Tuesday was supposed to herald the beginning of a new chapter for Ubisoft's "The Division," with players having been enticed with the promise of new content, new weapons and various bug fixes for the past few weeks. The promised day has come and gone, and while players have certainly been gifted with new content and weapons, the same can't be said for the bug fixes.
On the contrary, these bugs might even be worse than before and allude to a greater problem: Ubisoft and developer Massive can't seem to get their priorities straight.
Beforehand, Massive had promised to punish people who were reported and caught cheating. This was perfectly in line with past actions as well, as the developer has made a habit of removing exploits quite quickly. It was more of the same come Tuesday when players discovered that completing the daily Challenge mode gifted them with four high-end drops, instead of the one guaranteed drop for killing a named enemy that was expected. Massive kept true to its word and swiftly killed it with a headshot.
Fair enough, but that same level of vigor that was applied to this situation should have been brought to three other bugs which are far more serious, the first of which were mass character deletions on Xbox One, resulting in hundreds of hours lost. It might be unreasonable to expect a fix for this so soon, but it seems outrageous that it took less than a night to fix a minor bug but no headway has been made in fixing a bug that prevents a large percentage of the community from playing.
The next glitch comes with the new mission, "Falcon Lost." As you might remember, "Falcon Lost" is similar to horde mode that you would see in other games, where players are tasked with fighting 15 waves of enemies with no checkpoints. The mission works well enough, but everything will go downhill if someone leaves your team of four, as there is no way for others to take their place. Those who try will find themselves stuck in a loop that could last up to 20 minutes before being kicked out of the group. Simply put, matchmaking once "Falcon Lost" has started doesn't work.
The third glitch takes us back to where we began: Challenge mode. Massive killed the mode off but forgot to incorporate a respawn mechanic, and now the mode is gone entirely. Granted, the official Twitter account for "The Division" says the mode will be back tomorrow, but the mode shouldn't have been removed to begin with - even if it was accidental.
We are aware of the missing Daily Challenge mode. While we won’t be able to fix it today, we can confirm that it will be back tomorrow
— The Division (@TheDivisionGame) April 13, 2016
These are just the more serious problems that "The Division" is faced with after Tuesday. There are reports of crashes and disconnections, but those are the standard affair in MMOs.
In time, these will all certainly be fixed and everyone can go back to fighting looters in New York. However the situation begs the question of what Massive's priorities are. It fixed a minor bug while leaving serious ones to be fixed at an undisclosed date. If it takes as long as the infamous backpack glitch to fix, then fans have a tough road ahead of them.
