The Division - PS4

[Newcastle]

Just creating this so folks can communicate/coordinate and set up coop times and what not.

[Newcastle]

FYI I hit lvl 6 last night, and i made myself a sweet, sweet Blue sniper rifle. My intent was to kind of go a healers route as well as focusing on sniping...since i love to snipe in whatever shooter I play. I kidn of figured depending on people's levels we could hit the main missions since we will be grouped up.

One thing I read up is that people advised to clear out zones before moving on; because those side missions open up missions later on in the game. So i've been working on clearing out chelsea before I move on to anything else.

[ChuckB]

Hi,

Sorry I got online too late yesterday to team up. But I also played quite a bit and got to level 6. Game is growing on me, it's important to understand what it is (MMO that relies heavily on collecting loot and keeping busy with many (albeit slightly faceless) missions) and what it isn't (SP game with good storyline and living (or rather ... dying) vibrant city.

I also got a nice sniper rifle (M14 with strong headshot bonus) - we should definitely see how we can complement each other when doing coop.

I still have trouble with the cover system and using it well, having no melee weapon when rushed is an issue and it gets a bit hectic for me. The AI is actually not bad, once you understand the different roles.

I'll try to be online later tonight; I'm on Pacific - hope to see you (and other OOs) later!

P.S. Also: I'm really not good at understanding how all the damage numbers work in these games - I might be focusing on the wrong values when selecting weapons and equipment

[ChuckB]

https://youtu.be/i842pxgmcj0

Here is a video of Newcastle and me during our very first minutes of coop. We had no comms and you can see some disorganized running around and shooting but it was great fun. We started a mission afterwards (which was a lvl 7 and turned out to be quite challenging) and I think the game really shines when playing together.

Looking forward to more!

[Newcastle]

Yeah that dude, running around, not caring about cover...goin all rambo...that was me...i'll cop to it. To be fari...that first little encounter kind of surprised me so took a moment to grab cover. Then it popped me out...still getting use to the controls.

Also, got my mic up and running after you left ChuckB.

Anyway also managed to hook up with Raydude as well last night. We ran around for an hour or so and got one of the main missions wrapped up. Still not use to people just dropping in on my gameplay..its not bad, just unfamiliar.

Found a couple of interesting tidbits:

-If you are party leader, and you set a waypoint via your minimap; the rest of your party can see it as an bright orange trail and arrow thats in the top portion of your screen.

-I managed to wrap up most side missions in Chelsea...and on the way I found multiple fabric, tools, weapons part boxes. Thing with these is once looted they provide a couple of parts, and then take 2 hours to recharge. Great way to get crafting components. From what I've pieced together crafting a weapon is superior than anything you can buy right now. Could be wrong; but I enjoy crafting in MMOs so its a neat little thing.

[ChuckB]

Yes, we absolutely came out ok. I also still have issues with the cover system, I think I have to try different settings (you can set up if motion gets you out of cover at all and if you need another button press to move around corners in cover).

I think it's probably a good idea not to run too fast into unknown areas. When I play, I never use the sprint button outside of an emergency and pulse the environment on a regular basis to avoid ambushes. There are actually two nasty elites in Chelsea I ran into yesterday when doing solo and disengaging is not that easy - in general, the thugs don't seem to believe in "don't shoot someone in the back".

I have now finished all three of the base missions; had to solo the subway morgue yesterday, which is actually pretty good but it was tough in parts. I'm still not a big fan of the boss battles (but I don't like them in any game, so it might only be me). I actually got out of the mission only 4 minutes before they shut down the servers ...

Comms should really improve this, especially to coordinate when to initiate a fight and warn others when they get flanked or rushed. Also, defining general roles and areas of fire might be good.

[raydude]

Comms should really improve this, especially to coordinate when to initiate a fight and warn others when they get flanked or rushed. Also, defining general roles and areas of fire might be good.

Absolutely! Newcastle and I used comms to great effect and on seeing groups of enemies would pause and discuss where to set up, divide areas of responsibility, and plan out our attack. Heck, at one point we even talked about where to fall back once we get rushed by the enemy. Not to imply we were great strategerists because we had just died at that point in the mission from getting overrun, so we tried to figure out how to not let that happen again .

Conversely, I went through several missions with totally random people and I'm a bit disappointed with the results. No one talked on the mic, even though some clearly had them. Randos rarely taking cover, never waiting for us to set up before initiating contact, generally playing it like COD. I would much rather prefer with friends and go through missions tactically.

[ChuckB]

Comms should really improve this, especially to coordinate when to initiate a fight and warn others when they get flanked or rushed. Also, defining general roles and areas of fire might be good.

Absolutely! Newcastle and I used comms to great effect and on seeing groups of enemies would pause and discuss where to set up, divide areas of responsibility, and plan out our attack. Heck, at one point we even talked about where to fall back once we get rushed by the enemy. Not to imply we were great strategerists because we had just died at that point in the mission from getting overrun, so we tried to figure out how to not let that happen again .

Conversely, I went through several missions with totally random people and I'm a bit disappointed with the results. No one talked on the mic, even though some clearly had them. Randos rarely taking cover, never waiting for us to set up before initiating contact, generally playing it like COD. I would much rather prefer with friends and go through missions tactically.

Hi,

Saw you online on Saturday night and was about to reach out for some coop when the spring forward happened and I was reminded how late it already was ...

My TV died yesterday (which makes gaming with the PS4 incredibly hard) and I have to fix that issue before I'll be online again (more precisely: the TV sometimes works and sometimes it only shows very colorful vertical stripes and yesterday was an "off" day ...)

[raydude]

It's ok. I'm on travel all this week so I won't get on till Friday. Then I'm back on travel again Monday until Wednesday.

[Newcastle]

Sorry to hear about your TV; hope you get it fixed soon. I am off and on sporadically as my time dictates. I am tending to snatch small playing time frames. But hopefully one of these days we can hook up and test out the dark zone. That's something I am quite intrigued about. And hopefully wont come across anyone going rogue.

[ChuckB]

Hi,

Will look out for your guys tonight. My TV decided to work again and is doing so without any problems since Monday (I'm keeping my fingers crossed).

I had my first (and short) foray into the dark zone (solo). It's interesting and different from PvE - much more scary to run around with more possible threats. Also, the Mobs are running around in groups of 5-6 and are all purple, which is impossible to tackle solo if you are on similar level. I was able to participate in (and contribute to) a couple of shoot-outs where other players attacked these groups and got 6 nice (but no overly exciting) blue items that I was even able to extract successfully. I saw one rogue player and fired at him but felt bad about it later when I tried to help another human against an elite that was charging and that human player decided to run directly into my direction and my fire arc, turning me rogue for shooting him. I was killed within moments ...

[Newcastle]

I should be around today if we want to try. Or, maybe try to set up times when we could be all on. I am just on the cusp of lvl 10...been going real slow actually..but heck...no harm in that.

[ChuckB]

I should be around today if we want to try. Or, maybe try to set up times when we could be all on. I am just on the cusp of lvl 10...been going real slow actually..but heck...no harm in that.

Hi Newcastle - early Wednesday evening should work for me, will look for you. I reached Lvl 17 but will slow it down a bit so that we don't get too far apart, level-wise. Would be great to connect again

[Newcastle]

Hey wasn't on last night. I'll try to get back on saturday for a few hours; still only lvl 10. SHould probably work on that.

[raydude]

Hey guys,

I usually play for an hour or so starting at 8pm EDT every night. Fridays are when I can stay up longer, although tonight my gaming group is going to do the Destiny raid - Golgoroth challenge mode. They usually start late though - around 10pm - so I will most likely be online in the DIvision. Newcastle - I got my friend Scott to buy the game, and he's loving it!

[Newcastle]

This game shines when you are running missions as a group...seriously does. its just a lot of fun to run through stuff with people and working tactically to get through encounters. Hooked up with ray and his friend Silp yesterday and a had a blast on the mission we were working on.

Also i am not sure of the etiquette here...ray and i discussed this briefly yesterday...but if i am on...feel free to jump in my little realm and have a chat...even if its for a few minutes. I have been playing in snatches and small play segments...so sometimes I am on for only about 20-30 minutes. I really should work on levelign to catch up to everyone...so much to do...so little time!

[Newcastle]

fyi i dont know how long term I will play this...my desire to play has been low lately. I just get tired of running all over the place...especially the holding down the stick to toggle run ...believe or not is annoying. Been dying quite a bit too...so have to run back to the encounter...anyway...thought i'd let folks know. Though when grouped up; its a blast to play.

[ydejin]

This game shines when you are running missions as a group...seriously does. its just a lot of fun to run through stuff with people and working tactically to get through encounters. Hooked up with ray and his friend Silp yesterday and a had a blast on the mission we were working on.

Definitely agree. It's an awful lot of fun running on a team. The tactics are just much more interesting, the flanking and maneuvering works great. Then on top of that the skills synergize really well. Running by yourself, you always need to have at least one healing skill up, but on a larger team, you get a chance to try out a lot of different skill combinations.

[raydude]

fyi i dont know how long term I will play this...my desire to play has been low lately. I just get tired of running all over the place...especially the holding down the stick to toggle run ...believe or not is annoying. Been dying quite a bit too...so have to run back to the encounter...anyway...thought i'd let folks know. Though when grouped up; its a blast to play.

We could try going to a regularly scheduled game night rather than trying to rely on ad hoc team ups. I for one can only game for long hours on Friday nights. So perhaps a regularly scheduled Division PS4 night could work. I used to do this with Destiny. Only playing on Friday nights when I could devote long hours to it - along w/ all my other friends.

[ChuckB]

fyi i dont know how long term I will play this...my desire to play has been low lately. I just get tired of running all over the place...especially the holding down the stick to toggle run ...believe or not is annoying. Been dying quite a bit too...so have to run back to the encounter...anyway...thought i'd let folks know. Though when grouped up; its a blast to play.

Sorry to hear that (BTW, you don't need to hold down the stick to run - maybe that's a setting but it's a toggle for me). I still enjoy the game quite a bit and doing coop is great fun but our gaming hours don't seem to overlap much, so unfortunately, I haven't been able to connect a lot with you guys.

I'm Lvl 19 now and will try to keep it at that to not get too much ahead of everyone else.

[ChuckB]

fyi i dont know how long term I will play this...my desire to play has been low lately. I just get tired of running all over the place...especially the holding down the stick to toggle run ...believe or not is annoying. Been dying quite a bit too...so have to run back to the encounter...anyway...thought i'd let folks know. Though when grouped up; its a blast to play.

We could try going to a regularly scheduled game night rather than trying to rely on ad hoc team ups. I for one can only game for long hours on Friday nights. So perhaps a regularly scheduled Division PS4 night could work. I used to do this with Destiny. Only playing on Friday nights when I could devote long hours to it - along w/ all my other friends.

Regular gaming meetings would normally be challenging for me and my gaming normally only starts around 10pm (Pacific) but starting middle of next week, I'm much more flexible and I would love to team up.

While The Division (and even Destiny) are surprisingly fun even solo (would never thought that I would even try shooters on a console) but it's so much more better with others ...

[raydude]

fyi i dont know how long term I will play this...my desire to play has been low lately. I just get tired of running all over the place...especially the holding down the stick to toggle run ...believe or not is annoying. Been dying quite a bit too...so have to run back to the encounter...anyway...thought i'd let folks know. Though when grouped up; its a blast to play.

We could try going to a regularly scheduled game night rather than trying to rely on ad hoc team ups. I for one can only game for long hours on Friday nights. So perhaps a regularly scheduled Division PS4 night could work. I used to do this with Destiny. Only playing on Friday nights when I could devote long hours to it - along w/ all my other friends.

Regular gaming meetings would normally be challenging for me and my gaming normally only starts around 10pm (Pacific) but starting middle of next week, I'm much more flexible and I would love to team up.

Excellent. My friend in real life and I will be doing a regular game night most Fridays as this is about the only time we get to team up together. For some reason our other real-life friends are not getting sold on the game. But people are more than welcome to drop in and play for as long or short as they want.

[Newcastle]

imagine that...there's a setting that negates "the must push down toggle continuously to run" go figure...i'm still wandering around in the game, but albeit in small chunks. Hit 14 yesterday, might grab a small snatch of time later on today. I also just have to get use to the fact that i cant just run willy nilly all around the map without looking out for encounters...i also changed my loadout too...i replaced my turret with a healing station and thats helped immensely with my survivability.

[ChuckB]

imagine that...there's a setting that negates "the must push down toggle continuously to run" go figure...i'm still wandering around in the game, but albeit in small chunks. Hit 14 yesterday, might grab a small snatch of time later on today. I also just have to get use to the fact that i cant just run willy nilly all around the map without looking out for encounters...i also changed my loadout too...i replaced my turret with a healing station and thats helped immensely with my survivability.

Good - yes, that setting should make it a bit easier. I actually never run in the game (unless I run away from stuff, which sometimes happens ...) and awareness is important to avoid stumbling into some nasty encounters. The NPCs are pretty deadly in groups and if you don't get the chance to set up the fight with finding a good approach and cover, you are easily in trouble.

One of the coolest encounters I had was actually when I did run into a powerful group (which wasn't my fault): I think it was in the Garment district when I saw a subway entry on the map and decided to enter it, just when I reached the stairs a group with a yellow elite was coming up the stairs. It got pretty chaotic, I was able to drop a turret and ran away when another group of NPCs was coming down the same street in my direction. I ran into an empty diner across the street and started to fight off the bad guys when the two groups (the one from the subway and the one coming down the street started to also fight each other - not sure if I have seen this again). I survived but it was a tough fight

[ChuckB]

fyi i dont know how long term I will play this...my desire to play has been low lately. I just get tired of running all over the place...especially the holding down the stick to toggle run ...believe or not is annoying. Been dying quite a bit too...so have to run back to the encounter...anyway...thought i'd let folks know. Though when grouped up; its a blast to play.

We could try going to a regularly scheduled game night rather than trying to rely on ad hoc team ups. I for one can only game for long hours on Friday nights. So perhaps a regularly scheduled Division PS4 night could work. I used to do this with Destiny. Only playing on Friday nights when I could devote long hours to it - along w/ all my other friends.

Regular gaming meetings would normally be challenging for me and my gaming normally only starts around 10pm (Pacific) but starting middle of next week, I'm much more flexible and I would love to team up.

Excellent. My friend in real life and I will be doing a regular game night most Fridays as this is about the only time we get to team up together. For some reason our other real-life friends are not getting sold on the game. But people are more than welcome to drop in and play for as long or short as they want.

Great, this Friday should work for me. I set up a Playstation community for us ("The Octopus Division") and will send invites, maybe it becomes useful to exchange info and arrange sessions (also, always wanted to try the community system )

[raydude]

fyi i dont know how long term I will play this...my desire to play has been low lately. I just get tired of running all over the place...especially the holding down the stick to toggle run ...believe or not is annoying. Been dying quite a bit too...so have to run back to the encounter...anyway...thought i'd let folks know. Though when grouped up; its a blast to play.

We could try going to a regularly scheduled game night rather than trying to rely on ad hoc team ups. I for one can only game for long hours on Friday nights. So perhaps a regularly scheduled Division PS4 night could work. I used to do this with Destiny. Only playing on Friday nights when I could devote long hours to it - along w/ all my other friends.

Regular gaming meetings would normally be challenging for me and my gaming normally only starts around 10pm (Pacific) but starting middle of next week, I'm much more flexible and I would love to team up.

Excellent. My friend in real life and I will be doing a regular game night most Fridays as this is about the only time we get to team up together. For some reason our other real-life friends are not getting sold on the game. But people are more than welcome to drop in and play for as long or short as they want.

Great, this Friday should work for me. I set up a Playstation community for us ("The Octopus Division") and will send invites, maybe it becomes useful to exchange info and arrange sessions (also, always wanted to try the community system )

Hey ChuckB, it was great playing with you Friday night! Playing in a 2-player group is a blast, and when my real-life friend joined us it ratcheted up the tension a bit. For folks reading, he was level 30 and ChuckB and I were both level 20, so the game scaled the NPC bad guys up to an average of 20 and 30 - hence level 25 bad guys. ChuckB and I were still able to hit and kill them, we just had to be more careful about taking hits. My friend also had to be careful since level 25 guys were still able to hurt him - and we all wiped a few times on some of the missions.

If anyone else is playing The Division on PS4 just let us know. Friday is my best time for long dedicated Division playing, but I'm on most nights for about an hour or so. It's nice that The Division allows for drop in play and most of the side missions and encounters take less than 30 minutes to complete.

[ChuckB]

Hey ChuckB, it was great playing with you Friday night! Playing in a 2-player group is a blast, and when my real-life friend joined us it ratcheted up the tension a bit. For folks reading, he was level 30 and ChuckB and I were both level 20, so the game scaled the NPC bad guys up to an average of 20 and 30 - hence level 25 bad guys. ChuckB and I were still able to hit and kill them, we just had to be more careful about taking hits. My friend also had to be careful since level 25 guys were still able to hurt him - and we all wiped a few times on some of the missions.

If anyone else is playing The Division on PS4 just let us know. Friday is my best time for long dedicated Division playing, but I'm on most nights for about an hour or so. It's nice that The Division allows for drop in play and most of the side missions and encounters take less than 30 minutes to complete.

Yes, it was great fun (and yes, it was also pretty tough from time to time). I actually pressed the "share" button at the end of the first part of us playing together and you can see the result here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWvznDS ... load_owner

This was a bit of a chaotic fight which is not necessarily a good representation of the average fight, as it was pretty close quarters in part (and my position wasn't ideal, you can see me scanning all different avenues of approach the bad guys were taking.) You can also see that I was killed with one or two shots once, not sure what hit me but it was STRONG. Also, I have to work on my aim when things get hectic and my use of grenades was questionable ...

[JSHAW]

To those still playing The Division, got a question -

I've noticed when I get my DPS over 100,000 my health stats suffer.

When I get my health stats in the 50, 000 and higher my DPS goes down to
around 75-80,000.

I've also noticed that when I go in the Dark Zone with my primary and secondary weapons
with over 100K on both I can kill enemies that are level 30-31 very easy, but because
my health stats are lower, I have to keep injecting myself with health shots, and take along
a portable health generator. I find myself dying quickly when my DPS is high, but health stats
lower.

Has anyone come across gear that will allow you to keep your DPS jacked up over 100k. and
still have your health stats higher as well?

[JSHAW]

Since there's no thread for XB1, I'm gonna piggyback onto this one.

People liking the new changes in patch 1.2?

Search & Destroy missions that give intel, to go to the Main Base and pickup the
Daily & Weekly High Value Target missions.

I can solo the missions where it's a level 31 badguy, level 32, no freakin' way am
I finishing those. They kill me every time.

I hit the level 30 cap awhile ago. My gamescore is around 180.

I can take on a pack of 4-5 level 31's in the dark zone, but I never try and take on one or
more rogue agents. I need to get alot higher in my dps and strongness levels before I can
pull that off.

In the meantime, I hate rogue agents.

[raydude]

Since there's no thread for XB1, I'm gonna piggyback onto this one.

People liking the new changes in patch 1.2?

Search & Destroy missions that give intel, to go to the Main Base and pickup the
Daily & Weekly High Value Target missions.

I can solo the missions where it's a level 31 badguy, level 32, no freakin' way am
I finishing those. They kill me every time.

I hit the level 30 cap awhile ago. My gamescore is around 180.

I can take on a pack of 4-5 level 31's in the dark zone, but I never try and take on one or
more rogue agents. I need to get alot higher in my dps and strongness levels before I can
pull that off.

In the meantime, I hate rogue agents.

The HVT mission setups are kind of cool. A bit broken when it comes to grouping with randoms since someone touching the mission board after you bought an HVT will terminate the mission. Not a big deal for the daily HVTs, since you can just go back and get a new one. But if that happens for the weekly HVT you lose the contract. Period. No second chance. And all because some dude decided to touch the mission board.

But I play with real-life friends, so its all good.