I gave The Division another shot last night and had a much better time. I didn’t experience any annoying glitches, and a friend helped me through that pesky Security Wing mission. That’s a pretty hard mission to solo – they’ve really ramped up the difficulty since the beta, and I’m perfectly okay with that.
Despite having good fun, I think the checkpoint system is pretty broken. In most games, a checkpoint happens after you reach a certain milestone, but before you start the next phase of the mission or combat or whatever. In The Division, the checkpoint I was stuck at last night was when the JTF person was trying to disarm the bomb in the tunnel and the enemies were already inbound. Each time I died or the mission failed (and that happened a lot), I had just a few seconds before the enemies showed up. Well after failing so many times, I needed a biobreak, but there was no way to stop the action. So I just had to abandon my character to death as he stood there while I took a leak. This is disappointing.
While I didn’t look for a way to abandon the mission, I did try to run out of the tunnel, but even that didn’t work, because as soon as they killed the JTF agent, the mission failed and I was dumped back to the checkpoint. At one point, I actually quit the game, then I noticed a friend was online. I asked her for help on the mission, because she’s higher level than me and obviously knows what she’s doing (and it’s way more fun playing with her than solo). When I reloaded the game, strangely enough, it put us after the checkpoint, as if the bomb was already disarmed. So I essentially skipped that part of the battle, which is somewhat disappointing.
So I think the checkpoint design/placement should be rethought a little so checkpoints can give respite. But other than those annoyances, The Division went well last night.