Division at its core is a fun mechanic for lower levels, but at the end game, the grind becomes just silly. They introduced a new system to give elite high watch score players something else to grind for. But it's a trick. Sleight of hand. Yes the gear is stronger and even eliminates the insane marathon to get expertise to level 30. Which is needed to do harder end game content effectively.
The problem is, every time you do an escalation if for any reason you decide its too hard half way though, or get dced, or even run out of time, YOU FAIL. Go back to start and loose all of your tokens. Which means the run at 00 nets you nothing. So you need to do 2 or 3 runs just to get back into the possibility of getting one item. But guess what, you can't pick the stats or perks. You may earn a full set eventually, but it won't match and it's not as good as what you had. They say all you have to do it level up your expertise gear to 30 and then you can use your own sets.
Problem there is, only a handful of insane grinders have that. If you are new to the game, it could be years before you see a set you want of prototype gear. It can take you years to even get to expertise 30. I've read the guides and played for years, for hours a day at times and I'm only watch level 460. I was told in the guide to not even try to up the expertise level until watch level 1000. To top that off, the events they pick like the dust storm, is just silly. Not only is the end game content already hard, now you are blinded from time to time. I don't play games to suffer. I tried Dark Souls a long time ago, beat it and never wanted to play it again. That kind of suffering isn't for me. Some games will let you pay for the upgrades so you don't have to do the grind. That would be nice if they did that. Allow us to turn off the event modes. Or only do them in a mission, not tie it to the main world.
The problem with Escalation missions, is that they pick random missions each week and each mission has a specific gear type. Some missions are not doable solo, or are super hard to do with high failure rate. Since you can't change the talents on gear you get, and you have to wait weeks if not months to find a set piece you want. Guess what, that could be one of the harder missions. The loss of progress there is super annoying.
Essentially they took missions that you have been tired of doing for years, and repackaged them with a new gear drop. Accept, it's harder and every time you fail you lose progress and have to do several missions to get back to the point where you can see gear drops. I know there is other content to do, but just knowing that prototype gear is there, it makes me not even care about anything else. Makes me feel like im wasting my time trying to perfect a set that will be obsolete soon as get the prototype set.
So you have to love wasting your time, failing a lot, never finding a group and then have no way to complete the hardest end game content without a super group. Which of course mics and skills are required. So good luck with that. For a player that wants to just do a pick up group, play and advance to the highest tier in a reasonable amount of time. You can't!. Either because you can't find the groups, or you can't get a prototype set or 30 expertise to be able to do it. So the end game is just kind of a brass ring just out of your reach that will entice you to keep trying and keep failing. Why, there are plenty of shooters out there that are more fun and value your time.
I've played Division 1 and 2 on multiple platforms, since they both came out. I can do almost all of the content on heroic. I can even do the escalations up to tier 5. But after a couple of wipes my progress is reset. Or if I run out of time or DC< same thing. They need to fix the loss, make the content doable due to no groups, give us the npc bots that can revive us. Or fill our group with npcs to help. Our skills kind of suck in the new content. Give us those black tusk robots with the treads instead of an insane realism mode. Who would want to start over , and suffer even more to play that. If it resets your expertise level, I can't imagine anyone wanting to play that. The numbers will show. So stop making things harder and start making it so solo players can do all of the content. Give us the tools to do that. Better Skills, new classes, a stronger solo class and set. Anything that makes it easier and doable not harder.
I only play this game because of the skills, and they need to be better. Id like the option to play with skills if that's what I want to do. My turret and drone are good, but not great. They need to be better to solo these end game legendary modes, because you can't get good groups in a pug, or if you are solo, wipes put you back at start. That needs to change. Make the end game accessible and I think you will get more players to come back and keep players you already have. As for me, I'm done until they fix this. Save your money, unless they fix the escalation end game problem. If they make the end game accessible, then I'll change my review and come back.
