This is my first post here, and it will likely be lengthy. The first section is directly to Massive/Ubi. If it is TLDR for you, skip to the first bold section.
About me/us - My wife and I bought the game months after release after reading how awful it was, especially the DZ, but overall, just a big mess. When Massive employees said (paraphrasing) "you aren't playing the game the way we want you to / designed it" we nearly decided to never buy this game or anything by Massive again. We bought it anyway as we play co-op games almost exclusively. If a game is single player or multiplayer but no co-op, it doesn't matter how good it is, it doesn't get bought.
As most other Division players agree, the 1-30 leveling game was fantastic. The sense of progression, of becoming more powerful, and of course tons of loot was really, really good for the most part. Post-30, however, was some of the absolute worst gaming experiences either of us have ever suffered through. Sure, there have easily been worse games released before, but none of them cost $100-ish (both of us purchased the Season Pass) times two. And again, when I say that the 1-30 was fantastic (even with flaws), it captured our gaming attention like few games before.
That's what made having to leave the game so utterly frustrating. Developers complaining that we weren't enjoying the game the way they intended it to be played, the horrible, awful, completely unintentionally terrible Dark Zone mechanics (and players/griefers), the developers catering to the vocal minority instead of to the huge amount of casual players who made up the overwhelming majority of the player base, the often idiotic game mechanics... it added up far too quickly once we reached level 30. To the point it was making us severely enraged to the point we had to put the game away and move on.
I never actually expected Massive to admit they were wrong and attempt to fix the game. But because they've shown initiative, we decided to get on the PTS and do our part with actual playing as the devs have asked and providing wordy, detailed impressions, thoughts, and feedback. That's how much we both hate and at the same time absolutely love The Division.
So here goes our combined feedback from the first couple of days of playing on the PTS. This covers ONLY our (mostly me, she works a lot and doesn't have as much time as I do) journey from fresh 30 to T2 (my character already qualifies for T3 but I'm still rocking a few 163-182 pieces). We kept notes as we played, and I'll do my best to explain each item below.
Tier 1
Initial thoughts - First, the game feels completely different in terms of weapons and enemy NPC strength/tactics. The "tactics" actually don't seem all that different than we remember, yet they do. Instead of 4 shotgunners rushing while 3 other enemies toss 183,629 grenades, The Division somehow feels far different during combat encounters. It's hard to explain, but if this is what Massive was shooting for, the battles seem a lot more... I don't know. Better? Realistic? Realism isn't the best choice of words, but it definitely feels more natural or real or smooth than before. Massive is on the right path, though there are plenty of issues that need to be resolved or fixed or changed.
1. Gear still has XP bonuses on it at endgame - what the hell? I thought XP bonuses were going to be removed from gear since it is unnecessary once you hit level 30? Sure, we get the new caches and that endgame XP is finally going toward a reward of some kind instead of disappearing into thin air. But we do NOT want XP bonuses on endgame equipment. It's completely useless, costs credits to remove, and still takes up a potential recalibration when rolling off a non-XP bonus stat (ie: it shouldn't even be in the list at all, period).
My first piece of HE/Teal loot was a 163 Reclaimer vest. +22% bonus XP stat... Why is XP bonus still here? It's on EVERYTHING it seems (exaggeration, but ~40% or more of the loot we've picked up still has this stat on it).
2. Unable to fast travel because we're stuck in combat - Why is this still a thing? Just because an enemy is two blocks away and shows a red quarter-bar on my minimap = I can't fast travel? Fix this please. It's annoying and frustrating.
3. Missions / world chests still reward green/blue items - I don't expect every mission or chest reward to be HE/teal. Purples are actually pretty good and even better than HE and teal items at times, and I'm okay with this. But why the heck are GS38 greens and GS89 blues given out as rewards? This is more of a "not that big of a deal to be honest" complaint, but I wrote it down so figured I'd add it to this post.
4. Bullet lag - I do not expect The Division guns to shoot bullets that almost instantly hit their target. I understand this is not an FPS. At the same time, every single sniper rifle I have tried so far has a very noticeable lag when fired, to the point I can actually watch the bullet travel to its target. It's incredibly annoying, especially since none of my other guns seem to have this problem. BECAUSE this is not a problem with other guns, I know it isn't server lag or my own computer lagging (i5-2500k @ 4Ghz / GTX 970, hers is i5-2600 / R9 290x, both gpu's @ 4GB VRAM).
Sniping effectively is almost impossible. To pull the trigger when your crosshairs are on an enemy's head/chest and still miss because the bullet takes too long to travel is unacceptable.
The SA-58 burst fire AR seems to suffer from a slightly less laggy version of this, but it is noticeable. I do not see this issue when using a G36 or ACR (both purples, still haven't found an auto AR other than the AK-47 I looted two minutes before logging off tonight). I don't know exactly what the problem is with bullet lag, but it needs to be looked at.
5. Hit registration - Not sure if this is bullet lag, or if something else on top of bullet lag. Bullet hits NPC enemy and there's a noticeable lag between that and when the NPC's model registers the hit (stagger, impact, etc... there's a delay there). It's similar to watching a dubbed movie where the dialog is not in sync with the actor's lips.
6. HVT - WHY CAN WE STILL ONLY TAKE ONE HVT MISSION AT A TIME??? For the love of God, fix this. Our nickname for The Division is "Loading Screen" as in we play for 3-10 minutes, complete a mission or HVT, then sit while fast traveling, watching the loading screen. Spend 5 Target Intel to go kill an HVT? Loading Screen Minigame to travel to the target, kill target, play the Loading Screen Minigame to travel back to the BoO. Rinse and repeat. 1/3 of the time or more seems to be wasted on fast travel.
(slight note: the loading times seem to be greatly improved over the live version, as well as it seems like the huge amount of caching is down,or maybe the cache finally gets flushed regularly? The Division's live game can easily suck down 16GB+ of virtual memory pretty quickly, then it's hdd grinding until I shut the game off -- keep in mind I have 3x750GB 64MB 7200RPM platter drives in RAID-0 and she has 2x256GB SSD's, so hers don't grind but the hdd light is almost steady)
Fix the HVT system. If I have enough intel to grab 4 targets, let me grab all 4 and go about my business instead of all of this fast travel.
Even better... we're Division agents. Lau and others are always bugging us on our radios about this or that, so why can't we remotely spend intel to go after HVT's? In what world would HQ say "oh, you have to come in each and every time to get a new target"? We do not enjoy the Loading Screen Minigame.
7. Handstop / grip weapon mods - In what world does a weapon grip/handstop affect reload time??? I see this on almost every single mod of this type. I've owned real AR's that were modded and handled a number of others, and in no sane universe has this particular mod ever affected the time it takes to pop out a mag and insert a new one. NEVER. I know you guys wanted to reduce all the different types of stats (combining all the different stability stats into a single, etc, and that's cool). But saying these stability/accuracy grips and handstops and such affect reload speed is just dumb. Handstop/grip mods should affect stability, accuracy, optimal range, and probably some crit hit / damage. But never reload speed. If your gun reloads faster with a stability grip on it, your gun was designed by a fool with soup in his head instead of a brain.
8. Threat increase/reduction mods - Is this working yet? I'd love to have a Loud Vent Brake with 30% more threat on my M60 to keep the bad guys shooting at me while her 20% reduced threat mod allows her to move cover-to-cover and pick off enemies without five bad guys suddenly turning on her and ignoring me. If it isn't working, if it won't ever work properly, just remove it so any mods that might have it will get another useful stat.
9. Lighting is still awful when looking at cosmetic clothing - No matter where I have stood while trying on new jackets or scarves or such, the lighting is still terrible, and almost always so dark as to make it impossible to see what it will actually look like. Even when I go into the preview mode, the lighting is awful and dark.
10. No landmarks in LZ - as much as I hate the DZ, one of the best aspects of it is the landmarks. It gives players a waypoint of sorts, lets them know there will definitely be bad guys hanging around. In the LZ, I have zero clue where the world bosses are or how to spawn them. I don't mind wandering around to find them, but I'm not going to wander aimlessly. The LZ is absolutely HUGE in terms of area, so why not use if to fill in the world? The DZ has landmarks, give us landmarks in the LZ and put some bosses around them. Or at least let us see the general area in each district where the boss has spawned. I wouldn't mind wandering around Chelsea for an hour or five if it was set up like the DZ. Otherwise, I simply kill the HVT or finish the mission and play the Loading Screen Minigame again, which is not fun.
10b. HVT targets still in the same old spot they've always been. Seriously... you guys can't program them to spawn in up to 5 or 10 different locations at random? This seems lazy. Combine this with the lack of landmarks or markers to show the general area a world boss is in and we have zero reason to walk/run through the streets. In the DZ, the whole point is to wander the zones because we know bosses, landmarks, and elite mobs are going to be keeping us busy. In the LZ, it's Loading Screen Minigame - fight boss/do mission - Loading Screen Minigame.
GIVE US A REASON TO NOT FAST TRAVEL SO MUCH! I would love to have to walk through three districts because I'm fighting and moving boss to landmark to HVT to boss etc. I don't want to play the Loading Screen Minigame. I want to wander through alleys, subways, rooftoops, have battles in stairwells, get pinned down behind a truck in a clogged intersection, etc.
Tier 2
11. It took me up until just before logging off to finally get some teal gloves! This isn't a complaint. I'm very familiar with RNG. Made myself a note because I was beginning to worry that there was no such thing as gear set gloves =/. Again, not a complaint. I actually felt elated when I got them, the same sort of feeling while leveling when you get your first purple gun or gear piece.
12. Bullet lag part 2 - same as Tier 1. There's something fishy going on. I thought maybe, possibly the bullet lag was because T1 is supposed to be easy and it was programmed in or something. But it's just as bad in T2. Sniper rifles are awful, shotguns are still awesomely powerful but hard to use with the lag between firing, the bullet hitting, the recoil animation (my gun recoil), and the enemy character model registering the hit and subsequent animation that lets me know I've staggered or killed him.
13. FOR THE LOVE OF XENU-GOD-GI JOE, FIX THE JTF A-HOLES SO THEY CANNOT PUSH YOU OUT OF COVER DURING A FIGHT!!!!!!!!!
I am sorry for yelling, but holy %#@$@!!@# the most bestest, awesomest, funnest, killerest thing in the entire world is to be in an intense firefight and some %#@$#@ JTF ******* just shoves you out of cover and into a storm of bullets.
FIX THIS
FIX THIS
FIX THIS
I don't care if you have to make our JTF pals so stupid they never take cover again. I don't care if you make them just stand around with their thumbs up their ********s (to be honest, they are less than useful/helpful in almost every circumstance and we never get any actual help from them other than maybe soaking up some enemy bullets... beyond that, they are 100% worthless and only serve to make us more frustrated with the way they run around like they are on fire, interrupting menus and shoving us out of cover or blocking us from diving away from a grenade).
FIX THIS FIX THIS FIX THIS
*******
Wrap-up
Okay. Probably sounds like a lot of complaining and yelling and anger, but I want to reiterate that The Division feels like a very different game on the PTS. This is a GOOD thing. You ARE headed in a good direction. These are just my (and my wife's) thoughts after the first two days of playing. I'm not going to waste words complaining about queue waits, the Delta C-0-1082 errors or crashes, or the "poor connection to host server" message that has never gone away (my internet is 300/100Mbit so I know it isn't me).
We both understand that this is a test environment and with it comes a whole host of challenges and problems and unoptimized or broken bits. That's not a big deal. The game is progressing toward something enjoyable (keep in mind we are Borderlands/Diablo/Path of Exile/WoW/etc players who love loot-based games). I know this is a big wall of text but like I said, we're trying to do our part by actually testing out the game under the parameters you want us to.
Leveling from T1 to T2 is great so far. Not too quick, not too slow. The combat/crafting/field caches are an excellent addition, Please do not remove these. We've read plenty of new complaints about how loot is too generous, leveling is too easy, etc. I believe it is pretty good as-is. I'm already selling gear set and HE pieces because while the loot rain is almost a flood, RNG still keeps a lot of gear in the "meh" category. This is good. If we looted the best gear from the first few enemies, or even the first few hundred enemies, we'd be bored (let's be honest and admit that The Division is lacking content - with more content/DLC, we'll have a ton more playing options).
Also, the 24h timer for world bosses needs to be reduced. I know you don't want people farming the same boss over and over again, but that sounds a lot like "you guys aren't playing the game the way WE (Massive) want you to play" and that's not a good relationship with your customers/fans. If someone wants to kill the Bullet King 247 times over the course of three days, so what? Let him. Most of us won't be doing that, especially with an LZ that is a non-PVP version of the DZ. CHOICES are good, even if that choice is to kill the same boss six times in two hours. To us, that's boring as hell, but it doesn't affect us in any way if other players do this. We don't care that it took 16 days to get a good set of gear while it only took Jimmy_21365 two hours because he farmed a world boss repeatedly. We don't concern ourselves with how others play. IT DOES NOT AFFECT US AT ALL. But 24 hours between boss spawns... please fix this.
As for the DZ... well, I was off to my supply drop and it was finally in a different district than usual, so I ran through DZ1 instead of fast traveling. Lo and behold, within 30 seconds, some jughead in the DZ went rogue and killed me. In the live game, I've spent maybe 1% of my total playing time in the DZ, and she even less. We hate it. It's stupid. I get that you guys want the DZ to be the focal point of the game, BUT IT IS NOT AND IT NEVER WILL BE. Just admit that the DZ won't ever be as awesome as you convinced yourself it would be and move on by giving us an LZ that has all of the great features of the DZ but without PVP. PVP players will still go there for PVP, but PVE players have already abandoned it for the most part. Listening to the 1% or top DZ players on game design features is foolish at best, and you've seen 90% of your player base leave the game because of 1. lack of endgame content 2. bad enemy/TTK design and 3. Forcing PVP on players who want nothing to do with PVP.
It's like you guys didn't even understand the concept of "griefing" and just plowed ahead. I MIGHT have enjoyed the DZ by the time we bought the game but you added terrible features like rope cutting (worst idea ever) and reducing the penalty for going rogue. I could go on and on about my hate for the DZ, but I'll just reiterate that you really should stop trying to make the DZ an integral part of the game when very few players want to PVP. We want solo/co-op PVE and we want all of the great features of the DZ without the PVP. I simply cannot state this enough, and no matter how many persons post that we PVE players don't deserve the great loot and such, it won't change the fact that the majority of players don't want to PVP (and if we do, we want the choice). Your repeated refusal to even consider making the LZ like the DZ minus PVP is maddening, frustrating, and once again caters to the vocal minority. You've been to Reddit and your own forums. Listen to your customers.
Overall, it seems The Division is salvageable. We are pleased to see you making the effort, and we are enjoying our time on the PTS. I sincerely apologize for the length of this (was originally going to apply for the ETF but my fear of flying and lack of passport meant I waited until now to vomit up all this word soup). Keep going, and know that I understand this is just our opinion--there will be plenty who think completely different and want something other than what we want. We don't expect you to even read all of this, but just in case you do, we want to make sure we are heard.
T&C - Boise, Idaho
PS not even going to bother checking all of this for grammar/spelling/coherency. It's 4AM.