While it’s been out of the limelight for a fair long while now,Ubisoft’sThe Division 2is silently trucking along the sidelines. Updates are still coming in, alongside a somewhat modest seasonal content model. But there are some big changes coming, like the upcoming seasonal characters.
Specifically,The Division 2appears to be adopting one ofDiablo 4‘s seasonal progression tricks wherein players interested in progressing through the live content of the game need to create a temporary new player character whenever a new season is released. If this sounds at odds withThe Division 2‘s previous content model, you’re not wrong, andTD2‘s players are predictably unhappy with this decision.
The Division 2’s new seasonal changes are going live in Year 6 Season 2
In concrete terms, Ubisoft has recently clarified what its plans are forThe Division 2‘s sixth year of live content. There is alotof stuff to take into account here, but the crux of it is the following:
This is, obviously, amassivere-envisioning of howThe Division 2works at a core progression level, and it would’ve been a major enough change to shake up the playerbase all on its own. All of the changes outlined above will be going live very shortly, as part of the new Year 6 Season 1 release, but there’s more to come.
Ubisoft is making one hugely significant change by introducing the concept of “seasonal characters” into the mix. To engage withThe Division 2‘s seasonal content from Year 6 Season 2 onwards (i.e. notthisseason but the next, at the time of writing), you will need to create an all-new character and level them up from zero. It takes but the shortest of scrolls down the comments of Ubisoft’s patch notes on Reddit to see how the community feels about this particular change.
The good news is that all the earned gear and XP you accrue as part of your seasonal character’s progress through the narrativewillget rolled back into your main, legacy characters as seasons wrap up. With that in mind, it’s not atotalloss, though this does mean that our legacy characters will simply no longer be relevant for the latest content, which is a strange concept.
Arguably, it’s simply too late for Ubisoft to be pushing such significant changes toThe Division 2in the game’s lifecycle. Further, some ofThe Division 2‘s gameplay systems, such as Weapon Expertise, aren’t being changed to accommodate the presence of seasonal characters, so it’s all quite strange to see in action.
We’ll just have to wait and see how these changes pan out in practice. Whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing that Ubisoft clarified what’s happening so far in advance, though, it’s hard to tell.
