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Ubisoft not only smashed their own records, they also smashed industry-wide records with The Division.Ubisoft notes that The Division is their best-selling game both for single-day sales and for the first week of sales. In its first five days, The Division sold more than $330 million around the world. This remarkable feat also surpasses the former record holder, Destiny, which debuted at $325 million sold in its first five days.
Beyond this achievement, Ubisoft revealed some other statistics from this first week of release. They note that at its peak this weekend, there were 1.2 million concurrent users playing. In the first week, players logged more than 100 million hours of game time.
I'd say the success is quite rightfully earned here. To their credit, Massive and Ubisoft have done a tremendous job reacting to issues that have popped up. Despite some launch day hiccups with the servers, it's been mostly smooth sailing, a rather remarkable feat given that this is Ubisoft's first MMO-like release. Even better is the fact that The Division was designed in such a way that many of the changes for the game don't need a client update, thus resulting in fast updates for all platforms without the need for console certification.
(via UbiBlog)
I've heard a lot that what you do in the first 2 hours is what you do 40 hours later, enemy variety is minimal with later game enemies having a few tactical changes but mostly just being bullet sponges, your damage numbers go up and their health meters go up, once you find the abilities that suit you you'll end up using them the entire game, main missions take you to interesting places in New York but side missions are very bland and repetitive, go to random location and shoot people.
All this sounds very Destiny-like to me however Destiny had the advantage of being sci-fi, more varity in guns, variety in enemy races and abilities, bosses with unique abilities, The Division has to stay semi realistic, so the MP5 will always be the MP5 just with a few stat changes.
I made the Destiny comparison and i'm not the first, a game which attempts to stand on its mechanics and loot systems as opposed to a more traditional guided campaign or one filled with tailor made experiences, because if we're just talking main missions and comparing it to other third person shooters with co-op, Gears of War, Army of Two, Resident Evil 5 & 6, Spec Ops: The Line, at a stretch you could include Saints Row which represents a metric ton of meaningful main story and side mission content, then i find it lacking.
I'll also note at the end here that it doesn't mean this game isn't worth playing, as i'm listing my complaints and not talking positives it may seem that way, i played the beta and i like certain things about the game but i also saw the gameplay loop emerging and reviews confirm what i thought, it doesn't seem to have earned its popularity, like most things that reach the tops of charts it just found an audience.
There is also change throughout the city starting with the main safehouse, the Base of Operations. Upgrades made there actually change the base. Areas are fixed and become operational. More and more civilians start to show up. First to receive medical care, then to live there. Kids show up. Areas are cleared. They celebrate around a Christmas tree, they eat meals, etc.
The city itself begins to have more of the JTF roaming the streets for areas you've cleared out.
And the "bullet sponge" argument is pretty weak when this game is an RPG first, action game second. I am not saying that to you directly as I know this has been a common thing I've seen from people making an argument using the bullet sponge thing.
Some of the optional things do get a bit repetitive but this cycles back to what I said about most action games. And again, a year's worth of added content is planned.
I made the Destiny comparison and i'm not the first, a game which attempts to stand on its mechanics and loot systems as opposed to a more traditional guided campaign or filled with tailor made experiences, because if we're just talking main missions and comparing it to other third person shooters with co-op, Gears of War, Army of Two, Resident Evil 5 & 6, Spec Ops: The Line, at a stretch you could include Saints Row which represents a metric ton of meaningful main story and side mission content, then i find it lacking.
That's awesome that Destiny is sci-fi themed with all kinds of potential avenues for cool sci-fi type stuff but... they don't really do much with it. You get some energy weapons and "space magic" to fight off the same enemies over and over again. Content was cut from Destiny. Then they also shot themselves in the foot by developing for the last gen as well. Bungie/Activision made so many perplexing choices with Destiny and it could have been so much more than what it is right now.
I dumped a ton of time into Destiny. My main character alone has 14 days and 20 hours of game time. Like, literally 356 hours of Destiny on one character (next highest character has like 8 hours total). I quite enjoyed that game for a time and it's totally possible it will happen again with The Division. However, unlike Destiny, Ubisoft/Massive have actually outlined their content plans for the next year and it's not stuff focused on PvP. Bungie meanwhile drip feeds recycled content to the PvP community and promises "more next week" for months at a time on their next PvE announcement.
Other complaints, like the one about lack of diverse content has its merits but the same complaint could be made about a ton of games that still receive praise. It's about where those repetitive mechanics are utilized that makes games like The Division and others fun to play. Even though it's just set in New York there have been quite a few diverse locations and encounters. Will I still feel this way with another 50 hours? Maybe. Maybe not. It's entirely possible that by the time I feel "burnt out" on The Division will be right when they drop some new content in April. Then when I get burnt out on that, I still have more content coming at me in May, and so on and so forth.
And about those comparisons to Destiny. Don't think that. Instead think about The Division as a TPS version of Diablo. Hell, The Division even has a means of applying different stats or skills to weapons much like you can in Diablo 3. It has loot drops similar to Diablo with a variety of quality levels. It has "socketing" like Diablo does (only in this they're called mods for gear and weapons). There is crafting, skilltrees, etc.
I'm honestly having a lot of fun with this game. It's made even more fun when playing with my friends in a group. It provides a good challenge and it feels like playing as a group is how this game should be played at all times.
I have also seen the Diablo comparisons and those make the most sense to me, Diablo also doesn't have good moment to moment stories going on or variation in gameplay, just an overarching "you must kill Diablo", but that game has memorable locations, bosses, characters, you may even remember a unique weapon you found one time due to the famous naming conventions of those games.
Maybe that's a weakness of doing things the Clancy way in this case, in a JackFrags video talking about the game someone mentioned how one of the bosses could be in a humvee driving around that needed to be blown up or something, any kind of variation or surprise would go a long way to mixing things up a bit, making memorable moments.
If you don't break those other action games down to their basic elements then of course there is diversity in their gameplay, just as there is for The Division. You can't pick and choose things for this and go "let's break down The Division to its simplest gameplay elements but let's not do the same for these other, similar games."
As for story, Ubisoft did put a bit of effort by hiring Corridor Digital to manage live-action shorts in collaboration with RocketJump and DevinSuperTramp and create videos that are in each video producer's respective style. I'm mentioning this because although they are promotional videos, the stories in each of those videos are interconnected from various perspectives, and is canon to the game's story. While Zips did say he didn't need to check up on an external site to understand the story, apparently Ubisoft took the initiative to hire major YouTubers to provide story content ahead of the community creating wikis. While I certainly agree this isn't a deep story whatsoever (even with the videos, it doesn't add much), I do believe Ubisoft didn't treat the story as an afterthought.
I think the real question in regards to gameplay is, what will the additional content provide? When the DLC does come, what will the game look like then? I guess we'll find out when the it comes.