Diagnosis; "Division-itis"? | Forums

[furleys_ascot]

Let me just state for the record that I like wildlands despite its flaws and need for major changes. Also this rant is not directed solely at wildlands.

That said, what I mean by Division-itis is this:

A game that is released prematurely containing an excess of bugs, glitches, balance issues, sparse content and an overall lack of polish. Fast forward a few months and said game is an improved core experience from its initial offering, and possibly more in line with the devs original vision.

Games like the division and destiny were markedly better games say, 6 months in or so as opposed to when launched, due to fairly vigorous patching (im not counting content additions just gameplay improvements).

Even though those games were ultimatly improved I found myself feeling let down...

By the time those games got to a much better state (again, based only on the core game) I had already done basically everything in them there was to do (several times over).

I found myself wishing I had not purchased the game at launch as so much of the core experience had improved when the devs had a bit more time to work.

Its obvious that core components of wildlands need a decent amount of attention and once the issues are addressed we will see the game (and its players) in a better situation, which is great.

I just hope the fixes come sooner rather than later as I dont want to get that same apathy for wildlands that I got for the division and destiny due to needed improvements taking so long to materialize.

I think everyone involved (devs, publishers AND gamers) need to re-evaluate their expectation of how long it takes to develop games nowadays.

The ability to patch games post release has become a massive crutch for the industry that in the end has the potential to do as much harm as good.

[Cothes]

Let's Not Forget The Practices Destiny Undergoes, Who Cares About Bugs?
I Was Literally Halted And Told I Needed DLC To Progress Further.
If You Want To Talk About Lacking Content, Freakin A.
The Division Had A Ton Of Stuff To Do Also.
While Ubisoft May Let Some Issues Slip Through The Cracks, Their Games Always Have A Vast Amount of Content BEFORE DLC.
This Is Likely Not The Response You Wanted But Lets Be Honest Here.
I Believe That's Why We Still Like WIldlands Even In It's Issues It Still Provides A Ton Of Stuff To Do.
If Anything This Was Something New For Ghost Recon, The Game A Starting Point And Hopefully The Patches By The TIme We Hit End Game A Starting Point For The Next One.
I Think It May Go Unnoticed The Amount Of Detail In This Game.
Then There's Play Testing, How Much Play Testing Can You Really Get For The Game?
How Quickly Can You Re-Create And Solve All The Issues? Get The Patch Ready. Meet Sony AND Microsoft's Standards?
I Think There's A Bit More That Happens Behind The Scenes Than We Think.
Point Being, I Don't Believe Everything Is Lazy, Or A Ploy, Simply Sacrifices For Other Things Using What's Available.

[MrBibbIes]

Let's Not Forget The Practices Destiny Undergoes, Who Cares About Bugs?
I Was Literally Halted And Told I Needed DLC To Progress Further.
If You Want To Talk About Lacking Content, Freakin A.
The Division Had A Ton Of Stuff To Do Also.
While Ubisoft May Let Some Issues Slip Through The Cracks, Their Games Always Have A Vast Amount of Content BEFORE DLC.
This Is Likely Not The Response You Wanted But Lets Be Honest Here.
I Believe That's Why We Still Like WIldlands Even In It's Issues It Still Provides A Ton Of Stuff To Do.
If Anything This Was Something New For Ghost Recon, The Game A Starting Point And Hopefully The Patches By The TIme We Hit End Game A Starting Point For The Next One.
I Think It May Go Unnoticed The Amount Of Detail In This Game.
Then There's Play Testing, How Much Play Testing Can You Really Get For The Game?
How Quickly Can You Re-Create And Solve All The Issues? Get The Patch Ready. Meet Sony AND Microsoft's Standards?
I Think There's A Bit More That Happens Behind The Scenes Than We Think.
Point Being, I Don't Believe Everything Is Lazy, Or A Ploy, Simply Sacrifices For Other Things Using What's Available.

"Let's not forget the practices Destiny undergoes. Who cares about bugs? I was literally halted and told I needed DLC to progress further. If you want to talk about lacking content, freaking A. The division had a ton of stuff to do also. While Ubisoft may left some issues slip through the cracks, their games always have a vast amount of content BEFORE DLC. This is likely not the response you wanted, but let's be honest here. I believe that's why we still like Wildlands even in it's issues. It still provides a ton of stuff to do. If anything this was something new for Ghost Recon. The game A starting point and hopefully the patches by the time we hit end game Game A starting point for the next one. I think it may go unnoticed the amount of detail in this game. Then there's play testing, how much play testing can you really get for the game? How quickly can you re-create and solve all the issues? Get the patch ready. Meet Sony AND Microsoft's standards? Point being I don't believe everything is lazy, or a ploy, simply sacrifices for other things using what's available."

My OCD took over.

In response to your last statement: "Point being, I don't believe everything is lazy, etc."

I agree with you to a point. I don't believe laziness was the ENTIRE contributing factor to the issues plaguing this game. I believe a lack of proper prioritization was the problem. You can see clearly where the team's priority was focused: World creation 1st, Gameplay and Game Content 2nd. The world is almost a freaking master piece and by far one of the most impressive maps I've seen in a game (Largest, too). However, when you look at the game content; audio quality, poor voice acting, lack of dialogue resulting in repetitive chats and vocals, painfully obvious texture issues with clothing, visual bugs from sight alignment, hand placement on firearms, inconsistencies with firearm accessories, poor gunplay mechanics, poor driving mechanics, poor AI, etc, you can see that the actual GAME itself was simply slapped together and thrown in. Heck, you can see the blatant disregard for the game itself with the recent DLC packs. Poorly reskinned vehicles, and horribly designed guns that can't be altered in anyway, and patches that are almost nonexistent in the game that cost actual money for.

Create the beautiful world 1st, and vomit the game into that world, rather than building the world around the game. I'll be the first to say that I pay my respects to the team. I couldn't even scratch the surface of game designing; hats off to them. However, I've seen better games made in the past. I'd rather a map 25% smaller if that meant a more solid game.

[LoneSpymaster]

Every single game nowadays is like that.

You know if you buy a game at launch you will have problems and "lack of content", so it isn't "Division=itis" every game has been like that.
Even before The Division.

[NLxAROSA]

This game was in much better shape on launch date than The Division was (and still is!). That said: yes, if you want the full completed game, it's best to buy it 6 months after release. It was like that for The Crew (which was really crappy at launch, but became an amazing game later on!), The Division, etc. etc.

Then again, I played both the closed and open betas of this game and I asked myself: if this is the game, just 10 times bigger, will I like it? The answer for me was yes. So I got it and I'm really enjoying this game. There are a few issues, but this game just has very few big flaws (esp. for a game this massive), it's mostly tweaking and finetuning. (Not denying some people have game-breaking issues though, but they're really a minority)

Especially with this game, that had an open beta up front, it was 100% clear what you were getting up front. If the open beta had sucked, I wouldn't have gotten it.

[RHAIN07]

Personally, I like the evolution of gaming whereas, the developers are responsive to tailor gameplay based on the desires of the end users.

This is why a beta (with all core game elements available) should be released like they did with wildlands with the following changes.

- Have it run for a minimum of 4 weeks.
- Gather all player feedback.
- Identify the majority of requests and make all necessary modifications.
- Announce a target date and release of the final product once complete.

The gamers are the best QA team.

[AI BLUEFOX]

You only have to do the maths on play test hours you get from a million players in the first few days, to realise the enormity of the challenge. You would need to employ a 1000 testers for 5 years to cover the same amount of playtime that a million gamers will cover in 10 hours. Yes, I know this is a bit extreme and testing can be much more focussed, but we need to understand the sheer complexity of modern games. We will not get bug free games at launch ever again; not unless you want game makers to stop pushing the boundaries, to stop being so ambitious and to serve up limited games. There is enough ill considered criticism already that a games developer uses assets from one game in another to save resources.

@MrBibbles, your assumption on the amount of time spent on the world vs the amount of time on the game isn't correct in my opinion. The world was pretty much all there, very early on when we played it in 2015 and your comments about some aspects are subjective while those on the visual aspects are a matter of balancing and detuning the graphics against the hardware capability. I agree there is improvement to be made, but these weren't a prioritisation call they were deliberate design choices. Take the flying mechanics as one example; giving full Yaw control to the player would have actually taken less programming than the system we have which is a hybrid autopilot that frustrates players who naturally fight against it. The team AI are another example as it ihas taken more effort, simply to make them then not quite as intelligent as a human player with full control would have made them. The gun customisation, bullet drop etc are also design choices, not a reflection of effort spent.

[F.i.x.e.r]

Well I hope this game does not have Divisionitis, because TD was the first game I have owned where the developers turned out a game that was not half bad, completely destroyed it over the course of six months, realized they screwed it up and did a pretty good job of fixing it and then took another six months to destroy it again.

[Flaw3dGenius23]

Games like the division and destiny were markedly better games say, 6 months in or so as opposed to when launched, due to fairly vigorous patching (im not counting content additions just gameplay improvements).

Even though those games were ultimatly improved I found myself feeling let down...

By the time those games got to a much better state (again, based only on the core game) I had already done basically everything in them there was to do (several times over).

I found myself wishing I had not purchased the game at launch as so much of the core experience had improved when the devs had a bit more time to work.

Its obvious that core components of wildlands need a decent amount of attention and once the issues are addressed we will see the game (and its players) in a better situation, which is great.

.

I dont see this game going the way of others with it changing 6-12 months down the line, What we have now is basically how it will stay bar a few tweeks and obvs PvP getting added.

[NLxAROSA]

Well I hope this game does not have Divisionitis, because TD was the first game I have owned where the developers turned out a game that was not half bad, completely destroyed it over the course of six months, realized they screwed it up and did a pretty good job of fixing it and then took another six months to destroy it again.

This pretty much sums up my experience with TD as well.