The Division Player Base Collapsing?

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It's no doubt that The Division has had more than its fair share of problems since launch but has it's player base really taken a nose dive? According to SteamCharts, the average number of players was just over 65,000 in March compared to just under 25,000 over the last thirty days. :( Thanks to Austin D. for the heads up.
 
30 days starts to be a trend.

Ubi$oft should just market the cheating as superpowers players can acquire on their own.

/sarcasmoff
 
the cheating is rampant and the game really isn't all that deep with game play that gets boring fast.
 
played it for an hour and promptly uninstalled. Still had texture issues and graphics setting issues a few weeks ago on 9 series nvidia card. Game was no fun. Graphics were meh
 
could have been a fun single player game if the story wasn't some pg13 remashup of every other game
 
15 waves of shotgunning enemies does not an expansion make.

The cheaters live even on Xbox live which is nuts.

They destroyed the crafting system.

My friends play on the PC and they all stopped playing because of the rampant cheating, hacking, teleporting, aimbots.

This game had potential, turned into a mess. Ubisoft should give the expansions away for free, no one wants to touch this mess.
 
The game is fundamentally broken, I'm not surprised at all.
 
Just to echo everyone else, The game lacked any long term replay value. Maybe folks were expecting a more MMO environment or maybe they expected a better PvP environment. What looked good on paper didn't play out so well. Once again, Gamers get taught a valuable lesson. Don't believe the Hype!
 
I had a lot of high hopes for this game. It never really met them. Looks good and had a lot of potential. Maybe I expected too much. :/ It's too repetitive (same why I dislike Destiny) for me.
 
While the game itself is fun the end game content is severely lacking. Grinding out missions in hopes of MAYBE getting a piece of gear to drop gets old quick; you can craft better gear with blueprints but when an item costs 300+ Phoenix Credits and the most you can earn with daily missions is 30 if you're unable to handle the Challenging difficulty it is a daunting task. Sure you can buy blueprints in the Dark Zone but they cost several hundred thousand and the DZ isn't fun when you have to run around for 10 minutes to find a pack of enemies and pray that a prick doesn't one shot you in the back and steal away some of your hard earned credits, gear and XP.
 
They recently released a new free update which added some additional content and features, and of course the actual "Season Pass Expansions" are yet to come, but The Division does need some improvements. People say cheating is an issue and if that is the case, then it needs to be stomped out. They should also add some other quality of life features, like multiple chat channels including player-created ones. There is a single chat channel for every "zone" and it is scrolls really frequently....made even worse, by spamming in other languages (Chinese being the most prevalent) which includes offers for real money services and perhaps just lots of people chatting. The game does have potential in its mechanics and I hope to see the story become a bit more in depth; what it could really use are various choices to be made as you play, that take into consideration ethical elements in the story itself. Lets face it, Division members are basically a secret army under the President's command alone, subjugating other civilian and military authorities to support them, and basically unaccountable. . You're to assume you're the "good guys" because the game frames it that way, but the game could also tell a very different story from the perspective of the hundreds of literal "so-called rioters in hoodies" you kill; not to mention a great amount of the agents go "rogue" in the dark zone and simply steal for themselves. Having some decisions to make later on, taking certain missions etc.. could go into the dichotomy of power being used for "good" and what "good" means to different people... could have effects on what equipment you might unlock, story paths and much more.

The game can still be salvaged, but it needs to stop being treated like console-garbage - a pivotal reason I think the chat channels aren't very fleshed out - and updated significantly, both in terms of quality of life and end-game content.
 
No one really talks about this but in all the trailers and talking they did before launch, they made it out to be that destroying cover or blowing out tires was a tactical advantage and something you had to worry about. But in reality it doesnt matter and it is just something you do with your handgun while waiting for your friend to finish selling stuff in the base. Also why is the walk in speed still slowed? And everything is all centered around leveling the base and then after a day or two you are finished with that and its just repeat missions over and over (when dailies are actually working).

Also darkzone should just be all every man for himself, no rogues just all pvp.
 
It is mostly a single/co-op game.. and not an MMO. After you finish the missions and do the few level 30 stuff - there is no reason to keep playing.
it is a 20-30 hour game once people finish there is no reason to keep playing. There is nothing wrong with that. Most games have less play time.
I got my $65 worth and have been happy with the game.
 
Bigdady92 said:
15 waves of shotgunning enemies does not an expansion make.

The cheaters live even on Xbox live which is nuts.

They destroyed the crafting system.

My friends play on the PC and they all stopped playing because of the rampant cheating, hacking, teleporting, aimbots.

This game had potential, turned into a mess. Ubisoft should give the expansions away for free, no one wants to touch this mess.
Click to expand...

I got it on the PS4 and stopped playing cause of the Crafting/Phoenix Credits changes. Too much variability in gear for the costs to be that high. Game is also pretty repetitive in general so increasing the grind was just stupid. Then when they dropped the Incursions patch they borked the game up. You couldn't queue for Falcon Lost without some sort of bug. I haven't logged in now in I guess 20+ days and don't see myself doing so anytime soon unless some major changes are made. They got my money, I am happy with the playtime I had on it but also glad I didn't fork out for a Season Pass.
 
I watched the short film on Netflix. Does that count?
I wondered if the game sucked as bad is the film did.
 
I enjoyed the single player experience, although by the end I wishing Faye Lau had died in the crash. They really did a great job of designing the maps. It's a shame that after you complete the campaign, those streets are basically wasted. They are supposedly working on bringing some life back to them.

The beginning of the end was when they "fixed" the farming of high end NPC's. People that took advantage and played 20 hours a day got a huge leg up on a loot-based equipment game. Then they "fixed" crafting making it even more difficult to craft items which forces you to roam the same empty streets looting the same boxes with a scavenging boost that seems to do NOTHING. Which brings us to Phoenix Credits, given the low server pop and "gear-gating" snobs, its difficult to find a group to complete the challenging mission of the day. When the missions actually reset, this is also broken.

This brings me to the Dark Zone, or rather, that zone I avoid due to the rampant cheating and which resides some of the game's best loot. A ban wave went out, but apparently it only grabbed the most egregious of cheaters. Seriously, a cheater was ganking Hamish during a live stream and he had to WRITE down the name of the clearly cheating player as there is no in-game reporting tool. From what I've read, there are serious concerns that they will never be able to stop cheating given the source code of the game.

The negative out of the way, I still have found some cool folks willing to help out the under geared. I am holding out some hope that they will live up to their promise of making the single player maps worth revisiting. I also hope the will tweak Phoenix Credit item and crafting mat costs a little lower or make the resources a little more plentiful.
 
Want an idea of how broken the product is? Look at the code that has been put up online. So much has been hard coded.

Even the rotating daily missions are hard coded. Why they couldn't just script that with parameters is beyond me.
 
Spidey329 said:
Want an idea of how broken the product is? Look at the code that has been put up online. So much has been hard coded.

Even the rotating daily missions are hard coded. Why they couldn't just script that with parameters is beyond me.
Click to expand...

those should have been random per player, so that way no matter what mission you want to play, there is a group of people queuing for it no matter what.
 
It's an MMO type game, no?

They almost all collapse after the first month or two.

Add Ubisoft to a recipe that's doomed to fail and you get catastrophic failure instead.
 
Started the SP campaign. Played 2 hours. Shooting a guy 8 times with my pistol x 2 hours. Shooting a guy with my submachine gun with same damage. All streets with multiple-lane approach, like Gears of War. removed disc, uninstalled. There's a game here?
 
MadMurdock said:
Don't believe the Hype!
Click to expand...

uh.. this is true for EVERYTHING now. Especially nowadays, everything gets hyped to insane levels for every AAA or big movie or new product now. It is crazy i think.

and.. ubisoft doesn't care their userbase is tanking. They already got your money from buying the game and i'm sure ppl bought season passes or whatever other dlc they have.
 
Twisted Kidney said:
It's an MMO type game, no?

They almost all collapse after the first month or two.
Click to expand...

I don't think it can be considered an MMO at all. Unless you are in a safe house or Dark Zone, there is no one else around, which I prefer for the leveling experience. After that, you'll only see a handful of people every now and then. Even in the Dark Zones I've never encountered more than 10 people in a zone. I've played Battlefield matches with more people on a map. I like how easy it is to match make for a mission, but outside of that, it's a fairly empty game.
 
Spidey329 said:
Want an idea of how broken the product is? Look at the code that has been put up online. So much has been hard coded.

Even the rotating daily missions are hard coded. Why they couldn't just script that with parameters is beyond me.
Click to expand...
They're probably hardcoded due to Ubisoft forcing the game out before it was ready, as usual. Game could have used at least another 6 months of development time, if not another year. A longer closed beta period also wouldn't have hurt, to work on balance and quality of life.
 
Are some of these numbers due to the recent bans that went out I wonder?
 
Twisted Kidney said:
It's an MMO type game, no?

They almost all collapse after the first month or two.

Add Ubisoft to a recipe that's doomed to fail and you get catastrophic failure instead.
Click to expand...
Except this is their best-selling game ever. The irony on this is pretty sad.
 
Not really surprising, the game does not have much substance aside from the bullet-sponge grinding and ubisoft has had a terrible track record in dealing with the rampant cheating in their multiplayer attempts.
 
They are taking forever to fix shit -- and there's a lot of shit just flat out broken.

Some of said shit is _so_ stupid. Perks on gear are just flat out wrong or don't function correctly, weapon balance is blatantly retarded, the incursion was pure shit. Cheating and oversights in the PVP like equipping shit tier gear to drive your gear score down so you get matched against weaker players. Of course, you can put your good items back on at that point and walk around like a king.

The game can be super good at its best, but they need to make a fucking move.
 
Darunion said:
Also darkzone should just be all every man for himself, no rogues just all pvp.
Click to expand...

I agree with this...or at last make a dedicated pvp area...the whole Rogue concept was cool in the beginning but now it just feels stupid
 
An open world "looter shooter" with shitty loot and shitty shooting? That was bad enough. Add in rampant cheating? Doomed.

People diss Destiny over in the console ghetto. But at least Bungie knows how to do rock solid shooter mechanics. Add in "space magic" to suspend disbelief and you have a solid experience. Plus, while the shooting and looting is a big part of it, another aspect is looking good doing it. Armor shaders, the new chroma system and Bungies art-ninjas give players a lot of choice in how they look.

The Division? It's set in he near future. There is no world building that can explain why a bat-thug in a hoodie takes a magazine from an AR to go down. I did the Division grind for a while. Then went back to Destiny.

Maybe Ubi can fix it. I hope so, as there's tons of potential. Bungie managed to pull a rabbit out of the hat with The Taken King. perhaps Ubi can do the same?
 
The main missions and dark zone can be kind of fun to play in coop with friends, but there's probably only a few hours of entertainment there. Otherwise the game is mostly just a boring, repetitive loot grind, shooting the same enemies over and over again. I'm sure the cheating, glitches, and problems with game mechanics didn't help the player base stick around either. I got extremely bored and have no intention of playing it again. I feel bad for people who bought seasons passes.

I also think the game has problems on a very basic conceptual level. The near future, real world Tom Clancy setting just doesn't mesh well with an MMO. The game doesn't feature magic or advanced sci fi technology. There's no explanation for why you would need to empty five magazines into a looter or an escaped prison inmate to kill them.
 
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Spidey329 said:
Want an idea of how broken the product is? Look at the code that has been put up online. So much has been hard coded.

Even the rotating daily missions are hard coded. Why they couldn't just script that with parameters is beyond me.
Click to expand...

Was probably done early in development in order to test, then never got updated as crunch time approached. Tells me the project was rushed out the door not properly tested and optimized, hence the issues.

Forced deadlines are the bane of software development.
 
To put this in perspective, it took 7+ months for Battlefield: Hardline to tank to that level.
 
I think I read the problem with the rampant cheating is that all the cheat detection is done client side, lol. There are no master servers with any sort of anti-cheat detection at all. Every action is trusted by the client, so you can literally do almost anything in the game with any kind of cheat you can develop.
 
The only end game is grinding for loot in the darkzone or running the same handful of missions. Even if there wasn't rampant cheating and imbalance it would have gotten old fast. With the issues I was done playing before even hitting lvl30 DZ
 
As much I had hoped that this would be an exception and a good game, it has turned out as an Ubi standard "pretty" turd
 
This game looked about as interesting as an untoasted slice of wheat bread. All of the say-1 kiddies are getting bored now, and all of us who are selective with our purchases never bought it in the first place.
 
Really not much to do outside of getting to level 30. Incursions are OK, but once you finish, nothing to do. PVP is full of cheating and hacks, so I avoid Dark Zone.

Moving on to the next game until there's more.
 
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