The Fundamental Thing The Division 2 Gets Wrong about Loot Shooters

Imagine my surprise, then, to fire up The Division 2 and, by way of Twitter, hear that not only is this game considered a loot shooter, it’s also considered a good one. Frankly, it’s blowing my mind. There is almost nothing compelling or fun about the weapons of The Division 2. I find no entertainment in the accurate gun models and names, their plainly stated firing rates, magazine capacity and damage per second. Sure, having an understanding of these stats is integral to progressing through the game. But I find no joy in it, and that’s the problem. Every shooter I play is trying to get me to place a high value on stuff like sway reduction and superior reticles. And while I appreciate the insight it lends into the incremental improvements in game performance, it adds no fun to the strategic process. I mean, in Diablo II, the forefather of all loot shooters, I could pursue magical armor sets that would offer glorious character class-specific boosts to whoever donned it. I could socket my weaponry with gems and runewords, spelling out power incantations that would dizzy the mind—not to mention get quite a few oohs and ahhs while showing them off to my raid buddies. In Borderlands I had an SMG that screamed every time I fired it; it was annoying as fuck, but it existed. Even just storing it in my inventory for a laugh was fun. I passed that thing around from character to character for literally years. And who could forget how Destiny 2 puts its own spin on the formula. I love finding unique items, especially Ghost Shells, and tracking down elite armor pieces and guns in the ever-elusive pursuit of that maximum possible Power Level.

The big problem is that there’s no personality here. While the later stages of The Division 2 do add some new dynamics to the loot system that open up additional goals and strategic considerations (the Chatterbox, for example, is extremely compelling), for the most part, even the Exotics lack the theatrics and effects that would make obtaining them feel special (a problem I similarly had with Fallout 4 with its addition of random weapon modifiers). My routine in The Division 2 has been reduced to sticking to a few specific guns and cycling them out as I find an identical one with even slightly higher stats. I understand why the system is designed this way; the game’s source material mandates a level of realism that doesn’t really coexist with deep lore or a sense of humor. But I miss that feeling of treasure hunting.

All of this is a very long winded way to say that loot shooters, to be effective, have to be about the loot. And that means actually enjoying, anticipating and valuing that loot beyond those incremental performance increases. Any game can force you through the disposable grind of collecting and discarding weapons. But it takes a good one to make it fun.