Ubisoft, though, appears to be doing its best to quieten the doubters. In just a few days, The Division beta will begin on Xbox One (it heads to PC and PS4 a day later) giving the company a chance to nip any issues in the bud. However, Ubisoft has now revealed that The Division alpha (hosted in December) also led to some serious bug-busting.
In a post on the Ubisoft forums, a Ubisoft community manager explains that thousands of people played The Division alpha during the three days of testing and the team “received countless valuable comments and suggestions and started working on them directly.” Moreover, “the team has been hard at work fixing many bugs, but also implementing some changes that should help provide an even better experience during Closed Beta.”
Some of these fixes include improved language support (English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Japanese), user interface improvements for readability and usability, important NPC and weapon balancing, and the addition of a new Dark Zone gate to the “Beta Map” area. In addition, “more than 10,000 bugs have been fixed”, including broken textures, floating characters and weapons, mission objectives not completing correctly and character loading getting stuck at 95%."
While fans will be glad to see that these game-breaking bugs have been fixed (the community manager also says that “many of the most reported bugs” from the alpha have been zapped), that’s not the only reason they’ll be smiling. The fact that the developer has managed to clear over 10,000 bugs off its slate could mean that the team can get to post-launch content a lot quicker.
Not only has it been announced that The Division won’t feature Brooklyn at launch, but it won’t include item trading either. And while the decision to leave out Brooklyn was story-based, item trading was ditched due to the “priority of different features.” With the game’s creative associate director saying that they recognize fan passion and it could make an appearance in future, a smooth beta (and a smooth launch too) could see this added sooner rather than later.
Tom Clancy’s The Division releases March 8, 2016 for PS4, Xbox One and PC.
Source: Ubisoft Forums
