I imagine the full release will come with agent training or something to help show everyone what's going on in the UI (because it certainly has a lot of different pieces of information on screen at once)

I should hope so!

but in general it is actually very intuitive once you've deciphered it.

Let's take a moment to just think about what you just said... Okay, now that's like saying "Robbing a bank is really easy once you get past the guards and get in the vault!"

I have never played it, so I can't judge. But just from your description, that's anything but intuitive.

I get what you're saying. I should have explained better.

All of the information you want is in intuitive places. You just don't know what the icons mean so you're not aware that the information is there. Once you decipher the icons, the response should be "oh, wow, okay, that's exactly what I hoped that would be."

Examples:

Your ammo, health, skill cooldowns, and active grenade are all in a little floating window next to your guy, just below where your crosshair is. You barely have to look away from your target in order to check those things, which is awesome. Your ammo display shows, stacked vertically, rounds in mag, remaining rounds for that weapon, rounds in your other weapon's mag. Until you know what those three numbers are, it's not totally clear what's going on, but once you figure that out, the placement makes a ton of sense.

On your mini map, there are all these different symbols: Green pentagons, purple squares with vertical lines, purple squares with three dots, blue circles with white stars... what is all that? Oh, it's encounters (like world events), loot containers, division tech containers, and cell phone/data collectible items. Learning the map key helped immensely.

Huh, why does this guy in the darkness zone have a red skull over his head? Oh, I see, it's to tell me he is killing other players. Why yes, that is information I would like to know as soon as I see the guy on my screen.

Floating Orange arrow and line... waypoint and nav marker for getting you where you want to go...

My point is that when you know what the thing is, the placement of it makes perfect sense. It's exactly where you'd want that information to be. Anything you want to access during play is right on your screen. Anything you want to access every now and then is in the pause menu, and anything you access only once or maybe twice (like settings) is probably a few menus deep.

As a former UI designer, I am SUPER impressed with the UI of The Division, and the more I got to play the game, the more impressed I was.

So you are saying the UI is very well done, but the communication for what the UI is is really crappy :-)

Exactly!

I imagine that the full release of the game will have some kind of tutorial that explains all of it.

There was also a bunch of small touch things I really liked, such as sprinting while climbing up a ladder double-times it and sprinting on the way down slides. Or you can click the left thumbstick while aiming to switch which shoulder you're holding the gun at so you expose yourself as little as possible around corners. You can even do the switch while ADSing with a scope.

The only control thing that stuck me as weird was that you can crouch behind objects, but if there's no object nearby you have to stand straight up. I feel like you should at least be able to take a knee, and boy would I love to be able to go prone.

I imagine the full release will come with agent training or something to help show everyone what's going on in the UI (because it certainly has a lot of different pieces of information on screen at once)

I should hope so!

but in general it is actually very intuitive once you've deciphered it.

Let's take a moment to just think about what you just said... Okay, now that's like saying "Robbing a bank is really easy once you get past the guards and get in the vault!"

I have never played it, so I can't judge. But just from your description, that's anything but intuitive.

I get what you're saying. I should have explained better.

All of the information you want is in intuitive places. You just don't know what the icons mean so you're not aware that the information is there. Once you decipher the icons, the response should be "oh, wow, okay, that's exactly what I hoped that would be."

Examples:

Your ammo, health, skill cooldowns, and active grenade are all in a little floating window next to your guy, just below where your crosshair is. You barely have to look away from your target in order to check those things, which is awesome. Your ammo display shows, stacked vertically, rounds in mag, remaining rounds for that weapon, rounds in your other weapon's mag. Until you know what those three numbers are, it's not totally clear what's going on, but once you figure that out, the placement makes a ton of sense.

On your mini map, there are all these different symbols: Green pentagons, purple squares with vertical lines, purple squares with three dots, blue circles with white stars... what is all that? Oh, it's encounters (like world events), loot containers, division tech containers, and cell phone/data collectible items. Learning the map key helped immensely.

Huh, why does this guy in the darkness zone have a red skull over his head? Oh, I see, it's to tell me he is killing other players. Why yes, that is information I would like to know as soon as I see the guy on my screen.

Floating Orange arrow and line... waypoint and nav marker for getting you where you want to go...

My point is that when you know what the thing is, the placement of it makes perfect sense. It's exactly where you'd want that information to be. Anything you want to access during play is right on your screen. Anything you want to access every now and then is in the pause menu, and anything you access only once or maybe twice (like settings) is probably a few menus deep.

As a former UI designer, I am SUPER impressed with the UI of The Division, and the more I got to play the game, the more impressed I was.

So you are saying the UI is very well done, but the communication for what the UI is is really crappy :-)

I imagine the full release will come with agent training or something to help show everyone what's going on in the UI (because it certainly has a lot of different pieces of information on screen at once)

I should hope so!

but in general it is actually very intuitive once you've deciphered it.

Let's take a moment to just think about what you just said... Okay, now that's like saying "Robbing a bank is really easy once you get past the guards and get in the vault!"

I have never played it, so I can't judge. But just from your description, that's anything but intuitive.

I get what you're saying. I should have explained better.

All of the information you want is in intuitive places. You just don't know what the icons mean so you're not aware that the information is there. Once you decipher the icons, the response should be "oh, wow, okay, that's exactly what I hoped that would be."

Examples:

Your ammo, health, skill cooldowns, and active grenade are all in a little floating window next to your guy, just below where your crosshair is. You barely have to look away from your target in order to check those things, which is awesome. Your ammo display shows, stacked vertically, rounds in mag, remaining rounds for that weapon, rounds in your other weapon's mag. Until you know what those three numbers are, it's not totally clear what's going on, but once you figure that out, the placement makes a ton of sense.

On your mini map, there are all these different symbols: Green pentagons, purple squares with vertical lines, purple squares with three dots, blue circles with white stars... what is all that? Oh, it's encounters (like world events), loot containers, division tech containers, and cell phone/data collectible items. Learning the map key helped immensely.

Huh, why does this guy in the darkness zone have a red skull over his head? Oh, I see, it's to tell me he is killing other players. Why yes, that is information I would like to know as soon as I see the guy on my screen.

Floating Orange arrow and line... waypoint and nav marker for getting you where you want to go...

My point is that when you know what the thing is, the placement of it makes perfect sense. It's exactly where you'd want that information to be. Anything you want to access during play is right on your screen. Anything you want to access every now and then is in the pause menu, and anything you access only once or maybe twice (like settings) is probably a few menus deep.

As a former UI designer, I am SUPER impressed with the UI of The Division, and the more I got to play the game, the more impressed I was.

I imagine the full release will come with agent training or something to help show everyone what's going on in the UI (because it certainly has a lot of different pieces of information on screen at once)

I should hope so!

but in general it is actually very intuitive once you've deciphered it.

Let's take a moment to just think about what you just said... Okay, now that's like saying "Robbing a bank is really easy once you get past the guards and get in the vault!"

I have never played it, so I can't judge. But just from your description, that's anything but intuitive.

Exactly. Intuitive means there shouldn't be anything you need to decipher or get past. I perhaps didn't play enough to truly judge, and I can accept that after more time the UI may have been good at what it needs to be good at, but it's anything but intuitive.

I imagine the full release will come with agent training or something to help show everyone what's going on in the UI (because it certainly has a lot of different pieces of information on screen at once)

I should hope so!

but in general it is actually very intuitive once you've deciphered it.

Let's take a moment to just think about what you just said... Okay, now that's like saying "Robbing a bank is really easy once you get past the guards and get in the vault!"

I have never played it, so I can't judge. But just from your description, that's anything but intuitive.

Still, the more I see and play, the closer my desire to play the final game approaches zero.

Worst UI in recent memory (and I've played quite a few "Early Access" games).

The UI really grew on me (as did the play control). When I first got in I thought, "god this is a confusing mess" and "wow the guy won't go where I want him to" but by the end of it the guy was going exactly where I wanted, as quickly as I wanted, and the UI elements gave me loads of info quickly and efficiently. It's actually a really, surprisingly smart design. It's immersive to the setting of the game in that it all pretends to be augmented reality, and it also conveys all of the gameplay info you need. I imagine the full release will come with agent training or something to help show everyone what's going on in the UI (because it certainly has a lot of different pieces of information on screen at once) but in general it is actually very intuitive once you've deciphered it.

Worst UI in recent memory (and I've played quite a few "Early Access" games).

People saying the controls are wonky and UI is confusing are spot on. Until you figure them out, at which point it all makes a lot of sense and becomes very intuitive.

The dark zone, especially, is crazy fun.

I probably put 10-15 hours in and I had a blast. Really, really great. The more I got into it, the better it got. Figuring out the symbols on the map took a while, but now I know and I'm glad they're all there. Getting used to the UI took a while, but it all makes sense now and I get why they did what they did. The design is really, really smart. Like crazy smart. Things you're going to use a lot (vendors, stash, restock, etc.) are all right at the entrance to the base. Gun mods can be chosen and applies as you desire, then stripped down from old guns to put onto new ones. God I wish Destiny did that. Almost no loading at all after the initial load into the world (even when entering the dark zone, it's seamless). No lag. Server swap was done live and instantly; I only knew it happened because i got a text message saying it was happening.

Weapons from different classes handle quite differently, but within the same class all feel pretty same-y. ARs probably have the most variance, mostly due to fire rate and recoil patterns.

Enemy AI seems to scale with the level of the enemy, so the level 2 guys just stand out in the open while the level 5 guys find cover and the level 8 guys actually yell at one another to flank and coordinate movement. The presence of certain "leader" enemies allows them to command the other enemies to charge you or throw grenades. Taking out those leaders left the other enemies uncoordinated and confused. It was fantastic.

Graphics are incredible, especially the weather effects and day/night cycle changes. Super impressive. About 80% of the objects in the world are destructible or at least register damage. Lots of NPCs walking around to make the game feel more real and alive.

Sound is the best I think I've ever heard. Many, many times I took off my headphones to see if the airplane flying sound was the game or a real airplane, or turned my head because a door opened in the game and I thought it was the door to my house opening. Guns sound incredible. Directional sound, echoes, players and enemies chatting... all awesome.

I'm 100% sold on this game now after the beta. The more I played, the more I appreciated all of the detail and design of it. It just got better and better the more I played.

So 20 minutes really isn't enough time to judge a game

Sure it is. You really only need five.

I'm gonna try it again later, but as far as first impressions go, I don't have many positive things to say.

I did like the music, though.

I'm hoping to play a bunch of the open beta on Saturday (and possibly Sunday) night, and would like to try out some time in the dark zones with some buddies.

Anybody else have it downloaded yet (or is planning on downloading it this weekend) and wants to run together?

Just started remote downloading from work. If it's done by the time I get on tonight, I'd be happy to play together!

Cool! I won't be on tonight (going camping) - but I should be on the next two nights.

That's fine- I just realized I have Vortech's VoG run tonight anyway (and I still have to sort through the loot from last nights KF runs)

My what? Um, I didn't schedule something and forget did I? Cause I'm super out of town.

No, It was Marmott. I forget stuff a lot.