The Division Dev Addresses Loot Drops: “We Want Players to Play All Content”

One of the biggest criticisms surrounding Tom Clancy’s The Division is its loot drops, which are an essential part of its enjoyment. This is primarily due to the fact that you can’t just get any loot drop you want – if you want specific Gear Set pieces you need to play Falcon Lost, Clear Sky or High Value Targets. Conversely, if you enjoy any activity and want something else besides, say, Lone Star or some other nonsense, you’re out of luck since they prioritize specific drops heavily.

Players have been complaining about the same for a while now and Ubisoft community manager Natchai Stappers finally offered a response. “Mind you, I said they’re distributed more heavily, you can however get all the other gear sets from the Underground as well AND the team is looking to perhaps up that ante in the near future, but I can’t share any info regarding it.”

Which sounds fine but then Stappers noted that, “Regarding people who are requesting us to make it possible for all venues to drop all sets, there are a few issues with this. First, it will heavily sway even more in RNG’s way. Think about it, at the moment you know which venues tend to offer certain sets more, thus if you want a specific set you can focus on that content. If it is not this way, you’ll run whatever content you choose and might not end up getting the gear set you want for a long time, factoring in all the gear sets we have currently and possible future gear sets.”

This reason is understandable – The Division already has a ton of RNG behind it. Why increase that even more, even though the Dark Zone operates on the same philosophy and more often than not dispenses loot faster. But anyway, the next point is a little concerning to hear from Stappers.

“Second, if we make all content drop all loot, unweighted, then most of the content will be ignored because players will look for the easiest/fastest way to gather loot and then not bother with the rest. This might seem like a great idea to some of you, as you might be able to gear up faster, but this will be boring and is not the dev team’s intention. After all, we want players to play all content, or at least most of it, not just a tiny slice.

“I’m not saying our current system is perfect, but the devs are working on it to improve it. The suggestion of unweighted distribution for all content however, is not the way to go. Not for the dev team, and when you look at it honestly, not for the players either.”

The problem with noting that “most of the content” will be ignored is to not acknowledge some key issues with The Division’s loot. Firstly, some Gear Sets are simply better than others and not offering all players an equal opportunity to obtain the same without going into the Dark Zone isn’t working. Secondly, some activities like Falcon Lost on Heroic aren’t fun at all and tedious at best but they’re the only means to obtain Gear Sets like Striker’s Battlegear or Sentry’s Call. What does it say about ignoring content when players are ignoring 90 percent of the game to focus on the 10 percent that’s not fun?

Regardless, the developer also introduced a bunch of punishing crafting requirements and those have been relaxed overtime. What are your thoughts on this current approach? Let us know in the comments.