I never played the original but just bought The Division 2 over the weekend during Ubisoft's Easter sale and I must say I am really enjoying everything about this game. I tried getting into Fallout 76 and just couldn't get into it as much as I would have liked, even with being a Fallout fan in general and giving it some levels and time. Maybe I'll come back to that one at some point but we'll see.

I wasn't sure about The Division 2 being played from a third person vantage point but it actually works really well IMHO in providing situational awareness and peripheral vision which would not have been possible from a first person game perspective, while providing very similar fighting mechanics and weapons use/ cursor aiming as a FPS. The pace of the game/travel/fighting and difficulty of the engagements seems spot on, at least in what I've played so far and the skills/progression seems well done too. Here is how it is described on a review website for those unfamiliar with it:

"At its core, The Division 2 is an action game about a group of American government-backed sleeper agents who are activated at times of disaster to serve as a domestic fighting force. It depicts a battle to control America’s capital in the wake of a biological weapons attack and subsequent lockdown as it moves the franchise’s timeline and location from the first game’s wintry New York City to the summer in a wrecked Washington DC where deer sometimes run through its gun-blasted streets. Playing it is all about steering a character through hundreds of firefights, collecting, unlocking, and equipping better and better guns, gear, gadget skills, and more as you endeavor to hunt down and wield the rarest, best stuff you can find."

Looking forward to getting deeper into it and the crafting of weapons and equipment as well as exploring and finding some cool stuff along the way. The multiplayer aspect is really intriguing as well as there is just as much opportunity to co-op with others as well as PVP / PVE if you choose. One of the other pluses, especially if you choose to engage in PVP, while you can get up on top of and climb things, there is no frantic "bunny hoping" taking place in this game.

Any others playing it?

If anyone is considering it, I would say give it a shot. There is a lot to like about it.

I'm enjoying it though I wish I didnt have to pump 35 rounds into each bad guy. Very fun though especially coop with friends.

I played the Division quite a bit and got in on the Division 2 Alpha and beta releases prior to the official launch. I enjoy the PvE a lot more on D2, as there are some really nice builds that let you stay alive with an almost constant armor regeneration.

As with the first Division there are PvP builds that make it not fun. Me and 2 of my brothers hit tier 5 the weekend they released it but I haven’t played much in the last 2 weeks because of the unbalanced PvP builds. Half of the people in PvP are running the “vector build” and it’s just not fun to play right now.

Overall I really like the game, it’s also nice knowing people that play as can farm our crafting materials to max and do all of the bounties and weekly missions in an evening.

I obviously can't comment on PVP yet but I sure hope they find a way to keep it balanced and fun for everyone instead on their being only one "uber" character configuration / build that everyone strives to create.

So far, everything else I have experienced from the gameplay, mission variety, open world exploration and loot finding, and even the variety of clothing, equipment and weapons is impressive. I haven't but scratched the surface of the game still in the initially unlocked area of the city and it is very enjoyable. Helping and protecting the settlements and base of operations, helping take over control points, and just wandering around the city off the beaten path have yield fun and interesting experiences.

The graphics and level of detail are impressive and the game engine feels responsive and optimized as my Nvidia 1080TI rig is providing smooth 60+ fps gameplay at 4K resolution with Max/High settings! The selection of firearms I have come across already is amazing too with well done animations and sound, and I like that the equipment and weapons have levels as well which helps balance the stats/damage they do for your given level and the enemies you encounter. So far I have / have found guns from a Ruger 586 revolver, to HK USC, MK17 SCAR, AUG, AKM, AK-74, SIG MPX and more, even an old school M60!

Below is my character as he currently looks sporting the M60 and this is a resized image, not even the full resolution that I see.

I hated it the first 10 levels. Many things in the game aren’t explained very well and I was constantly getting ambushed. Solo play is the weak point. Once I grouped with some friends it actually became quite fun. I hit world tier 5 last week. I don’t do PVP so there’s really not a lot left for me. I’ll likely be moving on to Days Gone in a few days.

I’m on PlayStation, ID is CuddleMuffinz

If your playing add me on uplay Nickelsig229

I'll roll with you, Having a lot of fun myself.

PC that is.

I love this game and so far have only played solo.

I am unfortunately having an issue with my PC client that I noticed a few days ago when I finally progressed to the point of safe houses and other areas where I started to encounter more players. Not sure if it was related to the prior patch or what but extended load times was one. I was noticing more bizarre names than usual for a MMO game and also noticed some performance / stuttering / freezing issues which I should not have and did not have before, given my hardware and gigabit Internet connection. After some research, digging, and stat monitoring, it turns out that not only does my client not display what server/region I am connecting to in the Social square inside the game menu when you hit Esc (it displays Region: and a o))) graphic in green only), I found in the Windows 10 Task Manager and Performance Monitor next to the TD2 port 55000 which seems to be the main server port connection that I only alternate from connecting to European servers evidently located in Switzerland??? to connecting to Chinese servers on the other side of the Earth!!!

I used the Windows 10 Firewall to progressively block the offending servers to see if the client would eventually connect to a US server even once and I ended up blocking the entire 35.0.0.0/8 (China) and 104.0.0.0/8 IP blocks and got an error message while trying to connect that "The Division 2 services are not available at this time. Please try again later.". That means that my client isn't even trying to connect to any servers other than those in China and Europe and I'm located on the East side of the US. I won't be playing anymore until they fix it and I have reported it in detail to support. They are evidently having to escalate it to the developers as their port forwarding and other fixes did nothing to remedy the situation. It defeats the purpose of having a gigabit Internet connection and low ping setup that works great in every other online game I've played including other multi-continent games like World of Tanks, only to have this issue in TD2. While they seem to have fixed the long load time and stuttering / freezing for a few seconds periodically issues with a mini patch, I am not going to play on a client that forces me to play on a server half a world away for security, privacy and performance reasons! My average ping times when connected to these servers is around 150ms with higher spikes when my typical ping times for other MMO games in North America have been from a high of about the 40-50ms range down to in the low teens depending on the server and load.

I wonder if this is happening to others and they just don't realize it yet? So much for paying for the Ultimate access.

I like it but I don’t love it. As much as it’s like the first one, for some reason this one isn’t grabbing me like the first one did. I’m enjoying running through the museums and such on the missions but I’m just not as motivated to play this one.

The other night I ran one mission and told my friends I was going to stay online to chat with them but was closing the game because I didn’t want to play. I spent the time surfing the internet and just talking to them.

I would be interested to see if others on the PC client have checked or could check their Task Manager Performance Monitor readings for The Division 2 port 55000 to see what server IPs they are connecting to?

Would really appreciate it if someone could share their server IP findings mentioned above. Trying to troubleshoot the issue. Thanks in advance.

I’m playing The Division 2 on PS4. I played the original also.

My favorite improvement is co-op gameplay with varying levels. I can only play a few times a week. Some of my friends play daily. I love that the game scales the levels. My level 8 was fighting alongside my friends at level 21. This allowed me to level up quickly and experience the game maps at an accelerated pace.

I’m very happy with it.

quote:

Originally posted by Dtech:
Would really appreciate it if someone could share their server IP findings mentioned above. Trying to troubleshoot the issue. Thanks in advance.

I saw in the state of the game video today they explained what was happening.

If your matchmaking and there are not players locally they move you out to other world zones so your not waiting forever to get in a match.

I guess enough people complained so they switched it back to making you wait until other players in your world zone join matchmaking. So you wont be in an asian match, but it might take you 5 minutes to get matched up.

I'm assuming its euro, asia, austrailia, usa, for zones.


I'm on the east coast and never waited more then 3 minutes, typically its 30 seconds wait for me.

quote:

Originally posted by TannerBoyl:
I’m playing The Division 2 on PS4. I played the original also.

My favorite improvement is co-op gameplay with varying levels. I can only play a few times a week. Some of my friends play daily. I love that the game scales the levels. My level 8 was fighting alongside my friends at level 21. This allowed me to level up quickly and experience the game maps at an accelerated pace.

I’m very happy with it.

I agree that is a nice feature. I just broke into level 30 and my friends have been there for weeks. It’s nice still getting to play with them even though they were much higher. Also they were able to drop gear so once I hit 30 I was stocked up.

quote:

Originally posted by Nickelsig229:

quote:

Originally posted by Dtech:
Would really appreciate it if someone could share their server IP findings mentioned above. Trying to troubleshoot the issue. Thanks in advance.

I saw in the state of the game video today they explained what was happening.

If your matchmaking and there are not players locally they move you out to other world zones so your not waiting forever to get in a match.

I guess enough people complained so they switched it back to making you wait until other players in your world zone join matchmaking. So you wont be in an asian match, but it might take you 5 minutes to get matched up.

I'm assuming its euro, asia, austrailia, usa, for zones.


I'm on the east coast and never waited more then 3 minutes, typically its 30 seconds wait for me.

Yeah, I wasn't talking about matchmaking because I haven't even used it yet, I was talking about the default server connection you get when first connecting to the game. I did a little more digging and it looks like those two IP ranges I mentioned are actually Google Cloud connections which would explain why they are not registering as regional server connections in the Social tab. It sounds like they did something along the way to try and stick everyone on the PC client in a cloud environment to minimize what you say was happening with matchmaking and ended up causing everyone to have a less than optimal cloud connection with more people instead of a regionally better connection by disallowing it altogether. I haven't even bothered to try the DZ PVP zones yet since at an average ping of 150ms with some higher spikes, I'm not really that interested. It even affects the PVE gameplay. Hopefully this will be part of the fix that is supposedly coming next week.

If this improves maybe some of us can get together in game at some point, but right now I'm giving it another try trudging along at level 15 in PVE.