The Division 2 devs backtrack on Seasons 2.0 changes before we even got to see them

What you need to know

• During Summer Game Fest, Ubisoft's Massive Entertainment, revealed the long awaited changes to the seasonal model for The Division 2.
• The core idea was to introduce seasonal characters, similar to the model used in Diablo 4, to play the new seasonal content with.
• Massive has now "listened" to the feedback from the most vocal corners of the player base and will not be pushing ahead with these seasonal characters.

Score one today for the complainers, I guess. Reaction to The Division 2 getting seasonal characters as part of the Seasons 2.0 upgrade was mixed, to say the least. Some of us (myself included) were hyped for a significant change to the current gameplay loop which has been around for years. But the noise came from those who weren't happy.

Well, now, those people are. Massive Entertainment has announced that the planned changes with seasonal characters won't be going ahead. Before we even got to actually see it in action and find out what it was all about and how it would work, it's been canned.

The message from the developers suggests that the other changes to the seasonal model, such as how the developing story is delivered, and the promise of a Master difficulty mode, could still be going ahead without seasonal characters.

It also suggests that the roadmap is still pushing ahead as planned, though presumably the arrival of the story DLC in season 3 would have had ties into seasonal characters as well, so there'll no doubts be work to do there as well.

A situation that could have been handled better by both sides

There are parts of the player base crowing that they've won and are very happy. There are other parts that are disappointed that we were getting a significant gameplay change in The Division 2 and now we are not. I'm in the latter. I love the game, but I'm getting tired of doing the same thing over and over and over again every week of every season. I was looking forward to this, and now won't even get to see it.

What seems clear though is that the situation could have been handled better on both sides. From the developers, a more detailed first look at what the new system would have actually entailed could have dampened some of this down.

From the players, giving Massive a chance to show it to us before deciding you don't like it is the least they deserved. One side of this argument is claiming a win, but I'm not sure anyone really wins here. Everyone seems to want new gameplay, but then a portion of the players shun it immediately when its presented. I certainly don't feel like I've won anything here in what is one of my favorite games.