User:OceanHok/sandbox/others

Development

The game was developed by Massive Entertainment in collaboration with Ubisoft Reflections, Red Storm Entertainment, and Ubisoft's studios in Annecy, Paris, Bucharest and Shanghai. Evaluating the feedback from players regarding the first game, the team included more game content at launch and improve the endgame. The game's endgame development was prioritized, which was surprised by how quickly players consumed the base game of The Division and was left with nothing to do. The end game was therefore, designed to be more robust and further enhance the game's replayability. Black Tusks invasion offered a different set of challenges when compared with the main game, being more lethal and coordinated than the game's other three factions. The team also listened to the wishes of the community, introducing more character customization options, and post-launch updates introduced in the first game were available at launch. The game world was also designed to be more lived in, with emergent events that players can trigger simply by exploring the game's world. To set The Division 2 apart from the first game in the series, Massive Entertainment and Ubisoft spent part of the development process revamping the game's weapons based on player feedback. The development team also spent a great deal of time reworking the game's mod system, alongside class specializations.

The Division 2 is set in Washington DC, and Massive described the game's map as an one-to-one recreation of the city. The team utilized the Geographic Information System and lidar data to create the floor plan of the in-game map. Massive once explored other settings such as Seattle and New Orleans. The team added that Washington DC offered a diverse set of environments, allowing players to engage in more varied firefights. The Division 2 has six biomes, as opposed to only two in its predecessor. Unlike the city blocks of New York City, the spaces in Washington DC was designed to be more open and spacious. The new city landscape also prompts the team to improve the enemy artificial intelligence which can now utilize the terrain to their advantage, flanking the player and generally behave more aggressively. The diverse environment also enabled for more varied level design, and the incoproation of natural covers, and the inclusion of more interior spaces. The team conducted several visits to the city to aid their location research, and spoke with DC citizens in order to capture the “soul" of the city.

As The Division 2 is set seven months after the pandemic outbreak, DC is in a state of despair, much more so than New York City in the first game. Areas became flooded due to failing infrastructure, and vegetation began to reclaim parts of the city. Massive consulted with botanists, first responders and experts in emergency management, and took inspirations from real-life disasters such as Hurricane Katrina, while creating the game's post-apocalpytic world. The game also explores how civilians organize themselves in the times of adversity, and the player's role was to help rebuild these communities. The team relied on environmental storytelling to explore what happen during the seven months of crisis. The Capitol was chosen as it increases the stakes of the story, being an important symbol for power and the nation. Showing national monuments in ruins created powerful imagery indicating a complete collapse of society. Despite this, Ubisoft repeatedly cited that the game was "apolitical" and that it did not intend to convey any political message through the game.

Main missions in the game were set in iconic locations and major monuments such as the White House, the Lincoln Memorial and the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum, though players progresed in the game through encountering various civilian settlements, which in turn unlock more activities. The team also intentionally crafted spaces that players were unlikely to visit in real life, such as a Cold War bunker for one of its missions. The game features three main factions: Hyenas was a gang of “opportunistic raiders"; True Sons was a ruthless paramilitary organization led by former JTF officers; the Outcasts were previously improsioned citizens seeking revenge for their mistreatment. Each faction has their own distinct combat AI to better establish their identity. Both the player character and enemies in the game, however, will die much quickly than the first game as the team wanted gameplay to be more "intuitive", closer to that of a tactical shooter. Gunplay is also designed to be more impactful, with the team creating more elaborated and visible combat animations.

According to the team, the game placed a larger focus on player-versus-player competitive multiplayer when compared with the first game. The Dark Zones also returned in The Division 2, though it was designed to attract to a larger pool of players. Gears were now normalized when used in the Dark Zone to ensure that all players can compete fairly. Dark Zones will become "occupied", which turned off gear normalization, to cater to players who prefer the gameplay style of the first game. While all the loots collected in Dark Zone in the first Division game always required helicopter extraction, The Division 2 introduced "non-contaminated loot", which do not need to be extracted, in an attempt to make the experience more rewarding and player-friendly. The three Dark Zone maps were based in Washington Union Station, the DC waterfront, and Georgetown, with each map supporting different playstyle. As Dark Zones are set in uninhabited area, the team went to Chernobyl to record its quietness in an attempt to create an "eerie" atmosphere. They were also placed in the opposite ends of the map, so that they can expand on them in future updates. Efforts were made to entice PvE players to try out Dark Zones, such as introducing better loots and rewarding common PvE actions such as stealing supply drops. Checkpoint camping was now discouraged, as defense systems in each Dark Zone location will attack players with the highest Rogue status automatically. To extend the game's longevity, custom maps were created for the game's Conflict multiplayer mode. They are set in standalone locations that are not contagious with the main open world map.

Release

The game was announced on March 9, 2018, by Ubisoft, with the first gameplay footage being premiered at the E3 2018 in June 2018. At the Expo, Ubisoft confirmed that the game would be released on March 15, 2019, for PlayStation 4, Windows, and Xbox One. A private beta was launched prior to the game's release, starting on February 7, 2019 and ending four days later on February 11. A four-day open beta for the game also started on March 1, 2019. It was released as an exclusive for the Epic Games Store and Ubisoft's own Uplay store, and was released for Steam on January 12, 2022, approximately three years after the game's initial launch. The game, including all expansions to date, launched on Stadia on March 17, 2020. It shares cross-platform play with PC users along with shared progression between those platforms. The game was also made available on Amazon Luna on November 23, 2020.

The Division 2 was billed as a live service video, with Ubisoft supporting the game with various updates following its initial launch. After the game's release, three episodes of downloadable content, which add new story content and gameplay modes, would be released for all players for free. Players who purchased the Year 1 Pass received these content early and gained access to several missions known as "Classified Assignments". The first episode, titled D.C. Outskirts: Expedition, was released in July 2019, introducing two new campaign missions which sees players searching for the missing president and eliminating the leader of the Outskirts faction, and a three-part expedition set in Kenly College in which the Division must reach a lost convoy with valuable supplies. The second episode, titled Pentagon: The Last Castle, was released in October 2019, adding two new missions based in The Pentagon and a DARPA research laboratory. In this episode, the Division and the Black Tusk agents raced against each other to discover a secret in the defense headquarters. The last episode, Coney Island: The Hunt, was released in February 2020, taking place in Coney Island. In this episode, the player must look for a scientist who may have find the cure for the virus that caused the global pandemic.

In March 2024, Massive released Warlords of New York, the game's first expansion pack. The expansion further raised the level cap to 40, though new players can directly access the expansion as a level 30 character. The expansion closes the story arc established in the base game and its subsequent episodes, while introducing returning factions from the first game, such as the Rikers and the Cleaners. It also featured a new map based in a hurricane-ravaged Lower Manhattan. The expansion also includes new gadgets, an overhaul to the gear system, and more varied boss fights, and reintroduced global events, which are gameplay modifiers. Mechanical changes introduced in this expansion will also be available for players who did not purchase it, though they will not be able to access the New York map. Starting from the release of Warlords of New York, the game adopted a seasonal model, with Ubisoft releasing manhunt targets and gameplay events over a 12-week "season". Initially post-launch support was set to end by late 2020 as Massive shifted their attention to Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora and Star Wars Outlaws, Warlords of New York was more successful than the team had initially anticipated, prompting Massive and co-development partner Ubisoft Bucharest to release more seasons and updates for the game. Massive had to re-run seasons in 2021 and early 2022, before the first major update, "Season 9: Hidden Alliance", was released in May 2022. Ubisoft is still supporting the game, with "Year 6 Season 1 First Rogue", released in June 2024, being the latest season.

A number of game modes were introduced following the game's initial release. Ubisoft also released the first raid named "Operation Dark Hours" in May 2019. Set in Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, the raid was described by Ubisoft to be the biggest challenge for all The Division 2 players, requiring 8 players to cooperative with each other and complete a series chain of objectives. The second raid, titled "Operation Iron Horse", was released in June 2020. Ubisoft released a new game mode named "The Summit" on September 22, 2020. In this mode, up to four players work as a team and ascend a 100-story skyscraper, combating increasingly difficult enemy forces. Season 9 introduced "Countdown", in which a team of four must attempt to stabilize a failing nuclear power station within 15 minutes. In April 2023, Massive introduced the "Descent" mode as part of the game's year 5 update. Set in a training simulation, players, either playing solo or with up to 4 players, must complete a series of encounters starting with basic weapons. Borrowing mechanics from roguelike games, players became gradually more powerful as they acquire talent points. Massive once experimented with a battle royale mode, though it was subsequently reworked into The Division Heartland, which was cancelled in 2023. Ubisoft also released cosmetic items and weapons skins based on other franchises such as Resident Evil and Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell.

Reception

• Ghost towns of dark zones