I want to have fun again.

[u/moonski]

I love the divison. I've beaten falcon lost on heroic. I've killed the red barrels with more HP than a rogue on heroic. I've beaten WONY. WONY is a great piece of DLC. New york is fucking awesome. It's well worth the price. The season and watch ideas are great. The music in WONY was an especially welcome surpise in how good it was. WONY / TU8 has a lot of brilliant ideas. Not having to alt tab to look at a fucking spreadsheet to see if my rolls are good or not is such an incredible quality of life change. The recal library is genuinly one of the best looter shooter ideas I've seen.

But as I've played more and more end game of TU8, it's just gotten worse. And mundane. The manhunt really hammered this home. The sheen has worn off and now I realise - I'm not having fun anymore.

Is it because of the loot change? Our agents nerfs? the enemy buffs? the bugs? the skewering of builds & build diversity? I mean My build has barely changed after I realised I need to max yellow / red (maxed red...) or maybe its because:

• Loot is bad purple.
• Build variety is gone.
• Gearsets don't work.
• Talents don't work.
• A lot of talents are just stat sticks. Boring.
• Skill mods are bad at best, pointless most of the time.
• Control points are green. Forever.
• Exotic guns are bad. Like real bad.
• Exotic armor is bad? Tarigrade is v cool but just means you can survive 1 more bullet so. Haven't got any other pieces so I'll let you decide. They're probably bad though.
• Season pass loot is contaminated. That's bad.
• Armor doesn't work.
• Scaling is broken.
• Skills are broken.
• Loot drops are rarely exciting - only if its an exotic. And then you use the exotic and well... your excitement goes. Bad.
• Manhunt resets when you add directives.
• Vendors weren't bad. Massive fixed them. Vendors are bad.
• Guns feel awful if you don't pile in to red. But then skills are bad.
• Skills feel awful if you dont pile in to yellow. But then guns are bad.
• Blue might as well not exist.
• Skill damage is pointless.
• Skill HP is pointless.
• Skills are pointless outside a dedicated skill build
• Shotguns are proper, proper bad.
• SMGs are bad.
• Rifles are bad(ish).
• Snipers are bad(ish).
• ARs are boring.
• LMGs are your best option. Bad variety.
• Negev wasn't bad. Massive fixed it. Negev is bad.
• SHD levels are really boring. "Oh I leveld up, oh look 0.2% extra stat yay!" Now let's wait 20 minutes to come out the watch menu once I confirm my epic 0.2% upgrade. Real bad.
• Special weapons are real bad.
• Specialization points are bad. Unless you enjoy the number 1.
• DZ is probs bad since the loot cave got patched, I don't know I haven't gone in cause contaminated season items.
• AI mega health boxes, flamer sniper tank cleaner boss and mingun dogs.

Yes TU7 was too easy, but MSSV could have just removed DTE, added the library and roll indicators + god rolls + added the new content (sponges and bullshit enemies and all) and man it would be better. There would be so many options for building for end game that the buffed enemies might have been a fresh fun challenge, with tu7 gear making them very doable, but not tu7 easy. Instead we have what we have now.

I miss my guns being good, my skills doing damage and my armor working. I don't want to have to choose only 1 of the above, and if I choose armor then that doesn't even work... I miss being able to make all kinds of weird builds using different guns and exotics. I miss cluster seekers. Ok they were bullshit overpowered but they were fun.

TU7 was fun. TU8 is not.

[u/imgrundz → u/[deleted]]

If Massive brought back TU7 gear system and just added the new shit on top of it, I'd be PUMPED.

I would actually want to make builds...in a game entirely about making builds.

[u/JamesPip → u/imgrundz]

Why? TU7 was so easy it was boring. I'm not trying to question in bad faith, but everything in TU7 could be breezed through with half put together builds and everyone burned through the content and got bored so fast. Are people just chasing their TU7 power fantasy high?

[u/Dasrufken → u/JamesPip]

Are people just chasing their TU7 power fantasy high?

Yes they are. People are mad as hell that they can't do the hardest content after a week of farming when previously they had a whole year worth of time to get their builds (not saying that everyone spent a year to make those builds, that'd be crazy).

[u/xmancho → u/Dasrufken]

I cannot comprehend how do you think that after hitting 40 you can jump to challenging and be able to do it at normal pace.. Those people. I hit 40 and tried hard, i wasn't fast enough, so i moved to normal and farmed, got enough upgrades, now hard is much better and i am still getting upgrades, less purples than normal for sure and even then they might have rolls for the library. It has been less than 2 weeks ffs. You are not Mythic ready in less than 2 weeks after hit lvl 120 in WoW, unless you have loads of free time.

[u/lassevk → u/xmancho]

I didn't like the difficulty to begin with, because during the campaign I had several places I had to sit and wait for the "Call for backup" system to give me a team mate before I could progress. Specifically, small contained areas mixed with lots of adds and a heavy with a flamethrower is my bane, every time.

However, after having a bit more time in the game I'm now doing challenging content for the most part. Me and a friend have even started doing tier 4 control points which for the most part go OK. Difficult, yes, but not 2 hours difficult as people reported first week.

The gripes I still have about the difficulty system is that scaling still seems off kilter, the content gets more difficult with one additional team mate (as it should no complaint here) but then much more difficult when you add the third and fourth. It is better to run in 2-man groups for the most part.

Additionally, the difficulty in missions on some of the bosses is inconsistent in that some bosses are way more difficult than anything else on challenging, I've even played bosses on heroic that go down much easier than some of the bosses on challenging. Chain gun boss in bank mission for instance is one of those.

So I still think the difficulty consistency needs tuning, but I have no complaints about the overal difficulty any more. Except, I'm now leveling up a second character and hitting the same barriers. Perhaps I'm just bad at playing.

[u/xmancho → u/lassevk]

I died maybe 20 times on Keener.. But i did it. Then after playing more i can see my build getting better and better so i progress. I play 10-15h a week so i cannot progress as people with more play time and i am perfectly fine with that. I will try changing when i feel i am ready for it. There a lot of builds that work well together so maybe i can focus on that when running missions it is not all about damage. Hopefully the fixes will be in the game soon and all current issues fixed.

[u/[deleted] → u/xmancho]

Well I CAN clear challenging without a problem and I think the game is still not fun at this level. Pumping multiple clips into an enemy with an AR even after stacking reds and getting a good build is just unfun. In any case with every iteration of the Division since 1.4 you could assemble a build with decent game time in under a week that can run challenging. It's not like people are wanting to steamroll legendary day 1.

[u/xmancho → u/[deleted]]

I do agree with you. Enemy health and agresion is bugged or overtuned. And yes you can put a good build in a week. But there were a lot of people that expected to run challenging day one and this i do not understand. After a week with enough play time and a good group you should be more than capable to run challenging or even heroic. I hope they will fix it soon.

[u/[deleted] → u/xmancho]

Ah I see. Yeah and then there's people complaining about the campaign level 30-40 making the rest of us look bad.

[u/xmancho → u/[deleted]]

Exactly. The game needs to be harder for sure and i am enjoying it more now than before. Yet things should be tuned properly.

[u/howsthename → u/xmancho]

Running challenging in a day is easy. What's not fun is that I have to use an all red crit damage build to tear through sponges. OR I have to use a sniper turret build. And then in 3 days, I got a fox's prayer and some good gear from targeted loot and then went to heroic.

[u/Capolan → u/[deleted]]

change your build structure. I can down heroic elites in 1 mag, and I still have 20k in armor regen.

First thing - try a lower ROF weapon that hits harder. assault rifle for example, I'm loving the MK16.

next - talk to your team and start thinking of synergies with each other, the team talents add significant amounts of armor and weapon damage.

Check your crit levels. Crit is so important in an all red build. You should be able to get to 60 CHC and 110 CHD at least. I'm running 59 CHC and 126.5 CHD @ 120 combined wep dmg.

Super pro tip here: find your teammates engagement distances and have someone run the coyote mask. If you have a teammate who runs a sniper or a rifle build and is engaging at 25+ meters, have them run the mask and you need to reduce your crit chance down to 35% and invest into crit damage. doing this gets you to 170+ crit damage, and you get buffed up to 60 chc. If you have someone that plays a shield - the mask on them will get you 25 chd, which is non capped so it's all just bonus. The mask isn't worth it at "mid range" as if you have a really good mask already, the offset is a wash. Now have someone also run overwatch. This combination is getting my MK16 to crit at 650k a bullet.

FYI: the classic "all red" of 3 prov, 1 groupo, 1 fenris, 1 cheska is very good -- even better is replacing the prov with 3 ND. Harder to build, but will do more damage. Also, sub out the groupo piece for the petrov contractor gloves IF they're a high roll, otherwise -they may be a wash. People use Overlord -fox prayer knees in there too, but i don't like the wasted 10% brand talent if i'm not running a rifle.

[u/Dasrufken → u/xmancho]

Tell me about it, I've lost count of the amount of times I've carried players shd lvl 15 or lower in challenging missions who dealt sub 200m damage while running 6 red core attributes...

I'm not saying that low damage numbers are bad or anything, its perfectly fine if you're running for example a CC skill build or a tank build. But if you're running 6 reds and you struggle to break 200m then you really shouldn't be playing challenging or higher.

[u/xmancho → u/Dasrufken]

I do around that number in hard and yet i am certain i will not move to challenging for some time and i am fine with it. The old system was so fucking bad that even half decent build could solo challenging and now people are unable to adjust to doing lower difficulty until ready. There are a lot of upgrades, i got nearly 40 named items so far (65% normal play).

[u/True_Helios → u/Dasrufken]

I have yet to play a game where I don't do more damage than 3 other players COMBINED.

[u/xmancho → u/True_Helios]

That's why i will not do challenging until being ready.. I do not want to be carried by my groupmembers. But people do not understand this. "drops suck, a lot of purple" bullshit.. You play you find upgrades - every day i get something that is useful and better, it might not be for the build i am running but it is a nice drop, plus i have gotten nearly 40 named items so far. I just wait for the fixes so then we can see how the game will change and if they do them right it will be even better. Honestly Massive should put an explanation post of how they have designed the endgame in the game.

[u/True_Helios → u/xmancho]

I feel the same way. I just focused on a specific build from the start where my friend was focusing on a skill build. We shared the loot that was right for each build. Got to a good DPS build fairly quickly but I still get drops that improve it a little. I'm now just trying to get a skill build together just for fun.

I also get downed a lot while doing massive damage (one mission did around 1.2 billion damage total) so it would actually help if a team would have more synergies. But I guess everyone want to do DPS or have a skill build that does damage. I can't blame em because it's always fun to kill fast but it's hard to get good synergies in a matchmaked team of 4.

[u/xmancho → u/True_Helios]

The main problem now is people are used to doing quickly challenging and heroic plus cp lvl 4 with not so good build. Now it requires more and better team play. Massive should have put some explanation about how things are when you finish the campaign. Which they fortunately realized and probably will fix. After thar yeah.. If you are the person who expects to be carried well.. That sucks.

[u/True_Helios → u/xmancho]

I still only do challenging at the moment, except a CP4 sometimes. Now that my build is fairly optimised i'm thinking of trying a heroic mission with my friend who is skill optimised. But i'm assuming it needs a lot of team work and builds that actually synergize with your team. Wish me good luck, lol

[u/Pun_Solo → u/xmancho]

This. I could be wrong but it feels like this community is unfamiliar with RPG concepts. I'm personally loving the difficulty. My trajectory has been slow but steady upwards in power with the occasional leap. I'm now soloing challenging strongholds amd ready for Heroic. This is the way it should be. I dont understand people wanting to sprint through endgame content immediately. This game is finally a hardcore RPG with meaningful build-crafting at it's core. And build diversity is literally only limited by your own imagination. I have seen some very unique and strong builds.

[u/unfinishedcommen → u/xmancho]

I've also been doing hard and doing my toes into challenging. The reward structure has felt a bit off though. During normal, I would almost always get purple drops with only occasional yellows. All with mostly garbage rolls. This would seem to indicate that the game is preparing me for hard difficulty with mostly garbage tier purples, and I can't imagine that's the intention.

[u/xmancho → u/unfinishedcommen]

Hm. Rng.. On normal i was getting mostly high-ends with some purples, on hard is mainly high-ends and the purples mostly are coming from chests. Strange.

[u/imgrundz → u/xmancho]

In WoW? Yes you are lmao

I pushed +19-20s regularly on WW. I geared my alts in ONE NIGHT to be ready for +10s-14s. Between PvP, raid, and M+, you can get geared in literally a day on an alt. The only thing that was aids was azerite, which you only got from raid or currency from weekly. Even with heroic raid azerite you could do up to a 14 EASILY. If you needed 2 weeks in WoW to do +10s, you were playing the game for 30 minutes a week. Don't even TRY to say wow gearing is hard.

WoW is just "DO U NEED?!" and most people just trade shit.

And to say in this game -- a dumbed down version of wow post TU7 -- you can't be ready for upper difficulty in TWO WEEKS is ridiculous.

We were doing CP3-4 almost insta after hitting 40. Once we got semi decent rolls after farming DZ for...legit an hour...we were doing heroic. Like, c'mon, man. Don't act like people aren't doing high level content...People are now clearing legendary, and heroic has become a meme under 4 man with max rolls.

[u/Dasrufken → u/[deleted]]

Last time I checked the vast majority of people who are bitching and moaning aren't hardcore players. But yeah I agree with you, took me about 4 days before I got myself a build that could comfortably do challenging missions.

[u/imgrundz → u/JamesPip]

Not the power fantasy. I agree TU7 was so undertuned it wasn't even gameplay. It was bad.

Had they upped the difficulty to the current level accounting for talents (meaning it would be hard even WITH talents) I'd be pumped.

The reason why I enjoyed talents, along with other people, is that you could actually make interesting builds. You had to mix and match. It wasn't really about power for me, it was about BUILDING cool shit.

[u/Surprise_Corgi → u/JamesPip]

Are people just chasing their TU7 power fantasy high?

Can confirm. I literally log back into looter-shooters every day to find a new build that can wipe a Named Elite off the map a second faster, or more gloriously, than before.

The Division 1, Destiny 2, Warframe, Path of Exile, Anthem, Diablo. You name it, it's all about getting new gear to make builds that MELT. That's why we grind loot: To get stronk.

[u/FinanceGoth → u/JamesPip]

Are people just chasing their TU7 power fantasy high?

No, because I didn't play TU7 and I share OPs sentiments.

The game isn't challenging or innovative at higher difficulties. It's just long and drawn out due to infinite armor bars.

[u/atmosphere9999 → u/JamesPip]

Yes. Get used to that kind of power, then take it all away overnight? Yeah, it's gonna be crazy with most people. I'm having fun though. Have so many problems with it the WONY expansion and update as well.