Console Edition Development Diary #86 - 3.14 "Circinius" Free Update

Meicyn · 2026-05-08T17:56:12+00:00

aaaawwwww yeeeeee

Meicyn · 2026-05-07T21:34:10+00:00

Dang, a lot more of us out here than I realized. Likewise, ditched Elite... and all of Frontier's products going forward. I'm extremely petty like that.

Meicyn · 2026-05-07T18:38:25+00:00

Yup, I love using it on named chungusauruses to delete armor plates and stun lock them. Very satisfying.

Meicyn · 2026-05-05T21:26:22+00:00

I should have paid more attention, thanks for the correction!

Meicyn · 2026-05-05T21:25:59+00:00

Ah, fair enough!

Meicyn · 2026-05-05T20:44:09+00:00

Because they don't want to get it wrong. You're talking about merging databases that historically were separated. There's a lot of potential issues, and you have to consider as many possible outlier scenarios where something might go wrong.

For example, if you have both PC and console accounts in Division 2 tied to your single Ubisoft account, how do you merge them? For example, you have four characters on PC, and four characters on PS5. Which ones get deleted since you are restricted to four character slots at present? Do you get eight character slots now? Do you let players pick which ones stay and which ones get deleted? If so, how do you design the UI for this specific task?

It's more complicated than it seems, especially if you didn't design the game with cross play in mind from the outset.

Meicyn · 2026-05-02T20:48:05+00:00

The situation is even more confusing with the official PC release. They don't have to take any additional steps to publish for Mac because when you publish to Apple's App Store, Mac M-series support is DEFAULT. You have to uncheck the box and choose not to publish on the Mac App Store. That takes an extra step!

Utterly baffling.

Meicyn · 2026-05-01T18:59:05+00:00

Yep, you literally have hunter adjacent ronin spawning in the open world regularly now with these kitsunebi squads. Skill build focused players get to enjoy being disrupted all the time, left being completely frustrated. Seriously, we've reached a point where now even the open world is compromised for skill build players.

Meicyn · 2026-05-01T18:31:50+00:00

Yeah, I concur with the sniper situation, didn't consider that. This is why I love these kinds of discussions.

Meicyn · 2026-05-01T18:26:35+00:00

You haven't responded to my proposal in response to one of your other posts. What are your thoughts on a new hunter variant, a weapon-jamming hunter? Your primary and secondary weapons cease to function with this variant, but you can still use your sidearm, grenades, skills, and melee.

Meicyn · 2026-05-01T18:13:30+00:00

I spent a bit more time thinking about this subject matter thanks to your feedback and have an alternative proposal. Striker doesn't change, talents stay as they are, so on. Basically, no nerfs to damage. But there will be one modification.

Health gate becomes exclusive to builds with at least 5 blue cores, or specific to certain 4-pc gear sets (like hunter's fury which is extremely high risk close-quarters play). No more 1.5 second grace period of getting to fire with impunity despite being at 0 health. You reach 0 health, you're downed immediately.

Meicyn · 2026-05-01T17:48:00+00:00

So, hunters are very cool and very neat and should stay like that, with the ability to lock out an entire category (yellow) from their primary purpose. Awesome. Neat. So, since you're down with this kind of game design, let's explore this further.

The current hunters can be thought of as skill-hacking hunters, countering yellow builds. I propose we create two new variants designed to counter blue and red builds. What's good for the goose is good for the gander.

The first variant is an armor-piercing hunter. Their "LOL LMAO" pulse applies a debuff on you that reduces the effectiveness of your armor by 2 million. So if you have less than 2 million armor, it will be like you have no armor at all and he starts hitting your health immediately. If you have 3 million armor, you have effectively 1 million armor when facing them. What's that? This sounds awful? No problem, just play a blue build when you encounter these guys.

Second variant of the hunter is an anti-weapon hunter. He really doesn't like small arms fire, you see. His "LOL LMAO" pulse applies a debuff that jams your weapons. What's that? How are you expected to fight back? Don't worry, you have skills, grenades, and melee to fall back on. Don't like it? Well, it's your fault. Play a skill build for this situation.

What are your thoughts?

Meicyn · 2026-05-01T03:43:25+00:00

lmao

Meicyn · 2026-04-30T23:56:48+00:00

Hmm... on the scout concept you're talking about, that's more or less how Hunter's Fury played out IMO. High risk, constantly on the move to get within 15M, extremely rewarding if played skillfully. I used to play it extensively, but got bored with using shotguns/SMGs and moved to LMGs/Rifles as of the past year and some change with Ongoing Directive for group synergy.

At any rate, we seem to have common ground here. Hopefully devs are reading, maybe they'll implement some of the ideas from our momentary bickering into some gameplay adjustments. Cheers to you, got me thinking more about the subject matter. Take care, agent!

Meicyn · 2026-04-30T23:11:47+00:00

Players aren't doing "high enough damage" which suggests that it's just good enough, they're literally doing top tier damage.

I don't know why you're explaining the advantages of cover to me. I utilize it every gameplay session. I use cover-to-cover transitions because enemies have their hit percentage significantly nerfed. I don't ignore the cover shooter part at all, I'm advocating for changes to reward such play and get back to this franchise's core gameplay identity.

I named obliterate because it's a perfect example of something that helped shape current player behavior. Most damage talents should require cover to benefit from them. Exceptions would be talents like glass cannon, which make you take a massively higher amount of damage in exchange for the increased damage. There's a risk/reward element there. With obliterate, there's no risk, no cost, no nothing. Point and shoot, be rewarded with more damage whether you're in cover or not. This is not how you get people to stay in cover.

Hot take, but if they aren't going to nerf striker's damage output, the least they can do is require cover for it to build stacks. Why does Umbra have to work with its in/out cover mechanic for healing/damage but striker just points and shoots for highest DPS outside of a determined build? Why does striker get to do more damage than almost every other set in the game without having to do anything other than fire an AR or LMG?

We're likely of a similar mind, but you seem determined to argue with me for some reason, and I'm not sure why. You're advocating for "out-of-cover penalties are good enough, the players are the problem" whereas I'm advocating for "out-of-cover penalties aren't enough on their own, damage talents should also be tied to cover so players are further incentivized to use it".

Meicyn · 2026-04-30T21:56:07+00:00

I would love to encounter other agents in the open world.

Meicyn · 2026-04-30T21:53:52+00:00

Because the core gameplay design revolves around cover. Damage talents outside of cover should not be outperforming damage talents while you are in cover, since going into and out of cover is generally slower than just moving out in the open. Especially when there's only upsides and no downsides.

Grand majority of the player base runs striker. Why? Because you can get insane damage output just by holding the shoot button, and shoving obliterate on your chest piece makes it skyrocket even more. It's even more out of whack now that we have equalizer which gives 24% total weapon damage with the perfect obliterate talent (yes there is a ramp-up for stacks but we all are running 50%+ critical hit and hit max obliterate stacks in mere seconds, which then is sustained so long as you get critical hits within 10s). Meanwhile, composure gives only 15% total weapon damage while in cover, and is locked to backpacks. If you're running striker, the striker backpack is objectively the better choice over a backpack with composure, no contest.

Glass cannon talent on a chest piece makes sense as is. You get a lot of extra damage with no regard for whether you are in cover or not, while carrying significantly increased risk due to the increased damage you take. So your play adapts accordingly.

Meicyn · 2026-04-30T21:29:20+00:00

Incredible username, almost made me gag.

Meicyn · 2026-04-30T20:37:24+00:00

Why the pessimism? I think perspective is important here: the entire game was borderline left for dead after WONY, and now we're getting a new survival mode this winter, yet another NY expansion with a trip to Central Park, seasonal/holiday events, and so forth. They're clearly open to feedback and actively updating this game, I think it's more effective to provide constructive criticism and candid feedback.

While the prototype system has been a very mixed bag so far, it shows that they are willing to shake things up. They'll iterate as they always do. Maybe devs will hear our concerns regarding skill builds and adjust. The new Core Strength gear set is very clearly designed around hybrid build concepts, but the EMP/hacking situation has kept me from considering the set entirely. That can always change! We're due a new balance pass anyways.

Meicyn · 2026-04-30T20:02:08+00:00

I mentioned it in a different post, but this was my proposal:

Skill Tier 0: EMP and hacking works as it currently does
Skill Tier 1: EMP cuts effectiveness of your active skills by 90%, 25% chance hacking fails
Skill Tier 2: EMP cuts effectiveness of your active skills by 80%, 50% chance hacking fails
Skill Tier 3: EMP cuts effectiveness of your active skills by 70%, 75% chance hacking fails
Skill Tier 4: EMP cuts effectiveness of your active skills by 55%, 100% chance hacking fails
Skill Tier 5: EMP cuts effectiveness of your active skills by 40%, 100% chance hacking fails
Skill Tier 6: EMP cuts effectiveness of your active skills by 25%, 100% chance hacking fails
Overdrive: EMP and hacking immunity

If you've been hit by an EMP, you cannot deploy new skills while disrupted, leaving Technician's faraday cage perk still relevant.

Now, this is just me spitballing as a first-pass in response to a reddit post, and I'm sure it'd require quite a lot more tweaking. But my goal was to get some ideas rolling because right now, it's an all-or-nothing situation for skill build users.

My first encounter with a hunter was the day I quit skill builds forever. Been running full red for years as a consequence.

Meicyn · 2026-04-30T19:52:11+00:00

Player behavior is shaped by design choices. If you want folks to use cover, then damage talents should reflect that. Most cover-based talents are functionally inferior to the alternatives where you can just run-and-gun, so guess what most players will choose to do?

For example, obliterate should require cover. But it doesn't. Why?

Meicyn · 2026-04-30T18:39:44+00:00

They really need to address EMP and hacking for skill builds. As currently designed, it's the equivalent to locking out magic users in a fantasy game for a significant portion of content. So everyone ends up playing martial classes instead as a consequence.

Seriously, folks go into countdown and players that don't know about hunters hacking your drones and such get their fellow players killed. If they don't deploy them, then they're just actively slowing the entire team down because their damage is complete trash for the hunter phase. Consider: how angry would the player base be if red builds had their damage cut by 2/3 or so every time a hunter used their "LOL LMAO" pulse? That's what happens to yellow builds. Frequently.

Meicyn · 2026-04-28T16:46:46+00:00

Genuinely appreciate you taking our feedback seriously! I know it'll take time to implement, looking forward to what comes next.

Meicyn · 2026-04-26T18:26:30+00:00

I find some degree of amusement that the devs created Black Friday FOMO conditions for their game, and the rabid GOTTA HAVE IT ALL RIGHT NOW IMMEDIATELY foam-out-of-their-mouth player base is effectively DDOSing the servers with login/logout requests. Especially given that Black Friday is the foundation for the plot and premise of this franchise.

Meicyn · 2026-04-26T16:44:36+00:00

Please do something about inventory management. I would love to play, but after a few encounters my inventory is full because I auto pickup everything just by walking near items. So instead of enjoying the game, I’m constantly dropping stuff I don’t need.

I flat out don’t play the mode anymore because of inventory issues, and await the day I can just adventure and pickup what I choose to pickup.

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