I went back and took another look at how I felt about The Division after playing through Vanilla. My take was that the Dark Zone wasn’t fun for me as a solo player due to the ambiguity of the others players status, i.e., it’s actually always PvP since you have to assume that everyone is out to get you. And other than the Dark Zone, there wasn’t really anything to do other than the first, new Incursion, which was somewhat broken because there was no endgame scale. In order to make it a challenge to the overpowered endgame player, they threw a ton of bullet-sponges at you, which wasn’t that much fun to play.
With the release of 1.8, which is a free update to the game, they’ve managed to fix most of my complaints. There are lots of end game activities now, spanning PvE and PvP. Things are a little more limited if you approach it as a solo player compared to multiplayer, but multiplayer is what gives a game like this extra depth, especially at the endgame.
They made a significant tweak to the Dark Zone. By default, every player is an agent. You have to actively declare yourself to be a rogue, and it sets off an alert on the whole map to give other players a chance to prepare. If you’re in a group with someone who goes rogue, you’re given an opportunity to leave the group and not go rogue as well. While I haven’t played it yet, it seems to me that would eliminate the ambiguity. You would know if someone is looking to PvP with you or not.
The World Tier system allows them to scale the difficulty of the game without making the enemies seem like bullet-sponges. I had a supply drop that I tried to collect while I was on Tier 5, and I got my hat handed to me. I kicked it down to Tier 0, and it was a piece of cake with the same enemies. In order to get item drops at the level I currently need, I need to normally run on Tier 5, but being able to scale it and pretty much be able to scale it on the fly allows me to tackle all sorts of Content solo that I normally wouldn’t do, just because I would feel like it’s too hard. Of course, I’m doing things for the drops, so I’m still probably going to skip them, anyway.
The drops feel really heavy compared to Destiny. Almost every firefight ends with me collecting something; it’s actually rare that you get nothing. And while I understand the logic behind Destiny‘s token system, I have to admit that there is a more visceral sense of satisfaction to actually get a gun or a piece of gear than a token.
I reached a point where I needed to build sets of armor. The different sets have different themes which give you different bonuses depending on how many pieces of the set that you have equipped. I was able to get my current set after just a couple of hours of farming in the open world.
And since I don’t really know what I need to buy or gather, I’ve been alternating between selling and breaking down the different pieces of gear. Compared to Destiny, I feel like I’m awash in gear, credits, and materials.
Right now, The Division is offering a lot of end game activities, especially compared to where it was two years ago. Meanwhile, Destiny seems to have stagnated. I can drop into either one, and grind for an hour or two, but at the end, I’ll feel like I’ve accomplished more in The Division.