pyrodactyl

@cliffordbanes: no indication it isn't fucked so it probably still is. Sounds like they're stuck with a backward ass garbage engine infrastructure built based on irrelevant use cases and PS3 support. The core of their engine is fucked because of early decisions made years ago and no amount of duck tape can save them at this point.

No changes to time to kill, minimal tweaking of ability cooldowns, this sounds like classic Bungie. They're trying so hard to preserve their core vision for D2 PvP even though it's bad and almost everyone hates it. Maybe they learn their lesson by September but I wonder how many people will still care at that point.

@toysoldier83: then why is the loot so same-y and the abilities so boring and unsatisfying? I find this RPG vs shooter argument to be a false dichotomy. You can have deep interesting RPG mechanics and gameplay that feels good. The Division has neither. It's shallow and plays bad. If they don't address those problems they won't be able to peek the interest of most people who are asking for more than a meaningless loot slot machine.

I know people have praising The Division for where it ended up but I just don't see it. For me, the main issue was always that the shooting felt like crap in the end game and they never addressed it. Instead of implementing new mechanics or throwing more enemies at you to boost the difficulty, everything just takes forever to kill. The trashiest of trash mobs can take an entire magazine to the face before going down. This doesn't make for a compelling, sustainable gameplay experience. You never feel powerful, you just feel like you're tickling these unresponsive enemies to death so you can get more very same-y Diablo style loot. Pair that with the very underwhelming abilities they also never fixed, added to or improved in a meaningful way, and you get a pretty weak core gameplay experience.

Fixing that core gameplay experience is going to be a huge challenge for the Division 2. I hope they manage to do it because more competition in that space would be great. I'm just not sure they're even aware of these issues. Anyone who's been following the messaging aware if they ever talked about the unsatisfying feel of PvE in the end game or the poor ability selection as problems they know of and are working on?

I don't think The Division 2 comes out before the end of next year. The announcement they had was just to say they're working on it. And besides, if they want the throne they'll have to put a lot of effort and dev time into building a better feeling game.

I booted The Division back up for the first time since the month of release recently and boy does it suffer from the exact same fundamental problems it had at launch. The abilities are lame, not varied enough and they feel weak. All enemies are insane bullet sponges. There might be more of it but the shooting (at least in the end game) feels as bad as it ever did.

Like I said in the OP, I think this gameplay problem will be the biggest challenge for these games. It's a problem that's been mostly solved in Destiny but with Bungie's dumpster fire situation they can't execute on all the other important parts (like putting out more content faster, iterating frequently, etc).

There were more than 500k+ outliers logging in every weekend just to play the competitive PvP mode for something like 2 years straight. Destiny was a thing to do with friends but with PvP and the raids it was enough to sustain continuous playtime for months every time a new DLC dropped. Unfortunately, it never evolved passed that. It even went backwards in many respects. So with Destiny 2, everyone got sick of it.

Anyway, my point is that many don't realize how many people were into Destiny and how much people who were into Destiny played the game.

@justin258: People put more than 2000 hours into Destiny 1 and its expansions. I'm not sure it's physically possible to play borderlands for more than a few hundred hours. This is what differentiates a coop shooter from a "game as a service" like Destiny.

@werupenstein: oh right. Well Warframe is definitely a loot shooter. Maybe the first successful one too (it came out before Destiny didn't it?). Unfortunately, I can't see it pulling in people on the same scale as these other games I mentioned.

On a more personal note, I think it just looks sooooo bad. Man that art style/character design is the worst.

"The Cell Saga Is Not Number One"

HERESY

It's been apparent for years now that the genre of multiplayer focused loot based shooters with "game as a service" trappings can be huge cash cows. But despite that, there's only been 2 real attempts to build a franchise in the genre: Destiny and the Division. Both suffer from various problems and are promising to improve in the future. Destiny 1, 2 and the Division are compromised games but they still managed to sell like crazy and have player retention numbers vastly ahead of most games out there.

Unfortunately, both franchises are in quite a ruth right now. Destiny 2 became a deserted wasteland after people realized it wasn't a meaningful step up from Destiny 1 (it was even a step down in some respects). The Division could never compete with Destiny because of its far worse gameplay and shooting fundamentals.

That leaves the field wide open for anyone to come in, make a great multiplayer loot shooter without the usual caveats, and rake in mountains of money. A few contenders are in development right now. Which one do you think has the best shot?

Anthem: built by Bioware's core team, Anthem is making a real play for the loot shooter crown. Is it going to be able to avoid the trap The Division fell into by putting too much emphasis on loot stats at the expanse of gameplay feel? This could become a real problem for studios trying to build these as RPG shooters instead of shooter RPGs. Especially in the end game, arguably the most important part of these games, having most enemies turn into a bullet sponge because you have to justify your Diablo-esq loot table doesn't make for a great experience. Hopefully Bioware can overcome these challenges.

The Division 2: currently in development, the Division 2 will be at E3 and is said to incorporate a lot of improvements learned over the course of The Division's lifecycle. The previously mentioned gameplay problems are the top concern here. I wonder if the gameplay feel and shallow character progression, which remained mostly unchanged over the various Division updates, are in fact part of the "lessons learned".

Destiny: the Destiny franchise is still the reigning champ of the genre but the games and its various DLCs have been plagued by development problems. Destiny's gameplay is top notch but its progression remains shallow, not varied enough and those aspects failed to improve over the course of 3+(!) years. They offer the only PvP experience for the genre and a great one a that. PvP was a huge help for the game's longevity but they managed to make that part of the game worse with the release of Destiny 2, driving away countless players. Bungie's lead staff is either, not very good at making a compelling "game as a service" experience or their constant engine problems keep them from the kind of rapid iteration that's required to make this kind of game work. Can they turn the ship around? After 3 years all signs seem to be pointing towards NO but who knows. Crazier things have happened.

Borderlands 3: currently in development, this franchise was the proto loot shooter. Coop, loot, shooting but no "game as a service" elements. I'm betting gearbox is looking to add these elements in borderlands 3. Now will it be enough to sustain the game if they keep the same gameplay feel from 1 and 2? Probably not. But hopefully they've made improvements in that regard.

Do you think any of these games will become the League or PUBG of loot shooters or is the optimal balance of good shooter gameplay and deep RPG mechanics too hard to achieve making these game inevitably flawed from the get go?