An anticipated update to The Division last week introduced Falcon Lost, the game's first raid-like multiplayer "incursion" that culminates in a difficult final boss and rare loot for successful players. The incursion was designed to provide this loot just once a week, requiring players to come back again and again over time to gain the full set of randomly doled out gear.
That's not how things worked in practice. Shortly after Falcon Lost launched, word started to leak of a glitch that let players dash through the incursion in roughly 20 minutes, collecting the loot again every single time. The key is the abuse of the Survivor Link and Mobile Cover skills, letting players warp through walls and avoid triggering key moments and enemy spawns in the incursion.
In a number of threads on the official Ubisoft forums, community manager Natchai wrote that using the exploit is "obviously... against our Code of Conduct and the team is looking into what can be done in terms of punishment for those who have exploited." That Code of Conduct says explicitly that "exploitation of any new or known issues or bugs is forbidden and may result in account suspension or revocation," with a first offense leading to "temporary suspension" and multiple offenses leading to a "permanent ban."
Many players don't consider this glitch to be "cheating" in the same way as actively hacking the game client or trying to modify server-side code, though. "You are in charge of the final product that is delivered to your customers," Redditor CarpeBedlam writes in a popular thread addressed to the developers at Massive. "You get to decide what we can and can't do in your game world. You set the rules of this world, we simply inhabit that world and use the mechanics given to us... by you. Bottom line: if you don't want people doing something in your game, design your code so it's not possible.".
While the glitch was patched with a hotfix late on Friday, other similar exploits are already popping up on the Web. Regardless of the speed of fixes, though, the damage caused by this glitch may have already been done and could be hard to undo.
Players who have been able to take advantage of the incursion glitch have ended up with much stronger gear than the "legit" competition, and many players are now complaining of overpowered players running amok in the game's PvP Dark Zone. Many high-level players said that using the exploit had quickly become "the norm rather than the exception," as one thread on the Ubisoft forums put it. Players in that thread reported feeling the need to use the exploit just to keep up with the improved gear other players were getting or needing to use the exploit just to find a group willing to play with them.
The Division's official forums and subreddit are also littered with users complaining about the widespread use of other cheats and hacks in the Dark Zone. Reports suggest unscrupulous players can shoot through walls, teleport directly behind opposing teams, and/or kill the competition with a single shot—all without much chance of being detected by Ubisoft.
"The message is out," one forum-goer writes. "Cheat all you want, it will take forever to catch you apparently, and you get to keep all the exp/money/items you gained and then after a three-day suspension you get to laugh, come back in, and reap your reward. Then just don't cheat anymore."
It's currently unclear if or how Ubisoft can detect and fix such widespread problems with both in-game glitches and active external game hacking. Any efforts to reset the servers to an earlier point or rebalance by removing ill-gotten gains would have a massive impact on the state of the player base, and such moves could risk sweeping legitimate players in with the "bad eggs." But Ubisoft is definitely aware of the problem at this point. "We know that we have to act a lot more strongly towards players who use exploits, and we are working on that," Natchai wrote in the forums.
[Update: Ubisoft has announced that players who suffered from bugs causing missing character data or problems logging in will receive 500 Phoenix credits, which can be used to purchase high-end gear and high-end crafting materials. All players that log in this weekend will also get 150 Phoenix credits to make up for a lack of Daily Challenge updates last week.]
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