INQUISITR.COM / Entertainment

‘Tom Clancy’s The Division’ PS4’s 1.5 Update Now Available — Player Numbers On The Rise, Will ‘Survival’ DLC And Beyond Show Promise?

By Tony Smejek
Published on: 05:44 PST, Nov 30, 2016

Tom Clancy’s The Division PlayStation 4 owners can rejoice now that the 1.5 patch is available for their console. Although it’s been released for all platforms, the Survival DLC won’t be available for PS4 until December. That being said, PlayStation 4 owners more than likely have been keeping a watchful eye on those who already have the expansion, and the numbers are doing well for Ubisoft.

The company behind The Division did well by hearing feedback from their players/customers. Vice President of Live Operations Anne Blondel-Jouin weighed in not only on the open-world game but others as well, according to the International Business Times.

Although the Tom Clancy game had a successful initial launch when it released earlier this year, there had been complaints of hackers, undesirable end-game scenarios, and glitches. This resulted in a loss of engagement, and this allowed for Ubisoft to take action to get up off the mat and find a way to make The Division great again.

There were even delays in the Survival DLC back in August to allow for content to be reworked in their game and patch up the issues that had been running amok. VG 24/7 reported the list of improvements that justified the 1.4 and Survival delay.

  • 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)

Now, The Division’s Survival expansion made the gaming environment very interesting, intense, and challenging by depriving its Division agents of basic resources with an exposure to a harsh environment, including the pressure of beating the clock before keeling over from an infection.

Blondel-Jouin made note of the acknowledgment that the development team had to accept.

“It’s hard when you’re a dev team to acknowledge that you failed because you want to provide gamers with the best all the time and it was hard on us because we had to push back the DLC that fans were already clamoring for. We had to take that decision because we knew it was best for the gamers. It took a lot of discussion internally and courage to say, okay, we’re going to be disappointing the gamers because we’re not going to be providing as early as we should, but in the end it will be for the best.”

Tom Clancy’s The Division 1.5 and previous patches proceeded the Survival delay, but not without significant improvements having been made. Anne had mentioned that since the 1.4 update, active users increased significantly, according to the Bit Bag.

“Since the release of patch 1.4, we went back to the daily active users we had at launch, because people were [so impressed].”

This statement was later updated, impressing upon the fact that the numbers “are trending back in a positive direction.”

A decision was made between just coming out with additional content or putting on the brakes. The latter gave time to reprocess the issues and work to resolve them. After the delay, Ubisoft/Massive would come back in full force with satisfying results.

The Division players who received the Survival DLC and 1.5 patch were given accolades for contributing to the improvement process even though there was a bit of a disappointment on their end by not receiving the new content until later.

The Division’s The Last Stand expansion is the next in the DLC line-up by Massive, so hopefully Ubisoft’s new stance on listening to customers will bode well on future projects.

[Featured Image by Ubisoft]

Share this article: ‘Tom Clancy’s The Division’ PS4’s 1.5 Update Now Available — Player Numbers On The Rise, Will ‘Survival’ DLC And Beyond Show Promise?
More from Inquisitr