So, things seem to be going swimmingly for The Division these days. Even from launch, we had fantastic tales of players lining up just to talk to an NPC, then of glitches in ‘incursion zone’ Falcon Lost, and most recently server hiccups and missing character profiles brought about by the 1.1 patch, which was intended to fix more problems than it introduced.
Now, players have discovered a new exploit which further throws the game out of balance. By pairing the “Competent” talent with one gun and switching it to another, then back again a few times, a player is able to trick the game into repeatedly boosting a weapon’s damage per second (DPS). The effect is temporary but repeatable, and can lead to some grossly inflated numbers, as shown in this still from Kotaku:
A Division player shown using the exploit, with damage tallying in the Ultra Death levels.
Kotaku provides a more detailed explanation as well as a video of the exploit in action, if you’re curious to check it out for yourself. I’m not including it here because, well… there are exploits that enhance games, like getting import cartridges to play on your Nintendo 3DS, and then there are exploits that just seem to make things less fun for everyone. Like this, I’d argue. Your mileage may vary, of course.
As I said when Division character profiles were going missing, patching a game isn’t an exact science. Sometimes, plugging one hole ends up creating a dozen new leaks. I’m reminded of that ancient proverb:
99 little bugs in the code
99 little bugs in the code
Take one down, patch it around
117 little bugs in the code— Alexander (@irqed) July 19, 2013
“The team is working hard on fixing the exploits, glitches and bugs that have been reported to us,” Massive community manager Natchai Stappers told players on The Division‘s official forums. “We know our previous fix for Falcon Lost just spawned more glitches for it, we’re working to resolve that [and] we are actively dealing with cheaters, we are banning them, permanently as well.”
Still, Massive’s best intentions aside, a long legacy of woes can definitely sour players to a game. Exploits which offer game-breaking advantages like this one, even moreso. It remains to be seen whether the developer can smooth things over for the long term — in the sense of both game stability and player satisfaction — but at the very least, it’s a known issue and (another) fix is incoming.
(h/t Kotaku.)
UPDATE (1:15PM): VG247 reports there’s an infinite money glitch now too.
Kris Ligman is the News Editor for ZAM. Sometimes, they don’t have anything clever to put here.
