For all the lonewolves want to enjoy DZ out there, i think there are some tweaks that the developer can do to ensure some non-asshole players can also enjoy their lives in the DZ.

1. When a player turn rogue, he/she should automatically have some kind of stat debuff, like take away chunk of his/her health bar, less damage output, or slow health recharge .

2. Penalties once you turn rogue, stripe some of your funds depending on your rogue meter, take away your keys for the lootcrate, or you cannot extract for a certain time depending on your rogue meter.

3. Lock out vendor items to rogue agents for a certain time.

4. Better pairing people who generally just don't want to fuck with other players (probably not difficult to do, since server side can track how many players turned rogue in a certain region).

So you want players who turn rogue to be at a severe disadvantage? Turning rogue while not in a group would be near-impossible with those changes.

Why lock out items for players who turn rogue? That's the core risk/reward of turning rogue; to take loot from other players, while allowing non-rogue players to attack you and not turn rogue themselves. You also have a big target on you, alerting the entire zone to your whereabouts.

If you don't want to PVP, then don't PVP. There's no need to severely nerf people who want to engage in that type of gameplay.

I can see a case for better balancing between grouped versus non-grouped players, but handicapping one side isn't the solution.

@rikiguitarist: the problem is that DZ is going to be a huge part of your gameplay in the Division, it's not like a separate mode you can enter. So if you are a lonewolf, and you want to play the Division RPG style (get better loot), you are going to have a bad time in the DZ. I got screwed several times playing alone, while in a random matchmaking group, your teammates are not helping.

P.S Based on several hours of playing (lv 8 in the PVE, Lv 7 in the DZ), I find that the best way to approach extraction in DZ is get in and get out, sometimes there are invincibility frames while you are putting your loot on to the heli. So as a lone player, you can just run away once your loot is on the heli.

@britxmenyuan: You can absolutely play the entire game and avoid taking part in Dark Zones. This weekend's beta is more of a multiplayer (competitive) beta than it is a fair representation of the PVE vs. PVP proportions. The entire beta campaign merely consists of a starter mission for your base, and that's it. According to Hamish Bode and the currently ongoing PR stream for the beta, the final product will have a full co-op story campaign with crafting, group activities, and side missions for you to partake in. All of those will give you loot upgrades along the way and after you hit level 30. How plentiful and engaging that content will be remains to be seen, but Dark Zones are only a small fraction of the Division's offerings.

You can use matchmaking for the dark zone at the player hub, you don't have to go solo.

edit: if you die as a rogue your lose significantly more xp.

I'll have to disagree on all fronts. My experience so far is that rogue agents end up with the entire server chasing them down for free dosh and xp. It's already difficult enough to go rogue. The only mildly annoying aspect is that individuals can stake out extraction zones with the clear intention of going rogue and there's nothing you can do about them until they fire the first shot.

@britxmenyuan: All those things go against what the DZ really is. Being a free kill as a rogue is already a servere penalty since everyone will hunt you down when they see you as red (on the map too!) and it's very hard to get rid of the rogue status. Solo players will usually gang up on rogue groups and you can avoid rogue groups since they pop up on the map. I would actually make it easier being a rogue (lose status faster for example) so you get more backstabbing, but also players more playing more carefully since players can backstab you.

If you make it even more difficult as a rogue, everyone will just run around ignoring eachother except when the other player is already rogue and this already happens most of the time anyway. If you want that, stick to the PvE.

This is on the ball more or less, only reason to go for DZ funds is for the high end weapons, once you have those you might as well PvE all day and the difficulty of not dying as a rogue (which is by far the best way to get DZ funds) is just going to go up exponentially over time, forcing people to play in gank squads instead of having an incredibly exciting, dynamic experience as it was for the first few hours I played yesterday. I imagine you can still find interesting non group ridden servers in the 1-7 bracket, however.

I wonder how different the experience would be if you couldn't enter the DZ in pre made groups. It would force you to band together and make groups on the fly... Although that would be frustrating for people who wan't to play with friends.

Someone decided to go rogue and began shooting at me, so i killed him in self defence before he actually got the skull above his head which instead made me rogue...for defending myself.

Something to improve maybe?

@zenmastah: Weird. Did he miss you or something? If anything it normally gives you the rogue status to easily. I have been given it before because another player ran across my line of fire as I was shooting an AI.

@mister_v: Nah, it was a pretty clear case of him standing there for a few seconds and just making the call to try and get me.

It just took the game awhile to make him rogue, and since he did not kill me before i killed him i wound up with the rogue status instead of him.

Had this same experience in the Alpha and it was a bit weird/off-putting. I hope they shore that up - but also in the beta just yesterday got shot, a good Samaritan helped me kill my attacker but my new buddy was now rogue and showed as a threat on my minimap/radar. I let the guy run off after a quick wave because I'm not a dick but it seems like it needs a little tweaking.

Overall though the Dark Zone is more fun than I thought. Only gone in lone wolf and it's pretty tense and stressful, which I weirdly like. I was surprised to find some NPC guys in a parking ramp with sweet gear too, as I thought it was all PVP with no PVE in the Dark Zone but that doesn't appear to be true. Going in with a few buddies tonight to see if that aids or detracts from the experience but the Beta really ramped up my interest after being a bit concerned about the game.

@rikiguitarist:that makes more sense, i wonder if they are going to try balance the loot in-between PvE and DZ. Say you get a purple from extraction, but you can only craft in the PvE area.

@gundogan: You're right, I bumped into a group of random people(7 of them), chasing down rogues across the entire DZ, and they never turn on you while extracting...

@britxmenyuan: people in another thread had very cool experiences playing solo in the dark zone. Going in alone you can play it more like a stealth game. Avoiding other groups, picking perks that make you invisible from radar pings. That sounds like a very cool way to play the game IMO.

Sounds like you shot him first which makes you the rogue in this situation.

@britxmenyuan: Haven't played yet. Had no idea Nvidia had codes.

Anyway, I've watched a lot and the biggest problem seems to be...camping.

As a lone player it seems hard to avoid camping. A solo strategy I've seen a lot is waiting for someone else to call an extraction, showing up at the last minute, clearing out all the rogues, extracting with your new neutral friends, and GETTING OUT before the rogues come back.

Like someone else said, it seems to have potential as a solo stealth experience. Overall, I'm super glad the dark zone is taking off because who doesn't want The Division to do well?

I rerolled to avoid the 8-8 bracket and can confirm 1-7 is still really interesting and dynamic most of the time, it's only through sheer boredom that people will eventually rob the game of it's enormous potential for interesting pvp; if there was either no matchmaking whatsoever or if groups were split off into their own instances than that might preserve it for longer.

The entire point of going rogue is the risk of you vs them. If it's just you and another teammate in there, the risk is low. If it's you vs 3 others, the risk is high.

I predominantly hate PvP in all loot based games, but I'm not sure any other debuffs are needed, at least not from what I've seen so far.

@fredchuckdave: What exactly is happening in the higher level area that's different from the 1-7 area?

I don't think going rogue should have any penalties in the form of debuffs. Everybody nearby can see you through walls which is bad enough! They should however do something about how you turn rogue. It happens far too often that someone steps in to your crossfire and all of a sudden you are rogue and everybody around you is gonna kill you unless they are all your mates. It can easily be abused too, by intentionally stepping in to peoples crossfire, giving you full freedom to kill them without penalties.

@mister_v: In the 8-8 Bracket pretty much everyone goes in with a (matchmaking or otherwise) group and roams around in a group, if you gank someone then frequently a whole legion of people will show up to kill you so the only way to be successful is kill people while in a group which is a relatively trivial feat; as a result in most of these instances bounties are rare and the game is just PvE with better rewards. At level 1-7 a lot of people will just walk into the Dark Zone without even bothering with matchmaking so you might have 8 solo players in an instance and a few 2 man teams that joined up dynamically; which leads to far more interesting results; i.e. one guy ganks a guy, runs off but someone else is in the vicinity and tails him for a while until the time is ripe. With large groups it's just the gankers either prevail immediately or the PvE driven folks immediately kill off anyone who dares stray from the grind. You can also wind up in 2v2v2v2 situations or 2v2v3 etc. which tend to be a hell of a lot more interesting than 4v4. There's also something really cool about a 2v5 suddenly becoming a 2v2v3 because someone fucked up or got ambitious which just almost never happens in the stale servers.

I have to say after playing the Dark Zone for a few hours last night - it went from an area I was sure I'd probably avoid in the finished product to the most memorable part of The Division. I'm doing a writeup on how it all went but long story short it was stressful, intense, terrifying, exhilarating, and not at all what I thought it might be. I thought it'd be all kill on sight like I experienced in the Alpha, but with a buddy in tow most players would wave to show intentions and our server was all about swift justice for going rogue.

My suggestions for improvement are the timers on Rogue level however - there was a group of 4 that would terrorize people, and quickly became hunted by everyone in the zone. The problem seemed to be if they didn't shoot for a while their rogue level would go away and they'd be back to zero and free to betray unsuspecting players. Also noticed that the old accidental fire can still pop you to rogue pretty quickly with no option to shout out a quick "my bad" beyond the surrender emote.

@zenmastah: same here. I was at an extraction point with a large group of players and i guess we were waiting for something to happen. Then, someone started shooting at me taking down half of my health and as he was reloading i toke him down with my shotgun. Then, the game sentenced me as a rouge and i went down in seconds.

=== Anyway about the topic

If there's something i want to add to DZ then it's a solo-only DZ where no groups are allowed to enter while solo players have the option to choose from regular to solo-only DZ.

Also, rouges who kills number of players without dying should have different icon color on top of them. The player who kills a rouge will get different levels of rewards depending on the rouge level (the higher the level the better the rewards).

Also, i wish it has a revenge mechanic. So, once you get killed by a certain player you'll have a free ticket to kill him without any sort of punishment.

Here's a really good example of what makes the Dark Zone incredible (and something that will never happen in a 4 person group), going to be rare in the final product at best:

Not only is the whole escape sequence completely unscripted and tense, the very beginning of it is sheer randomness as well, a random stranger comes and revives a bounty; he's most likely not in the same group with said person but him doing so makes him an ample target and the escape begins.

He likely did that on purpose. He shot you with one shot to get your attention, then shot around you and missed on purpose to make it look like he was trying to kill you. Your response was to defend yourself, so you unloaded on him and did enough damage to be flagged as rogue before he had, resulting in you being flagged rogue. This is a common trolling tactic that people use to kill you without going rogue; you need to be able to recognize it for what it is and respond accordingly, unfortunately.

Rogues who kill a lot of players do have a different icon above them, they become a higher "level" of rogue with a higher bounty when you kill them; you'll see a number next to their rogue icon to depict this. If you kill enough people while you are rogue, you get flagged with a manhunt, and the entire instance knows your location and you need to survive a 5-minute timer to lose your rogue flag, which is reset each time you shoot a non-rogue player.

As for the revenge ticket, if someone kills you, they're likely going to be flagged as rogue, so find them and kill them. If they've already died, you've missed your chance. If you were given a free ticket to kill the player without any repercussion, eventually that instance would turn into a free-for-all deathmatch as everyone would keep getting "free tickets" to kill their last killer; I don't see this as being a mechanic beneficial to the spirit of the gameplay they're trying to design.

I honestly don't see these types of situations being that few and far between, to be honest, regardless of being in a group or enjoying some solo play. If you kill someone who isn't rogue and are flagged as a rogue yourself, you have a few options: continue killing, fortify somewhere and defend, or flee--this player opted for the latter. His escape is tense as he encounters a few groups of agents while he attempts to evade his pursuers, but he is more or less stumbling sloppily through the dark zone in random directions as he runs for his life. This is not to detract from the intensity of the situation, it is just to say that this isn't some isolated special case that you're never going to encounter; you could easily engage this type of gameplay whenever you want by simply killing someone and going rogue. The situation that called for him going rogue, killing a non-rogue agent who was reviving a downed rogue, was his choice to make. He didn't have to kill the agent doing the revival, he could have simply finished off the downed rogue and that would have been the end of it. (In my opinion, the agent who was reviving the downed rogue probably was part of his group and hadn't been flagged rogue himself, otherwise what benefit did he have from trying to revive the guy in the first place?)

I've seen some pretty interesting situations play out on some streams with groups of rogue agents as well which have been equally intense, if not more-so. I've seen groups that became rogue more-or-less by accident as one player became flagged rogue by his own mistake (or maybe he meant to do it, it could go either way I suppose), and the rest of the group decided they would help defend him, becoming rogues themselves, as other agents tried to kill their friend. After the ensuing initial gunfight, they didn't want to be rogues and made a run for it as a group, encountering other agents throughout their escape, eventually leading to the rogue group killing more agents in defence as they didn't want to lose a bunch of dark zone credits or any gear they had on them. Eventually they killed enough agents during their escape that they were flagged with a manhunt for 5 minutes, where they ended up finding a small secluded rooftop somewhere with only one entrance up to it via ladder. They fortified on the roof, and soon enough everyone in the instance was close by looking for blood; you could see about 9 players in the alley below the rooftop they were upon trying to take them down.

All in all, although we'll have to wait and see what it is like with the final release, so far from what I've seen with the beta is a pretty diverse set of situations that can play out, regardless of if you're with a group or not. Personally, I believe the most fun to be had is with a group of friends, but that isn't to say that entertaining gameplay is limited to one form of play or the other.

This being a beta did not make me care about anything (materials, DZ rank and funds, equipment). But I can see things getting pretty tense in the final release when you picked up something good and trying to extract.

We tried to flank a rogue player by moving through a building, but stumbled upon a large force of strong AI's. The chaotic firefight that ensued was amazing! I had loads of fun in this beta and can't wait for the game to drop.

I've been playing pretty fast and loose in the beta. Knowing none of this carries over i find it fun being the guy that puts a single shot into the head of a player with low health at the extraction point and watching all hell break loose. (I usually die afterwards.)

A ragtag group i ran into ended up forming a group with me and the 4 of us ran around and filled our stashes with DZ loot. We killed rivals. Fools that stepped to us got marked the fuck down. At one point we were rank 4 rogue and held down a corner of the map while what seemed like 10 people came at us for the bounties on our heads.

I think the dark zone is great.

As long as I can play the game in a 60/40 split of single player/multiplayer, I don't care about rouge or not. I tend to play most MP parts of games with randoms....I honestly don't have too many issues with pairings in most games....but as long as I can escape into single player when I want - I'm fine.

I just didn't want the whole game to be DZ stuff...so since it ain't I'm cool with it.

@ottoman673: Good tip for maximum dickery is tossing a grenade at a group of people holding square to put their shit on the rope, then just shoot them all; success. Can probably get up to 3 reliably if you're using a semi auto rifle or another pretty good weapon. Granted it's tough enough (~65% success rate even on good servers) surviving a bounty for 90, good luck surviving for 180 solo.

If you're playing solo (as I typically do), it really just depends on the folks you happen across.

Last night I was playing and sent invites to the people I came across. Eventually someone accepted it, and the group of two shortly thereafter became a group of four, and people are far less likely to go rogue against a group of four than they are a single person.

It'll be a bummer if once the game has been out for awhile, everyone has what they want out of the DZ and the area becomes nothing but nonstop pvp, but the tension of not knowing what people are going to do has so far been an exciting change of pace.

-edit- Also, I hope the DZ isn't necessary in the endgame to get all of the best gear. That's one of the problems Year 1 Destiny had, was that almost all of the Tower vendors only accepted pvp tokens, and that game's pvp is a train-wreck in my opinion.

Or dropping an incendiary as they all scramble in to hook up their precious loot... poor, toasty bastards.

My issue with the rogue mechanic, which I like generally, is that the rogue agent is always at an advantage, which shouldn't be the case. The assailant should always have to put in the effort. The problem is that they always get the first shot and if you can clearly tell the guy is about to turn on you or he's shooting at you but missing, you can't shoot back until his rogue status activates, otherwise you'll turn rogue and put a target on your back.

I get that the element of surprise is part of it, but clearly the guy who gets shot first is pretty much fucked, because anybody can get his loot when he dies, not just the rogue agent who killed him.

@strife777: If you're rogue, you have something like a 30 second respawn (in addition to running back to where you died, which can take a bit depending on where it was), whereas if you are not rogue, you can respawn as soon as you've died.
In addition, you lose more DZ xp and DZ bucks when dying as a rogue than you do as a non-rogue (which, is very little), and someone who has gone rogue's location will be visible by anyone nearby, which should make their escape a little more of a hassle.

Not to say the detriments of going rogue are enough to outright punish people for doing it, but the devs seem to be at least thinking about ways to encourage people not to to a degree.
I hate dying to jerkfaces and losing my drops, too, but if they make the penalties too severe, then players just won't go rogue (unless, theoretically there are pvp-builds, and players make premades to just troll people), and the area would just be more pve, which would ruin the concept of it.

The 8-8 bracket actually ruined my hopes for this game. It really exposed what this game would eventually be once you hit max level or whatever. The 1-7 stuff was fantastic, lots of small groups and solo players running around which is what the developers likely intended considering the 4 player group limit. The first time I stepped into 8-8 there was a group of about 10 people roaming around together going rogue on anyone they came across. And of course they were all good sports about it and didn't shout stupid bullshit over their mics as they ran over our dead bodies. Needless to say, it was not very fun. I imagine the most fun to be had with this game will be while leveling up. I expect nothing but large groups of people in a clan or chasing around some streamer at the highest level looking for stragglers to pick off and bullying everyone else in the DZ out of the way. It's really disappointing.

Getting a huge upgrade and trying to get it out in a DZ full of rogues has been the most intense multiplayer experience I've had so far this year (I know it's only Feb 1, but still). I just think of it as death match where you actually have something to lose, which makes it much more exciting. If you just want to farm NPC's for loot, that can be done outside of the Dark Zones. I ran the Madison Square Garden mission on hard a couple times and walked out with a bunch of decent blues. Punishing people that want to PVP (while in an area that allows it) isn't fun. If people were out in the main world able to kill eachother, people would say "why don't they designate a PVP area?". They totally did that and now people are complaining about PVP happening in the PVP area. That being said, I would like to see some dedicated PVP modes in addition to the Dark Zone optional PVP. Something like CTF or something to earn pvp credits for gear as well. Perhaps people would be more comfortable doing TDM, CTF, or KotH where they know who the enemy is.

Ok, this is seriously fucked. There's a group if like 8-10 people just killing everyone in their path. Absolutely nothing to be done about it. They're basically invincible

I've mentioned this another post, but the beta really needs some basic raid style action, just some high level Mob that would encourage the group dynamic the game is fostering. In fact it could probably do with more enemies in general, I found it to be incredibly empty.

@ottoman673: Incendiarys are funny but likely won't do enough damage sadly.

You got it, note that doesn't mean the game isn't necessarily worth buying, I bet rerolling to make it interesting works in the main game for a good month or two (you do get four character slots it seems so why not). I'll probably hold off since I like MGO enough as it is so I don't necessarily need another potentially good multiplayer TPS. Now if they eventually patch MGO into oblivion as might very well happen I'll be more interested.

It's such a simple thing to fix, just have an all solo or all 2 man bracket for matchmaking and have an all 3-4 player bracket, that way the boring PvE'ers and squad gankers can do their thing and the people that actually want a fun experience can do their thing.

@wallzii: I played with a friend of mine to see how far we can go as rouges and were able to reach the manhunt level. Let me tell you, that was fun! At least on our part, it felt like a horde mode but with real players instead of a dump ai.

The reason that made me suggest a revenge mechanic is that a) the first rouge count down timer is not enough for the player to get back to the rouge and claim his/her vengeance unless the rouge is close to your respawn point b) rouges have the upper hand since they shoot you first c) rouges will think twice before killing other players because they'll know that they'll hunt them down. I found that most rouges go rouge because there are no consequences and because they want have a deathmatch.

All in all, i found that playing solo is a totally different experience than being a in a group and they're all fun on their own way but in this state most players will prefer being in a group than going solo losing what could be a better experience.