In the upcoming online shooter The Division, updates and DLCs are currently being worked on. The aim is to avoid the impression that something has been cut from the game.
In an interview with Gamespot, Ubisoft Massive’s Creative Director, Magnus Jansen, spoke about the plans for the game. The questions aimed at: “When you lift such a franchise off the ground, you surely have many plans for the future. Do you have stuff ready that you want to bring out later?”
The Creative Director was rather defensive in his responses. He stated that whether planning a franchise or a single game is the same. The goal is always to create a living world. If that is achieved, ideas for further parts come as if by themselves. And with The Division, that has been accomplished.
The Creative Director wants to dispel concerns that The Division has been fragmented to have material for sequels. With The Division, nothing is held back. Everything that is available goes into the first game.
So far, everything has been given for the base game, only recently did paid DLCs begin
Only now, as the base game is completed, has there been an increased focus on working on updates and the DLCs. Everything is not yet set in stone to be able to respond to player feedback. Until very, very recently, all of this had only been ideas. Only when the development of the main game was nearing completion did the focus shift more towards the DLCs and updates.
As a distinction between updates and DLCs, the Massive guy says: Updates mean “free game content”; DLC refers to paid content. They are working on both.
Does that mean nothing comes shortly after launch? Well …
My MMO believes: It is interesting how cautiously The Division must step to avoid every pitfall that lurks along the way.
Two years ago, when The Elder Scrolls Online was released as an MMORPG with a subscription model, it was entirely logical that the developers already had entire zones and contents ready and held them back to bring them into the game after a month or later. Those who wanted to play had to have a subscription in the second and third month as well. With World of Warcraft one goes the same way and makes no secret of it. No player is upset that the second raid tier does not come at the launch of an expansion, but only half a year later.
In MMORPGs, it is undisputed how important it is to keep feeding the game with updates after release, providing players with new activities for the maximum level. If developers started programming and creating these only shortly before the deadline, a boring phase without new content would be inevitable shortly after release.
With the much younger Destiny , it was quickly clear that quite a bit was already in the drawer and more or less finished – it would have been impossible to launch the thing between release and the first DLC in such a short time. But exactly this behavior, where Destiny had content “on the disc” but not “unlocked yet,” brought the MMO shooter bad press and cast it in a negative light. The word “rip-off” circulated. There are rumors that have not been dispelled to this day.
In Star Wars Battlefront , fans threw their hands over their heads when EA spoke of “4 DLCs in the first year”: So those are the features we miss in the base game – such was the tenor.
Apparently, they want to avoid all these troubles with The Division.
Trained by the controversy of single-player titles “You exclude this and that and sell us that extra for additional money,” they seem to want to avoid this impression at all costs with The Division. It should not look like they already have something in the drawer. If it is indeed true that they have only recently started working on “updates and DLCs,” that could mean for The Division: After the release, there will be a while with nothing.
The scenario seems quite unlikely to us. After all, they are already selling a season pass. They surely wouldn’t refund the money if they couldn’t deliver after all…
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