I feel like The Division 2’s launch failures and problems are eerily similar to the corse The Destiny franchise has taken. Why can’t these developers carry over the momentum from their previous games into their next installments?
Hear me out. Destiny started out great for bungie. Fan boys galore and new fans pouring in at launch. The game lacked a lot of things but mostly played well and had replay ability from launch. They went through some lulls on their season pass content but delivered resounding content later with the final two dlcs. The Division followed a very similar path as it hit the ground running then the game breaking bugs and exploits were discovered. Through multiple dlcs the game did eventually become very very good by the end of its content cycle. Underground was fresh , survival was challenging and the PvP modes while favoring veterans were fairly fun.
Fast foward to the sequels. Both developers claimed they had learned so much on how to deliver content and respect players progress yet both games didn’t hesitate to throw around unfinished content yet again and nerf anything that stood out. While I enjoy these games and have the patience to see them through i know most gamers don’t. By the time division starts to realize it’s potential my friends mostly will have moved on to other things same as they did for division 1. Sure they might come back for a day and check out all the new stuff but they will not stay. I was able to convince 1 buddy to come back and grind himself a build only for the both of us to sit for extended periods of time trying to matchmake for end game activities. We eventually would give up and play a different game.
Division was a very good game. The problem is nobody knew it because they moved on before it could evolve to that. With dwindling friend and clan activity I fear The Division 2 is headed down that very similar path.
I’m not necessarily claiming the game is completely dead. It isn’t by any means. However if they cannot get this ship corrected in short order I have a feeling you’ll be finding day old LFG posts and never ending matchmaking times before the 1 year free content cycle is over. Same as the first gameOriginally Posted by NORTHBOERN1 Go to original post
Just mentioned in another thread that MM is getting worse.Originally Posted by urbanphilosophy Go to original post
I think it actually had a very good launch. Nothing fell over, it worked albeit a few bugs and everything was going swimmingly until the Dev's decided to start balancing.
I don't think anyone foresaw the radical changes made on the 5th April. These are usually the kind of changes made a long time after release when more statistics are available. Unfortunately, the game then started to lose it's appeal for many and since that change I have personally seen many people leave.
I believe this is one of those games that will lose a very large proportion of it's player base. I don't think the Dev's are doing anything currently to slow down the volume of leavers and are not giving any light at the end of the tunnel.
All we currently know is that we are about to get nerfed again. We know that there is a raid coming and it has been suggested this will be May. I am not holding my breath for this though as it was supposed to be today that the raid was included. Nothing stopping the Dev's just pushing back the date of the raids and using the old trademarked comment "soon".
Will the game be successful. Probably!. It will probably make some kind of return late in the year (November / December) when they have finally released more content and solved the current issues they seem to have with balancing (or should that be making the game boring and linear). I doubt that all those who left will ever return. With the advent of Borderlands 3 on the horizon, I would imagine that many of the leavers will not look back and will just set their sights on a game who's developer tends to release balanced combat from day 1 (let's ignore "The Bee" and the "shotgun")
I am disappointed in the direction of The Division 2 but I am more disappointed in the lack of any tangible information from the Dev's that gives us a feeling that there is something to look forward to.
This should be obvious. The players and the bosses. We want these games to be huge, full of content, and we want them right now. There is only so much a handful of developers can do, and their corporate bosses are pushing them to get this game out. RIGHT. NOW. So what would still have been in a beta test years ago is now pushed out with the hope of fixing it later. Then when it doesn't make the money people are let go so they aren't there to work on fixes, improvements, and add ons. People are also impatient and think improvements should happen right now. Completely forgetting that this isn't something simple like old NES games, or the original Oregon Trail.
You even hinted at part of the problem when you said people don't have the patience to wait for games to be fixed. Not only do they not have the patience to wait for fixes, they don't have the patience to wait for a game to actually be truly finished before it's released. And of course the companies are going to push the advertising well ahead to build up demand and interest. Which adds to the people wanting it NOW, and then the companies pushing the developers to get the game out the door right freaking now.
This is probably every game in the last decade. And of course now you're going to list some of the ones that you think are exceptions right? But for everyone of those, there are plenty of people who will say the opposite about them, and there are dozens of games that fit this description.
I don’t agree. I feel like the launch was a huge failure. I got my character to 7 or 8 I can’t recall and then couldn’t talk to Kelso prohibiting future progress. I had to make a second character and start over. This time this characters crafting bench couldn’t upgrade because I was never rewarded the bp. They just recent fixed this. Much to my disappointment crafting is also all but worthless aside from exotics. Say I wanted a decent tactical MK 16 since I have a bp for it. I’m GS 500. I’ve crafted 20-30 of these just for testing purposes. Only 2 have crafted above 480 GS. You can’t use the talents to roll into other guns and you cannot recalibrate new ones into crafted ones. So basically you’ll need to craft all three talents you want and get a near top GS roll all at the same time. I was so discouraged with this I’ve not even bothered with the gear bps
So you don't agree that the crafting station is pretty much useless once you reach end game?Originally Posted by Harshilizer Go to original post
I honestly cannot think of any exceptions. I listed these two developers because they’re well funded and experienced. Both of these developers made these very same mistakes with their first installments even though both claimed they had learned from their prior mistakes the trend is continuing. These issues wernt as much of an issue from major developers for NES games because the developers didn’t have the luxury of releasing half finished content and fixing it down the road with updates and patches.Originally Posted by Unicorn001 Go to original post
The blame is squarely on the developers here. You cannot blame the consumer for wanting product. That’s what consumers do. These developers announced a tentative release date , it is not mine , yours or anyone else fault that they failed. I personally wasn’t even aware of a sequel until they told me they were doing it and when I could expect it. I’m confident in saying the majority of game consumers don’t look at forums and back pages on the web trying to figure out where the next game is coming from. These developers tell us , they sell it to us and more often than not they tell us exactly what we want to hear regardless of what they’re actually capable of providing.