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State of the Game
The Division 2’s next big update is drawing closer, and the second phase of Public Test Server (PTS) feedback for Title Update 10 is about to begin. With Associate Creative Director Yannick Banchereau and Game Designer Bruce Kelly on board, this week’s State of the Game livestream looked into some of the reactions from players to Title Update 10 so far, as well as what’s in store for the next round of testing.
Priority Alerts
Maintenance - May 26th, 2020
- Fixed an issue that prevented players in a group from earning progress on Global Event Challenges from their allies for some challenges.
- Fixed an issue that caused the doors during "Break Through the Black Tusk Forces" to not open during the DARPA Research Lab Main Mission.
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Fixed an issue that could allow players to instantly reset cooldowns of Skills.
- The change for this means that players will no longer be able to swap out Skills when charge based Skill is on cooldown.
» Source
Known Issues
Deltas in Raids and in General
It is a continuous issue that is difficult to pin-point. If you make reports about these provide as much information as possible:
- The exact error code that you are getting (the delta with the whole number)
- Time and date when it happened
- Where are you playing from
- Platform
- Group / Solo
- Matchmake / Friends
The more the better.
=> you can check out the Known Issues here: Link
Title Update 10 PTS
Impressions Phase 1
- The gear changes have been received well
- The Feedback has been positive
- One of the gear sets was too powerful (Foundry Bulwark – that will be addressed in Phase 2)
- Players saw the potential in the new items.
Rifles Feedback
- They wanted to package the balancing of the M1A with an overall balance pass.
- While adjustments to the most popular weapons are never popular, they think that the weapons are in a better place now and that is also reflected in the feedback.
- As listed in the Patch Notes the Assault Rifles, Shotguns and SMGs got a significant buff, Rifles that were underperforming were brought up and LMGs also got an increase. Some outliers like the M1A were brought in line. So, while not everything is on M1A level now, there is a more cohesive balance among the archetype now that should make more weapons viable in heroic/legendary content.
Brand Set: Walker, Harris & Co.
- Core: Weapon Damage (Red)
- 1: +5.0% Weapon Damage
- 2: +5.0% Damage to Armor
- 3: +5.0% Damage to Health
- The feedback was it was “not strong enough”
- While the 1 piece bonus is not that spectacular, the 2 and 3 piece bonus is multiplicative
- So they scale very well – especially with damage to Armor in the mix.
- There are also two Named Items attached to the brand (Perfect Headhunter / Perfect Adrenaline Rush) and those are powerful talents.
- The Brand Set will stay the same for now unless you make a very good argument.
Game Difficulty
- The Feedback from the PTS is that the game is a bit too easy
- One of the goals of TU10 is to increase the fun factor and increase the player power.
- With the overall buff to the weapons, one conclusion is of course that parts of the game become easier and that is ok.
- Heroic should still be a challenge if you are not fully optimized, but when you are already min-maxed, Heroic will become easier and Legendary Difficulty is your next step.
- Legendary should always be a challenge.
- So overall the feedback is understandable, but they think the game is in a good spot now where the activities should be more fun but also not entirely trivial.
PVP Time to Kill
- It was difficult to get objective feedback about the PVP changes because Bulwark basically dominated the PVP.
- So Phase 2 should provide better feedback when Bulwark is fixed.
- So please go into the Dark Zone and test things out when Phase 2 drops so that they can get as much data as possible.
- MMR weapons were buffed by 12.5% in PVP and there is also a new Exotic Weapon “Mantis” plus the new “Head Hunter” Talent. So Sniping should be satisfying.
PTS Phase 2
PTS Update for Phase 2
- Phase 1 is soon ending, and the team is planning to take the PTS down to deploy Phase 2.
- The PTS is scheduled to shut down on Thursday at 1 PM CET / 7 AM ET / 4 AM PT.
- PTS Phase 2 is scheduled to go live on Friday at 1 PM CET / 7 AM ET / 4 AM PT.
- Exact times for the PTS shut down and reopening are subject to change, and up-to-date information will be relayed via social media, so players are encouraged to keep an eye on @TheDivisionGame on Twitter.
- Players will not have to re-download the PTS client to play Phase 2, but will need a patch.
- Patch Notes should become available on Friday.
Foundry Bulwark
- Foundry Bulwark functionality: Whenever you or your shield take damage, 40% of that amount is repaired to both over 10s
- It is a powerful set but burst damage should counter that.
PVP Issues
- Foundry Bulwark was not working as intended in PVP because it basically repaired with the normal damage and ignored the PVP modifier that is in place.
- For example:
- Actual damage would be 100k damage
- With a 70% PVP modifier you do 30k damage
- But the Gear Set would repair for 100k damage and the players became unkillable.
- The Healing is now calculated with the PVP modifiers in place.
PVE Issues
- The Incoming Repair attribute would also impact the amount of repair you get from the Gear Set and made the set more powerful.
- This was also fixed for phase 2
Phase 2 Exotic Balance Pass
- Exotic Balance Pass will be added in Phase 2 and that will be very interesting in combination with the Gear changes of Phase 1.
- Chameleon: Damage increase by 32.8%
- Bighorn: Damage increase by 11.2% (with more headshot damage while scoping)
- Most Exotics got a damage buff so that they can keep up with the other weapons.
- BTSU Gloves gives you a Skill Haste buff for Hive Skills depending on Skill Tier.
- Eagle Bearer is getting a 7.2% Damage Increase
Loot and Crafting Changes of Phase 2
- Updated the spread of item power between the minimum and maximum rolls (result is mostly fewer rolls at the minimum).
- Increased the minimum item power for all caches.
- All containers in missions now scale their regular and targeted loot with difficulty (no more purples on Challenging difficulty or higher).
- Increased the minimum and maximum crafting results, with weighting added for a better spread between them.
Weapon Handling is improved.
- The Weapon Handling was not added in Phase 1, but it will be applied in Phase 2. Basically, if you have 10% Weapon Handling on your build, you get 10% Stability, Accuracy, Reload Speed, and Weapon Swap Speed.
Other PVP Changes
- Negotiators Dilemma – the radius that marks target is reduced to 15m and the UI feedback is improved.
- The Bleed Damage for Singer Hive, Auto Turret, and Explosive Seeker Mine was reduced by 75% in PVP. The damage of the Stinger Hive will be Increased by 75%. The goal of that is, that it is more of an area denial tool that punishes you if you are in the range of it and you don’t die from bleed when you get hit by one drone.
- Imperial Dynasty will no longer immediately ignite someone in PVP. You need to maintain 3 seconds line of sight to apply the burn.
Phase 3
Phase 2 will add a lot of additional changes and it is becoming clear, that there will probably be a Phase 3 for the PTS to validate all the changes. Especially because of the Bulwark situation and PVP feedback was not really that objective in Phase 1.
General Topics
More Stash Space
- With the last increase, the Stash size was doubled.
- At the moment further increases are not on the table.
- It is something they can look at, but they don’t know if it is possible, because the last update was already “this is probably the one time that this will be increased.”
- 300 is also a good amount and they don’t know if increasing it would actually provide an improvement.
Season Update
Season is Extended
- As mentioned last week, Season 1 has been extended to June 15.
- More information can be found on the forums.
Guardians Global Event is live
Every group of enemies has one or more Guardians. While the Guardian is alive, other enemies in the group will be immune. Eliminating the Guardian temporarily increases your weapon damage, rate of fire, reload time, restores armor, and removes immunity from protected enemies.
=> Summary
Season 2
- All Seasons will be free for Warlords of New York owners.
- There is a Premium Pass that unlocks additional season rewards.
- It was free in Season 1, and players can currently still claim it.
- In future Seasons, it will be a premium item.
- All Seasonal gear can be earned in the game; the premium track gives out more caches and cosmetic items.
Season 2 will be discussed further in next week’s State of the Game.
Game and Story Leaks
Doing a PTS is always a risk because they deploy a work in progress build that may contain information that they would not have wanted to disclose. This what happened with this particular PTS and information was found.
In any case, please be mindful of discussing this information, so that the story is not spoiled for others.
Also, keep in mind, all this is still work in progress, so there might be more surprises down the road.
Players might have also seen Skyscraper references. Yes, they are working on a new PVE game mode that is currently called Skyscraper. The idea of this game mode is, that it should scratch that itch of a replayable PVE game mode.
Also just to clarify, this is not Underground 2.0. While they always wanted to take inspiration from Survival or Underground, the goal is not simply to recreate those modes in The Division 2. So when Skyscraper comes out (and it will take some time) it will be a new and different experience.
Roadmap
- You can check out The Division 2 Roadmap here: Link
Community Resources
The community has provided many guides, tools, and lists: Link