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It's getting incredibly frustrating to play this game. Not fun, not rewarding, frustrating. As if the real world events didn't already have enough of that.
Currently we're in a loop where Massive releases a new patch, there's a bunch of bugs and issues that are incredibly off-putting, and when the player base is finally starting to get used to these "features" and learning how to cope with them to some extent, new bugs come out that make you just want to uninstall the game or write a rant on reddit.
I see hundreds of crying posts on a daily basis but honestly, 90% of them is just some incessant crying about "how the game did me wrong" and then they proceed to point out the ridiculous ways they want the game "fixed" like (and I paraphrase): "being able to get all the exotics in one day." This was an actual suggestion, because exotics are too hard to get. Hold my 11th Acosta.
As a game developer myself, this is my sh*tty attempt to address the current issues and hopefully put it all in one place for when my friends ask "but what's wrong?" I can just give them a link and at the same time vent out my feelings to you guys and hopefully, Massive.
Buckle up boys, here we go! Expect a Massive wall of text. *wink*
1)
It can't be too hard, you reset my season level to 0 when I was level 68 so, just do that while leaving my season level alone this time around, or at least wait a couple days for me to hit 100 first okay? Damn.
My trust in Massive right now is in such a all time low that when I lost my season level I was like, sigh, shrug, let's go. Not for a second I thought it would be fixed and in my mind, if it was "fixed" there was no way we would also retroactively get the XP we got from the point you reset our levels to the point you'd give them back.
Seriously, massive, if you can't get your sh*t together, run a freaking test server for the love of God or you will keep losing players until this game is a ghost town again. You're causing permanent damage to people's accounts because you can't rollback on your mistakes.
2)
Balance in all things, except this game.
See that guy? I was full. 700k Armor gone in one shot. He has a freaking shotgun. Hes a good 100+ meters away. He's purple, Massive. Seriously, do you guys test your game? I'd love to see the developers actually run the game, hell, we all do! We all requested it plenty of times! You keep telling us how we should play your game, how about you show us?
Balance was already bad before yesterday's patch but at least I could do every content solo, except Legendary. Legendary to me was that thing where as soon as I stepped in it I realized: "Oh wow, I'll never be soloing this." It's everything bad with the game right now but times 10. Which I'm fine since you openly said "It's 4 people content" as it should be but still on the "way too strong" side. You can't balance a game around your top players. You're not an eSport. If you're creating content you're absolutely certain not even 10% of your playerbase then you spent a ridiculous amount of effort and man hours that you don't have for something that less than 10% of your community will get to experience and enjoy. Like DJ Khaled said: "Congratulations, you played yourself".
Keep in mind those who experience it and don't enjoy it however which is almost everyone if you look at the feedback from this thread.
Most of the countermeasures you can usually take like shooting a guy readying a grenade so he blows himself up or shooting the drones as soon as they spawn on top of the technicians so they take explosion damage, you can't because if you're being fired at and you peek you're downed almost instantly if you're anything but a tank.
In legendary difficulty the drones are authentic jet fighters. This is all fine and dandy since it's Legendary, it's supposed to be hard. I'm not supposed to able to solo it. I accept that but I hope that at level 1000 agent these are more doable, I'm fine with some content being difficult but not when all content is incredibly difficult which leads us to:
3)
Holy crap the new party scaling. Carrying a friend through heroic so he can get decent loot because God knows he won't be able to alone (more on that later) is now an incredibly rage inducing, anxiety from knowing you can be forced to restart at any second, sh*t show. The loot is now better or at least it felt better since the patch two days ago in higher difficulties, I'll give you that! Seriously, Massive, credit where credit is due.
But we're always one difficulty behind the quality of the loot we're trying to get. That means the loot you usually get in hard is good enough for normal, and the loot you get in challenging is good enough for hard, and so on and so on. You can't do the higher difficulties because you get shredded and now it got even worse, so what did this accomplish?
An even bigger gap between players who glitched the game. Yes, Massive. You know who I'm talking about. All the less than 4 minutes Roosevelt Island clears that you should've banned. All the players that abused the Landmark Dark Zone experience glitch. All the players that abused the minigun damage glitch to solo legendary and get stacked on gear and unlock the Legendary only exotic and the apparel. But you can't do that, can you? You can't afford to lose even more players so "we" community know that we can get away with all the glitching and mechanic abusing we want to.
I personally refused to do the glitch and I can post a screenshot of my apparel just so you can see I didn't resort to cheap tactics because I think that would be robbing myself of fun, but you know players in general did and you have proof of who those were and you didn't do anything about it, yet again.
I had no problems with the balance before the patch, I actually thought the game was somewhat well balanced. Sure, some enemies were incredibly frustrating to play against, from the top of my head:
Hyena's Assault aka SMG guy - You know this guy, the guy that walks up to your cover and melts you faster than you can melt him. This guy should be a glass cannon and take a lot more damage.
Hyena medic - Nothing against having a guy in the battlefield rezing his squad, not even mad at their high armor which is logic, but their damage should be negligent. It's absolutely not.
Outcast rusher - I have serious PTSD due to this guy. They should go down a lot faster in higher difficulties if you hit their weak spot which is literally a bomb, but they don't. If this was fixed you could actually use it strategically to kill your opponents but alas, while he's not spongy most of the times you can't burst him for strategical plays. I'm fine with the one shotting, not fine with him setting the floor on fire and destroying your rez hive but, still, don't think much balance is necessary.
Outcast heavy weapons aka LMG guy - Just... I don't even, Massive. He's always on the other side of the map melting me with perfect accuracy. How am I supposed to shoot the weakpoint in his back? Definitely needs a lot of tone down like having to reload on top of the cover like when he's setting up to give us an opening to put him down. That or stop making it ridiculously tanky.
True sons tank - Specifically the grenadier one. In heroic and above this guy is a nightmare for obvious reasons. There's no cover. Give him a 5s cooldown at least. The barrage of "f*ck your cover" is not okay.
I actually like fighting the Black Tusk so I have almost nothing against them. I think they're well made and well balanced. However, some warhounds are a little frustrating to fight against and I think lowering their movement speed would fix this so you have more time to locate.
During the dog spin I think your opponents should all also duck for cover or at least not rush you while you can't move or peek. Drone fighters in Legendary have their issues like I said but I accept it. The grenadier elite warhound grenade barrage setting fire to your cover is just... who had that idea? Seriously. Just add a coffee machine to that warhound and it'll do everything. That one is just anti-fun.
Rikers and Cleaners are generally pushovers. Nothing special about them that hasn't been said before.
Any grenadier - Seriously, did they all have better %'s than Drew Brees in college? Are they all monstars that stole the shooting ability from Steph Curry? Just stop. Remove the 100% accuracy, make them miss sometimes and absolutely fix the damage/hazards on the other side of walls.
While we're at it, stop with all the enemies being sharpshooters across the map with any type of weapon, I mean sheesh. They look more like Division agents than we do in terms of, hell, everything.
So this is it for non-named non-boss units, let's go to:
4)
This is honestly one of the things that actually makes me rage. Whoever had the idea of giving Bosses and higher difficulty bounties, or Rogue Agents no cooldowns and no max uses on any of their skills should be unceremoniously fired, and I don't say this lightly! I'm not the type of person that lightly wants to cost someone their job, but that guy, that developer, whoever made that decision, he can't develop.
This was made even worse and even more aggravating during the new polarity event. Let's use a certified bullet sponge such as Vivian Conley as an example. She can melt you in seconds if you peek out of cover, she can force you out of cover, but she can heal back to full if somehow you manage to not leave cover and play safe.
Fighting Vivian Conley solo in Challenging/Heroic is something that I would love to see any Massive developer do with polarity on. This stands for any bullet sponge that has a no cooldown no limited usage heal. If by any chance you don't get absolutely destroyed by her while draining her HP, voilá, time to switch your weapons or reload and switch which is just enough time for her to heal with her uninterruptible one second cast time heal. If this boss really decides to beat you, you can't win. If I had Vivian's skills, tankiness and DPS at challenging, you could send 4 men teams at me all day and I guarantee you very few would not rage quit.
Let's not even get started on the spamability of Rogue Agents or some Hunters because I'd throw up. This one is basic: cooldowns, max uses, extremely simple fix.
There is not enough firepower in the world to down some of these consistently in higher difficulties. And before you say "optimize":
How much more does one have to optimize?! With the current difficulty, the enemies in two man squads in heroic melt me so freaking fast, I got to the point I just picked up Perfect Glass Cannon. I was using Unbreakable on 750k armor but since the last patch I have to resort to the armor that almost everyone was using already because your game is so poorly balanced in anything that isn't a 4 man squad.
I tried "diversifying", I did. I optimized. People wish they could spend as much time "optimizing" as I did, for what? Massive? There's no point on wearing an unbreakable with 700k armor. It's irrelevant. You get shot you get downed as if you had glass cannon so what do you do? Only one obvious answer. If you tank too much you'll never DPS them enough. Skills is absolutely out of question exceptionally with healing enemies, so that leaves us full blown DPS.
Everyone right now is wearing season mask plus glass cannon or perfect glass cannon, sokolov or sombra holster, solokov or sombra backpack with damage talent, Contractor's Gloves and Fox's Prayer with Baker's Dozen or M1A. Seriously, just make some named holster that allows you to roll to douse fire and voilá, you have the late game starter set! Everyone is using it not because it's "too good" before you even decide to nerf it, it's because everything else is inadequate!
How can you tell people to try different builds when everything you do says "stay at range and go full DPS"? Season started with a speedrun. PVP was already a one shot fest and still is. The new event also promotes killing enemies faster, so how can you say one thing and do exactly the other with a serious face, every time?
Don't get me wrong, I LOVE the balance of this game when you're playing as a 4 man squad. Super super fun! I've played tank. Skill damage build. Skill effect build. I love playing medic. If that's what you want us to do just come clean and say "the game is optimized for 4 players" instead of making excuses.
We're tired of excuses. It undermines your very short credibility at this point. Understand that the player's patience is wearing thin and most if not all of us only keep playing due to loyalty to the game, not you as a company and as a developer, that's something I'm very, very sad to see.
You've read this everywhere by now, Marksman Rifles are crap. The slow ROF and having to aim through a barrage of shots is not being compensated by the damage at this point. Shotguns are extremely inaccurate and again, the damage needs tweaking for the downsides. Assault Rifles are pointless since I can currently deal 500k damage with my SMG at 100m. Up their damage or make them laser beams so the headshots compensate. But knowing you, you'll probably just nerf SMG's accuracy to create even more disparity between what rules the AI has to follow and then ones we have.
5)
Hazards. https://www.reddit.com/r/thedivision
Take your pick.
6)
Exotics. I for one have an unpopular opinion. Don't get me wrong, I'm also frustrated I'm on my 11th Acosta, my 3rd Bullet King, my 6th Sweet Dreams and yet after I'm wayyyy past collecting the whole deck of cards for New York I still haven't seen Lady Death. Some of us really are unlucky. I got Eagle Bearer at my 16th run because a clan mate gave it to me!
Still, I'm fine with this! I think you could make Challenging/Heroic bounties also be able to drop it but hey, just a suggestion! Not even complaining. But when you make these hard as f*ck to get, and most of them are not worthwhile even with godrolls, but instead you get dog rolls!?
It's like you're trying to sh*t on player's efforts. It's disheartening, Massive. The obvious solution to me is not increase the exotic drop chances which would make them trivial but instead make them all come with godrolls or alternatively allow us to spend 1/2 exotic part(s) to increase one of the stats in a Exotic of choice with no cap on the amount of attributes we can raise. That means if I spend 6 exotic parts I can guarantee a godroll Bullet King for instance.
Ultimately the better solution is make the talents so good it's almost irrelevant what stats come with it but you risk creating an even more "pick this weapon" situation than we have already.
7)
Sets. Half of these are bugged so I can't even point out how crappy they are and how very little use most of these have. Aces, I guess? More when it stops being bugged. What else is good? What's the point of collecting a full set with good stats of something? They felt good pre-WoNY. Something like Hard Wired was useful and fun to use but you keep nerfing the players and buffing the PC getting us closer to The Division 1, a game you let die. This is your "one more chance", you won't get a third and there won't be a Division 3. You're screwing it.
8)
Mods. I don't have a suggestion for these. All I can say right quick is that they're incredibly annoying specially when you're switching sub-skills and this needs to be optimized a lot. The lack of scaling of the mods in the specialties is just cringe worthy, like, seriously, either make them worth having around or get rid of them and allow us to put 3 points in a new weapon class for a maximum of 4 weapons with increased damage (so everyone can pretend we use more than rifle, smg and lmg).
9)
Some of the content and what you got to go through just to get nothing or very little is honestly disheartening. Everyone that could feel disappointed at this point, was disappointed when we saw Hunter Killer was the prize for off-white chest. It could've been a cool Hunter Killer exotic weapon or mask or whatever. It could've been Regulus or The Ravenous. Regulus would make sense since you'd become the "king" of the agents and conquer all the hunters, but nope. A perfect form of an already existing item. Yay...
I also did the owls sidequest. Another disappointment that could've culminated in so much more, but as usual it's typical Massive, hella anti-climatic.
10)
"It could be something, it could be nothing.""Is that supposed to be helpful, Earl? Because it ain't."
I just love this line.
11)
The bugs. Some of these are gamebreaking. The innability to manually revive someone after they got revived with an hive. Which shouldn't come off automatically, by the way, we should have like a 3 second period to drop or not the hive so it doesn't get shredded by AoE's or developped in a pointless position.
Shots are not registering and it's not "now and then". In a 30 bullet clip it feels like 6 or 7 don't hit. Players are getting stuck everywhere. There's uncoded walls. There's walls/stairs you should be able to get cover behind of so you run there and lo and behold you're now a sitting duck.
The "map hacks" is something that I personally don't love either. An enemy two blocks away can throw you a grenade over the two buildings that will land exactly where you are even though you killed all enemies in close proximity and no enemy has a clear sight of you. There's no "target" acquiring for the AI. They just innately know where you are at all times even though they have no vision of you which makes the already annoying task of moving around even more of a chore.
EDIT: Welp, this explains how much Massive listens to the community or gives a f*ck about our concerns.
Their developers are clueless. As of 22h ago they weren't even aware of this bug. They adopted a mentality where they're not gonna test sh*t since it's new, you guys will be their beta testing team, who cares how frustrating it gets or how many hours of progress are lost to bugs, "it's new so it's fine."
It's not a one thing OR the other. I'm a developer, that sh*t doesn't fly with me. TEST your sh*t. All your content is filled with bugs that very little testing would've picked up on it. You're not an indie company. You should have someone constantly out on social media, forums and Discords (like the one where 15 members of their team are online at) and search for people reporting gamebreaking bugs.
12)
Like, seriously, ANOTHER maintenance as I'm writing this? That's 5 in the last 3 days! For realsies. Test server, homies.
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