The Division - Confusing Stats, Bottlenecks, Issues Galore

maskedweasel

Most people that have frequented The Division know that I'm a huge proponent for the game. Love it.  I've likely averaged about 5 - 8 hours a day since launch between the PS4 and the XB1 systems.

That being said... here's some things people that have or haven't played The Division may not know - even if they've experienced it.  Many are bugs, some of them are issues -- I don't feel they are gamebreaking but they are certainly inconvenient. 

Stats are actually very misleading-- especially DPS.

 While I've gone into detail about why Damage Per Shot is as important as Damage Per Second -- this is ALL crazily misleading when it comes to modding weapons and gear.  Accuracy, and hipfire accuracy are just a few stats that INACCURATELY depict a DPS increase, misleading the player when they are actually doing LESS damage per shot had they gone with a stat that shows a lesser increase to DPS.  

• Examples here are - Critical Hit Damage, Critical Hit Chance, Headshot Damage. Accuracy is praised and inaccurately increases your stats simply because when slotting accuracy The Division believes with greater accuracy, you will have a better chance to hit.  They're not wrong.. but... each hit does the same amount of damage regardless of accuracy.   In the shooting range in the base,  you can see the major differences between speccing for Headshot Damage or Critical Chance.  You do substantially MORE damage DESPITE the weapon itself showing you're doing less damage.
• The problems don't stop there.  The newest patch was supposed to fix DPS display based on mod swaps, etc.  This is still not working properly.  It's very unintuitive to swap mods only to find that your DPS hasn't changed at all -- EVEN WHEN it showed you SHOULD have a DPS increase.

When it comes to Crafting -- Bottlenecks are poor design.  

1. When you finally reach DZ Rank 50 and start picking up DZ gear blueprints, just about every one requires Division Tech Rank Gold materials.  This, in itself isn't an issue.  The problem is -- these materials are gated as they only appear IN THE DARKZONE ='s forced PvP areas.  What's worse is that you can't upgrade lesser Techs to Gold materials like you can all others.  Gold MUST DROP from division chests or enemies.  The problem?  It rarely drops.  Progression is stagnant here.  Why is this a problem?  Crafting items can take many many many rolls of items just to craft a piece with the proper stats you want.   With a gated system like this, you pretty much lose out on progression entirely in the event YOU EVER find enough Gold materials to craftconsistently.

•  But it gets worse. Crafting Blueprints can be bought in the PvE zones that do NOT require Division Tech.  This should be good right?  Again, though,  for the past couple weeks the same Blueprints and Gold Items have been showing up at these vendors... and the developers stated they WILL roll to new blueprints eventually,  but when is that? it clearly isn't based on the merchant timer.  Basically if you want a full set of crafted gear -- you need to be DZ rank 50 -- have enough Division tech AND also pick up the blueprints in the PvE Base as well.  In the event the blueprints eventually DO roll to the PvE merchant -- well what would the point even BE?  They cost substantially LESS to craft than the DZ crafted materials as you don't need Gold Division Tech! 

Bugs are here, in many ways, in many forms.

1. Bullet King was a big exploit for a few weeks, despite myself not finding out about it until a couple days prior to the patch that fixed the exploit.  Now there are other mission exploits to bypass the entire mission and just get directly to the boss fight so you can farm them for credits and gear and currency.  This is being used as a farm so that people will be able to easily purchase whatever non DZ blueprints and weapons that are currently available.  While its not putting players out of balance necessarily.. it does appear that it has given those "in the know" the advantage yet again. 

• Other major bugs are Hacking on PC -- client side stats like crit chance and crit damage make it extremely unplayable in PvP for many players.  One shots that can range anywhere from 1 - 2 million per hit or 3rd party aimassists with no recoil definitely put cheaters at the forefront of the Rogue Squadron. (Star Wars References unintended) 
• DZ Landmarks are completely broken.  A purple landmark is supposed to signal that a Boss is up and patrolling the area.  In fact, it usually means the opposite of that.  If you patrol the areas.. even if it IS purple, it's highly unlikely you'll find a boss.  Some do work properly.. but these are very few and far between considering how large the DZ is and how many there are out there.
• Certain Perks are giving people Permaheals --  On Masks especially, there is a particular perk.. Rehabilitated, that once activated, consistently gives regenerative healing at roughly 2% every second.  This puts this particular mask - that can be crafted - at the forefront of "required"  gear for players in the Darkzone and during Challenging missions.  You can even jumpstart the process by smoke grenading yourself once you log in so that you have a 2% permaheal per second.  For some people.. 2% of their health per second is enormous depending on their health pool.
• Other issues range from crazy teleporting of enemies, falling through the world, enemies that cannot be damaged,  a perma-life downed state, craftable backpacks that will log you out of the game and not allow you to log back in and -- especially on the PS4 -- a Sound silencing bug that will eventually crash the entire game prompting an error report.  

These are just some of the current issues with the game.  Have you been playing?  What are you experiencing?