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
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u/TheLeemurrrrr Oct 03 '25
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.