Senior Member
I think two major mistakes are being repeated with each new dlc.
- Addding gear set after gear set, many of them uninteresting to the vast mqjority of players. This is a problem because of the brutal rng in this game. Every time you add a gear set you make it harder for players to complete their build unless the are willing to go Marcostyle and run the same heroic incursion 90 times.
-The casual player base keeps on being left further back in the dust and face an ever increasing difficulty in maintaining pace with the game. This is caused by the point made above combined with the level 30 player level cap, while the npcs we fight keep on levelling up, making obtaining gear in increasingly difficult circumstances the only option -well that or altogether quitting the game. This issue is compounded in the DZ, where not only the NPCs have levelled up, but the PvPers have geared up.
Players, be they casual or those that have more time to invest need to feel a sense of overall progress in a loot based game. The current path you are on as devs not only makes progress very difficult for some, but also makes regress a very possible eventuality. Now if your ultimate goal is to make this a HC player only game, that's fine. Only you know if that is a financially sustenable scenario.
Anyhow, my 2 cents.
Senior Member
One last thing...
If Massive and The Division is to have a true Watershed Moment to prove to the community you are serious about changing the course of this game, possibly...
It will be when you announce major changes to the loot and / or DZ, and then FOLLOW THROUGH WITH THOSE ANNOUNCED CHANGES IN A WEEKLY UPDATE (TUESDAY, THURSDAY MAINTENANCE).
This is what needs to happen to regain trust with the remaining community and maybe even draw those who have already left back?
Senior Member
20% buff - no idea as I have written the DZ off, but agree with everyone else on this thread that this is the least of your worries Hamish me owd mucker!!
Personally, I would have nerfed the damage to other players by 100% to give the majority of players a temptation to come back to the DZ and/or the game.
You should have called it "The More Efficient Ganking" patch cos it will just allow gankers to gank more quickly. Nothing else changes this broken experiment at PvP
Surely Massive are going to take this on the chin, fess up, admit you got it wrong and make vital changes quickly before the game is gone forever.
Member
Yeah the damage buff in the dz is pure fluff (perhaps low hanging fruit??). So many other things really need addressing but loot changes would be at the top of my list. Allow people to more easily find "good" loot. I had a friend come back for 2 nights in the underground only to finish a challenge run (which was difficult for him) and get garbage loot (low gs AND bad rolls). He quit again immediately as that "reward" for the time taken to complete that activity was not worth it in the slightest. THIS HAS TO CHANGE!!!
Member
Member
Don't go to the DZ and farm outside , it's just that simple !!Originally Posted by mattrickl06 Go to original post
Senior Member
+9000Originally Posted by Mikey_Flies Go to original post
There is a reason I posted a rather lengthy post in a thread created by one of the main Community Managers.
I, and the rest of the remaining community, believe you (Hamish & Massive) are asking the wrong questions, so we are changing the conversation to what we believe is the real reason The Division is on life support right now and very well may end up being a F2P game after the last DLC is released.... Unless some drastic changes are made, and made sooner than later, in our humble opinions.
Banned
This solves nothing. So everyone can be put down 20% more quickly... That means solo players and pairs will be put down even faster by groups of 4 that come up behind them.
I'm just going to lay it out there... You guys have no clue how to balance things. I almost feel sorry for you guys. You're so in over your head with various aspects of this game, I honestly don't think you have the means to even implement what the community asks of you. These simplified approaches/bandaids you folks apply to things shows either an unwillingness, or an inability to really address the issues from a ground up approach. What's worse, you appear to work in hypotheticals...without having ever put your ideas through their proper paces via testing. I'm absolutely shocked you folks don't have an ongoing beta test whereby your users can log on to a test server, much like they have for World of Tanks, and test content before it's formally released. Granted, at the rate things pop up in this game, if we had to wait for things to work properly before getting them released, we may not even have a game to play until this time next year. Maybe that would have been best for everyone.
What I really can't believe, is that with all of the other issues in this game, this is the one thing you're focusing upon, and polling the community on.
Oh well.
Senior Member
Hamish,
I watched the SOTG stream and while it is nice to hear you and the devs are aware of some of the glaring (non-technical; game design) issues in The Division brought up in this very thread...
I feel you (Massive) need to be even more transparent with some of your future plans because with a three-week absence of SOTG streams, I fear you will lose even more players because the way the current drop tables are (weighted) outside the DZ... Many are not sticking around to see what changes you "may" have in store regarding a central element of the game.
I understand you want to create buzz and excitement for future content, but for those of us who have stuck around this long... I respectfully ask to be treated like adults and just told (within reason) what Massive's future plans are for the loot distribution is since this is the main reason we... and many don't, anymore... Play The Division.
Also, the French guy (Antoine?) reiterated the point you want to make certain activities drop certain gear sets, so players know where to farm, but the main problem with this is you are forcing players to play content they don't want to get the gear they need to take on some of the harder content they *do* want to play. Don't force players to play anything they don't want, or they will just quit the game as many have already.
This is why I, and many others, are asking for loot equality across all activities because of the high amount of RNG (loot quality; variance) that effects the quality of the loot dropped.
Thus, the more places loot can drop, the better chance players will get something they can use, eventually.
It's a basic law of statistics: The more you try for something, the bigger the chance you get what want, finally.
Equal loot distribution across all activities means players are playing what they enjoy, getting rewarded... if only slightly... And are still coming back for more in the hopes they get that piece of God Roll gear, or weapon. This also means once they do get what they are hoping for, they will try harder content like the Incursions, the DZ, etc. which is the real end-game, not just farming for loot.
This is something I believe Massive needs to realize, too:
The loot in loot-based games is just a means to an end... Not the end-game like it is, now. Players farm activities to get better loot (to get stronger; progress their character) to take on harder content to get... Better loot! It's a simple concept, but one that is deceptively simple unless developers have a handle on the power and progression curve... That seems to be all over the place in The Division, and why many are quitting the game because they can't progress their character, and / or are being forced to play things they don't want to in order to progress their character such as The Dark Zone.
Junior Member
It doesn't change the fact that the biggest issue is the game is increasingly only playable for people who can put in ridiculous hours. If you want to maintain a player base you need to have the casual player in mind who may only play an hour or two each day or a few hours on the weekend and may have to solo a good bit.
Signing on and going in the dark zone to get melted by some mouthy 12yr old punk who has nothing better to do than play video games all day while pretending to be a man in the DZ isn't enjoyable. This is especially true when your in the low end of the 201+ gear score range and the level 32 NPC's can two or three shot you. Going in there is just about pointless now.
If you want a decent pvp experience gear needs to have strengths and weaknesses that are exploitable. Take Halo for example. If I'm running at you across an open space with a shotty and you got a dmr I'm done. But if you've got a dmr and I use cover to close the gap your done.
I get that if I go up against a group of 4 players and I'm solo I'm probably going to lose. I get that. I might get one of them, but I expect to get flanked and run over. That makes absolute sense. But in a 1 v 1 and even 1 v 2 situation it should be a toss up every time.
The pvp balance should be so that tactical skill (which is what I thought was a big emphasis of this game) plays more into it than dps or being able to 2 or 3 shot someone with an unscoped M1a because you're running 4 Dead Eye...meanwhile you can sponge 3 full clips from an Aug or AK. I don't think gear score should factor in as much with pvp - that way you undercut the imbalance by leveling the field and forcing players to use actual tactics instead of simply grabbing the latest OP set.
The npc balance should scale in each zone to give players an actual chance of progressing and this is where gear score should play a huge role. The higher the gear score the better I should be able to stand against the hordes of npc's and the higher the gear score the better I should do against the npc levels with the higher ones still giving me a run for my money. I'm not saying make it so you can roll through their like superman. If I'm running solo I shouldn't be able to hit DZ 5or6 without a squad and not get melted. But I should be able to at least move about DZ 1-2 if I'm in a gear score that places me in the 201+ bracket. I'm running near 400k toughness w/ 2 Final Measure with a gear score of 217 and can still get 3 shot by groups of level 32's that, if I take down, I have to resupply after killing them because they are so tanky.
And good luck extracting because here comes that group of 12yr olds wanting to flex their imaginary muscles to prove their prepubescent masculinity by crushing the easy target to take gear they don't need because they can go into DZ 5 or 6 but don't need to because they've already maxed out their gear so they can troll other players who can't do anything about it.
I really like that game...but it's getting old really quick because of these things.
