Well I've thrown about 3 hours into The Division, and while I'm not ready to throw in the towel, I'd have to say that it's not looking very promising that I'll keep playing for extended hours..
As I mentioned a while back I knew little to nothing about The Division other than it was a 3rd person shooter based in New York. I didn't realize that it was basically Ubisoft's attempt to capitalize on the shoot & loot genre that Destiny and Borderlands had been so successful in. Unfortunately it appears as though Ubisoft doesn't totally understand what it is that made those games so popular. I mean I'm not big into those types of games but I can at least understand why people are. It's not just the constant mowing down of enemies and getting different random prizes for doing so. Taking down enemies is only fun if they have some sort of personality or some "thing" that makes taking them down feel like an accomplishment, and loot is only cool if it's, well, cool. Maybe I'm just too early into the game but I haven't seen any indication that Ubisoft realizes this, because the enemies are just generic thugs mixed in with other thugs who for some reason can take more bullets to the head than a goddamn Abrams tank. I can believe that random enemies in space or Pandora can take damage like that, but a guy in the middle of Manhattan in what is supposed to be a "realistic shooter?" Not so much. And the weapons are nothing unique unless you haven't played a modern military shooter made in the last decade. Oh boy! This new M5 reloads a half second faster than the one I already have? JACKPOT!
I'm also not a fan of the silent protagonist role again, nor the amazingly lacking character customization. I mean this is essentially an MMO so they're expecting a lot of different people to play, but the options for creation are not much better than what was in the beta. I wasn't expecting Saints Row 2 levels of customization, but the levels I'm seeing here are what I'd expect to see in a PlayStation 1 game.
And the missions seem to basically be "Kill everyone" or "Guard something by killing everyone" or "Save someone by killing everyone." At the end of the day the task is just "Kill everyone" no matter what sort of weak context they give it.
Speaking of weak, let's talk about the controls. They sort of suck. Maybe I'm just too used to Gears of War style controls but the cover based shooting seems very sloppy here. It's not hard to accidentally poke your head up or dislodge from the wall you were stuck to, leading to you getting hit. And getting hit really sucks because it does that crap where you have regenerating health that only goes up to your highest health bar at the time. So you could get shot 4 times and then you won't be able to recover past your lowest bar unless you have a health pack or someone else can heal you, and the health regeneration for that is PAINFULLY slow. Even when playing with other people the early missions I've done have been quite difficult, in fact more difficult than seems appropriate for this early in the game.
But who knows, maybe as I level up more the game will get more fun, and while I'm willing to keep an open mind, past experience seems to point at what will inevitably be another "meh" experience that will quickly go back to Gamefly.
That's too bad. I am actually having a really good time with it so far. The game just came out Tuesday and I've already put 11 hours into it. I've actually come across some pretty cool people through the matchmaking and my uPlay friends list has been gradually growing. I never had a use for it before this game.
I'm even liking the Dark Zone much more than I thought I would. It's not GTA Online where everyone you see immediately attacks you. Most people work together. I've even had strangers who weren't in my group reviving me when a rogue agent or AI enemy downs me. This is surprising because if they just let me bleed out they could take whatever loot I had found but not extracted yet. It's been a much more cooperative experience than I thought it would be.
I'm going to copy a couple parts from your post and respond to them directly.
As I mentioned a while back I knew little to nothing about The Division other than it was a 3rd person shooter based in New York. I didn't realize that it was basically Ubisoft's attempt to capitalize on the shoot & loot genre that Destiny and Borderlands had been so successful in. Unfortunately it appears as though Ubisoft doesn't totally understand what it is that made those games so popular. I mean I'm not big into those types of games but I can at least understand why people are. It's not just the constant mowing down of enemies and getting different random prizes for doing so. Taking down enemies is only fun if they have some sort of personality or some "thing" that makes taking them down feel like an accomplishment, and loot is only cool if it's, well, cool. Maybe I'm just too early into the game but I haven't seen any indication that Ubisoft realizes this, because the enemies are just generic thugs mixed in with other thugs who for some reason can take more bullets to the head than a goddamn Abrams tank.
The Division is heavily influenced by the two games you mentioned, Destiny and Borderlands. If you didn't like either of them it makes sense that you wouldn't like this either. I just checked the Smartglass app and I have 165 hours into Destiny. I also beat the story on PS4. It's hard to say on Borderlands because I have played 3 separate games in that franchise on a mix of PC and PS3. I've also played a ton of Diablo 3. It's clear that I love loot shooters or even just loot games in general.
The enemies vary a bit more as you get further into The Division. There are 4 different gangs with 4 different combat styles. They also have 4 different reasons for doing what they are doing. It is a little disappointing that there are so few character models. Basically there are a few variations in each gang but you see a lot of the same enemies over and over again. This is no different than Destiny or Borderlands though. In Destiny all the Thrall look the same, all the Vex look the same, etc... In Borderlands the raiders and psychos look the same.
And the missions seem to basically be "Kill everyone" or "Guard something by killing everyone" or "Save someone by killing everyone." At the end of the day the task is just "Kill everyone" no matter what sort of weak context they give it.
This is true. It's also true of Borderlands and Destiny. Actually it's true of most shooters. I've recently been playing Uncharted 2. A little before that was Halo 5, and before that was Black Ops 3. All 3 of those games mostly consist of walking into an area and killing everyone and then going to the next area and killing everyone. Uncharted changes it up occasionally with some climbing and light puzzles but it's mostly shooting a bunch of people.
I will say that the story is not a strong point of The Division. Again, the same can be said about Destiny and Diablo. For me the loot grind and gameplay has been enough for me to overlook the weak story in all 3 of those games. This is one of my favorite genres and so far I think The Division is doing it pretty well.
I don't know if there will be enough here to match my 165 hours of Destiny. That depends on how well Ubisoft continues to support The Division with end game content. This is something Destiny was bad about at the beginning but got much better by the time The Taken King came out.
I do think The Division does a much better job of bringing people together. I played the almost the entire story in Destiny alone. This was not by choice. It happened because there was no matchmaking. The only time I was playing with other people was the special strike missions and the raids. I ended up finding a good group to play with through an external site but that is more trouble than most people are willing to go through. I haven't played a single mission in The Division alone and it's mostly been a positive experience for me.