1 - Dissatisfied
2
3
4 - Neither satisfied or dissatisfied
5
6
7 - Very satisfied
Tom Clancy's The Division 2 is a good game but a BAD sequel.
The developer's did not make a game that the customer base was wanting/expecting but one the developers wanted. Imagine how things would play out if after a highly successful debut of a Call Of Duty style game that resulted in record sales for a publisher, the studio doing the sequel decides they don't like how the current game works so they re-invent many aspects of the game so that it is what they (the developers) want and not what the customer base wanted or expected. it may still be a good game but because they re-invented so many aspects of the game they haven't really produced a "proper" sequel to the first but what is effectively a reboot of the game. A reboot would be fine for a game that's already been thru several iterations and needs something new but not for the second title in a new IP where the first game set record sales.
NOTE: Not only did Ubisoft-Massive do this "re-invention" with The Division 2 but Ubisoft-Paris did the same thing with the Ghost recon Wildlands sequel, BREAKPOINT. Breakpoint was SO BADLY received that they had to severely lower project earnings. At the shareholders meeting it was said that The Division 2 also resulted in lowered earnings projections albeit to a lesser extent than Breakpoint.
What's wrong with doing this, with the developers making the game they want instead of a sequel the customer is expecting?
1) Reduced sales
2) many unhappy returning customers
3) Waste many hours trying to fix the game post-release, to try and make it function more like what the customer wanted. That in turn delays any post release content like raids. That in turn eliminates some already planned post release content in successive years because they no longer have the resources to do it.
The bottom line is that by itself the game is fun and MOST definitely worth the FULL sticker price but its not a proper or good sequel. If Massive had made a proper sequel, what the customer was expecting/wanted, we would have had the raids much sooner and instead of wasting time trying to fix the changes they made (those re-inventions of aspects of the game) its very likely we would have had more post release content as they would have had time to work on those since they wouldn't be spending thousands of hours trying to fix/undo the changes they made.
I've met several of the guys you see on State of the game and they're all great and I truly believe they want what's best for the game. These egregious errors of judgement with changing the game in the sequel not only for The Division but for Ghost Recon Breakpoint must have come further up the chain, probably someone at Ubisoft corporate who is in a position that we never see or deal with so they are insulated from the negative feedback of their decisions. Remember this when posting anger or dissatisfaction with the game as its often not the developers making the bad game design changes but someone else.
I think most of what your seeing is the anger and frustration from a customer base that feels they are never heard, and never respected. If i, as a paying consumer, tell you directly what you need to do for me to continue spending money constantly on your product, and you ignore that feedback, there's something wrong with your plan. Most companies would kill to have access to this feedback before making their next product or alteration. Ubisoft/Massive ignores it and often does the opposite. Then they do the absolutely MOST frustrating thing, which is ignore the consumer frustration, refuse to address it or answer the questions the customer wants answered, and totally dodge any responsibility for any of it.Originally Posted by Legoguru2000 Go to original post
They apologized to the community and made promises about learning from Division 1 mistakes, then just made the game they wanted to make, essentially deliberately lying to us from Day 1. Trust in this studio has been entirely eroded at this point. I don't see this franchise ever reaching it's full potential if the IP isn't moved to a difference studio entirely. The relationship between studio/community is forever fractured and trust has been permanently betrayed.
And for the record, I believe gear 2.0 destroyed this game. Not because it was a bad end result, but because it sucked up so much time and so many resources that it killed all the content in terms of map expansions and game modes that we most likely would have gotten without it. The better choice would have been to keep gear 1.0 and release a major map expansion and another new game mode or two with the resources instead. Ultimately the failures of this game come down to poor leadership.
I think you're wrong on this one. There are two different departments responsible for gear and and balancing on the one side and for content, maps and missions on the other side. They only share little resources. So it's not Gear 2.0's fault we did not yet get the new content we are all looking for. There are most possibly other reasons that are maybe even interconnected (Corona, Division 3 in the making, other Massive projects, such content wasn't planned at all, such content was planned for year 3 etc.).Originally Posted by chicagolongball Go to original post
You may be right, and if so, whoever is in charge of map expansions and game mode development has clearly been on vacation since March of 2020. I, however, don't see why they would have a dev team stay on to change gear entirely but not allocate any resources at all to true content development. Why rework gear to play the same content we played a year of gear 1.0 with.Originally Posted by ArthurFriend Go to original post
Or they've been working on the next expansionOriginally Posted by chicagolongball Go to original post
We get it, you want (2)WONY per year, as do I [as stated, I'd pay $10/mo for it], but Ubi/Massive not delivering that is not them ignoring the player base, it's Ubisoft trying to get us to buy other games. How many of us bought Ghost Recon or Immortals or Valhalla because WONY was getting stale?
Why deliver double what your competitors do, which will depress Publisher wide sales? Think MBA™, and more will make sense. Too much risk, for too little upside [even if we think they could own the Looter/Shooter market with such a move].
As for the discussion about ruining Div2 compared to Div1 - I'm pretty sure the Devs listen to "me"* [which is why I'm less salty than the average forum poster] - because I still haven't finished Div1 [maybe next week], and they fixed all the issues I had with Div1 in Div2. Then when I was about to bail, they dropped Gear2.0, which fixed my remaining issue with Div2. My beef is the same beef I have with Apple, don't tell me I can't customize my screen and defaults as I want [don't tell me I can't use the talent I want for some dumb, arbitrary reason that makes RNG way worse].
*Whomever is in charge, seems to have the same approach & playstyle as I do
I don't want to seem like Donnie downer and kill your optimism but nothing more is coming for DIVISION2 in terms of expansions. I wouldn't be surprised if we saw some bug fixes in Year 3 but with how things have been these last few months i don't see anything more for this game.
You (referring to the Development Studio and Publisher) don't handle PR & Marketing like Massive/Ubisoft has the last 3-6 months if your planning another major expansion to the game. You certainly don't let the existing game and all its additional content look like as if its fallen on hard times.
I don't want to spoil anything in case anyone reading this has not done season 4's manhunt yet but its ended on a "massively" disappointing note. I'm seeing "I'm pisssed" comments from some who have traditionally not only supported the game and the studio but in some ways sucked up to them and made excuses for past mistakes. Even these people are pissed off at where things have gone with the game.
As LtBuzzLIteBeer (Division Content Creator/Streamer and ETF member) recently said in a video about the game, The Division 2 does not have what is needed to keep the game going another year or more like the first Division game does. In DIV1 we have many people still playing the SURVIVAL game mode (I had 12 in a session last night, middle of the week) even though they already have everything you can get. They play it because its fun, the rewards for playing are the pleasure of the content itself. That is what DIV2 is sorely lacking.
For the record I'd love to be wrong about this but if something more was coming to DIV2 I'd be concerned with how they've handled things leading up to that. I believe that DIV2 is on a less than skeleton crew, quite possibly staffed with less experienced devs than in the past which is why things have been bad lately. Because of the recent Ubisoft shareholders call we do know that they are planning on something Division related in 2021 and 2022 but I doubt its directly connected to DIV2 and my biggest fear is that its some mobile garbage. Ubisoft made it clear in a recent gaming article that their goal is to pull back away from so many AAA titles and focus on, you guessed it, mobile.
My biggest fear is to hear the announcement of TOM CLANCYS THE DIVISION mobile game - Agents On The Go.
Hey, stop stealing my lineOriginally Posted by Sircowdog1 Go to original post
Just as for ME3, I'm not going to change my vote just because the ending was a let down. The many hours of enjoyment that led up to it don't magically disappear.