Patch notes for Ubisoft’s open beta for their early-March shooter The Division have some good news for those who tried the game’s recent closed beta and saw some flaws in its promising quasi-player-vs-player Dark Zone section.
The notes indicate, among other things, that the Dark Zone will have more enemies and give a little more feedback about which fellow players you should be wary of.
The highlights:
- “Non-Player Enemies in the DarkZone have been significantly increased in number.”
- “A new warning icon has been added to indicate an Agent who has shot another player but has not done enough damage to go Rogue.”
That should help with the main complaints we had and saw coming out of that first beta.
To catch those of you up who haven’t played: the main part of The Division involves the player patrolling the streets of New York City shortly after a bio-chemical terrorist attack. Streets are fairly empty. Rioters roam the avenues of Manhattan. You take cover and do a lot of shooting. You can roam in co-op and collect loot as you shoot, which is one of the reasons the game is drawing comparisons to Bungie’s popular shooter Destiny.
The game’s most interesting may well be the Dark Zone, which encompasses sections of virtual NYC that allow players who encounter each other to team up or, if they’re more devious, shoot each other. Shooting other players, rather than helping them, is called going rogue. It triggers a bounty system but also is a risky but rewarding way to grab loot from other players.
You can find out more about that in our impressions of the first beta, but what you’ll also find in various articles and comments sections about The Division are complaints that the Dark Zone was too desolate and too inscrutable in terms of who was friend or foe. These changes address that.
The open beta starts on February 18 for Xbox One players, a day later for those on PS4 and PC. It will run through February 21.
It’s always nice when a beta isn’t just marketing and leads to improvements, no?
Full patch notes below:
Comments
15 responses to “Here’s What’s Changing For The Division’s Second Beta”
Holy crap, that’s a good sized change log! At least it shows they’re listening and pretty well on top of what people want.
I’m kind of amazed that they managed to target basically every high profile complaint/bug/tweak that came out of the closed beta. Should be interesting to see if this makes for a better game or just raises tonnes of new problems.
This is actually what happens in most betas, but Ubisoft are just being transparent about it and communicating it better, which is a great thing!
… Massive*
Damn, Ubi/Massive are really doing a good job listening to the community so far, plus just staying on top of bugs/fixes in general. They did the same after the Alpha, so this hopefully bodes well for the full game!
Very encouraging for those of us eagerly awaiting release day
Does anyone know if you will retain your characters from the closed beta earlier this month?
Nah, nothing carries over 🙁 I think I remember them sayign that we’ll get something for participating in the beta though, but will probably just be a cosmetic unlock
This game just keeps growing on me, this level of support and attention has me very impressed.
Not going to do any of the new missions though, wanting to save it all for the full release 🙂 will just hit the DZ with some mates I think
Thank god they patched the invis player bug, my team reckt and got reckt because of it
Does anyone know if we’ll be able to play this with our friends? Or is it just random matchmaking for now?
I was able to party up with my friends but i believe you can only have 4 agents
I actually found a group of 6 – 2 groups of 3 playing together. It looks as though, unlike Destiny, the game will preference friends into the same servers increasing the co-op factor. I hope it’s true as it will reduce a lot of the griefing we saw in the closed BETA.
going to kill the shit out of anyone and anything.
can get division gold edition from aregntina for $50 >:D