The Division: The Dark Zone Divide

Over time I have become obsessed with loops, the cycles of gameplay that make up the whole, the patterns of input and the output stimulus that make up a games. They’re what grabs us initially and, when well designed, they are what keep us coming back, over and over.

There are different kind of loops, smaller loops are moment to moment; the action of cover, shoot, reload, grenade, are all cycles of action to end result. The best are consist, with an obvious and direct correlation between the players skill and the output of success.

These build into bigger and more abstract systems, loot and random reward loops. These are the systems that keep us playing. Smaller loops give us the reward of satisfaction, of seeing the end result of our actions and knowing that we made that kill, that we scored that critical, that we secured that point.

A loot system galvanized this by turning time invested into repeating these loops into an irregular reward, a cherry on top of our own personal success. A good loot system turns performing the same loop over and over into pulling the lever on a slot machine. Boredom at repeating the same tasks over and over is transformed into an effort to get incrementally better equipment.

Do it well and players will return time and again for new equipment, new cosmetic items and knick-knacks for their character. Do it badly and they will become frustrated with the experience and see their time wasted, abandoning the game for something more worth their time.

Tom Clancy’s The Division is the latest game that I have played that embraces this formula. You play an agent in brilliantly realised New York that is under quarantine and largely abandoned by the federal government, causing people to divide into factions and fend for themselves, while the ragged JTF try to maintain order with the support of the player controlled Division agents.

So far so “Batman: No Man’s Land”, at least in story. As a Division Agent you’ll take on the task of taking down enemies with an arsenal of incrementally better equipment colour coded by quality.

So far so “Diablo” then?

Every game like this needs a hook. The Division’s is The Dark Zone; the most dangerous quarantine zones walled off by the CERA and turned into a free fire zone between dangerous enemies and the agents of The Division. Here agents can go ‘Rogue’, turning on their allies to take whatever they can.

In these areas you can find better loot, but there’s a catch. Loot from the Dark Zone is contaminated. The only way to recover your loot and get in past quarantine is to get it airlifted out of the Dark Zone by your JTF buddies.

It’s a very cool idea, as you shoot a flare into the freezing New York night, knowing that all the eyes in the Dark Zone have just turned towards your position. Setting up for the waves of enemies that could be swarming your position, or the agents who might turn up, not knowing if they’re friend or foe.

Dying before you can extract your gear means dropping it which makes it fair game for any of the other agents and really amps up the tension during an extraction. More agents appear; are they looking to offload their own loot or claim yours? You circle, try and put your back to the wall and take cover, but without making it look like you’re prepping to strike first.

Then the chopper arrives, you dive forward to take one of the four slots on the winch only to see someone raise their weapon and open fire, their name flashes red, they’ve gone rogue.

The Division is at its best in moments like these, the tension, the threat of an agent turning, the panic as a team of rogues raids the extraction zone. It’s a mechanic we often tried to incorporate (with middling success) into old airsoft games. It creates a focal point and an opportunity for someone to gamble and win big.

The problem is that this constant threat of being killed doesn’t stop at the edge of the Extraction Point, it stalks the streets of New York. Every time you see another Agent you need to decide if they are going to draw on you, and in almost every situation drawing first or out-gunning the opposition means you win.

In theory this should be no different than defending yourself at extraction. The difference is that there you have taken a risk, you know the odds of being attacked and, crucially, tend to be surrounded by other agents, who often rally round when under attack.

The only limiting factor out on the streets is the player’s mindset and the threat of being highlighted as rogue; a timed state where the player is worth a bounty in the Dark Zone’s currency and highlighted to other players along with a greater penalty if you die as a rogue. It’s a system that feels nobly intentioned but that does little as a deterrent, especially to a fully stocked 4 man team set up to kill fellow agents.

Being killed robs you of your loot and costs you “DZ Exp” which affects your “Dark Zone Rank” and DZ currency; whilst neither is an unrecoverable resource what it means is that when you are killed by a group of Rogue Agents you are being robbed of your time.

For me, this is a problem.

It’s a problem Destiny, to which The Division is oft compared, had a brush with. In Year 1 there was the ever irritating Thorn Exotic Bounty, a challenging PvP quest in which you accrued points for killing enemies with Void damage and lost points for being killed. The losses were never great, but they piled up, and seeing my counter for the quest rise and fall by the same amount in an evening was particularly frustrating.

Gone was the soothing realisation that even if I had done badly in the Crucible I had at least contributed to a bounty, or gained experience for my weapon, replaced by the disheartening realisation that instead of playing the game I was now watching a bar rise and fall.

This was the moment that Destiny went from being a casual game into a grind, it is also the point at which it almost lost me as a player.

For the casual player time is a precious commodity, juggling work, family and friends means that more and more multiplayer games need the ability to be the game we want on demand. I’ve spoken about Destiny as being gaming tapas before; small plates of whatever you want, to continue the analogy The Division is a school dinner circa 1973: You have to have it all, no you can’t not have peas, and yes you will eat your peas if you want any pudding.

Perhaps this is a case of me being spoiled. All the comparisons to Destiny had given me an expectation of a game that would be comparable but different. The Division seems closer to the survival experiences of something like DayZ or Rust than the looting and high adventure of Destiny. There is a loss of control inherent in that; not being able to choose when you engage with the PvP content, being under constant threat, is the very foundation of the Dark Zone. It is the source of its strengths, but if it dominates as much of the game as the it does the Beta I feel it is an area that could quickly turn away more casual players.

So how could they fix this? Well, I don’t think they do.

As I have said, the cruelty of the Dark Zone might not gel with me, but it is the most evocative aspect of the game. Here it sells best the hook of Manhattan abandoned: Dark streets, frozen with snow, trash piled up against houses and in the distance the whip-crack of gunfire; it is an evocative scene. The danger, the very real sense of losing something when you die, is part of the DNA of the game, to remove it is to dismantle the very reason to play.

For me though I fear this is a title I will end up admiring from afar. What it does it does well, but that frustration was a brick wall that I hit hard. Can they win me back over? We’ll have to wait until March to find out, but unfortunately I fear The Division will be a game that still misses the more casual audience, with no way to win them back without compromising the core of the game.