The Division players up in arms over bugs, exploits and glitches
"Enough is enough."
Ubisoft is coming under increasing pressure from The Division players who have called on the company to tackle the game's growing list of exploits.
The latest high-profile exploit allows you to ratchet up your weapons' damage output if you own a gun with the Competitive perk, which grants bonus damage after using a skill.
Players have found that using a skill then repeatedly switching weapons allows you to multiply your gun's damage per second (DPS) to levels where the game's hardest enemies - or toughest players - can be beaten with just a couple of bullets.
Another video shows the game's toughest boss being downed in just two shots, apparently using this method. The boss in question is the centrepiece of The Divisions new raid-like Incursion activity.
Yesterday, we reported on players who had found an exploit to repeatedly rinse the Incursion for its top-level rewards.
There's a screenshot of Ubisoft's official The Division forum in that article showing the current flood of criticism from fans.
Looking at the forum again today, it is a similar picture. Discussions include "This is ridiculous", "Let's ask refund", "Hackers are out of control", "Disable Competent talent now!!" and "Enough is enough - shut down the game", among many others.
Last week, Ubisoft threatened "punishment" for players who use exploits. Some fans rejoiced at the news, but others - who felt like they were forced to use the exploits to stay competitive in the game - claimed this would simply be unfair.
The Ubisoft community manager who threatened this mystery "punishment" appeared to backtrack on the comment in a tweet published two days later:
These issues are particularly frustrating for players as The Division shares all of its player-versus-enemy power levels, items and abilities with its player-versus-player Dark Zone area.
Understandably, players are unhappy to see others strutting around equipped with full sets of the game's best armour, at power levels currently unobtainable through legitimate means.
This becomes far more of an issue, however, when these same exploits allow players to dominate in the game's competitive multiplayer area.
Ubisoft has issued patches for some of The Division's problems - glitches affecting backpacks and missing characters were fixed last week, and Ubisoft has promised in-game currency as compensation after The Division's daily mission failed to update three times in a row.
But the big problems remain, and players feel Ubisoft is either unable - or simply swamped by the mass of issues - to fix them as fast as they'd like.