Widening the Divide - Ubisoft Punishing Players Who Exploit a Glitch During The Division’s First Boss Battle

On April 12, 2016, Tom Clancy's: The Division received a free content update, the game's first Incursion, titled "Falcon Lost" in which players confronted the Last Man Battalion in a water-treatment facility.

The "Falcon Lost" storyline has two difficulties: Hard mode, which is recommended for players who have a gear score that is equivalent to level 31 or higher; and challenge mode, which is far more difficult. In addition, there are no checkpoints in Falcon Lost; if your team goes down, you'll have to restart from the beginning. This is reminiscent of Destiny's initial Nightfall activities where players were expelled back into Orbit upon a total party wipe (before certain updates were put into effect). Gamers can replay Falcon Lost and other upcoming Incursions as many times as you want and still be rewarded with new loot each playthrough.

Clever participants have discovered a rather unique method of defeating the boss and avoiding several waves of enemies. The process involves using the mobile cover skill to clip through a wall. Doing so prevents the game from registering that players are in the room, meaning a group can fire upon the boss without it retaliating in kind.

Ubisoft's community manager, Natchai Stappers responded to this issue on the game's forums claiming that it's working on a fix for this particular glitch. However, he also mentions that those that took part in the exploit violated Ubisoft's code of conduct. Thus, the developer is "looking into what can be done in terms of punishment" which is, in my mind, not the proper course of action.

When Destiny had an exploit known as the "loot cave" they fixed the issue promptly, and then acknowledged the error by making a tribute to the players for bringing the lack of loot to light. They did this by providing a tribute to Rahool, the Cryptarch of the Tower and official engram decoder. Bungie honored (by the transitive property) the players by creating a special Easter egg. They placed the remains of the countless Hive creatures in the caves and permitted players to "disturb them" with a cryptic message bellowing "A million deaths are not enough for Master Rahool." It was a nice nod to guardians who were shooting at a rock formation for several hours instead of partaking in other, less rewarding activities. What Ubisoft plans on doing is placing unnecessary sanctions upon players for their own negligence.

I believe that players should only be reprimanded if they're utilizing an external device (such as "lag switching") or outside software to give themselves an unfair advantage in competitive play (this includes hacking). I believe also that if they're using profanity or sexually explicit imagery in customizable settings there should be some form of repercussion in place. When the game itself is flawed, players should have free reign until the developer patches it accordingly. Ubisoft is forgetting their role. They set the parameters for the game. If they miss something crucial to the stability of the rules of the game, the blame should lie upon them, not that of the players.If this were Dungeons & Dragons for example, Ubisoft would be the Dungeon Master (DM) setting up the campaign, with the setting and scenarios in place. The players, if they outwit the DM should be praised and rewarded, not chastised. The DM would merely adjust encounters for the next playthrough if the party managed to do something out of the realm of his or her intended guidelines.

This may have a detrimental impact on the Division's fanbase, especially for those that have moved on from Bungie's monumental success. Previously, violators had been handed out a 3-day ban and the matter wasn’t pursued any further. However, Ubisoft can also wipe a player’s stats completely if they so desire, rendering a player's time and effort, worthless.

Works Cited


Ayres, S. (2016, April 16). Ubisoft Will Punish People Who Exploited a Glitch During The Division’s First Boss Battle. Retrieved April 16, 2016, from http://www.gamnesia.com/news/ubisoft-will-punish-people-who-exploited-a-glitch-during-the-divisions-firs

Makedonski, B. (201, April 15). Ubisoft's looking into how to punish people who glitch The Division's toughest new boss. Retrieved April 16, 2016, from http://www.destructoid.com/ubisoft-s-looking-into-how-to-punish-people-who-glitch-the-division-s-toughest-new-boss-355632.phtml

Tom Clancy's: The Division - Together We Rise! or Divided We Fall?

Title: Tom Clancy’s The Division™
Genre: Action, Adventure, Third Person Shooter
Developer: Massive Entertainment
Publisher: Ubisoft
Release Date: Mar 8, 2016

My Rating: 7.0/10.0 Average C


The BETA Test for Tom Clancy’s The Division™ took place on January 28, 2016 - January 31, 2016. I happened to participate in the closed BETA and unfortunately, it was not up to par with my expectations. Although the brief story mission regarding the Memorial Field Hospital drew me in, I was rather uninterested in anything else. I only enjoyed speaking to Kandel after she was rescued about who might be responsible for the weaponized virus.

After you've completed the ONLY available story mission for the first time, you can opt to replay it again on a higher difficulty (which, to me, seems extremely repetitive, monotonous, and reminiscent of Destiny's Raids). Even though this is just the BETA, which doesn't provide enough to really give us a glimpse at how good the rest of the campaign will be, I felt that it was quite "cut-and-dry" in that there was little else to do except wander the Dark-Zones and streets of New York aimlessly. I did manage to complete a virus scan time trial, as well as a side mission for Faye Lau, which is to locate her lost sister, Heather Lau using an "echo" or security surveillance camera information from the cloud, but it felt commonplace and rather dull.

The Dark Zone plays almost exactly like the regular game environment. You are still exploring the area, still looking for additional items and gear to add to your inventory. Occasionally, players run into AI opposition that respawns in certain areas periodically. These enemies are tougher to take down, and thus, their drops are of a higher quality. The only noticeable difference is that these zones become highly contested areas of player versus player combat.

In order to actually use these rarer pieces of gear and weapons, players must make their way to extraction points within the Dark Zone to have these items “decontaminated”. These items are stored in a yellow haz-mat bag on the player once obtained. Once a flare has be shot, the helicopter transport is signaled to arrive. In the meantime, enemy AI is being drawn to the flare and the player(s) defending that position until the chopper comes. Once it arrives, the players put all of their gear onto a rope and send it up. At any point, players can "go rogue" and attack one another to steal loot. Those that do can gain much more experience and "Dark-Zone Dollars" by doing so, but for every kill the rogue agent gets, the higher the bounty rises on that player's head.

"The Seven Deadly Wins" From Left to Right: Delgryn, Valcrith (Me), and TheLoanSurvivor

Often, while patrolling the streets, players can encounter civilians in need of aid. If they happen to have what they're asking for on hand (medkits, water, food, etc), they can offer to give it to them. Not only will the player earn some easy experience points, but these non-player characters (NPCs) will usually drop some sort of reward, often in the form of a new customization item.

I felt that at times, the PvP was a tad one sided, so I tried to avoid engaging with other players and while I myself didn't shoot anyone, one of my teammates made judgement calls that I did not particularly agree with (as you have a lot to lose by going rogue). Irritably enough, I lost quite a bit of experience as I was gunned down after my friend decided haphazardly to shoot up some other Division agents in order to steal their stuff. So, needless to say I wasn't thrilled with the notion that the group leader or any member of the group shooting others causes the whole team to go rogue.


While my playthrough was fairly short (upwards of two to four hours), I got a pretty decent feel for what this game will be like long term. I was rather disappointed in that for such an expansive open world environment, it's not well-stocked with enemies, and the enemies that you do encounter don’t have all that much variety. On the positive side, there are almost no loading screens, no lobbies, and the game looks appealing on a graphical scale.

Regrettably, I no longer have any profound interest in this product. If anything (and perhaps most ironically), Ubisoft has somehow managed to make me more invested in getting my friends involved with Destiny: The Taken King.

The Underrated Underdog Console: Wii U

So the Wii U has been out in the U.S. since November 18, 2012. It's barely even three years old yet and people are tossing it aside like it's not worth making games for...it's gotten to the point where even Nintendo has started to convince themselves that the console is a sinking ship and that everyone should move on to the next project, codenamed: NX.

Developing software for the Wii U is a Catch-22 situation: Publishers and developers seem to think that they will not make much profit on the fledgling console, but by not developing for the system at all, Nintendo will never truly grow outside of their first party franchises.

What irritates and frustrates me the most is that these companies are often providing "half-assed" games when they do decide to contribute to the Wii U library because on the competing platforms (PC, XBOX 360/XBOX ONE and PS3/PS4, respectively) the games have all of their original features intact. As such, players that pick up a copy of the game for the Wii U are not getting the full value of what they initially paid for.

Warner Bros. for instance, did not include an online multiplayer mode for Batman Arkham Origins, while Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Blacklist has an online multiplayer mode, but no local split screen co-op.

Granted, this isn't the first instance of companies applying this "laissez-faire" (or "do-nothing") type of approach to Nintendo's platform. However, this practice has become far worse due to the sheer number of companies hopping on this informal policy bandwagon.

Treyarch, (and by the transitive property, Activision) in my opinion, is one of the worst offenders of this nonchalant apathy towards Nintendo and is guilty of making false promises on more than one occasion. This was evident during the Wii era with Call of Duty: Black Ops lack of DLC (although, that console's limitations were clearly evident) and with Call of Duty: Black Ops II on the Wii U now. It took Treyarch two years after the game was released to develop the Nuketown 2025 map, which was long overdue. Call of Duty: Ghosts by Infinity Ward in comparison managed to finally get the Freefall map several months after the other consoles received it.

Ubisoft proved that DLC was possible on Nintendo's latest hardware by offering transactions for Assassin's Creed III. Sources reported however, that these options would not be available for the latest installment of the franchise, Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag.

On a much more positive note, Ubisoft creative director Jonathan Morin had briefly discussed his latest title, Watch_Dogs, stating in an interview with CVG (ComputerAndVideoGames) that it is "...a beautiful game on Wii U and it's cool to play it just on the GamePad". In addition a comparison between that version and the other on PS3 and XBOX 360 was made of Morin and he claimed that "On the Wii U, you can play on the GamePad screen. There are no new features or anything like that - it's the same game, but we're optimizing the controls for the beast that is the Wii U GamePad".

So there is some hope for the Wii U considering that a few (if not many) games will have all of the bells and whistles that the other platforms come with naturally. (You can read the conversation in its entirety here.)

That's not to say that all of the blame is on the third-party developers. Au contraire! Nintendo has not exactly done an optimal job of generating public awareness of what the Wii U actually is, or what it is capable of either. Initially, many folks believed it to be an add-on to the existing Wii console (perhaps due to the name). Thus, perhaps folks viewed it as an unnecessary peripheral rather than an entirely new home console.

The sad thing is that most companies are advertising that their games will be on "next-gen" consoles, but they deliberately exclude the Wii U. As such, it's fallen into this abstract, unknown, unspoken category.

How can Nintendo get back on top? I would suggest just belting out as many games as possible. There has been a positive shift since Mario Kart 8 was released and even moreso with Super Smash Bros. Wii U. Hopefully, with the sales of the Amiibo figures, profits gained from those sales can apply to some of Nintendo's major financial losses.

How this information will affect other publisher and developer opinions remains to be determined, but it does not bode well in this economic climate. On one last positive note, Nintendo's latest intellectual property, Splatoon for the Wii U is doing quite well as a third person shooter. It's a game where characters known as "Inklings"— beings that can transform between humanoid and squid-like forms, hide or swim through colored ink sprayed on surfaces using gun or brush-based weaponry. The object of the game is not to score points via kills, but through covering territory with the most amount of ink. It's a game that has become quite popular despite the sluggish sales of the home consoles themselves.

We as gamers need to be patient and keep watching to ensure that Nintendo gets its fair share of publicity and we need to stop treating it like the third political party in an election. The more competition between the three major competing companies, the lower the prices will be for the consumer.