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Who is Chris? A developer?
I'm a Community Developer on The Division 2. I'm part of the community team and lead the community efforts together with Johan in the Massive studio.
The open world is neat, but it needs to keep up with the power creep. Underground did that with its modifiers to keep things challenging even for classified sets, Survival didn't have to deal with power creep thanks to an isolated environment, but the open world is getting increasingly trivial. Lv4 control points have turned from challenges into loot grinding spots, and normal encounters are just nuisances at this point.
I just used the Open World as an example of what we think has worked well for The Division 2. Not in direct comparison to Survival or Underground. I really like what you're saying about the power creep and the isolated instance of Survival. These mini details about why you liked these modes are awesome, they help us bring more diverse feedback about what you enjoy to the devs.
No survival just ruined it for me on sotg. Yes ‘hardcore’ is similar in way but I shouldn’t have to sacrifice a character for it. Went back and played it on D1 the other day and was just the same fun and tense situations. Saw a group of yellow 30’s way too early and ran like wuss. Could have made it work in DC, dehydrated status, virus, power outages which require the flashlight attachment. Plenty of new ways to revamp the gameplay but nah, screw it.
Hardcore is not meant to be a substitute for Survival. It's a side project some devs here made and we think it's fun but it's definitely not a "here, have this Survival light".
While some players definitely would enjoy Survival in D.C. a lot, we also want to do something else. As said on Discord, we don't nail it every time but we won't stop trying.
I understand that, and I plan on digging in deep on it. But when making a sequel of sorts game modes that people play should be carried over based on community request and playtime.
The playtime doesn't necessarily speak for Survival for example. The players that really dig Survival play it a lot. But overall it wasn't super popular in terms of player amount.
That being said, you also have to take into context that there was a lot of different things to do in the game. We're not disregarding that.
I don’t mean to troll or be an ass but Division 2 is a dying game with really no well thought out endgame and literally thrown together pvp. Pathetic and I’m ready for this game to disappear sorry.
Thanks for the feedback. We don't have plans to make the game disappear anytime soon and we have a lot of players that enjoy playing right now. We understand that there are a bunch of things we can do better and we'll always try to improve.
While it'll take a little more time to talk about Episode 3 and beyond, it's coming and we're excited about doing more content for the game.
"Community Developer" is such a horrible misnomer. I do not why Massive insist on referring to their community managers as "developers". You make no design decisions, you do not create anything ingame and you do not code. You only act to summarize and feed information to the actual designers and developers. This is not a developer role at all and should not be called such.
Edit: Just because you smash that downvote button, it doesn't mean I am not right. Companies such as Blizzard do not call their community managers "developers", so why should Massive? it's misleading.
Just to clarify, we also have Community Managers in Ubisoft. The Community Developers work from the studio, while the CMs work in the CRCs, for example in Newcastle and North Carolina.
While we don't code the game we do influence decisions on the design by bringing your feedback to the team. One example would be the negative attributes on attachments were changed based on community feedback we brought to the team.
But I also agree with you, titles in the gaming industry are generally pretty vague and don't give a full picture. I worked at Blizzard before and the titles didn't really make that much sense either.
I felt like that development time could have been put towards making some more mission instead of giving us a mode no one asked for. I feel that you guys have drop the ball seriously when it came to episode 1&2 content wise and I feel like this was a last ditch to show you guys are working on something before you dissapeared for the holidays. Division 1 had it problem but man it had alot of stuff for keep us occupied during year 1 then the division 2.
I don't think it's fair to compare this mode to new missions. The amount of work is vastly different. Just talking about new environments for the missions is way more work than the mode.
The reality is, we need time to make the content people are asking for. We think Hardcore Mode is a small feature we are able to support right now and can develop with the community involved.
Just look at how far the second raid got delayed. That's a clear sign that resources were already pulled from The Division 2 development because the game's numbers are obviously too low to warrant a bigger investment. It's the second game in a row with a disappointing launch & year one, so I wouldn't expect too much from the franchise in general going forward.
They definitely won't invest a lot of resources into completely new features and game modes. They will deliver the stuff that was prepared for year one anyway, and then you will get some little side projects like hardcore mode. Probably with as many stupid oversights like not having stash access in a looter game.
Side note: I think it's funny how they talk about low numbers for a game mode when it's convenient for the narrative on the current game but at the same time have no problem lying about "a lot of players" in the live game. That's the dishonest and manipulative games industry in a nutshell for you.
We're fully committed to the game. We also don't have content lying around that we're just keeping to publish later on. We're actively working on Episode 3 and will do more work afterwards.
And I'm bringing up the player numbers for Survival because it influenced our decision if we want to make these modes or not. It's not to hide anything or make people feel different about either game.
We don't have plans to make the game disappear anytime soon and we have a lot of players that enjoy playing right now.
Can you define "a lot"? Because from here it looks like the game is borderline dead by all metrics publicly available.
We have never communicated player numbers and I won't start now on a reddit thread. It's alive enough for us to continue our commitment. We don't have reason to abandon The Division 2.
We're fully committed to the game.
That statement is so washed out and overused by your industry that it has lost all its meaning.
We also don't have content lying around that we're just keeping to publish later on. We're actively working on Episode 3 and will do more work afterwards.
I haven't said "content lying around", I said "prepared". And I know for a fact that DLC content gets worked on way before the launch of a game in most studios. I have no reason to believe that this is different with Massive.
And I'm bringing up the player numbers for Survival because it influenced our decision if we want to make these modes or not.
Almost every decision around this game has been poor & confusing for your player base, so I recommend you reconsider your decision making process, or the decision makers rather.
I haven't said "content lying around", I said "prepared". And I know for a fact that DLC content gets worked on way before the launch of a game in most studios. I have no reason to believe that this is different with Massive.
I think you misunderstand how development works. Content is indeed worked on in advance as the development cycle is a long process. In a simplified way, an update might be "ready" a month before its release but that's when it goes through QC testing, finishing touches, bug fixes, balancing and eventually the approval process to first parties.
Once the update gets the final "go" is when we have an actual release date.
Since an update might be more or less content complete I.E. a month in advance, artists, game designers coders etc... move on to the next update unless their help is needed for final tweaks.
This is how content gets produced in the industry.
We have never communicated player numbers and I won't start now on a reddit thread.
Of course you won't because transparency is only valued when it works in favor of your narrative, like "low" player numbers of Survival.
I didn't use exact player numbers for Survival either. If somebody, as a player, thinks there are too little people playing this game and that affects them, totally understood. We, as a studio, have our own measurement and commitments to the franchise. We are continuing to create content.
We, as a studio, have our own measurement and commitments to the franchise
You, as a representative of said studio, have an interest to publicly save face for your employer first of all. So every statement must be taken with a grain of salt anyway.
Sure, I'm not here to bash the game. But as the CEO of Ubisoft has said, sales were lower than expected. We don't shy away to say when things aren't great but I also want to assure everybody that we have not at all given up on this game.