Additional details on the upcoming loot and crafting changes in The Division’s first big update have been released by Ubisoft. The changes might’ve come as something of a shock to the members of the game’s community, after a month of adapting to its existing systems, but the explanation for this month’s rebalance should make sense to most Division players.
Earlier this week, Massive published patch notes for The Division Update 1.1; an upcoming patch that will deliver the game’s first incursion mission, a variety of gameplay-related changes and dozens of bug fixes. One of the planned changes that’s drawn a fair amount of attention from the community is Massive’s plan to adjust the means by which players are acquiring most of their high-end loot. Previously, crafting has served as the primary means of acquiring the game’s best gear. But that will be changing next week, when Update 1.1 goes live, and Massive has a pretty solid explanation for the change.
“The Division is primarily a RPG. As such, gearing up your character is one of the main aspects and incentives to keep playing the game once the story missions are completed and max level is reached,” the dev team wrote. They added,“The way our crafting feature is designed is to offer an alternative for players to temporarily complete their gear, by crafting missing pieces of their level. For End-Game we want crafting and our different in-game economies to provide reliable but slower source of gear compared to loot dropped from named enemies.”
According to the studio, nearly half of all the high-end gear currently floating around The Division community was acquired via crafting. Players have even been buying high-end gear from vendors more frequently than they’ve been acquiring it from named NPCs -- a trend which has worn out its welcome with some corners of the community -- and the dev team is finally addressing the issue.
For more information on the changes coming to The Division later this month, head over to the official Division website and/or read the Update 1.1 patch notes.
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