The Puddles In The Street

Back into The Division? A game that will be two years old soon? Why? You’ve got all these other games to play, yet you’re playing The Division. Again.

Well, it’s familiar. I spent almost a month playing Vanilla when it was released. I was queued up on release day, and that was early March 2016. I played all through Vanilla, but then there wasn’t much to do. I tracked down all the intel, and then there really wasn’t anything to do but the Dark Zone, which was an unleveled hell of a PvP arena. And I wasn’t interested in that, so I stopped playing. Destiny came out with the “Taken Spring” update, and I went back to grinding for light.

And yeah, I guess I hit a fatigue point with both Destiny and Nier, which is too bad, because I like both of them. And I’ve still got games that I’ve never played, and I came back to The Division.

I just don’t know what I’m doing. I can kick the World Tier up by notches as I improve my Gear Score. The higher the Gear Score, the higher the World Tier that I can access. The higher the World Tier, the better the Loot, ie, Loot with a higher Gear Score, and then you can go to the next tier, and so on. I found a guide on Reddit that basically said, do what you can to get your gear score up to 256 before going on to the next steps, and by the end of today, I’m at 253 or something. I just farmed out in the new district they added, and did some High Value Targets.

But I keep alternating between selling and dismantling the loot I don’t want. Oh, and part of the rapid leveling is through newly introduced Loot Boxes. Actually, I don’t know when they were introduced, but they were new to me. I had earned a bunch of them, and I didn’t really understand what they were, but they give you good loot.

But now I’m really in uncharted territory. I have no idea what the end game actually entails. Is it like Destiny, where I’m grinding light for no particular purpose? (Though I bet those missions in the Infinite Forest would be easier now than when I tackled them before.)

Right now, there’s a Global Event going on, which will apparently last all week. There are missions that will pay out GE credits, which I assume you turn in to some sort of GE vendor, probably to get a GE Loot Box. GE vanity items? I saw that for one “commendation”, which look like in-game trophies (also new to me), you could earn a new patch for your shoulder. It was a cute patch.

The game kind of wears on me, but it’s actually better for my neurology than Nier or even Destiny. You operate at a level removed from your character. There’s almost an X-Com-like interface, where you mark what cover you’d like the character to take, and then just hold X to get them to run to it. It’s actually pretty strategic, trying to find cover without getting flanked. Since I’m playing solo, it’s really important not to get flanked. If you get flanked, you’ll have some unbearable lightness happening.

But the constant combat is a grind. There’s some resource gathering. There’s a whole crafting system that I’ve barely scratched the surface on, as well as an optimization system to fine tune weapons. I’ve saved up a ton of crap because I know it’ll be useful someday. I just don’t know what to do with it.

But it’s definitely a game you can get lost in. There’s something sort of meditative about it, jogging down these city streets, watching the road ahead for trouble. The graphics engine is beautiful; earlier tonight I was running into a sunrise, lighting up the concrete canyon and setting the puddles in the street aglow. It was gorgeous, even though the city is ruined, and a firefight could erupt in front of me at any moment

So, yeah, I guess I’ve got some studying to do.