I have been playing The Division constantly since it came out. It's gotten some great to okay reviews out there citing repetitive missions and damage sponge enemies. While they're not wrong, I don't even think about that sort of thing most of the time. I lived in New York City for eight years before moving to New Jersey a couple years ago. I've lived in each of the boroughs (except Staten Island which barely counts...sorry guys) and the art direction and even the setup of the world is so impressive on every level. They took away the filler streets and still managed to make it feel big and familiar. You can find specific stores and eateries replaced with a generic name but kept the theme/colors of their real life counter parts. There's some verticality to every area of the world. They absolutely nailed it!

I also can't help but think that if this were set in San Francisco, Chicago, Kansas City, etc I wouldn't be as into it. It would all look the same to me because I wouldn't know what I'm looking for or looking at. Anyone else feel this way? Either from the "I know NYC and love it," or from the "I have no idea so I don't really care/don't like the environment!" Or is New York City so iconic it doesn't even matter?

I think the bullet spongy enemy thing is a bit over blown. Known how many good hit you need with a sword to kill someone? One How about good sword hits if the guy is in common 12th century warrior/solider armor? Two ior three...or as little as one if you just have a perfect shot at the armpit, neck, or any open spot A long bow? One, and you could kill hist damn horse too with a lucky shot! Soldiers have always know the ONLY way you get out alive is not to get hit at all. You can bumped, bruised, beaten bloody; but don't let them really hit you with tehir weapons.

We sort of expect a gun to take someone down, but do to living in the 21st century we forget that a sword, mace, or bow is god-damn deadly too. When people complain about bullet sponges, just remember some medieval guy would say the characters in our fantasy RPGs are ridiculous 'weapon sponges' too!

I'm neutral to New York, having visited 3 times ever. None of the locations mean anything to me. It could be a made up city for the game and I wouldn't be able to tell the difference. This game is the most fun I've had all year.

@monkeyking1969: I also feel like this is mainly discussing the elites (around the named/boss tiers who have armour to burn through in the game's model of combat) or people using weapons barely suited to the task or designed to give a completely different feel to 1-hit kill weapons. Or playing in groups where... yes, having 4 well armed people in these smaller areas designed to be realistic and enable funnelling means that if you could take out an enemy in a shot with any weapon then there could be nothing but a trivial challenge.

I constantly poked my DMR (while levelling and now getting to the end of that ramp) to make sure that your average mob, your solo encounter with a typical enemy meant to be little serious challenge unless you got flanked and lost the defence of cover: this was a single round to the head away from being a solved problem. Sometimes I could have a large clip while I did it, sometimes I was stuck with a small clip to keep the dmg high enough with the drops I had available to me. But I could do it, the game includes a single-shot-kill sniper option for those who don't want to unload clips into enemies during solo play and if you've got 3 friends then you should expect them to contribute some bullets into each kill.

Even when I'm out in the areas with only group-content mobs. As I levelled through the 20s and walked into nameds or played in the DZ and was taking on packs of lvl20-28 armoured enemies (talking mainly the purple bars so the medium health tier of armour - yellow bars were manageable at range but yes, they take a few rounds even from a really nice gun at the top of the power curve for your level; but let's not forget that blue bars exist too between the unarmoured red-bar mobs and that elitest tier) - there was still times when I was able to throw a few burst from a DMR or a rifle and do quite well. Hell, once I was lvl29 and picked on some lvl26 purple-bars then it barely felt like they had armour at all if I got a series of solid connects (looking to avoid being up close but also not wanting to waste most of the clip with missing their heads). And those were meant for groups.

The DZ is basically a yellows only pool when you hit lvl30 but not before and the missions (especially solo) are so much no-armour mobs it's almost unreasonable to come well armed. Ditto the open PvE areas. They scale up in level to keep it at least slightly interesting in places but until lvl30 there is just so much prime 1-shot skull around to clearly show off the option to use a DMR and avoid much of the feeling of a sponge. Hell, the Uncharted games are far worse for bullet sponge mobs (they're just far less dangerous to Drake than the high-health mobs here who can also shoot back if you're not really buffed to tank it) than the Division is when you're going for weapons designed to be single-shot rather than clip-emptying.

I definitely wish they at least added some gear to the enemies to put some minor suspension of disbelief for the sponginess of the enemies. I shrug it off if it's an elite enemy that takes a lot to kill, but if I'm shooting a rioter/Riker in the head a dozen times and they don't even have a helmet or gear it is a little weird.

@jpon87: My issue with such a structure is... how would that actually work?

So where I currently am at in the game (last zones, lvl25-30 enemies, but also now max-level and geared suitably - focus on aiming for end-game inc mods DMR with either SMG or assault rifle) then just the standard mobs, the rioters/Rikers red-health bar: burst to the chest is fatal and a single DMR round often is, definitely is to the head.

But I can take off my gear that makes the dmg of my weapon (so not even changing the weapon I'm holding) at least an order of magnitude higher (1000% more dmg buff from Firepower stat). That completely changes that from single round kills to requiring an entire clip (of DMR or SMG/assault rifle as their clip sizes are also pretty different) so should my removal of clothing also reactively make every enemy around me magically put on lots more clothing and serious armour?

I can suspend disbelief about my ability to almost instantly swap my own clothing but if everyone around me also changed how they looked to indicate what my dps output was every tie I changed gear: that's far worse to me than looking at colours of health bars etc to get a feel for how susceptible to damage the non-special enemies are. I think we're looking for a way to paper over the artifice of the game but ending up with just making new layers of artifice that are no more convincing to me. The game is fundamentally an RPG and if you're 4 levels below me then you're not going to stand a chance even against stray bullets. That doesn't mean that, as I level through the game, everyone 5 or more levels below me needs to be naked and holding a sign saying they're a haemophiliac. That doesn't make me feel this place is more "real" because part of the major RPG stat systems (as in most RPG systems with these really big power curves rather than RPGs more about pure story-telling) is incredibly unrealistic progression that are used to provide a rather strange gating (strange for reality) but also promote the likelihood that a role-player will actually rarely have to deal with the disconnect of their repeated death (possibly because these systems come from games where dead players can often actually be dead and so end the campaign).

Actually, I would think that having lived in the area it's based on would make you far more critical of the game. You would be more qualified to think something like "Hey, that street isn't actually that close to this subway station." or something equally immersion breaking. I know you mentioned streets being omitted in your OP, but I'm glad to hear that the game hasn't caused that feeling to detract from your enjoyment of playing it. I've only been to NYC a few times myself, mostly to do your standard tourist nonsense (Times Square Shopping, Empire State Trip, Etc.), but even I felt that it nailed the sensation of being there, or at least being pretty damn close.

Only real thing that hampers my fun as far as setting goes isn't related to your post so sorry for going off a bit, but...damn those echos/phone recordings can get really depressing. Just flat out ruin your day kind of stuff in there. Guess that means they created a believable world, but man they tug hard on the heartstrings. Especially the echo where (POSSIBLE SPOILER INCOMING) - You see someone toss a grenade into a cell to kill a bunch of petty criminals while a cop shouts for him to stop.

@neozeon: agreed, the surveillance of the two running from rioters really bummed me out. It goes one long enough for you to want them to escape and when they hit that locked gate it's kinda heartbreaking.

That said I wish there was more like it, it gives a great sense of the terrible things that went down before you show up.

I havnt been to New York and thinks everything looks absolutely the same in this game but i still enjoys it very much.

I don't think you are biased, this game looks fantastic. I know Ubisoft is a huge company and has hundreds of artists working on this game, but it's still incredible how detailed every inch of this game is.

I can't speak for you, but I'd be way more interested in the game if it took place in Flushing and Bayside instead of midtown Manhattan.

I've never been to New York. I love the game for its looks for sure. SnowDrop is great. Kudos to Massive Entertainment and Red Storm and the rest.

I'm sure that helps but I myself have never been to New York and this game consumed me the first week of release. Then I went back to work and slowed down a little.

Pretty much just doing dailies now. Tried Stardew valley and that may turn some attention away. Not to mention all the tv I am behind on and Quantum break,Dark Souls 3 on the way. Just too many good things out.

Also really looking forward to more Division content.

@shivoa: That's actually a fair point. If you look at it through the lens of an RPG it makes more sense and there really wouldn't be much of a better system that I can think of.

Has anyone noticed how much HARDER the game is in large groups (4, mainly)? I play all the missions on Hard if it's available, and with 2 of us, they're easy peasy. The same mission in a group of 4 can get quite hard though!

I work for Verizon in Midtown in the Bryant Park location and the Hell's Kitchen central office. It blows my mind how accurate the streets of NY are in this game. While waiting for an extraction in Bryant Park I look up and see the building I work in. While running through Hell's Kitchen I have a firefight in the lobby of the West 51st street location. The neighborhood depictions are nearly perfect. It definitely adds to my enjoyment of the game.