Six months after launching the game, they posted info about The Division Update 1.4 on their official Steam Group, Survival, and Last Stand patch.
This is what they say:
The Division has been out for almost six months, and what an incredible half year it’s been! Through regular game updates, a first expansion, and weekly patches, we have put a lot of energy into constantly improving the game. While these efforts have allowed us to bring more gameplay variety, the overall experience has been affected by lingering issues that have accumulated since release.
With Update 1.4 in the works, it has become apparent with your feedback and our observations that our priority should now be on improving the core gameplay experience. For this reason, we have made several adjustments to our development schedule: Update 1.4 will be released in October independently from Survival and will focus entirely on bug fixing, game balancing, and other improvements. Survival, the second expansion that was initially planned for release with Update 1.4 is now postponed to a later date this year. The third expansion, Last Stand, will be released in early 2017. This new schedule will not only enable us to strengthen the core experience before adding new content but also continuously improve it by allowing for more production time to ensure the quality of future updates as well.
Our focus for update 1.4 and beyond will be on the following:
- Fixing bugs, including those listed in our Known Issues as well as many other ones
- Making loot drops more relevant to the player
- Enemy difficulty and time to kill
- Gear Sets and weapons balancing
- Solo player experience
- Dark Zone and PvP balancing
- Quality of life additions based on community suggestions (such as weapon skins no longer taking inventory space)
This ongoing effort will begin with Update 1.4 where we will address some of the most pressing issues, such as bugs, loot and time to kill and set the foundations for future improvements such as PvP and Dark Zone. We will make sure to keep you informed of our progress in our weekly State of the Game and share the complete overview of the changes to come in Update 1.4 in a Special Report live stream on September 13th.
We want to take this opportunity to thank you, our community, for being so openly passionate about the game. Our passion is what unites us and allows us to build a better game together! We remain committed to delivering the best experience possible, and will continuously be looking for your feedback as we shape the future of The Division.
Stay awesome, The Division Team
PS: We have prepared an FAQ for more details
Our Opinion on The Division Update 1.4
FIxing bugs, including those listed in our known issues as well as many other ones
We think that fixing bugs should be their number one priority. They should not make the same mistake like after releasing the first patch. I do not know what happened with the cheaters in the game after the last patch. People went crazy. Glitching, hacking, doing stuff that eradicated the game. These things should not be happening, and Massive should open their eyes wide.
Making loot drops more relevant to the player
Does loot drop according to the spec of the player? Sure, why not, this could be a significant improvement for the player’s experience. But, there is a little problem over here. What if the player has one spec and gear, and he would love to grab some other equipment. What if he is farming the new gear while using the same equipment he got by playing on the previous patch? Still, they need to make this a little bit more clear.
Enemy difficulty and time to kill
We do hope they are going to make something like Frenzy time, make the boss go rage if they do not destroy it on time. This could make the game a little bit more laborious, which means it will be more exciting and will push the community to work like never before. This could be interesting, we do agree with this.
Gear Set and Weapon Balancing
Even tho they tried this before, they will still fail, a new meta will come up that will be stronger than everything else. They will fail again on this, 99% sure, which means the patch after this will be a new balancing for sure. But, they can entirely balance the sets. At least that should be easier to do. They should ignore the weapon balancing and go for the sets first. You cannot balance two things at the same time.
Solo Player Experience
This is going to be a beautiful thing. What we assume is they are going to change the NPC’s health higher, according to your gear score of course.
Dark Zone and PVP Balancing
The only thing you can balance in the dark zone is making it party vs. party and solo vs. solo? If they do this, they will achieve a lot. Maybe I will give this game one more try if this thing becomes a reality.
Quality of life additions based on community suggestions (such as weapon skins no longer taking inventory space)
Thanks for listening to us Massive, this point of the patch is one of the best I have ever seen. Like we said before, the game community makes the game awesome, not the other way around. God bless you on this one, and we still hope that you are going to make this game even more fun.
So, according to everything we’ve analyze, this patch should be the right thing. But, we still do not know if they are going to balance this game as they say. We guess time will tell, so let’s wait, relax and see what comes up after the patch release.
