Wake up, clean your ears, listen to your consumer base. You created a game that was similar to Destiny in the minds of many customers. You succeeded, you had a great pre-order and launch, people loved the game, i played for hours, couldn't put it down, now i might not pick it up again, it's dependent on you.
I've owned and managed my own business for decades and let me tell from experience what is the most valuable commodity in any enterprise in any industry, ready for it? Knowledge. When a company is not making the money they hoped to make, or are losing money the question is "how can i sell my product or service more?" Having that answer is golden, it solves the problem, you come out on top. You have the answer(s), but you're not listening. You have hundreds if not thousands of people commenting on social media sites, forums, xbox, ps4, pc dashboards, all you have to do is listen and you'll solve the riddle.
This game is separated into two categories; campaign (story mode) and pvp (Dark Zone). Once the campaign is finished all that's truly left is the dark zone. Sure you can do dailies and farm the campaign for gear, supplies, mods, and weapons, but it's repetitive and over time it will get boring. People will leave and go to another game, IE: How destiny players came to the Division. I have 7 friends who all stopped playing Destiny for the Division, guess where they've been the last 3 days? Back on Destiny. Just in my life you succeeded in pulling 7 hard core Destiny players from their beloved game into yours but lost them 72 hours ago. How do you lose gamers to a game that's almost 2 years old? That's a kick in the junk.
Here's how to enhance the Campaign
Step 1: More Daily and weekly missions.
Step 2: Increase the rate of drops for high end green gear.
Step 3: Make challenge mission on incursion easier.
Step 4: Include the ability to upgrade safe houses in each section of the city along with the ability to expand the post office to include more services to the public such as showers, and bathrooms, more barracks, training simulators, surgical wing, etc. The post office is massive and yet only a small fraction is accessible.
Step 5: Include the ability to clean up the city or increase safe houses to accommodate more citizens.
*key is to have more things to do than time available to do them. Players will be enticed to play it more to achieve more.
Dark Zone
Here is where the biggest problems lie. For three days in a row i have been destroyed by level 95s, level 97s and level 99s. On one occasion there were 6 level 99's against myself who's a level 70. You'd think this happened in DZ6, nope DZ01. The rogue status in this game is out of control. I've seen people camp outside of safe houses making it impossible for you to play, i've seen people intentionally go rouge for extended periods of time and groups of 6 or more running together. You really think people want to play this game when it's like this? Wait why are the Destiny servers packed tonight? Probably because people left the Division back to Destiny. Three days this has happened to me and those i play with and it's at the point where i don't want to play the game any longer. The other 7 have left all together. That's only $480 dollars lost on season passes, big whoop right? Check your forums, check social media I'm only a small sample size of a much bigger problem coming your way. You made over 330 million in the first week, you're riding high, but you're going to lose a great opportunity.
Here's a few simple solutions
1. Divide levels into their own servers. 90> own servers, 65-89 own servers, 1-64 own servers.
2. Create an "intentional rogue system" vs "accidental rogue system". This would easily be determined by a set amount of bullets hitting the same target in a certain amount of time. Over the limit = intentional rogue. When someone goes rogue intentionally they should be penalized with the inability to use specials, longer refill timers on healing, half armor score, and limited ability to use benefits from high end gear sets. The penalties can be stiffer for different DZ player levels. Dying as an intentional rogue has a greater penalty in xp lost.
3. Rogue duration penalty. If a player stays rogue for a period of time or goes intentional rogue X amount of times in a period of time they should have the penalties mentioned above. Level 90s> should have a reduction in skills by percentages based on which DZ area they are in. DZ06 no percentage reduction, DZ05 - 5-10% reduction across the board, DZ04 - 11-15% reduction, DZ03 - 16-20% reduction, DZ02 - 21-25% reduction, DZ01 - 30-45% reduction in health and or dps.
4. Dying as an intentional rogue 90> could also force the player to allow the killer to choose from an item they have equipped, cash, phoenix credits, or item in their stash.
The bottom line is you need to even the odds. Don't get rid of the system, but level the playing field or run the risk of losing customers. A person who's a level 95> who comes down to DZ01 to beat up on people who are 70< can't get any enjoyment out of it and the 70< aren't getting any enjoyment either. They can't progress in the game, they can never get to level 99 because they've hit a wall of 90s. The 95 and above people are living out how they wished their childhood could have been. It's probably a bunch of kids who got picked on or picked last for kickball growing up now taking out that frustration of not being accepted on innocent people who spent their hard earned money to enjoy a game. It should be riskier to go intentionally rogue.
You could also create a separate DZ server for people who specifically want to pvp each other. Listen up Ubisoft, your customers are telling you what they want in order to buy your product, listen and you succeed, ignore and you fail.
Just would like to chime in here for them to deal with all the hackers. I was having fun with the game right up until I encountered my first one. Since then, it's been out of control. Players are submitting hacker/cheat reports in droves WITH VIDEO proof - and still Ubisoft has not acted. I don't understand what there is to figure out. You have players caught cheating with video evidence. Cheating is against the EULA/TOS - so why are they not banned already?
i think it's because they truly don't care. They've made hundreds of millions already, they've probably hit their goal so everything going forward is purely a bonus for them. Sure they would love to sell season passes, but they don't need to sell them to hit their goal.
It's companies like this that entice modders and hackers to find exploits, to download the game, etc.
Yeah, welcome to 1992...
Games are in a very different category than most products out there, like cigarettes, or the NFL. I mean, cigarette makers print on the package "hey, you dummy, you'll get cancer and die from smoking", yet people keep smoking. The NFL keeps diluting its product, coming up with silly rules, the officiating is getting worse every year, more commercial breaks, etc.. yet every year they make more money.
Sure there are lots of people complaining about the Division from many sources, but that is not the only information Ubisoft is getting: they gather information from another source, the game itself: when you log in, how long do you play, where do you go in the game, what outfits you buy, etc etc etc etc. So people can complain, whine, cry, protest, call for lawsuits, post "why I'm quitting" threads, but if Ubi sees them logging in and going to the DZ ...
I agree completely with what you suggest for the safe zone, but for the DZ I'm still on the fence. I'm only level 38 and spend most of my time just doing the daily missions. I tried the Challenge level and can't do it. I'm pretty sure my level of 168 is the problem. I have almost 100k DPS, but probably not enough to beat the 32's. I can't even dent them before they horde mode me and I'm dead. I can fend off 31's with no problem at all. I have the HE Aug, Vector and M1A, all at 182, but I guess that's not good enough, yet. I'd love to be able to get those extra 30 PC's, but can't at this point. More to do in the safe zone would be amazing and I assume they're just waiting for the DLC's to drop it to us.Originally Posted by thedonclark Go to original post
The DZ is a different story. Again, I'm only level 38 and can maneuver into and out of the DZ to do what I have to do without issue. The thing I like about it is the thrill of being hunted and killed by those that might be a higher level than me. I make it my mission to avoid the rogues, avoid large groups of humans, and when I can successfully kill the NPC's I need to, and/or, extract what I need to, its a win for me. An exciting win. If Ubisoft were to "dumb down" the DZ it wouldn't have that special feeling I get while in it. In other words, I don't want the DZ to end up feeling like the safe zone. Does that make sense?
They don't care about any of this. They have our money already. They will throw us a few glitch fixes but when it comes to anything else we're out of luck. I'm glad I play on Xbox one but I feel for the PC users most of all. I think it could be considered stealing from PC users since many of them aren't even able to play properly because of cheaters, or people glitching the game in general.
Look at the state of their other games. This is a perfect example of what we're going to see in the Division. Rainbow Six, Watch Dogs to name a few are still riddled with hacks and cheats and glitches and they have been out way longer then the Division has. They constantly threaten to ban cheaters on those games yet people are saying they see the same people cheating as they did a year or more ago and nothing has been done about it.
Nothing is going to be done about it on The Division. We're delusional if we think we're special and they will fix it.
Well they're in for a rude awakening. http://steamcharts.com/app/365590 shows the PC player base down 57.52% (as of this post). Personally speaking - myself and 4 of my friends have removed the software off our computers until such time as all the hacking is actually being addressed (and not just the devs giving us lip service).
As I've stated numerous times before - was having fun right up until I started encountering all the hackers in the DZ. Other than that, I could have overlooked the other issues (which could have been corrected in time, and are relatively minor compared to the rampant cheating).
I'm also extremely tired of all the fanboy toxicity where they chime in that it's just because "I suck at pvp" or how I don't "properly understand the mechanics of the game". How well/poorly I play has nothing to do with other players warping around; walking through walls; shooting players fully hidden behind walls and killing a dozen or so players with 1 shot in under 10 seconds. I've absolutely no issue with losing to another player when it's a fair fight. There is absolutely nothing fair about fighting against another player using aim bots, wall hacks, unlimited ammo and invulnerability. That's what I've been saying all along.
I'd be happy to collect my refund and move along, except that Ubisoft won't give a refund. They knowingly sold us a product that they knew (since beta) was broke. They're running the scam of the century; we have little to no recourse; and they're running like hell with our money to the bank - all the while laughing their asses off at us and stringing us along.
Its like Destiny in the same way South Parks like Disney's Frozen. Sure they're both animated but... the only similarity is snow and 8 year olds. In Division and Destinys case that similarity is loot grind. Because first person shooters and cover-based third person shooters have a drastically different feel, people should have never compared the two.Originally Posted by thedonclark Go to original post
P.S.
If they did try copy Destinys formula they missed - diverse exotic weapons, genuine bosses, dedicated competitive pvp playlists, co-op raids and strikes with weekly modifiers... and with hindsight, probably should have given the PC a wide birth like BUNGiE cleverly did (lolcome on master race I'm joking, but I wonder if they actually regret doing a PC version now )
For many years, Ubisoft's top management has tried to kill the PC gaming division.
And they've talked about it quite frankly on the gaming press (a lot of articles on Google).
Because they fear pirated games and loss of revenues.
And because PC sales represent only 10% of the market.
So they do the minimum, because they consider PC as a dead-weight.
I'm even thinking that The Division as a botched game disaster will serve as a argument for the investors to definitely stop developing for PCs :
"you can see, PC sales were bad, frequentation went awry, there was a lot of cheaters" and so on.
So they can turn their own mistakes into convincing arguments for the investors, who are the real decision-making body.
PS : these are my personal opinions, eh, i wouldn't like to spread "false allegations" =)