Ubisoft has replaced bullets with numbers. That was my first thought playing The Division beta. Tom Clancy's famed realistic tactical shooter was always about finding an advantageous position and then shooting first. In The Division, shooting first won't save you. Lobbing a grenade within arm's reach of an enemy won't save you either. Rubber bullets would do more damage. Though all enemies are bullet sponges, the most bullet sponge enemies have purple and gold health bars. During regular missions, these were "boss" characters. In the Dark Zone, almost every a.i. enemy is a purple or gold enemy. You have to hold your cover and keep shooting, at least until the a.i. enemy throws a grenade. By the way, when you are low on health, the screen turns red. The grenade indicator is also red, so good luck seeing it when you are low on health. Oddly, the other players in the Dark Zone have less health than the enemy a.i.  When you are the easiest target in the game, I t's no wonder that players go rogue and try to take your gear. Playing with a group, I started to appreciate the slower, strategic gameplay of the Division. A fast twitch will not save you in The Division, even in the Dark Zone. You can't leap 20 feet in the air to evade enemies like in Destiny. You need cover, situational awareness, and an advantageous position. All efforts to rush enemies with melee was met with enemies who could withstand five melees before going down. Even throwing a grenade is a slow affair, as you have to tap (not press) the left direction on the d-pad, aim with the right stick, and then throw with the right trigger. On the other hand, if you stay in cover near an exploding barrell, you can wait for the enemy a.i. to slowly make it's way to the barrell. In other words, you are slow, the enemies are slow, and you have time, whether you like it or not, to plan the flow of battle.  Grouping together with friends was also a problem in the Beta. Unlike Crucible in Destiny, your level always matters in The Division. In the Dark Zone, this means group members will find themselves in different brackets and unable to play together. If your buddy misses a weekend of playtime, prepare for the frustration as he or she finds themselves too low of level to enter the Dark Zone with you. Ubisoft needs fix this, but with only a couple week until launch, I wouldn't expect a fix anytime soon.  If you don't want to see a disparagement of RPGs, please skip this paragraph. The RPG portions of The Division seem totally unnecessary. Like Destiny, your character is a blank slate who never speaks and has no backstory. Division member are only differentiated by cosmetic gear found throughout the game. (Side note, I give kudos to Ubisoft for separating cosmetic gear from gear that provides in-game bonuses.) Your character then unlocks abilities by building a base of operations, and in-game, these personnel at the base provide your character with advanced gear. This kind of pseudo RPG fits within the realistic setting of the story. Conversely, your character also finds weapons that have different damage outputs based on the level and inherent stats. This runs counter the realisting setting. An AR-15 is an AR-15 and its seems incongruous to have an AR-15 that does 1/2 as much damage as the next. Besides, as you gain levels and better gear, so do you enemies, and this kind of zero sum gain means all your grinding and inventory management only keeps you competitive; you never have an advantage for long.  In summary, the Division Beta shows a game with slow, low-skill, high strategy gameplay. It doesn't play like any other Tom Clancy game and it certainly doesn't play like Destiny. Many of the RPG elements seem unnecessary and I have a feeling the missions will have the same kind of same-i-ness as the missions in Destiny. The Division won't be for everyone. It certainly won't be a Destiny killer, at least not in the long run. (We have at least a year until Destiny 2, so these games can easily co-exist). After Destiny, most of us are more cautious about pre-orders, and with The Division, I believe caution is warranted. Wait for the reviews. See how much your friends play in the weeks after release. The beta just wasn't good enough for me to commit my $60.