The Division 2‘s latest season—Yr 6 Season 1—is now reside and with it, Ubisoft additionally revealed its plans for the remainder of the 12 months. Nonetheless, an enormous change on the roadmap involving seasonal characters that gamers should create recent in the beginning of every new stretch has led to an enormous quantity of backlash on-line.
Launched in 2019, The Division 2 has quietly been one in every of Ubisoft’s most profitable on-line video games, receiving steady updates and patches since its launch. And since then, the third-person tactical looter-shooter has largely labored the identical manner, with gamers working via every new season, unlocking new gear, and shifting The Division’s storyline ahead. And all of this was carried out along with your essential character. Nonetheless, that’s going to alter within the subsequent season later this 12 months, and longtime gamers with 1000’s of hours poured into the sport aren’t glad about it.
On June 10, in a highway map posted by Ubisoft, the writer laid out its plans for The Division 2‘s sixth 12 months of content material. And in season two of 12 months six, Ubisoft goes to maneuver the sport to a seasonal character mannequin. Which means every new season’s content material and story will solely be playable as a brand new character created for that season. Gamers must degree up from 1 to 40 and discover new gear and weapons, too. On the finish of the season, gear and XP will revert to your essential character and your seasonal one can be added to your roster, letting you play with them extra later if you need.
It is a related system to Diablo IV’s seasonal characters. Nonetheless, The Division 2 shifting issues a lot this a few years into the sport’s run has set off a firestorm on-line amongst gamers. For those who hop on to Twitter or Reddit, you could find tons of of gamers indignant and confused in regards to the seasonal character shift in Yr 6 Season 2.
“Not excited in regards to the new character for each season concept. It doesn’t appear to be it’ll be enjoyable for solo gamers who simply need to chill out and expertise the story,” stated one participant.
“I don’t perceive seasonal characters so what you’re saying is that our essential characters/ brokers that now we have tons of to 1000’s of hours on now [are] type of ineffective,” stated one other participant on Twitter.
“New Seasonal Characters just for Seasons? The tons of of hours grinding for weapons, gear, expertise, supplies and to degree up my experience was for nothing! Nice job of alienating your present devoted participant base on a 6-year-old sport & for what,” requested one other fan.
Ubisoft responds to all of the considerations and confusion
Ubisoft’s PR crew on Twitter has been replying to many of those indignant and confused tweets, attempting to clarify that this technique will work nicely for solo gamers and that it’s going to allow them to do extra in future seasons. However the replies don’t appear to be serving to a lot, as most gamers simply reply with much more confusion or anger in regards to the seasonal character system.
The general takeaway I’ve seen from most gamers who’ve invested years of time into The Division 2 is that for the higher a part of a decade, they’ve been capable of play via all seasonal occasions, manhunts, and missions as their essential characters. They usually’re pissed off that, in season two, that gained’t be doable. Ubisoft assured gamers that they’ll nonetheless have the ability to use their essential brokers within the tougher season finale missions, however that did little to assist persuade indignant gamers this can be a good change.
Kotaku has contacted Ubisoft in regards to the roadmap.
For a lot of gamers, myself included, The Division 2 isn’t a sport that we play day by day or week. It’s as an alternative a sport that lots of people come again to for brand new seasons and missions. They play via some new content material, make their essential character even higher, discover some cool loot, and cease enjoying till the following replace. This seasonal character shift is clearly supposed to maintain gamers round longer.
Whereas I get why the devs may need to implement this large change—it lets them design wilder seasons with extra modifiers—it does really feel like Ubisoft has miscalculated what number of Division 2 gamers aren’t trying to grind endlessly again and again every season. In reality, the backlash to this roadmap is so robust that I wouldn’t be shocked if Ubisoft and Large shifted their plans earlier than Yr 6 Season 2 arrives. We will see.
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