The Division 2 Beta DIscussion.

[quinch1199]

Near the end of open play I picked up a blue Urban MDR and Purple Thompson for my level 7 free-roam character. 

That MDR is soooooo good as a semi-auto sniper rifle!! Its unfortnate I didn't manage to find a blueprint for any .45 or 9mm magazines in my time in Beta though so I couldn't really use either the Thompson or the submachine guns really effectively as i would in normal play. 

Pros & Cons next! 

 

[RimBlock]

Wow, a purple huh.  Nice going.  Never saw on on the lvl 7 agent.

Thought the last level of magazine perk was for 9mm.  Didn't unlock it as it did not occur to me some SMG's use 9mm.

On the Black Tusk Invasion, if you went around the building to the central courtyard there was also sometimes a named boss you could kill .

The P90 is top of my list with the MDR.  Everything after that is grays ( or day old stinky custard depending on what weapon it happens to be).

Need to work out how the skill / armour / firearms pie chart worked as I was heavily in skill for most of the time but saw little I was using with skill perks.

Roll on the 12th March (3 day early release access  ).

@tusler: Getting rid of the .... I mean treating the wife to a shopping weekend sounds peaceful for full on concentration of Division fun.

 

[quinch1199]

Wow, a purple huh.  Nice going.  Never saw on on the lvl 7 agent.

Thought the last level of magazine perk was for 9mm.  Didn't unlock it as it did not occur to me some SMG's use 9mm.

On the Black Tusk Invasion, if you went around the building to the central courtyard there was also sometimes a named boss you could kill .

The P90 is top of my list with the MDR.  Everything after that is grays ( or day old stinky custard depending on what weapon it happens to be).

Need to work out how the skill / armour / firearms pie chart worked as I was heavily in skill for most of the time but saw little I was using with skill perks.

It was unfortunate I was stuck with a 30 round magazine for it ... last magazine perk was "pistol" magazines, perhaps it meant 9mm etc? Wasn't sure if would effect the Kriss or Thompson as they use .45ACP either ...have to see when its live

 

[quinch1199]

Impressions and Pros/Cons for Private Beta:

Pros:

Environment – Loved the more open environment for LZ areas, promotes a more realistic (in my opinion) engagement distance, allows for better “suppress and flank” options, discourages “Face hugging”.

Ai – They are far more active, far more adaptive and sneaky

Damage Mechanics – body armour instead of HP Sponges!!! For a quasi-RPG this is a nice innovation. Reminds me of the Cyperpunk RPG tabletop game.

Settlements & Checkpoints – If I recall it’s something I suggested a few years ago. Dynamic safehouses…where you liberate them but have to keep them supplied or they get retaken. It’s a mechanic similar to the old Mad Max game of a few years ago. I love the intricate way you NEED to take the checkpoints and the rewards you get for doing so. The need for supplies constantly makes you want to explore and gather supplies and I can see this being very consuming for LZ players. Then you need to secure the perimeter with a battle nearby, nice.

Graphics & Animations – a noticeable step up from the 1st game! Wish the game allowed me to change settings after its last update though…unfortunately it was locked to “custom”. Looking forward to spending an hour or so in character customisation when the game is live!

Extensive world – Finding extensive sewer systems was brilliant! Though I did run into a nasty chainsaw wielding boss down there on the last day. Things like enemy faction specific keys points to a greater game mechanic not yet explored in much detail.

Cons:

Net code: Server-side net code was, again, poor and a large proportion of bug reported relate to this and memory leak.

Memory Leak issues: Should have been picked up in Alpha testing. Perhaps I didn’t play long enough or for other reasons, I didn’t experience the issue but enough of other people did for it to be a worry BUT fixable (was reported fixed on last build).

Specialisations: I … DIDN’T enjoy playing ANY of the three specialisations. I didn’t like the signature weapons or the play styles, none of them fit how I play (either Alpha Suppression or Beta Assault roles). I’m hoping there’s others available for release??

Intel processors: a chunk of people running Intel systems had massive issues with optimisation of the game. As I was using Ryzen I can’t comment other than to say as the game was rebuilt with AMD, I’d suggest this has plenty to do with it but hope they fix it for others.

 

[RimBlock]

Agree on the specialisations.    Past a quick try, I didn't use any of them.  Saw quite a few using the sniper one though.  At this point , from what I have seen, they just wont get any use from me.

The Deltas were fixed for me after the first maintenance.  Rarely had an issue after that.  I did have lots of issues with sound near the end of the Beta.  I also saw one or two invisible enemies (health bar and skill targeting button was visible but no enemy) who then blinked in to existence after 5 --> 10 seconds.

Also, and pretty worrying for me, I seemed to get the preemptive grenade stagger in the last day runs of the Invasion mission.  If that is still in the game then that will be a major disappointment in my view.

I am running on Intel, played for hours with only one CTD and not really any noticeable slowdown.

I am pretty convinced they were playing with damage / health / armour of the enemies during the maintenance.  First round was hard, second was easy and third was in the middle although Invasion was noticeably more difficult on the last day for me.  They did the same on the PTS for TD1 to try and dial in the right levels.  We will see in the Open Beta if they have got the balance right.

 

[quinch1199]

I am seeing people with 10k AUG damage with a green lvl 1 item, wtf? All green gear too. 

Didn't see this directly answered.

THIS is how "Normalisation" works. Everyone gets maxed out, regardless of the actual level of gear. If you're in a level 1-5 Dark Zone for example but only have level 1 gear it gets maxed out, as does everyone elses so the playing field is completely even except type of build attachments or specilised buffs an item may have.

Soooo many people on the official forums claiming people are cheating because of this but don't realise they're doing the exact same level of damage. Only cheaters at the moment could be teleporters or people shooting through terrain/map etc. 

 

[Callsign_Gloves]

Seems like it could end up being a blessing for PVP. But we won't know for sure till after the games release. 

 

[RimBlock]

So the Open Beta...

Seems a little tougher (especially outposts) but rewards also seem a little better.

The new repeatable mission was ok but 4 player on hard pretty much breezed through it apart from the last stage.  The aggro system failed big time there as the enemies all focused on the main person drawing the aggro and I just ran around and destroyed the jammers.

The proficiency caches are level locked.  I stored all of mine up until I hit lvl 8 and they had lots of different levels come out of them .

Found the tunnels south of the whitehouse and a few boxes with 'keys'for faction ammo boxes.  There is another area like this but a bit smaller just be the start of the narrow corridor of playable area going to the dark zone.  These areas seem like small scale battle maps with corridors and one main chamber.

Overall, still good but going from lvl 1 to 8 in the full game is gonna be pretty boring now as I have done it 3 times already...  Price you pay for joining the test phases I guess . 

Not found a P90 yes for the main character.  Suspect a rare drop at that level.  Found a Competition LAR though (not grat for my style) so still with a blue MDR and Blue RPK.

 

[RimBlock]

Not sure if anyone bothered but if you run around the Black Tush mission area, there are at least 6 caches in the environment and if you join other peoples games you can farm them all over and over again .

There is also an open door with a lift that takes you to an upstairs bar and you get info pages on Otis Reading and Conflict.

 

[Oh. daesu]

How did you all go? I must say, when they said the beta would end on at a certain time, they were very punctual.

 

[SHDFoxHound]

Not much to say that hasn't already been posted. Unfortunately, I was not able to catch a picture or screenshot of my character before the OB Servers were shut down, yes very punctual about that. But was Very excited that I was able to loot a Superior AS-12, MDR as well as M92R along side my nearly finished Superior gear hold for a specialized mask and knee pads. 

In short, very please with both beta runs with the exception of major bugs with audio and graphical assets which made rendering a B and models look like box characters from 16bit PSX. 

 

[RimBlock]

How did you all go? I must say, when they said the beta would end on at a certain time, they were very punctual.

Not bad.  Only played half heartedly compared to the Alpha / closed Beta rounds.  Lvl 6 before moving to the second area so was a bit out of sync with the difficulty and rewards there.

Anyone found a P90 with the lower level (non-endgame) character ?.  Wonder if some items are locked to a higher level.  Also found a named pistol (looked like a short barreled Rhino from memory and limited pistol knowledge).

I also thought there were more gold drops from the end game mission (like the end boss) but its mainly purples this time around so mostly junk.  Couldn't get to all gold gear this time.

Ran with a gold AUG and P416 as they were the best I could fine.

One prediction... Snipers... Snipers everywhere for endgame matchmaking.  Rand a couple of runs and they were all heavily loaded with people doing the sniper specialisation.  Also found a guy running Demolitionist who was just spamming grenades quite a lot.  Not sure if he was just finding a lot of special ammo or something else was going on there.

That end game mission I think needs reworking a bit as well as after the first two waves come down and are dealt with then you can just run down and kill the boss (better with two team members).  Maybe they should drop more 'guards' for the boss drop off to make it harder to do that.

 

[RimBlock]

Not much to say that hasn't already been posted. Unfortunately, I was not able to catch a picture or screenshot of my character before the OB Servers were shut down, yes very punctual about that. But was Very excited that I was able to loot a Superior AS-12, MDR as well as M92R along side my nearly finished Superior gear hold for a specialized mask and knee pads. 

In short, very please with both beta runs with the exception of major bugs with audio and graphical assets which made rendering a B and models look like box characters from 16bit PSX. 

Nice.

I love the MDR in TD1 and still in 2.  Them changing the LVOA-C to a rifle is terrible  :14_relaxed: .

As per Marco's (MS) testing from the beta, Accuracy seems only to be good for LMGs and stability is great for Rifles.  No real affect of ether for other weapon classes.

 

[Oh. daesu]

I think people are still simply hoping it is true that the P90 is in TD2. Haven't heard of anyone with bragging rights. The beta loot drop probably isn't the best indicator of how the release will be, a part from the initial levels. In open beta, up to lv6 had few weapon types and then at lv6 I had more types than I could choose.

 

[RimBlock]

Well it was in the closed Beta so would be a little strange to drop it for the live release as so many wanted it.

Have a pic posted in this thread with my endgame character owning a gold one  :5_smiley: .  It shredded with that SMG build.

Devs have also confirmed there is some randomisation of the waves as they have a 'manager' routine that works out the wave composition based on a preset 'budget' so the types of enemies you face are sort of randomised but their spawn locations not so much (which is the big factor on re-run boredom IMO).  A step in the right direction hopefully but I suspect it will be flawed in that it does not take in to account the synergies between enemy type (needs some fast reds to help protect the tank with a grenadier or sniper in the distance keeping us on our toes).

We will see.

 

[quinch1199]

Them changing the LVOA-C to a rifle is terrible

THIS!! OMG! At what point was the LVOA-C a DMR?? Never in game, never in real life! lol

P90 is in game, Bison is also, haven't picked one up at a stage where it was worth changing to use yet. Disappointed the L86-LSW is still an LMG in the game...because since the late 90's its been a DMR. 

I had bad drops in Open Beta, I didn't get a decent AR until I hit level 7 and that was a G36K

I'm going to gobble up all the stuff and add to my stash when the game is live though!!