Home Gaming Ubisoft delays The Division expansions to focus on improving the core gameplay experience

Ubisoft delays The Division expansions to focus on improving the core gameplay experience

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Let it not be said that Ubisoft’s The Division is a bad game. It genuinely isn’t. What it is however, is a debut title that ran out of momentum after a few dozen hours of exploring the dangerous side of a New York City that had seen better days. For a game that was supposed to set up a proper playerbase that would engage in daily and weekly activities for months to come, The Division struggled to keep players around.

Ubisoft has been trying to fix that, retooling the game to offer better carrot-on-a-stick mechanics and rewards. But it just hasn’t been enough, so much so in fact that Ubisoft has announced that the upcoming expansions Survival and Last Stand will be pushed back as the core gameplay experience is worked on to be something appealing again.

“With Update 1.4 in the works, it has become clear with your feedback and our own observations that our priority should now be on improving the core gameplay experience,” Ubisoft said in a blog post.

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For this reason, we have made several adjustments to our development schedule: Update 1.4 will be released in October independently from Survival, and will focus entirely on bug fixing, game balancing and other improvements. Survival, the second expansion that was initially planned for release with Update 1.4 is now postponed to a later date this year. The third expansion, Last Stand, will be released in early 2017.

This new schedule will not only enable us to strengthen the core experience before adding new content, but also continuously improve it by allowing for more production time to ensure the quality of future updates as well.

So what does Ubisoft plan to change in update 1.4? The following:

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  • Fixing bugs, including those listed in our Known Issues as well as many other ones
  • Making loot drops more relevant to the player
  • Enemy difficulty and time to kill
  • Gear Sets and weapons balancing
  • Solo player experience
  • Dark Zone and PvP balancing
  • Quality of life additions based on community suggestions (such as weapon skins no longer taking inventory space)

I’ve genuinely tried to get back into The Division, but I’m not feeling the same hook that I did when I first booted it up in March. I still think it’s a fantastic game, but it just didn’t have the endurance to last long enough. One key gripe I have however, that I’d love to see Ubisoft fix? The fact that your agent slows to a crawl whenever he enters his BOO.

I don’t know why, that always just bugged me so heavily.

Last Updated: August 26, 2016

18 Comments

  1. “Dark Zone and PvP balancing”

    Good luck, probably 10 billion lines of code to fix here

    Reply

  2. Admiral Chief

    August 26, 2016 at 07:35

    I’d like to finish my second character playthrough, but in co-op, just rollin’ in the streets with a bud

    Reply

    • Allykhat

      August 26, 2016 at 09:06

      Literally rolling…. because Tanktician is still a thing…

      Reply

  3. Ottokie

    August 26, 2016 at 08:04

    “Let it not be said that Ubisoft’s The Division is a bad game. It genuinely isn’t.”

    Victim seems to have taken a blow to the head and might be suffering from a concussion, he is not thinking straight.

    Reply

    • Gareth Lagesse (eXCheez)

      August 26, 2016 at 08:29

      Nah, I’m with Darryn on this one.

      Reply

      • Admiral Chief

        August 26, 2016 at 08:39

        Ditto

        Reply

    • Hammersteyn_hates_Raid0

      August 26, 2016 at 08:29

      *Victims

      Reply

  4. Ottokie

    August 26, 2016 at 08:05

    They can fuse Evolve and Division so that there would be at least enough people to fill one party.

    Reply

    • Hammersteyn_hates_Raid0

      August 26, 2016 at 08:29

      XD

      Reply

  5. HairyEwok

    August 26, 2016 at 08:12

    Is this game still even relevant?

    Reply

    • Hammersteyn_hates_Raid0

      August 26, 2016 at 08:29

      Apparently

      Reply

  6. Gareth Lagesse (eXCheez)

    August 26, 2016 at 08:28

    I love the pre-endgame experience of this title; it really is beautifully executed. As a new player of the game this is great news.

    Reply

    • Brendyn Zachary

      August 26, 2016 at 11:06

      I loved this game all the way to level 29. Once I hit 30 I started to get a sour taste in my mouth and I don’t think I’ve gone back to it other than for benchmarking purposes.

      Reply

      • Gareth Lagesse (eXCheez)

        August 26, 2016 at 11:10

        This game reminds me a lot of what Diablo 3 was at launch. I’m hoping that The Division can receive the same sort of core changes that fixed Diablo 3.

        Reply

  7. Jonah Cash

    August 26, 2016 at 09:07

    Good enough single player game. I put 44 hours into it and felt happy with my time with it. The PvP side just didn’t work for me so no need to go back again.

    Reply

  8. Allykhat

    August 26, 2016 at 09:15

    @Darren, the slowness is their form of a loading screen. They confirmed that a while ago.

    As for Division itself, I have the gold edition, which I kind of regret now. I haven’t even started up the game in almost 2 months and to be honest, I don’t feel bad at all about it. The biggest problem for me is even though Im running end game gear, not god rolls, but good enough that on paper I look powerful, I just dont see or feel it.

    Destiny got it right, that game makes you FEEL powerful. I can run through the raid solo if I really wanted to… sure it’s not advised, but I can if I want and I’ll get decently far on my own. Division? The lowest “level” ads can wipe the floor with your face. I honestly feel like the guns shoot Marshmallows. And dont even get me started on the super duper special “Named Weapons”… They are so irrelevant its actually not even funny. MASSIVE need to take a page out of Bungie’s book if they really want to fix this game.

    Reply

  9. Viper_ZA

    August 26, 2016 at 10:26

    Waiting for Destiny all-in-one packaged game for my PS4 instead. Over this title, pity I paid full price for it >.<

    Reply

  10. Andre Fourie

    August 26, 2016 at 12:05

    That bugs me as well. I hate it. All valid points to fix, but can someone please tell that pony tailed little twerp to undo all the weapon nerfs. I’m playing other games at the moment. Sick of The Division and all its nonsense. Starting to love Siege again…

    Reply

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