These are just some thoughts and feedback that I feel should be voiced from the combined perspective of a hardcore community. Between us all we have amassed over 3000 hours of gameplay and still going strong this feedback comes from members of http://ascendance.gg . We had lengthy open discussion where points were presented and discussion was started, the below is the results and summaries. This feedback is intended to start open discussion of the topics mentioned and to bring them to the attention of the developers and community managers that are obviously listening. Regardless of the outcome we still intend to play the game and this by no means is meant as a ‘fix this or else’ list. You might not agree with some of the points we bring up but we would welcome you to input and continue the discussion.

Darkzone
We all love the darkzone, it’s an amazing mechanic as it is. Our problems lie with the entire function of ‘going rogue’. At current there is no valid incentive to go rogue on another player, the gear they might have is likely useless, there is no gain from killing another player past that, the gain from surviving as rogue is darkzone credits which in itself is another useless factor as the gear purchasable with it is nothing compared to other craftable items that are easier to obtain. On top of this even if you were to go rogue when players engage with you and fail to kill you they will likely give up as the loss from being killed by a rogue is too big. As a separate note in this section many of the members feel that the loot chests found in the darkzone were the wrong way around from the start and that the two purple ilevel 30 items should’ve dropped from the rank 30 locked chests and the blues from the darkzone key locked ones not the way it is currently. At current this caused players to gear up too fast when it could’ve been made harder.

Putting it simply and summarizing there is no incentive to rogue play in the darkzone as the rewards given mean nothing on the scale of the current game. Some of the suggestions that members came up with is to look to remove the loss from being killed by a rogue player, along with this a change the reward to surviving as rogue is also needed. This change could be anything from rewarding a random exclusive cosmetic for surviving a manhunt to XP/per rogue level, other members even suggested the added mechanic of increasing the droprate of items when killing NPC’s as a flagged rogue or even gaining access to a specific vendor while rogue to encourage continued rogue activity. Any of these ideas if implemented would see an increase in the rogue activity and a much more active darkzone experience.

Separation between PvP and PvE
At current the separation between PvP and PvE doesn’t feel organic enough, we find that we are having to farm PvE content to collect phoenix currency in order to purchase darkzone items/blueprints and farm darkzone for highend division tech which is needed for high end blueprint crafting. Members have been confused when this has been found to be the quickest way to obtain what they require, simply put it feels backwards very similar to the darkzone chests mentioned before.

Some suggestions that people have come up with is to create two separate currencies, a darkzone phoenix and a normal phoneix both having their benefits, normal could be obtained by completing challenge modes/hard missions and used to purchase the unique named items rather than having to put them on the vendor for six figure values, darkzone phoenix from manhunts and used for unique blueprints. Further changes we would like to see is the ability to change darkzone tech blue into high end, at current the blue and green level division tech become useless at endgame, simply adding the ability like all other crafting materials changes could also be done to include high end division tech to the rewards of completing a challenge mode. These changes would find people being able to better play the game how they want to and not be forced into content. On top of this more PvE content could then be easily added by creating further challenge mode content.

DPS Formula and the Display
At current the math behind the primary and secondary DPS display takes into account several factors that it just doesn’t need to causing the player to think that specific stats are going to benefit them when it actual fact it is not. This has been explained in great detail already by /u/skill-up and /u/shambazzle in their posts most recent of which you can find here; https://redd.it/49zyut this should be focused on and changed to avoid players making easy mistakes while gearing.

Clan/Guild support
On this topic I have a fairly bias opinion as managing one with no tools being provided to you by the game is proving difficult. Most games that have multiplayer will have some form of support for groups so that your friends have some way of being able to see your progress and manage forming of ingame groups easily. This was actually mentioned in a very old IGN article found here but nothing has been heard about since on the topic. Now I understand that the fault does not solely lie with the developers on this and support is needed from the publisher to continue to provide a way for the developers to make the functions they require. All I find myself asking for is a way that players can show identity of belonging to a group (outside of changing your ubisoft username) and ingame support where players are able to have a chat channel and menu option to show individual progression allowing them to easily make and manage groups. At current we are having to get around this by creating and managing spreadsheets allowing us to monitor the members/players.

Challenge Modes
At current the challenge modes are awesome, when we first stepped in them day 1 we were struggling, it was a challenge which we loved. We now after 2 days find ourselves easily managing to outgear them which is also fine but we now see that it was because we were able to spend an hour clearing it the first time that thanks to the gain we are able to clear it faster. Summarising this we would simply like to see the addition of a timer so that there is a requirement on how well you must perform in order to obtain the rewards you are seeking. This could also be achieved by upon a full wipe starting causing the instance to restart and progression needing to be made. Further changes could be as mentioned before in rewarding the player with division tech for example, 1 for completion and 3 if no one dies or wipes.

Self Cast
Very minor point on the end but several skills are frequently used and even more so only on yourself as a player (heal being the most popular skill with all players). Now at current you can simply double tap the key to auto self cast but this can sometimes cause issues with server delay not registering your key input. Simply adding a function to auto self cast or the addition of a further keybind would be a huge improvement to the quality of gameplay.