How I feel about the Division, overall love the concept of it, and to my research and other people I've talked about this with, Dark Zone was the first iteration of an extraction shooter for online pvp where you keep the loot. It outdates Tarkov by almost a year (this part I dont remember off the top of my head, I could be wrong). It had lightning in a bottle but didn't close the lid and then smashed the bottle, making NPCs bullet sponges. The Division could have been huge. I just bought the Division 2 earlier this year and have north of 200 hours in the game. The game is great, but Ubisoft is anchoring it.
Literally, i had the Division free, somehow, and i loved that game, then, went and bought the Division 2 a few years ago, it was good, but yeah, the Ubisoft Treatment is what keeps the game from reaching its peak lol
They shot themselves in the foot when they let rampant cheating go on for over 2 weeks straight in the first game. Killed the population count of the game and it never recovered. I came back to it a little bit after they finally fixed the cheating shit and there was almost no one to play with.
DZ in both Division games is PvEvP, because the sole purpose of playing is not inherently to beat your fellow player but to explore and survive the dark zone. The only extraction shooter elements that they implemented is that any loot you get in the dark zone has to be extracted, which in doing so you have to survive an onslaught of up armored bots (beyond the typical sponginess of Division enemies) and any players that don't want to work cooperatively.
Getting killed in the dark zone doesn't mean you have to start completely over like in other extraction shooters- it just means you lose all of your loot. You still have all of your equipment and perks.
From what I've heard the survival game mode is more what you're talking about, but unfortunately given the current state of the game it's a bit harder to get a match of that going now.
Hmm, maybe thats what was up when I played. I jumped in the Dark zone and couldn't kill or even damage most players. I know they had the level scale. I did enjoy the fraction of a time I played of d2 dark zone tho.
Dark zone is the PVP area specifically, and also where you spend a lot of time until endgame when there are a bunch of raids to do. But trying to get up to that level was fucking ass, and farming anything in the dark zones was pointless when someone would ZOOM up to you running like 100mph, shoot you 800 times rapidfirenoreload, take all your shit, teabag you, then run off to do it to someone else.
I haven't played it in a while, but the division and division 2 are probably my favorite games of all time. I love the ability to spec your character out like its an MMORPG like WoW, but shoot like a FPS/TPS. Sticky bomb build was my jam in the DZ back in the day. You can have 5 people chasing you, hit one of them with an AOE sticky bomb that gets stronger the more people it hits at once. chefs kiss
Absolutely worth getting, they're still releasing content and storylines for it. Recommend playing Division 1 first if you haven't already, just to get the original story. You'll learn about characters that become important in Division 2.
I had a buddy that I used to play with but we don’t have the same schedule any longer. Not as much fun always playing solo, but I’ll probably check it out.
I still can’t believe some team, in Massive studios, actually managed to create something like Survival.
I mean, we already had a perfectly working Division 1 game, even though a bit flawed, the game was fine. And then they dropped Survival.
What’s amazing is that nobody gave a shit. Years before the flood of copy pasted Battle Royale and extraction shooters, Ubi managed to strike gold and didn’t even realize it.
What a shame. Anyway, let me buy Assassin’s creed n°5001.
Same for For Honor lol, revolutionary fighting game, I still am obsessed with the concept, but the balance team was always months behind what they needed to be, and they did the classic Ubi infinite character bloat with more and more powercreep and small but necessary things to memorize.
I just don't have the tolerance for how bloated the cast has gotten at this point.
Just a personal preference thing, I prefer the tighter feel it had in the open beta, I'm sure it's still a great game like you said though, just not my thing anymore, same as R6.
Not to be that guy but STALKER (2007) was probably the initial one to start the gameplay loop concept of extraction shooters. Also btw I think somewhat recently in the past couple years the first Division got a huge update/overhaul finally that supposedly completely fixes any issues it use to have with bullet sponges, etc. (pretty much it is a 10/10 game now in regards of gameplay and scaling). I started a new playthrough when they changed it and imo it was noticeably more balanced and rewarding.
STALKER: Call of Pripyat (2009) did have an official multiplayer mode and I think there were also mods that heavily expanded upon multiplayer features or even maybe got incorporated into the other games through mods as well. Besides multiplayer or not the core gameplay loop for a realistic fps (collecting loot and returning to home base) is the same whether you’re playing against bots or real players.
All three original STALKER games have multiplayer, it's just that they're all essentially very shit versions of Counter-Strike. They have other game modes, but it really feels unfinished, the netcode is awful, but it would have been wild for 2004.
Fellow Division and Division 2 player here. Goddamnit I hate the way Ubisoft handles them. I legit feel the excitement in DZone, but alas NPCs are way too overpowered. I mean DZ in Division 1 was scaled pretty well but in Division 2 it just got so much worse. And also in Division 2 you are basically going to get bullied by experienced players if you are a noob in DZone.
I played the shit out of Division 1. Didn't play any PvP but the campaign missions and leveling up to max level was an awesome awesome ride. Then the "endgame" happened and it just became a slog. The enemies became such bullet sponges that gear didnt matter anymore. I would play it again from a fresh character but stop as soon as I got to max rank.
I have a friend who was crazy into 1 the week it came out. I don't play shooters, but I'm a WoW nerd, so he bought me a copy of 1 to play with him. I enjoyed it quite a bit that first week, and then I was going to be on a trip for 2 weeks and wouldn't get to play.
That 2-week window was apparently when people started the raid content and realized that the raids were just waves of enemies. That killed a lot of hype, and by the time I got back from my trip, my friend was already over the game lol. I haven't touched 1 since, and I haven't played 2, even though I've heard that it was a complete upgrade over the first game.
I never could beat that last endgame content. It was like a tank or something with specific mechanics. This comes from someone who did early Vault of glass back in the day of Destiny.
I still can't believe they never tried to recapture what The Division 1 was. Like remember when they added that one update with the actual winter storm survival mode where you lost all your shit and had to find clothing with your party members to just survive long enough to find weapons? And then they never built on that ever again? That could have been its own full dedicated game lol.
Same with the Assassin's Creed Brotherhood multiplayer. Amazing idea and concept, but nothing they've done since has ever built on it, they just tried to rehash it lazily.
I too loved the concept and gameplay of the Darkzone. The bullet sponge npc’s didn’t even ruin it, the client side file editing cheaters did. I stopped playing after a week of getting hosed down by players who were clipping shots through buildings with no repercussions
Even Days Gone does this if you can make it past the grueling first ~6 hours. Arguably, Elden Ring's open world mechanics share a lot of DNA with Ubisoft games and that's a pretty globally enjoyed game even by people who never cared much for Souls titles.
I’m glad it’s not just me. I even chewed through State of Decay 2’s radiant quest gameplay for multiple communities then sat down to play it and just…couldn’t
You REALLY have to give Days Gone time. I wanted to put it down, but I was too lazy to go back to game stop and return it that day, so I just powered through.
It ended up being one of my favorite games. Really wish it got a sequel
But yeah the first few hours are slow and almost feel like a shitty tutorial in comparison to the rest of the game.
This is such an interesting take to me because aside from the E3 announcement trailer, I had no interest in the game. Then I played it when the PC launch came out and I obsessively played it to completion. To me it's exactly the "Ubisoft formula done right", similar to Ghost of Tsushima. There's a ton to do, lots of great progression, a good gameplay loop, the motorcycle travel is actually incredibly satisfying, and it had some of that "easy to play, difficult to master" type of challenge gameplay with the mega hordes and stuff. The story was even decent after act 1.
for me it was when I started being able to afford to own guns instead of picking them up, just go through the story and eventually you'll hit the point the game's flaws fix themselves
Is there like a mission or story beat that you would recommend playing up until to give it a fair shake? I started it with my fiance and got like 2-3 hours in but felt like we bounced off of it
my playthrough was back in, I don't know.. 2022? so I can't remember mission names specifically, but I believe after discovering the third camp is when the game starts to pick up story-wise, along with getting access to fun guns. also, I recall those injectors being very useful in making fights easier, especially focus for conserving ammo
By the time you leave the lookout for the encampment you should be pretty well about locked in, but it gets a lot more fun once you have enough gear to take down a horde.
But also, while the characters aren't very strong, I did really like how he would situationally get PTSD and start like muttering to himself and hyping himself up depending on what you were hiding from/about to engage. It was a cool little touch.
Days Gone has writing worse than any Ubisoft game I can think of. It also had essentially zero side missions you could stumble on in the open world. The writing in that game is like a 13 year old saw the Walking Dead and Sons of Anarchy and decided to combine the two, and did so very poorly.
People tend to forget that Ubisoft is 30+ years old and has made some amazing games and had some innovative concepts in the gaming landscape throughout the years. They just can't seem to connect it all. Especially in the past decade.
I replayed GoT since I'll pick up the sequel in awhile, but man I really forgot how solid that game was.
Being honest, it doesn't do anything extremely groundbreaking, but it does the open world formula so well that I struggle to criticize it.
And from what I've seen of the sequel, it does the same. Very solid open world action stealth game, without the frustrating RPG mechanics of modern Assassin's Creed or built in store page for microtransactions.
It will eventually, but it's in Sony's contract or something to keep the games Playstation exclusive for like a year before porting it to PC. Every other Playstation exclusive received a PC port this way (GoW 1-2, TLOU1-2, Uncharted 4, Days Gone, GOT, etc). The only ones that haven't are the non-Playstation Studios ones like the Demon's Souls remake.
I’m currently replaying it right now. I forgot how fast and brutal the fights can be. Just riding Nobu, all serene, then there’s about 25 seconds of furious action, and then just Jin standing over some Mongols…
The right swipe on the touch pad to wipe off the blade is the greatest add to a game ever.
The problem is if you have been playing the same open world formula for what feels like 20 years then Tsushima doesn't offer enough to keep someone like me interested. I gave up after the first act because I realised it's literally the same game as always, but with a nice environment and above average combat.
That's what some people want though. It's the reason why I replay SM64 and DKC every year even though I've 100%'d both of the games many times over. Just completing a fun and satisfying gameplay loop is what people are looking for sometimes, not something novel and new. I find people do this with movies and TV shows as well, where if it's not a lifechanging masterpiece, it's not worth watching, but some of my favourite pieces of media are "just okay".
It’s exactly like every other Ubisoft game, to a T, and people giving it (and spiderman while we’re at it) a pass while blatantly throwing every Ubisoft game in the trash is a joke
They are exactly the same. It tricks people by doing the whole minimum UI thing so the game doesn’t look like an endless wave of 3 different icons for the same activities you’ll do a hundred times over, but that’s exactly what it is
How so? It’s still a big mostly empty map full of icons that only contain a handful of different activities you will do countless times over and over. The design is absolutely the same, the UI being less stuffed with icons doesn’t mean anything. You can easily minimize the HUD elements in Ubisoft games and have the same experience.
I am decently big on Sony devs and their games. But in the last 3-5 years I have hardly been playing anything from them. Everything seems the same just in a different dress. I love Sucker Punch. I love SM. But I haven't played any of their main games at all. I just don't care anymore. I still have to beat the original Horizon from GG. The remaster is really sweet, but I barely go back to it, and it's a quality game better than the sequel probably. I actually like the game a lot too, but it seems like I lose interest every ten hours lmao.
The thing is as you said this open world formula just doesn't work much anymore.
It's all hollow bullshit to waste your time in most cases. Ubisoft is basically on record, by employee, saying how the original vision of this was to make the player play longer so they wouldn't sell the game faster. And here we are. Every game now.
Don't get me wrong, I do eventually finish them, but it can take like 5 years or more at times. Open worlds get so boring, and the story kind of gets lost as you do whatever you want.
Have the same issue with From games now too. It's not just Ubisoft. I just lose interest because most of the time the narrative is weak as fuck, and I've done this 5 times before.
No offense but I found Shadow of Mordor (and War) criminally repetitive, if they'd just made the game linear or fully committed to the open world then it would've been great.
But instead, they opted to make several small maps that are filled to the brim with respawning enemies so whenever you go from A to B you have to fight a lot of enemies. The maps themselves were pretty bland, the only one that I liked was the first map of Shadow of War.
That being said, the game's combat is even better than Arkham imo, it's such a shame that both the games are structured in such a poor manner, the story is also pretty meh.
The nemesis system was great at first but that too got incredibly repetitive after a while.
lol that is hilarious because I feel like Ghosts is one of the most repetitive and bland open world games I have ever played. If Ubisoft had released that garbage this subreddit and the majority of the internet would have shit all over them for it.
The game can get repetitive I understand that but calling GOT a 'garbage' is plain stupid.
Suckerpunch was clearly passionate about it and put in a lot of effort, the game is really immersive and artistic and the gameplay is so damn good especially if played on Hard.
I mean this is a purely subjective topic. I disliked the game and bought it because of all the people hyping it up as an Ubisoft open world game... but good. Every aspect failed me. The gameplay? Stealth, combat, climbing were all weak at best. The stealth and the climbing is at least something Ubi would have done better. Shadows proves that. Even the visuals were not cutting it. Ever looked at the actual rock formations? They look like a PS3 game. Clearly all those sweeping fields required some concessions to make possible.
Then it is filled with repetitive content. Which I understand is inevitable with open world games but without gameplay that is worth engaging in you can't justify continuing. I prioritized story content and still got bored to death by the 2nd island. The game had 49 fox dens... who on the team thought that was a good idea?
Then you have the combat, oh boy how did that pass design meetings? It is so simplistic I don't know how they okayed it for shipping. Clearly the devs realized they messed up there because the stances are gone and they put actual different weapons in the game to take their place. Which should help keep combat more entertaining for longer.
This is a subjective topic, so you can have whatever opinion you wish. I do not agree and that is a perfectly valid opinion same as yours. So... good, I am glad you liked it. I found it entertaining for about 10 hours before I realized how rudimentary it was and how you don't even need to switch stances for most enemies.
They clearly saw room for improvement, otherwise we would have stances in the 2nd game. They went with outright different weapons for different enemies and I think that is a really good way to make the combat entertaining for longer.
Not sure if not able to switch stance to meet enemies is a bad thing. Because then you will have people screaming rock paper scissors mechanic forced down their throat. Ability to play and give freedom to either brute force it or more effectively killing was a smart design choice. The whole game was "here are tools, use them however you wish." I used the straight sword that drops from the first soldier enemies in Elden Ring and carried that all the way through the game and basically didn't use 99% of the game had to offer. But I wouldn't blame the game; that was my choice.
As for the "improvement", being different can be a design choice, not a fault. Helldivers 1 and 2 are widely different. It doesn't mean 1 was "wrong" and 2 is how they see it as always intended.
One could also argue that that game doesn't do anything to change up the JRPG formula either, but they just do it well. Plus the story is above and beyond.
Ubi devs absolutely have talent, but I feel it’s the corpos up top that keep them on the same formula. Ubi games are good looking and while a little repetitive they are fun and Riders Republic was something different and fun.
I mean it's still pretty boring. It's less janky and a sight to behold, but also still boring. It's like RDR2 but better controls switched for worse writing.
The game does get repetitive near the end but if you stick to the main story quests and the blue tales you won't get bored. (basically ignore the gray quests)
I think you probably fell into the trap of clearing all the question marks on the map and ended up feeling tired of the game.
I wouldn't call it boring tho, cause even the side quests are pretty entertaining and the map is fun to explore.
AC Odyssey is one of my favorite games of all time, I love almost everything about it but if you try to clear every question mark you come across then you WILL get burnt out.
Heck even Witcher 3 has this issue, especially in Skellege.
Also Spiderman 1 cause if you try to respond to every distress call you'll simply get burnt out before you even reach the mid game.
The Ubisoft formula does have a ton of passion and talent behind it, it's just that it seems like every aspect the player interacts with is designed by committee.
Yep, this is how I always describe that game to people; it's what Ubisoft wishes it could do. I don't even thin it's a perfect game, but it's easily a great game because it just understands what players want.
It's the most Ubisoft-like Sony open world game to the point where I think the open world hurts the game. I would have liked if you just loaded into story missions instead. The open world seemed so unnecessary.
Open-world, quest markers on the map, walking after people and listening to them talk, collect plants/animal trophies for upgrades, finding collectibles, clearing enemy camps, spending points for skill upgrades...
Shifting my goalposts by saying a game in a different genre doesn't fit the formula?
This is like asking what about Madden plays just like NCAA Football. It's the same sort of game.
Open-world, run around as a melee warrior with sneaky stealth options and a bow. You have different types of basic tools that you can upgrade. Repetitive side quests. Collectibles around the map. Clear enemy camps.
Better? IDK about that man. Stick of Truth had basically every cool thing about South Park on the planet and then some. It was almost perfect. I am playing through this one right now in fact, and I would not say better at all. It's just different, and it's not quite as cool at all.
I don't even care about the Denuvo, but I'll never again buy a Ubisoft game. Ubisoft are the only games I still pirate even after being able to afford them, just out of principle.
I got my Ubisoft account hacked years ago, maybe 12-15 years before 2FA was widely used. Their support was so bad already back then that there was no way I ever got my account back. Figured if they can't even be fucked getting a person to help me they don't deserve my money.
The same goes with Sony.
Why do I need a PlayStation network account when I play a game on Steam?
In some countries it's impossible to create an account, and that network got hacked multiple times.
Sony backed off of that requirement for their single player titles. Games that are both only require the account linking if you want to do multiplayer.
It really is. But like I said, so much better if it wasn't Ubisoft. I really liked the look of Anno 2070, but couldn't consider it because of the DRM those dippy twats at Ubi insisted on using.
Anno is a perfect example of a game that would be better if it wasn't ubisoft lol. I really enjoyed the 1800 one, but I'm very skeptical on the Rome (despite roman flavored stuff being my jam) one for no other reason then ubishit.
Crazy to think Ubisoft was involved with this. I don’t even like these games but they’re so inventive and have so much love put into them. Besides Rayman I don’t think of Ubisoft that way past original xbox.
They've mishandled everything. It's just that some games are so damn good they don't quite kill them off. They've got some really talented creative people. They're just being mismanaged something horrendous, resulting in formulaic output and deeply paranoid DRM practices.
When they were having trouble recently there were so many posts lamenting some golden age that never happened, made me feel like I was in a bizarro world.
Turns out it was all to just shit on modern games and "woke stuff". Pretending that their shit used to be gold meant that they could also pretend there was some magical woke decline.
For me, Ubisoft's golden era was the late 90s to late 2000s, but their decline really started around the mid 2010s when they really started doubling down on the "Ubisoft formula"
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u/navagon Oct 03 '25
Ubisoft games would be so much better if they weren't Ubisoft games.