game to come out... even this small bit of content was very interesting. I also saw a "Dailies" tab in the options/inventory/info panel which has me excited.

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

Update 2:

 

Apparently the PC version is ruined with cheating.... the servers don't question the client so people have been fiddling with the code to give themselves infinite ammo among other things.

 

I got bored with the beta yesterday and didn't play any of the extended time. The DZ finally turned into a gankfest because most people have max gear and there is simply nothing else to do beside kill each other. The beta has its limits, and some people are taking it too literally. In the Beta DZ the best gear comes from the vendor... literally nothing good drops. Yet some redditors think this is an indication of the full game. Clearly there wont be any purple/orange tier weapons at level 8. Ubi just did this to give us a taste of what these weapons can do. Kinda like how Destiny had a lot of iron banner and raid guns drop left an right with a level 6 cap. (I remember having Efrideet's Spear even though it wasn't called that, the skin was the same)

 

TBH though, the difference between Blue, Purple, and Orange weapons are in side perks called "talents" The DPS is slightly better, but minus talents or even with them, a better player with all blue can crush someone with all orange. I think the Armor is a bit different at least in the beta, the blue armor ratings were a lot larger than green. The way the weapons seem to work is that blue has 1 talent, purple has 2, and orange has 3. These talents range in between more damage at certain health thresholds, faster reloading times, stability when using a skill, and health regen. Like Destiny these are randomly rolled.... you could have 3 purple M1A's drop and the talents could be different on all 3 of them. Another cool aspect is that the attachments tiers don't limit their use... you could theoretically put all orange attachments on a green weapon.... not that you'd do that, but its a nice feature when you don't have any purple gear lets say, but a purple suppressor drops... you can use it on your blue rifle until you get something better.

 

I noticed the situation board I mentioned in my last post tried to refresh on me my last day of playing. When I hit it, it said it loaded new encounters and side missions, but they never appeared on the map. If I had to guess this will probably be a daily thing since the map will be a lot bigger. I forgot to mention that upgrading your base will most likely come from these encounters and scavenging. While main missions unlock upgrades, you need parts as currency to purchase these upgrade. Tools, Weapon Parts, Electronic Parts, and Fabric were some of the things you could find... you could "discover" these on the map when you got close, and these boxes refreshed themselves every so often. So just doing the main story isn't going to cut it which makes me really happy. Like I said, exploring was more fun than it should have been for me. There are some rooms that require lockpicks that you can hold a limited supply of at any time, yet they seem to drop at a decent rate.

 

XP sharing is to the extreme in this game. Any time you get XP, everyone in your party will get it for everything. I gave a beggar a soda across town from where my friend was and he got the 150xp that I got for doing it. This is perfect IMO, everyone can spread out in situations without having to worry about missing out on XP. It takes out any kind of selfishness. Are you pulling unjustified aggro from the sharpshooters in the DZ? Don't worry, you buddy that is killing them all is giving you all the XP. (NPC snipers can seriously one shot you in the DZ). I've ranked up while my friend killed NPCs without myself firing a bullet. So pulling aggro is just as rewarding as getting all the kills. I think the only time XP varies is during mission encounters. You'll get bonus XP after each encounter based on number headshots and not getting downed. So you technically still get rewarded for higher skill without worrying about being a glory hog.

 

I will be spending a lot of time on this game... it will be the first game on PS4 I sink more time into than on my PC for once. I hope the expansions deliverers some raid like content because honestly the PvE is a shit ton of fun to repeat. Me and a friend mastered the one mission we got on hard to the point we started making stipulations like pistols only.

[Sledgstone 8,672]

The game sounds good, but I'm surprised the beta is so limited. This is the kind of game I'd never buy for PC. So many trolls out there determined to ruin a game.

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

I think they did that on purpose to funnel people into the DZ and create a gankfest. People are crying on reddit how going rogue is so disadvantageous, It should really stay that way. It shouldn't be easy to steal people's loot, otherwise you have GTA Online/Day Z where everyone is a dick. The DZ feels high stakes at all times. Once you have loot, you don't want to die until you extract.

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

I've played to level 12 and so far its been a blast.

 

Props for the weapons adjustments. AR recoil seems to have been reduced drastically. Barrel drift is still at thing with continuous fire, but the damage output and range compared to SMGs is worth it. I just picked up a blue SCAR-L before I got off and it seems to have the least barrel drift yet. Marksman Rifles seemed to have been nerfed. The damage just isnt there anymore for semi-autos. LMGs are the biggest beneficiary of the adjustments. Recoil and muzzle rise are much more controllable. It was just too outrageous in the beta. Shotguns seem to no longer stun enemies at close range. I'm curious if this got changed to a weapon trait. Not liking shotguns at all anymore. 

 

For skills, Sticky Bomb is still trash. I got First Aid with the overdose mod, and I just got Seeker Mines... they're nasty little boogers. I can't wait to unlock the mods for them. Smart Cover is another interesting skill that is useful as well.

 

The missions are decently long so far. A lot of them are visually impressive. Playing them on hard mode is frustrating but rewarding at the same time. I've stayed up to almost 5am two nights in a row... I can't say I've done that for a game in years.

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

After no lifing it to 30, I can tell the end game is light years beyond destiny. It is group required, but Ubi has the decency to put matchmaking on it.

 

The main mission chain got me to about level 25. I had to do side missions and encounters to reach 30. Even after that I've still got various encounters to finish to be able to max out my BoO. There is still a shit ton of intel to collect, and side missions to do for solo play. Purple gear becomes purchasable through standard vendors around level 23. High end gear can be purchased at 30 through the Advanced Vendor that is unlocked via Security Wing upgrades. These are astronomically priced. Its a way for solo players to obtain them I guess. Purple gear will run in the $40-60k range while HE gear will run $460-480k I made 2-3 vendor purchases my whole way to 30 and I only had $115k maybe by that time. Purple gear does drop in open world PvE, boss kills, and mission rewards.

 

Playing in a group of 3-4 makes enemy toughness scale pretty high. I played 2-3 missions solo on normal and it was way easier. The loot table didn't improve in group play, but maybe the XP was a bit better? I can't really say. We played on hard mode til about level 18 missions. It gets brutally hard in groups at that point. Rushers have shotguns that can insta down/kill you. Cover is only a formality because of this... once you take them down grenadiers can make life miserable by flushing you out of cover for snipers and heavy machine gunners to tear you apart. Playing in a group brings some good challenge. 

 

End game content consists of DZ and Challenge mode. Challenge Mode is basically Destiny's Nightfall on Steroids (but with check points). Everything is boss level HP and damage. Each day, 2 story missions are selected for challenge mode. As we had just reached 30 and our gear wasn't very good, they first one we tried was a catastrophe. . It started out with 4-5 shotgun rushers just eating our lunch mercilessly. You're boxed in a small room and leaving it will reset the mission. We settled for the other mission that allowed us to sit back and snipe our way forward. We had room to fall back on rushers. This mode took us about 2+ hours to finish because of the constant dying/objective failing and the cautious nature we took. It was a lot of fun though. We had to change our skills and weapons various times through the course of it to best fit the situation. A decent amount of purples dropped and the end reward is a GUARANTEED High End drop. (Take that destiny) You can replay these as much as you want and get the HE drop, unlike Destiny. But seeing as they are very time consuming, its well deserved. The daily also rewards Phoenix credits that allows you to buy more HE gear from a special vendor in the BoO. I think you can only earn the Phoenix credits once a day per mission.

 

The level 30 DZ is pretty barren right now of other players. I assume this is because not many people are 30 yet, and we were patrolling the most dangerous area were level 32 enemies were. The DZ offers the most frequent purple drops and gold drops. Purple rained for days, but gold was few and far between for everyone in the party. A scavenger armor mod can increase your chances of drops I've read, but again, we just reached 30. Enemies aren't as powerful as they are in challenge mode, but they are a lot more aggressive, and they don't seem to have a limit to their chase... there is a limit, but its huge and its hard to run from them. We were able to kite a boss almost endlessly, so I assume as long as you stay engaged, they will give chance indefinitely. Dying is beyond frustrating. You drop everything in your DZ loot bag, a portion of your DZ funs, keys, and you lose a chunk of XP. I down leveled a few times because of it. Teammates cannot revive you once you have died out of down state like they can in PvE. You'll have to spawn at the nearest safe house and make your way back... this can cause problems if more enemies have spawned in the streets. NPCs are more populated than the beta and they respawn a lot more frequently. My group of four ran into another group of four and we made a truce that we both stuck to. Even a group of 4 can get wiped easily in the area we were in and it was amazing to have a truce that went super well. Since we couldn't group into 8, friendly fire happened a few times, and we just went along with it until the rouge timer went away. No one picked up anyone's death loot either which will probably be a rare occurrence between random squads. I just dont see how the DZ can be solo friendly unless you manage to matchmake your way to all HE gear. The NPCs are overwhelmingly brutal for one person to take on.

 

I'm so happy with this game TBH. Even after beating the story, I still have a lot to do to get geared up and ready for possible raids. My only complaint is you can't play with lower level people without making a new character. Missions always scale to the highest leveled player even if the session owner is the lowest level. So it makes the mission unbearably frustrating.... I was going to run through the story with another friend using just my pistol and melee, but I can't. I wish every game had a downlevel scale system like GW2. There is no power leveling either. I did one mission with him and it only gained him 1 level... its not like borderlands or diablo where you can get people massive leveling jumps super quickly.

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

 

I wish I could have gotten it all. This was about a 45 min conflict starting out with these guys going rogue on us and running away until their timers ran out after they got cold feet because they thought one of my friends was alone. We went rogue on them when we heard them talking shit via proxy chat, but they were able to get us after one of my friends accidentally got glitched into the environment in the subway. At this point they were running their mouth so much about how we sucked, I couldn't let it go. I prompt came up that BattleBooski called for extract. We ran to their extraction zone just as the rope was coming down, killed them all and extracted their loot. Of course this meant war for them. They chased us as we tried to trim out level 3 timer down, We wanted to see if they would follow us into the most dangerous part of the DZ and they did. We mowed them down a few more times to reach level 5 rogue  status which starts upon the first kill in the video.

 

It was intense, but a lot of fun. the steaks were so high for dying, but it was worth it just to teach them a lesson. They were so outclassed by our High End Vectors, it wasn't even close.

[Sledgstone 8,672]

That was an intense fire fight right there. Was there an item that was replenishing your ammo? How did you not run out during all that?

 

And those turrets.. wow.

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

I have a lot of ammo capacity stats on my armor. But we were all pretty low. The guy that kept making the green AoE heal had the skill modded to refill the magazine. If you carry one of each weapon, you'll have full ammo for all of them until you use them since they have their own ammo type. That's why I swapped my shotgun to my AR. Right now SMGs are the dps king, especially PvP.

The flame turret is amazing for some deadly CC. The turret has a dedicated CC mod, but the burn condi damage is too good to not use. Even though the CC isn't as good stat/duration-wise on paper, it's very disorienting on screen when you're on fire.

[Sledgstone 8,672]

I was also wondering, what about friendly fire? as long as you are in the same party you won't hurt each other in the DZ right? And it looked like you were able to throw turrets and grenades thru your teammates? I always hated that in battlefield. I'd lob a grenade only to see my brother run right in front of me at that moment and see it bounce off his head right back at me.