We have a new video on the skills and skill mods systems of Tom Clancy’s The Division. This comes to us courtesy of YouTuber Arekkz Gaming, whom you can subscribe to here.
Ubisoft has made severe changes on skills and talents, so much so that what we knew from the 2013 demo is almost completely obsolete. With that in mind, this is as complete and up to date a description as possible.
Skills are abilities which you can use to attack enemies or support teammates. You have slots to choose what skills you can access on the fly, and, of course, you can switch them around to fit specific situations.
Talents were a way to upgrade your character. They would also enhance your skills and define your player in some way. It seems, at least for now, that Ubi has disposed of talents. Whether they come up again in the future is entirely up to Ubi.
What we are left with is a classless skill system. This is a boon for you, since it means you can upgrade whatever skills you would prefer as it suits your needs, without ever having to worry about picking up skills, items, etc that you can’t use.
In fact, it’s possible to ultimately obtain and max upgrade all skills, and for the most dedicated players, it likely won’t take that long at all.
Added to skills is skill modding, which gives skills three upgrade tiers. Each upgrade tier comes with an added ability to said skill, and you get to choose what mod to apply. How you get to those upgrades has not been decided yet, so they could be something you pay for in experience points, or money. It could also be something that progressively levels up simply from use.
In tier 1 of skill mods, all you can do is increase the base value of certain skills. At tier 2, you can actually start altering your skill’s behavior. Case in point, you can now have your turret throw out incendiary bullets instead of ordinary bullets. Tier 3 will raise the bar on those possible updates. Going back to the example of the turret, it will be converted completely into a flamethrower.
Tom Clancy’s The Division is coming to Windows, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on 2015.
