Tom Clancy’s The Division has been having a rough go of it lately, with cheaters and exploiters toppling its endgame balance and leaving legit players feeling burned. In a new post on the company blog, Ubisoft Massive has outlined new detection methods and increased punishments for cheaters and exploiters alike.
“We have great plans for the future of The Division, and for these to succeed we must make sure to provide a smooth high-quality experience,” they write. “Unfortunately, the gameplay experience was recently impaired by in-game bugs and players violating the rules of the game. In order to bring back a better and healthier environment, we have taken new steps to address the situation.”
First they address the use of external cheat engines, which had become a larger and larger problem for PC players over the last couple of weeks.
Cheating players have been an issue for a number of you in the Dark Zone, and we’ve heard this feedback loud and clear. We are strengthening our efforts to address this problem, as described below.
First, we have implemented new cheat detection methods that have allowed us to identify many more players currently using cheat engines in the game. We have already caught more cheaters in the last few days than we had in total during the previous weeks. As a result, we will be handing out the biggest wave of suspensions and bans to date over the course of the next few days.
Second, when cheaters are caught, we will now apply a suspension of 14 days on first offence (instead of the previous 3 day initial suspension). Second offence will always be a permanent ban.
We anticipate these two changes will noticeably improve your experience. New upgrades on cheat detection are underway.
Next they talk about exploits, which is a trickier subject.
What is a bug exploit?
An exploit is the active triggering and use of a bug or glitch to bypass established game rules in order to gain a significant advantage or skip progression steps otherwise necessary.
Identifying and fixing bugs before releasing new content is one of the most important parts of game development. This is also the best way to guarantee a smooth and enjoyable experience for our players. Learning from the past and your great feedback, we are currently reviewing our development and testing process to further minimise the amount and impact of these bugs going forward.
Unfortunately, we cannot simulate the experience that millions of different players will have, and how they will play the game. As a result, some bugs may make it through testing, and may be present when an update is deployed. In the event that a bug makes it into the game, and this bug can be used by players to gain an advantage, we need to be able to react and fix it, but also dissuade players from exploiting this bug until it is fixed. This is why moving forward we will adopt a stronger stance against players abusing exploits.
Our first step is to give you clearer and more concrete visibility. Should new bugs be discovered, we will quickly confirm if these are considered exploits. All known exploits will be clearly listed in a public forum thread and across our various communication platforms. We want all players to be informed. This will ensure that those caught after an exploit was confirmed are aware of the consequences and actions that can be taken against them.
Second, sanctions will be implemented for players who repeatedly abuse exploits and will vary depending on the severity of the abuse, as well as the history of the player. Possible sanctions include character rollbacks, account suspensions and permanent bans. Those who encounter bugs during the normal course of play have absolutely nothing to worry about.
As mentioned earlier, providing a high-quality experience is our priority. Fixing game bugs is one aspect of it, and we are improving our processes to address that. Dissuading players from impairing others’ gameplay by violating the rules of the game is another aspect. We also want to give you better visibility and transparency. We are fully committed to providing an enjoyable and fair environment for all our players, and will take all steps necessary to achieve this goal.
That approach to exploits sounds a bit loosey-goosey, particularly the idea that they can inform players that a given exploit is now off limits, then go forward with the understanding that players “have been warned”. I could see that leading to a culture of paranoia among the community, where no one’s sure if a given trick or tactic has been tagged by Massive or if it might result in a rollback, suspension or ban. Then again, if you’re the sort of player who quickly finds out about and tries the latest exploits, you’re probably also the sort of player who’s aware enough to see when Massive labels it as such.
As with most things related to The Division, only time will tell how well it will work. My optimism and patience for the game have dwindled for a variety of reasons — mostly unrelated to cheats and exploits — but I’d love to see The Division and its community get back on an even keel.
Comments
8 responses to “Ubisoft Says They’re Getting Tougher On Division Cheaters”
The division won’t be fixed on PC anytime soon, hacks/exploits will just keep being found. They need to significantly rewrite how the game operates (far to much client side processing). It doesn’t help that they also embraced exploits with the bullet king as that set a terrible precedent. Moving forward to the incursion people exploited the fuck out of that getting months (years?) worth of 240 gear in hours.
This game really is the best example of the mmo mantra – exploit early, exploit often. Those that didn’t got punished severely.
check http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/04/analysis-the-division-may-need-complete-rewrite-to-fix-hacking-problems/
The division, a group of individuals who act as the last line of defence between society and chaos… is now causing all the chaos.
I have been thinking a lot about this this morn
why is there way over average of cheaters?
why temptation is a human trait and we will never get rid of cheaters (why did god make the forbidden fruit)
prevention is the best method — dont blame the child make the lighter childproof
I dont cheat in games (cheating yourself) but I think this blame should be on the developers and not the kids being punished/banned
The problem is this style of game though. There are no guarantees of loot drops. Yes some people can be happy to spend 100 hours trying to get the best gear, but if someone told you could do it in 20 hours, tell me one person that would rather do it in 100.
The whole part about repetitive games to get what you want/need just screams shortcuts. I agree with you, the developers themselves have caused this problem, by not giving good enough progression at an easier rate. They are basically asking you to do the same thing over and over again for the ‘chance’ of something better, and if you find a way to get it quicker, you are the problem.
An online game where players are funneled into a rigid stacked system where their time is wasted by an extra, unnecessary amount, in order to ‘progress’ (and prop up ‘players currently online’ figures) , purely because that’s how a developer wants it, is not fun.
As a developer you have to hit the sweet spot for time spent/advancement by understanding your own game and where it’s relevance/importance in the market/gamesphere.
Ubisoft clearly doesn’t get it.
Its Atmospheric Bullet Sponge Simulator 2016 anyway, no big deal 😛
I just want there to be more to do at end game than just PvP.
Sure, there’s the daily quests and such, but the rewards they offer pale in comparison to what you can get from the Dark Zone.
They really should have a PvE version of the Dark Zone available for those that don’t want to be forced into doing PvP.
I have to say that I’m with @comixfan above about more end game stuff to do. Whilst I’m not against PvP, and I think it should absolutely be part of the game, very little has been done to ensure that the PvP area is equal for all people.
Once you hit a gear score of over 161, you get chucked in with people that have the best of the best gear, and at a GS of 162, you may as well run around with no armour on at all. People will of course say to just hang around DZ01 – DZ03 until you get better gear, but you don’t get that much good gear from those zones, and there is nothing stopping high level people running around there as well. Yesterday I was in DZ02 with a GS of 184 and some dude with GS of 221 just ran buy and melted me like a level 25 purple, I was by myself as the only people I could match make with must have been playing on a server on Mars because the lag was Horrendous.
So for someone like myself, In terms of end game content, I am left to run the daily Hards and Challenge, which never give me any better gear than I already have, so all I’m getting out of it is a small amount of phoenix credits and a few mats from breaking stuff down. 40 minutes later when they’re done its the DZ or just turn it off. DZ means running around Solo because nobody seems to be on Matchmaking for it and when I do get 1 they are in EU with horrible lag, then I’m pretty much forced (figuratively speaking) to stick to DZ01-03 to grind the bosses, again for gear that’s no good for anything but scrapping plus a few phoenix credits, and even then I get melted by rogues and barely extract anything.
I would absolutely support a PVE version of the DZ, or maybe you could just select on the way in if you want to be able to pvp or not. If you select PVE, you appear as green to the PvPers and you can’t shoot each other or go rogue or anything. Probably a boring solution but at least people like me can grind some bosses and get good enough gear before I go into the PVP. Plus it allows legit players to catch up to the glitchers before trying to compete.
I agree with crackafruity! I was just playing solo in DZ1 & 2 this past Saturday and only to be melted by some one during extraction with GS of 99. And also melted again by someone pretending to be friendly with a GS of 99. Why are they allowed to be in DZ1,2,3 with a GS of 99. What could they actually need at that level? Those with a high DZ GS should not be allowed past DZ4 and those with a low DZ GS should not be allowed into DZ level 4,5 & 6. Not until they have reached that level.