I spent about 10 hours playing The Division 2's Private Beta and had a complete blast, speaking in terms of gameplay. The controls are a little better this time around and the player character feels a little lighter to control when compared to the first game as well as other Tom Clancy's titles. Now the combat remains largely similar though the Bullet Sponge has been significantly reduced which is a good thing. Every gun felt very different to control and the shooting felt very precise and crisp which was also the case with the first game. The Division 2 offers you an overwhelming amount of things to do which includes the usual main missions in addition to a number of side activities such as doing SHD missions (to gain SHD techs which helps you unlocks more skills and perks to assign onto your character), Capture points, Public Executions, finding collectables and SHD caches and many more. In other words, The Division 2 doubles down on its RPG content by giving you enough tools to shape up your character. The Division 2 The game also offers new activities such as building projects, settlements and recruiting staff members which in return gives you more XP and blueprints to customise or craft other items. It is a neat little addition though people familiar with other Ubisoft titles won't find these things a revelation. What I really loved about The Division 2's gameplay is how difficult the game actually is. The beta only offered a little insight on two of its factions which are the Hyenas and True Sons, but both enemy groups acted very differently, making the players think tactfully to overcome the adversaries. I played alone, and for the most part, I actually had a lot of fun seemingly because the game neither threw a huge number of enemies at me, that would usually take a group of four to tackle, nor did it become too easy to complete the mission without screaming or throwing away your controller. The Division 2 finds a middle ground as far as solo experience is concerned and this is something every multiplayer game should do. For more The Division 2 Private Beta Impressions, stick to Sportskeeda.<doc-sep>The private beta of Tom Clancy’s The Division 2 kicks off today for those who have preordered the game. While high-level content doesn’t unlock until tomorrow, there’s still plenty to share about our first few hours with the game. It’s clear that The Division 2 has a look and feel that’s very different from its predecessor. Meanwhile, we’re still not sure what to make of the storyline so far. Here’s five things we learned on the first day of The Division 2’s private beta. The tactics have changed The changes to combat in The Division 2 go deep, and they begin with subtle changes to the look of the game. Environments appear to have much less contrast than in the original, especially at night or in dark environments. Once engaged, there’s no longer a guarantee that enemies will have a persistent icon floating over their heads. Those two differences combine to make it very hard to know how many enemies you’re fighting against at any given time, or where they even are on the map. Things may change in the mid or late game as more passive skills unlock, but in the opening few hours these factors combine to change the flow of combat quite a bit. In the original The Division it was pretty easy for me to post up on one side of an environment and push through to the other, making lateral moves from cover to cover as I went. This time around the enemies have found ways to sneak around and flank me on a regular basis. As a consequence, I’m forcing myself to maneuver faster and more purposefully than ever before. One feature that I’ve been playing with today is called “parkour mode.” It cuts down on the stickiness of cover by making your character automatically vault over low obstacles if they’re running. It’s going to take a bit of time to change my muscle memory, but so far I can see the potential for much more fluid advances and retreats. Weapon choice matters Weapons feel much more defined this time around. In The Division, there wasn’t all that much separating an assault rifle from a scout rifle. Both worked well at either medium or long range. In The Division 2 — at least on PlayStation 4, where I’ve spent the majority of my time — aiming feels a lot less sticky. That means scout rifles are really only effective for poking at stationary targets behind cover. Meanwhile, shotguns have been dramatically improved. A semi-automatic model, so long as it’s at an appropriate level, is hands down the best way to deal with enemies up close. Where that leaves submachine guns, which were effectively uber-weapons in the previous game, I’m simply not sure. Another big question in my mind is the role of light machine guns. In The Division, they were practically worthless. So far in The Division 2 I’ve been happy with their ability to suppress enemies. Once you’ve got them zeroed in, it just takes a few short bursts to fix someone in place, pinning them down and showing the word “suppressed” in bright white letters over their head. But actually doing damage with them has proven extremely difficult. The role of tech has expanded After the opening few levels in The Division, Strategic Homeland Division (SHD or “shade”) tech sort of faded into the background. Seeker mines were just as good as a grenade in most circumstances and stationary health kits were simply a timed area of effect buff. This time around, tech seems to play a much bigger role. Take turrets for example. The beta includes two different styles, an assault and a sniper variant. They’ll happily plug away at enemies once you deploy them, but you can also assign them to a specific target on the fly with the press of a button. As a solo player, it’s the equivalent of having a teammate who actually listens to you. In a small group, it allows a single player to hold a flank much better than ever before. High-level players will find all kinds of clever uses for the feature, I’m sure. There are also synergies to be found between different types of tech, which are mounted to your character as skills and in pairs. The healing drone, if left to its own devices, will repair your armor. But you can also assign it to repair your turret, which seriously improves its resilience against incoming fire. Even more surprising, I quickly found that the enemies had access to some of the same tech that I do. Some enemies lobbed seeker mines in my direction very early on, while others drove flamethrower-wielding RC cars with deadly effects. I’m curious to see what other surprises lay in store with boss encounters down the line. It’s easy to play together The launch of The Division in 2016 was rife with technical errors. It was practically impossible to participate in cooperative missions when the game came out, and persistent matchmaking bugs plagued the game well into its second year. The same can’t be said for The Division 2. Multiplayer just works. I had very little difficulty joining in with other players on the fly. Better still, it was easy to form parties while outside of the base and actually run the missions that I wanted to run. While playing solo, the game also encouraged me to ask for help from the other players by sending out calls for aid. On more than one occasion other players actually showed up, helping me to push through a difficult encounter. The result is a game that feels simultaneously like a solo and a multiplayer experience. That should pay dividends early on by helping to galvanize the community. The storyline feels apolitical, but that could change Ubisoft turned a lot of heads last year at E3 when it pitched The Division 2 as a game about the next Civil War, and then refused to acknowledge what that might indicate about the current political climate in the United States.<doc-sep>The Division 2 gameplay consists of two parts. One part is where Massive Entertainment and Ubisoft listened to The Division players and implemented appropriate changes and the other is where they kept some old elements, like bullet sponges. When the original The Division came out, people immediately started complaining about bullet sponges and the problem persists to this day. Massive Entertainment went to great lengths to curb the issue in The Division 2, but they had to keep bullet sponging in some elements, to preserve the looter shooter feel. First, let's address the gameplay changes that happened as a direct result of community demand. Bullet sponges are out of a good chunk of the game, even though they are not entirely gone. For example, in the original The Division, once you saw an enemy with a purple or God forbid, a yellow health bar, you would immediately need to check if you have three million spare rounds in your gun. This is not the case in The Division 2, for the most part. Going through story missions will introduce you to various enemies, some of which have armour. These enemies will be tougher to kill, but the moment you penetrate through the armour, their health will melt with just a few bullets. Massive Entertainment have managed to make engaging content, in a multiplayer game that is all about getting that sweet powerful loot, without resorting to abnormally high amounts of health on enemies. Combat feels satisfying, you can drop three to four enemies in a single magazine and it doesn't feel like you are shooting peas anymore. That is, until you group up. Considering that one agent is enough to mow down all the enemies in a mission, it wouldn't make much sense to keep the difficulty level the same when they group up with three other agents. Therefore, enemy health will scale accordingly, but it starts to become egregious as soon as you have three agents in a group. A group of four further increases enemy health pools. This specific mechanic is the reason why the whole argument about bullet sponges' existence in The Division 2 is confusing. In essence, you will not run into bullet sponges as long as you play solo or with one agent in your team. If you group up with two or three agents, The Division 2 will turn into a bullet sponge galore. Massive Entertainment The Division 2 The good news is that agents are no longer bullet sponges themselves, meaning PvP should be more fun than ever. Gone are the days of instant healing through skills, medkits, Nomad's set and the signature ability. Players now need a few seconds to replace their broken armour plate and getting caught by a flanker usually means certain death. Agents move slightly slower in The Division 2 so chicken dancing is off the table as players can no longer instantly switch their running direction. PvP firefights should, in general, feel more tactical now, with skill and proper decision making having more impact than before, as a firefight can be done in a matter of seconds. One major issue remains unfixed though, and everyone who played The Division will hate it. Grenades in both games stagger anyone they affect, except some heavy enemies, which is a good thing in itself. The bad part is that the pre-stagger glitch is still present. For those who didn't play The Division or are otherwise unacquainted with it, the glitch makes players go into stagger animation before an enemy grenade explodes or even reaches the impact point, therefore reducing their chances of escaping the blast. Massive Entertainment have changed many systems for The Division 2, and so far it looks like they made the right moves. Players who want to avoid bullet sponges can now do so by venturing into the Dark Zone more often, while those who don't mind them can simply focus on higher tier PvE content. Raids were not shown yet, but are expected to be filled to the brim with bullet sponges, as they will be eight-player instances. It is not hard to see that the studio gave a lot of thought to The Division 2, and not only through the mechanics changes. They have also added loot caches all over the place, and it's not that hard to find them, as long as you're not staying on the beaten path, meaning the path shown by the GPS system. Exploration is rewarded and those who pay attention to detail will find faction loot caches that award higher grade items. Speaking of detail, The Division 2 is filled with smaller things that offer either fan service mini stories of themselves, such as the picture below, showing a sad part in this particular husky's life. Massive Entertainment The Division 2 It is important to note that the Private Beta didn't allow players to unlock Pulse, which reveals all enemies around an agent, and most players saw this as a positive thing. Having to focus on battlefield awareness brought another layer of depth to The Division 2 and players are now even asking Massive Entertainment not to include the skill in the final version of the game.<doc-sep>The private beta test for Tom Clancy’s The Division 2 went live on February 7, and Ubisoft has already identified multiple problems with the game that are causing it to crash. The first, which is sure to affect more dedicated players, occurs when you’ve been playing The Division 2 beta for an extended period of time. Until a final fix can be found for this crash, Ubisoft says it can be avoided simply by restarting your beta client every two or three hours. A second issue will also occur if you are invited to a game session by a friend when you aren’t playing The Division 2. Accepting the invitation will cause the game to crash, but this can also be worked around by launching the game first and then accepting the invitation. Online multiplayer games of this scale always seem to have some rough edges to work out at launch, and The Division was one of them back in 2016. It dealt with error messages that prevented players from connecting to the servers, and because of its online-only structure, they couldn’t even play the campaign missions by themselves during these periods. With any luck, The Division 2‘s launch will be smoother — or at least free of game-breaking bugs. The Division 2 moves from the streets of New York City to Washington, D.C. as chaos threatens to destroy the nation’s capital and throw the world into complete disarray. Unlike the first game’s DLC structure, which was a mix of free and paid content, three major pieces of story content will be released for free in The Division 2‘s first year. The endgame content is going to be more substantial than the first game’s, as well, with larger raids and new specialization options once you reach level 30. If you want access to The Division 2‘s private beta, it’s available through January 10 for those who pre-ordered the game. A select number of users who signed up on Ubisoft’s website also received access for free. The full game releases on March 15 for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC — the PC version will not be available on Steam, instead launching on the Epic Games Store. Editors' Recommendations<doc-sep>
The private beta for Ubisoft’s The Division 2 is here, and it shows that the developer has finally listened to its fans. Taking place in a large open world in Washington, D.C the sequel is shaping up to provide tough competition for other MMO-lite shooters this year. When The Division launched all the way back in 2016, it was met with lukewarm reception. With a mostly hollow open world and lots of launch issues, that game did not fare well with gamers. However, Ubisoft chose to stick with it and provided frequent updates. That seems to have been the company’s motto, with them releasing games in a not-so-grand way and then providing updates to make them better. Just look at Rainbow Six Siege. But now, it seems like the company’s finally had its wake-up call. With last year’s Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey, Ubisoft has changed for the better. Tom Clancy’s The Division 2 has a great open world The Division 2 is, like its predecessor, an open-world looter. What that means is the primary drive for players in the game is to keep upgrading their gear with loot. Games like Anthem and Warframe come under the same genre. You can play it solo or team up with your friends. Either way, with a game like this you’ll be ideally looking to play this for the long haul. To support a game design like those two things are very important: a) Consistent content Updates b) Open-world variation c) Good gameplay loop So let’s talk about those. The Division 2’s Open World is Another Feat for U bisoft The Division 2’s Open World Washington is beautiful For a game like this to exist in an open world, it really needs to reel players in. Gone are the snow-covered streets of New York City. The Division 2 presents players with a much more aesthetically pleasing Washington DC. The game uses an updated Snowdrop engine, and it shows. It just might be the most beautiful a Ubisoft game has looked in a long time, with great foliage and verticality. AMD Ryzen CPUs Are 35% Faster After World of Warcraft’s Latest Update Most of all, the world feels lived-in, which is one of the most important aspects of any virtual open world. Each district feels distinct from the other one, and the city has been reconstructed on a 1:1 ratio, much like Paris from Assassin’s Creed: Unity. This adds a sense of realism, with tons of content everywhere to engage in. Gameplay in The Division 2 is Very Hands-on Gunplay in The Division 2 The Division, as well as other similar games, has often been criticized for its bullet-sponge combat design and exploration. Things seem to have been changed up here. Combat in The Division 2 involves active participation. Enemy AI has been upgraded, and the inventory/perks system also seems to have been expanded. Exploration is also a big aspect of this game, with almost every mission taking you somewhere new. And with such variety present in the private beta itself, it’s kind of baffling to think just how better it will be in the final game. We just hope it Ubisoft won’t go the Rockstar road and put content too far and wide across the map. Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey also had a big map, but that doesn’t mean that it had a consistently interetsting content in it. Performance Patches? Content Updates? After all, this is Ubisoft. Historically speaking, the developer has been known for buggy launches. Remember Watch Dogs? Rainbow Six Siege? Assassin’s Creed Unity? All of these games launched with frequent performance hiccups and missing content. Unity, in particular, is the company’s biggest dirt spot. However, Ubisoft didn’t let go of these games. They provided frequent patches and updates to make those games better. Siege, which at launch was considered a weak game, is now one of the most celebrated e-Sports titles out there. Considering all that, The Division 2 looks like it might be the company’s most polished game at launch. I’ve played the demo for over 2 days now, and not once did I encounter any glitch or performance drop. I’m playing on PC with a humble GTX 1050Ti and the game has no problems in hitting the desired 60fps mark. It also helps that the game has a good selection of graphics settings, although we’d love to see some NVIDIA proprietary settings like HBAO+ or the newly introduced DLSS or raytracing features.