“Both Division 1 and 2 made it easy to play with strangers, but Division 2 made it even easier,” she says. Rather it’s a shift brought on by design decisions that made grouped play relatively frictionless. And lots of players answer the ‘call for backup’ sent by players who have been downed during a mission.”įurthermore the difference between grouped and solo play isn’t as drastic as you’d imagine either. ![]() “Grouped play is fun, and those backend coop rules from earlier make getting into group play frictionless. “That does not mean that Division 2 is not brimming with happy, successful players who exclusively play solo, but it does mean that players who group tend to have positive experiences,” she explains. “A greater percentage of playtime in Division 2 is grouped than it was in Division 1,” she says before cautioning that it doesn’t mean single-player experiences in the game are absent. Dempsey reveals that players played together more often in The Division 2 versus the first game. The Division 2 Has More Cooperative Players Than Division 1Īll of the number crunching and reworking seems to have paid off. I guess the short answer was ‘math and iteration’.” The dynamic enemy system relies on a much more fluid set of increase enemy durability, increased veterancy, and increased numbers than might first seem obvious. And common enemies in the Division 2 feel so good because they only take a couple seconds to take down once you've gotten them exposed. “Geometry plays too big a role in every fight. Just doubling the enemies on screen or buffing their health isn’t the solution Dempsey claims. ![]() Reason being, even the addition of a second player means that they have twice the damage and twice the health. However with more players comes a change in the number of enemies that squad faces. Moving is the most significant decision in a cover-based game.” Sharing cover with another player should feel intimate to the point of claustrophobia. “Four players should feel they have places to go, but never that they are comfortable all bunched behind the same cover. “Importantly, this anchor can support up to two players, but not four,” she says. Furthermore, steps are taken to induce movement and a sense of claustrophobia. This focus on planning and execution explains why missions in the game start in a similar way, it allows for smoother experiences regardless of the player count. ![]() How Math, Iteration, and Claustrophobia Shape The Division 2’s Levels In most areas, this planning is encouraged by a strong ‘anchor’ inside a combat space but which does not immediately alert the enemies.” “Generally, players are funneled into a space by a single entrance, they can scout the space prior to the combat kicking off, and then they execute on the plan of combat. “All combat areas are built with four players in mind,” she says. But really, all of that ground work is just a start.”Īccording to Dempsey, there are two major areas of importance to ensuring a game like The Division 2 scales for single-player and cooperative play - areas which promote dynamic group gameplay and systems which ensure steady resistance. Thus there's a backend set of rules that informs every decision about how missions trigger, how story is delivered, and how players enter and exit a world. “The question ‘but how does it work in coop’ gets asked a lot during reviews,” she says. ![]() First up we had to ask what the biggest challenge is in making The Division 2’s gameplay work for solo players and for those who prefer grouping up.
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