MSim
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http://www.pcgamer.com/ubisoft-delays-the-next-two-division-expansions-to-focus-on-fixing-the-game/ Ubisoft has decided to delay the next two expansions to The Division so that it can instead “focus entirely on bug fixing, game balancing and other improvements” to the core game. That means the Survival expansion that was supposed to be released alongside the 1.4 update will instead come out later this year, while Last Stand, which was originally slated for a late 2016 launch, won't be out until early next year. The focus for the 1.4 update “and beyond” will be on fixing bugs, “making loot drops more relevant to the player,” adjusting enemy difficulty and kill times, balancing gear, weapons, the Dark Zone, and PvP, improving the “solo player experience,” and making “quality of life additions” based on player feedback, like setting weapon skins to no longer take up inventory space.
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Re: Ubisoft delays the next two Division expansions to focus on fixing the game
2016/08/26 11:27:22
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Interesting opinion article - http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2016/08/26/its-too-late-for-the-division-to-make-a-comeback-at-this-point/#538802f2ad0a It's Too Late For 'The Division' To Make A Comeback
Paul Tassi , CONTRIBUTOR News and opinion about video games, technology and the internet
Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own. Photo: Ubisoft Photo: Ubisoft
The Division is a game in crisis, and more or less has been since just a few weeks after launch this spring. After a series of relatively brutal and soul-searching State of the Game livestreams, developer Massive announced that they were delaying The Division’s upcoming Survival DLC until later in the year, focusing instead on a massive 1.4 patch that’s supposed to change a number of significant things about the game, and bring players back into the fold this October.
Among the long list of changes being looked at are weapon and gear balancing, loot, enemy scaling, inventory management and a trillion other things that have also been modified in almost every other major patch since launch. Once again, it’s pretty much like the entire game needs a huge overhaul.
I’m not saying that Massive shouldn’t be working to revamp all this stuff, because lord knows nearly all of these systems are screwed up enough to need it. But what I’m slowly starting to come to terms with is that it’s just not going to happen for The Division. It’s a game that’s taking too long to fix, it will be debuting its next round of fixes during the most jam-packed AAA release season of the year, and frankly, many of these aspects that need fixing may simply be too fundamentally broken to ever be patched.
The Division probably would have been a pretty solid title, had it just existed as the level 1-30 story portion of the game. During that time, it’s a mechanically adept shooter, and features one of the most impressive environments in gaming history with its sprawling rendition of a plague-ravaged New York.
Photo: Ubisoft Photo: Ubisoft
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But The Division didn’t want to be just the best rendition of Ubisoft Open World: The Game. Rather, The Division wanted to be Ubisoft’s Destiny. The Division wanted to be Ubisoft’s Diablo.
But I just don’t think it can be. Not in this iteration, at least.
Massive has designed a game that does many things very well in terms of being an engaging cover-based shooter in an open world, at least during the story missions on sane difficulties. But what Massive has not figured out (and may never figure out), is how to create an endgame for The Division that is even remotely balanced, and does things like gear sets and raids and loot drops correctly. It’s been months, and it still seems to be so far away from these solutions, you have to wonder if it will ever get there. A while back, I might have had faith, but now? I just don’t think it’s going to happen.
First, the logistics of this new patch. As I said, The Division is going to be rolling out this new patch in October, where in the October/November window, there are going to be about eight trillion big name shooters coming out including Destiny’s Rise of Iron expansion, Battlefield 1, Titanfall 2 and Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare. At that point, between the shooters and everything else that’s coming out, I would be amazed if anyone was even paying attention to The Division’s delayed DLC, much less some “revamp” patch, when that’s already been attempted three or four times at this point.
But fundamentally, I think The Division is just too far away from where it needs to be in order to have a prayer of emulating its biggest influences, Destiny and Diablo.
That may not seem fair to say. After all, both of those games had at least a year to sort out their problems and become the fan-favorites they are today. Why am I being so harsh by giving The Division only a couple months to figure things out?
Photo: Bungie Photo: Bungie
A few reasons, but namely I don’t think The Division has the staying power of those games. People were willing to give Diablo 3 another shot because the game has 15+ years of history behind it, and it’s not like Diablo 4 was going to be right around the corner. Destiny was a new IP with a wobbly launch, but despite its flaws assembled a massive community which only snowballed over time. In The Division’s case, the game started out with a pretty positive reaction, but it has almost exclusively been downhill from there, as the playerbase continues to shrink even in the wake of major patches and big DLC releases. The Division has never had its House of Wolves moment, where DLC indicates long-term promise. Nor have they had a “Loot 2.0” atom bomb like Diablo 3 that fixes nearly everything wrong with the game at once.
The Division will never be Destiny in terms of its gameplay mechanics. Nothing Massive has done has ever come close to emulating the iconic raids of Destiny, nor has Dark Zone PvP ever felt as competitive as Iron Banner or Trials of Osiris. Adding in dedicated, balanced PvP is something that just doesn’t seem possible at this point for The Division, and after months and months, PvE enemy scaling in endgame activities is only getting worse if anything.
By contrast, The Division does not seem anywhere close to Diablo 3’s prized loot system. It uses the same type of system with random rolls and set bonuses and the like, but the gear that’s being dropped does not facilitate diversity of play like Diablo. Diablo 3 has six hero classes, each with anywhere from 2-4 viable endgame builds based around sets or legendaries. The Division has zero classes, and forces everyone to tank/heal/DPS all at the same time, where half the skills are bugged, half the sets are useless, and only a handful of weapons are viable at any given time. I just don’t see how they’re going to fix all that. They’re not even close, and it feels like they never will be.
Photo: Massive Photo: Ubisoft
Here’s the thing though, it may not really matter. Destiny has its grand ten-year plan, while Diablo 3 will probably have to last for at least a decade. The Division? With the way Ubisoft publishes games these days, if something isn’t an annual franchise, it’s at least bi-annual, so I would not be surprised to see The Division 2 in another year or so. Despite all its endgame failings, the game was a sales hit at launch, and it’s clearly getting a sequel. I wonder at what point it’s better to just cut their losses and rebuild these core systems of the games from scratch for a second game.
It seems weird to advise that Massive not sink too much more time into The Division, but the timing of this latest update paired with what they’re probably going to be able to accomplish makes me skeptical of how worthwhile it is. It would be hard enough to change the current game to the point where it would bring people back in droves, and it’s almost certainly not going to happen in a window where there are five other AAA shooters vying for attention during the fall.
I’m curious to see the future of this series, and I still think there’s a lot of potential here, but Massive has not demonstrated they know how to fix their endgame in any meaningful capacity, and I wonder how many more tries fans will allow them before they walk away for good. After realizing Underground and its surrounding patches weren’t going to be game-changing enough, they lost me. And if 1.4 and Survival aren’t god’s gift to the game, they’ll lose even more of their dwindling playerbase.
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