shdagent

Before I delete my reddit account in a couple of days, some thoughts on the current state of the game vs a year ago.

#1 Technical - Worse.

I understand the team had to deal with a lot of technical debt. But they've had two years, and things only seem to be getting worse.

#2 Storytelling - Vastly Improved.

We've had a much better sense of each prime targets motivations. There have also been some great story beats, and I liked how the new modes were so well integrated with the story. The Descent comms to date have dropped some 🌶️hints.

#3 Playable content - Vastly Improved.

Countdown was a fantastic addition, though a back-fill function would be nice.

Descent is enjoyable

I expect a few people here have read and enjoyed the two Division books by Thomas Parrott - "Recruited" and "Compromised". Events from the latter were referenced during Season 12.

Turns out the author is having some financial issues, and has opened up a ko-fi for donations: https://twitter.com/ParrottTom/status/1671916506278445057

As blue-checks are meaningless on twitter now, those wary of scams can check that Yannick retweeted that link: https://twitter.com/yannickbch

Another preview Q&A that touched on a few points I've not seen elsewhere:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnOkKQa1818

She was impressed with the level design for the mission everyone got to try, but was less enthused about the repetitive nature of the objectives for that particular mission.

She also echoes the sentiment that the game has lots of Arkane DNA, but feels it might be best in co-op, and that it may find a much larger audience than their previous games.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIGOVKCIRJg

One thing they cover that I haven't seen elsewhere are loot drops. Aside from the usual tiers with random traits, there are specific named weapons that always roll the same.

No ability to upgrade (or re-roll?) weapons though.

They also go into more detail about how progression works in co-op.

Get yourself a big pot of tea, as this is a long read:

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2023/mar/25/i-had-to-be-a-rebel-to-play-football-england-captain-leah-williamson-on-beating-sexism-nerves-and-self-doubt-to-win-the-euros

“When I was in the academy, I was just thinking: I’m the fan who gets to wear my team’s kit and go out to play! When I got to the age where I thought, I’m not the baby any more, I’m not the one who gets carried by the team, I became afraid that might not be good enough. I thought: peop

For those who got all the RE apparel events when it originally ran, don't bother grinding again when it rolls around in a few weeks. It will have the same items as before:

Tweet confirming upcoming Resident Evil apparel event is a re-run

One of the GSG devs gave a talk at this years Game Developer Conference (GDC):

https://www.gamedeveloper.com/gdc2023/developing-a-live-game-that-never-truly-left-early-access-with-deep-rock-galactic

In a talk from GDC 2023, Mikhail Akopyan, lead game designer at Ghost Ship Games ApS, discussed the evolution of Deep Rock Galactic, exploring how this Early Access game eventually became a live service title and how the community played a role in its development.

The article is aimed at developers, but how they handled community feedback rings true.

Also, next season's shirts will have a gold premier league lion badge 😏

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7UO0eVSqmM

Ian Wright cameo @ 1:31

Conor Henderson's shirt @ 2:08

Happy Anniversary to the Division 2

https://www.massive.se/blog/games-technology/the-division-2/happy-birthday-the-division-2/

It's been, and continues to be, a rough four years for various reasons, but this has been my favorite game by far. Thanks to all the developers and players who've contributed to making it such an enjoyable experience.

My oldest Div 2 screenshot

Not sure if this is intentional, but gear dyes now work on apparel event appearance mods for chest and backpack?

Let's Go chest with black gear dye

Babyface chest with badlands gear dye

Backpack with badlands gear dye

In addition to a patch for the game, Ubisoft Connect itself was patched today. As expected, it asked for admin privileges to patch itself.

However, it's now asking for admin privileges EVERY time it's launched.

It never did this before. Is this happening for anyone else who uses a standard (non-admin) user on Windows?

Trying to run Polarity Switch is not fun when timing of weapon switches is important, especially when the server lag interferes.

The Faye Lau mission isn't on the critical path for the campaign, and doesn't drop any unique rewards. Disable it until the team have a solution.

For those who use multiple characters, it seems the progress for league activities is no longer shared between characters.

League activity progress for character 1

League activity progress for character 2

This doesn't seem to affect the reward track (see 6/10 unclaimed rewards), but you should probably stick to using one character for the activities (i.e. BT Elites killed, SHD Skill Kills).

Ran four missions, all four crashed, one of them twice. This was particularly annoying with DARPA.

I get that dedicated engine programmers are being hired to fix the legacy issues behind these crashes, but it sounds like this is going to take awhile.

Time trials make little sense for a looter shooter, so at least improve QoL by making this change.