Burrito of Peace wrote on Sep 22, 2023, 12:07:
Look, I just want a game where I can drive a .308 in to some asshole and watch him drop like a stone. No slots, no super secret squirrel stones of power, and no traits horseshit. Just straight, accurate ballistics and damage. "A zone" hit at 100 yards? Someone is having a very bad day unless they are rocking Level III or III+ armor*. "T zone" hit? Game over.

*Even with either, you're still going to be having a bad day. Just not a very bad day. You'll probably get away with deep tissue bruising or broken ribs.

Rainbow Six through #3 and the first Ghost Recon (plus xpacs) were very much my thing for this reason. They didn't have the best ballistic modeling due to when they came out, but to date they're still my favorite style of modern shooter. Unfortunately this style of game very much died when consoles got involved (there are plenty of multiplayer-centric ones now, but nothing single).

Burrito of Peace wrote on Sep 22, 2023, 16:13:

MoreLuckThanSkill wrote on Sep 22, 2023, 13:35:
You might enjoy the Sniper Elite series... weird but cool after shot X Ray views, but bullet damage, ballistics, etc. will be much closer to 'real' life for 99% of enemies.

I have played the Hell out of that series and unabashedly love it. On the hardest difficulty, bullet drop is a thing at distance and the scopes from WW2 didn't have BDCs so you'll be doing a lot of math in your head. I love it.

Hated Contracts, though. They cheesed the mechanics in those two so badly.

The Contracts games are from the other major franchise in the genre, Sniper Ghost Warrior. They certainly have their differences compared to Sniper Elite, even if they both offer the same type of fantasy.

MoreLuckThanSkill wrote on Sep 22, 2023, 13:35:
You might enjoy the Sniper Elite series... weird but cool after shot X Ray views, but bullet damage, ballistics, etc. will be much closer to 'real' life for 99% of enemies.

I have played the Hell out of that series and unabashedly love it. On the hardest difficulty, bullet drop is a thing at distance and the scopes from WW2 didn't have BDCs so you'll be doing a lot of math in your head. I love it.

Hated Contracts, though. They cheesed the mechanics in those two so badly.

Nullity wrote on Sep 22, 2023, 13:44:

VaranDragon wrote on Sep 22, 2023, 02:18:
Never played 1 and 2, the whole third person schtick + bullet sponge enemies + typical Ubisoft design doesn't gel with me. I also don't like Assassns Creed and very few Far Cry entries.

One, the Division games don't follow the typical Ubi game design, and two, the games aren't meant to be realistic shooters. They're more akin to an ARPG, just with guns and tech instead of swords and magic.

That said, I'm beyond excited at the TD3 announcement. I lump the first two together as my favorite shooters ever.

Every "realistic" shooter I've ever played has been a yawnfest. I want to have fun, and many times that means "unrealistic" as in most video games that aren't sims.

Nullity wrote on Sep 22, 2023, 14:06:

Prez wrote on Sep 21, 2023, 20:11:
Faye Lau's betrayal was contrived and stupid as well.

Did you never play her manhunt mission? It's not that black and white.

Story spoiler: You can argue that she did technically betray the Division, but she was basically undercover within the Black Tusk in order to kill President Ellis (a traitor working with the Black Tusk).

If you haven't played her manhunt mission and would like to experience it for yourself, it's an alternate Camp White Oak mission. Travel there and you can swap to that version.

I don't remember. I'm leaning towards that I didn't. Iirc her betrayal was the last thing mentioned in the story, and I never went beyond that.

Prez wrote on Sep 21, 2023, 20:11:
Faye Lau's betrayal was contrived and stupid as well.

Did you never play her manhunt mission? It's not that black and white.

Story spoiler: You can argue that she did technically betray the Division, but she was basically undercover within the Black Tusk in order to kill President Ellis (a traitor working with the Black Tusk).

If you haven't played her manhunt mission and would like to experience it for yourself, it's an alternate Camp White Oak mission. Travel there and you can swap to that version.

VaranDragon wrote on Sep 22, 2023, 02:18:
Never played 1 and 2, the whole third person schtick + bullet sponge enemies + typical Ubisoft design doesn't gel with me. I also don't like Assassns Creed and very few Far Cry entries.

One, the Division games don't follow the typical Ubi game design, and two, the games aren't meant to be realistic shooters. They're more akin to an ARPG, just with guns and tech instead of swords and magic.

That said, I'm beyond excited at the TD3 announcement. I lump the first two together as my favorite shooters ever.

Burrito of Peace wrote on Sep 22, 2023, 12:07:
Look, I just want a game where I can drive a .308 in to some asshole and watch him drop like a stone. No slots, no super secret squirrel stones of power, and no traits horseshit. Just straight, accurate ballistics and damage. "A zone" hit at 100 yards? Someone is having a very bad day unless they are rocking Level III or III+ armor*. "T zone" hit? Game over.

*Even with either, you're still going to be having a bad day. Just not a very bad day. You'll probably get away with deep tissue bruising or broken ribs.

You might enjoy the Sniper Elite series... weird but cool after shot X Ray views, but bullet damage, ballistics, etc. will be much closer to 'real' life for 99% of enemies.

Ghost Recon Breakpoint has a much quicker damage model than Division 2, but it'll also be unrealistic.

Think of Division 2 as an ARPG, farther away from realistic damage than even the Battlefield or CoD series.

Burrito of Peace wrote on Sep 22, 2023, 12:07:
Look, I just want a game where I can drive a .308 in to some asshole and watch him drop like a stone. No slots, no super secret squirrel stones of power, and no traits horseshit. Just straight, accurate ballistics and damage. "A zone" hit at 100 yards? Someone is having a very bad day unless they are rocking Level III or III+ armor*. "T zone" hit? Game over.

*Even with either, you're still going to be having a bad day. Just not a very bad day. You'll probably get away with deep tissue bruising or broken ribs.

This is definitely not the game for you. The damage modelling isn't even approaching accurate. It's not even movie accurate.

Look, I just want a game where I can drive a .308 in to some asshole and watch him drop like a stone. No slots, no super secret squirrel stones of power, and no traits horseshit. Just straight, accurate ballistics and damage. "A zone" hit at 100 yards? Someone is having a very bad day unless they are rocking Level III or III+ armor*. "T zone" hit? Game over.

*Even with either, you're still going to be having a bad day. Just not a very bad day. You'll probably get away with deep tissue bruising or broken ribs.

OmegaFoRCe wrote on Sep 22, 2023, 11:28:
I may be in the minority here, but I could not get into The Division or The Division 2. It's the bullet-sponge aspect coupled with real world environment and weapons that throws me off.

Well yeah, it's effectively an ARPG with grinding, ranged attacks, 'spells' just disguised with semi-present day, semi real life weapons. It is 100% unrealistic in terms of bullet damage/player health/enemy health. *Disclaimer* unless you have very high level exotics and specific core setups, usually 6 red, to 1 shot most enemies. Even then you will be doing millions of damage.


Ghost Recon, Ghost Recon:Breakpoint, etc. have a slightly more realistic damage model, with 'real' world guns, but I found those games to be sorta boring.

3 / 0 =

I may be in the minority here, but I could not get into The Division or The Division 2. It's the bullet-sponge aspect coupled with real world environment and weapons that throws me off.

WaltSee wrote on Sep 21, 2023, 21:09:
I like the game, too--got it with something I bought--somewhere. Couldn't do much in single-player, like I wanted...any quick hints come to mind for SP?

Hrm, where to begin... obviously it's a cover shooter, so as soon as possible in any fight, get into cover, go for head shots. Certain guns will have really good damage per shot and accuracy even with lower level beginner versions, namely the M14, but these days every gun is at least somewhat useful. Pistol damage has been raised a ton, so always feel free to break out the pistol to finish off weak enemies.

Enemies will try to flank you, even at low level, but when they run out of cover, they will take more damage/be easier to shoot. Later you will get mods/items that do increased damage to Out of Cover enemies, etc.

Playing solo, I prefer to have 1 damage/distract skill, and one healing skill. Even though it can be inefficient, I like the healing mist, that you can drop basically right at your own feet to heal up. A lot of players prefer the Revive Hive, but that basically means you have to die to make it worthwhile, and you can easily get shot to death right after it revives you. I don't recommend NOT having a healing skill, either Healing Mist or Healing Drone, if you are going solo.

As far as cores, I usually go at least 4 RED cores for damage, with crit chance, crit damage, and then hope for the best rolls for damage on your guns on top of that. Then I prefer 2 YELLOW cores, for extra skill damage and healing, but arguably these days you can run 2 BLUE cores as backup for more armor, if you get passive regen items/exotics. Once you start getting higher level/exotics, you can change this up, and you'll see people going 6 RED cores, or 6 YELLOW cores, etc.

Not sure why I'm capitalizing colors, lol.

As far as Kits, I prefer the Technician kit by far, for solo. It gives you one free YELLOW core, so I can go 4 RED, 2 YELLOW from gear(usually Skill Haste or Skill Damage), and then the bonus YELLOW core for a 4 R, 3 Y, 0 B setup. I find BLUE cores to be usually the weakest strategy solo, unless you have exotics that dramatically boost damage based on armor/hp. Killing enemies is better than tanking enemies.

Starting from scratch, you want to do the main questline/tutorials, then start grinding out your various Specialities. Technician is far and away my favorite, but they're all good now. You will want them all eventually, maxxed out. They increase from gaining experience while having the kit selected, so there will be growing pains when you switch to a new one that has no points in it, at higher levels, but it's still doable. Ideally by then you will have some decent gear to carry you.

You can read Reddit to see what the absolute best experience per second is, but I preferred to just play the open world, take over checkpoints, run into random spawn quests and enemy minibosses, and then occasionally do strongholds. I could only do the strongholds and main/side quests so many times before it got boring. Now there are also basically assassination missions as well, all of which can line up together, as well as Invasions, so you can have 3-4x the experience and or quests in the same spot to gain more experience.

Also later on you can add modifiers to the global settings to increase difficulty and exp gain, but realistically starting out you will ignore those. Start on low level Global, then gradually increase as you get more comfortable, get more dps, etc. Higher level items only drop at Challenging and Heroic level difficulty. With good stats anyway.

Early, very early in the game, just use whatever drops. Level cap with the Expansion is 40, anything before 40 is basically tutorial. It's a lot like Diablo 3 in that way, any pre-40 loot is going to be garbage at 40.

There is also crafting and extracting aspects from weapons, various other grinds, but the cover shooting in the open world is going to be 90%+ of your playtime.

You only have to do the College once, and the highrise skyscraper thing is going to be too annoying for you to deal with at low level, just stick with quests and the open world.

*EDIT* Forgot to mention, you start out in "Story" difficulty, and have options for Normal Challenging Heroic later on. In spite of that, if you have missions you have never done before, you will have to do them once in Story difficulty even if you have already progressed to higher difficulties. There are usually experience bonuses for both Story and higher difficulties, and most missions can be completed in under 15 minutes, so it's not too big of a penalty, just forewarning you of built in repetition for most missions.

Also, the level cap is 30 without the expansion to NY. Almost all the above info remains the same, just obviously you're going to cap out at 30 and 'begin' the grind at 30. I highly recommend getting the expansion if you don't have it, whenever it's on sale again, the game is not really complete without it.

This comment was edited on Sep 22, 2023, 11:40.

is this still a game based on "road map"?

This is great news for me. I love the series... played through 1 and 2 a few times and I rarely play a game more than once. Yes!

Oh good, the bullet sponges are returning.

And people said Ubisoft is creatively bankrupt.. worry not, they got you covered with... MORE SEQUELS ;p

Never played 1 and 2, the whole third person schtick + bullet sponge enemies + typical Ubisoft design doesn't gel with me. I also don't like Assassns Creed and very few Far Cry entries.

WaltSee wrote on Sep 21, 2023, 21:09:
I like the game, too--got it with something I bought--somewhere. Couldn't do much in single-player, like I wanted...any quick hints come to mind for SP?

are you having difficulty getting through the basic campaign? if you queue to join a mission do you not get any takers? which is possible if there are not enough new players. you still should be able to SP it, look online for maps of world bosses and make a route, that is probably an easier method of gearing up. avoid the dark zone. you can also capture bases, find ones close to your level.

I stopped playing div2 after they did some pve build breaking shenanigans. Still I enjoyed the gameplay look. I have the NY expansion, but 1000 levels seems like a lot.