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Summary
This State of the Game focused primarily on the Encrypted Caches and some FAQs from the community.
Hot Topics
Matthew Szep is leaving The Division
Community Manager Matthew Szep or mattshotcha is leaving The Division to join the Community Team of Rainbow Six. He has passed on his torch to Anthony or @AmperCamper. He can also be found as UbiAmper on Reddit.
Update 1.7
- We still have no release date (hopefully mid-august)
Update 1.7 PTS
- PTS 3 is now active on all platforms
- This is the last PTS Version, the PTS will not be updated with a new version
- But there will be additional changes between PTS 3 and the final version that will be deployed.
- Classified drop rates are still being tweaked and general bug fixes are scheduled to iron out any last minute issues.
- So test as much as you can and still give feedback, because when the issue is server related, they can change it almost until launch.
- PTS3 is scheduled to end on Monday, 31/7.
Encrypted Caches
- Lt Buzz Lite Beer posted a video a couple of days ago about the Encrypted Caches and that started a big discussion.
- They don’t want to ignore that discussion and that is why Matthew Higby was invited to answer some of these questions
The Idea behind Encrypted Caches
- A few month ago, they added the Premium Vendor to the game to sell cosmetic items for real money
- The Encrypted Caches were added to monetize these vanity items, but also to allow players that play a long time, to get these items for free
- So right now you can buy specific items and Cypher Keys for real money from the Premium Vendor or you can farm Key-Fragments in the game to unlock the Encrypted Caches for free.
- So the Encrypted Caches were introduced to have an interesting feature that gives you access to these vanity items and also something fresh and not just another store.
- The prices on the PTS are not final – but the goal is to always get a good reward from these caches.
What are the Chances to get specific items?
There are two systems:
Collections
- There are 22 items that belong to one of the Vanity Collections that will be added to the game with 1.7. Each time you get one item of a collection, you get an increased chance to get another item from that collection down the road.
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That basically means, that at the beginning you have a normal chance to get an item, but the more collections you have completed, the higher is the chance to get that specific vanity item that is still missing. This was implemented, so that you don’t have to grind for months to get the last missing piece.
Rarity Tiers
There is the already known common – high end category system and that equals to a drop chance of about 60% / 30% / 7% / 3%
What are the Collections
- With Update 1.7 we get new vanity Collections that can be completed to get additional rewards.
- There are 5 Collections that have 4 or 5 pieces (22 pieces in total) and when you have completed one collection you get a piece of the Astronaut set.
- When you have all collections complete, you basically have a sixth collection that is the Astronaut set.
Content of Encrypted Caches?
- You will get the mentioned items of the collections, but you also have a chance to get Emotes and pieces that are in the normal Premium Vendor (also weapon skins and so on)
- But there are also a few pieces that are exclusive to the Encrypted Caches
- Over the coming months, these caches will get more and more items to keep the loot pool fresh and interesting
Why did you decide to introduce the Encrypted Caches and not put all the items in the Premium Vendor?
- They wanted to experiment and try new things how to sell items
- It is more interesting than the normal Shop experience
- Later down the road they look at the result and then decide what is more interesting to the players
- With the Encrypted Caches, they also have multiple ways to sell items and get more money for additional content
Why can we get Duplicates from Caches?
- When we have (for example) a pool of 30 items - when there are no duplicates, you can just buy the whole pool in one go and that is not interesting
- As long as there are duplicates you don’t get all items in one go and it stays longer interesting, because it keeps the hunt for the last pieces of the Collections going
- But they are also discussing to maybe remove duplicates, but that would also require another mechanic to compensate for the missing duplicates.
Why can’t we trade items and duplicates?
- When you introduce a store, you automatically introduce a platform that could basically end up in real gambling
- When you have a rare item, it could be sold for real money and that lead to very dark places in other games
- So there are advantages and disadvantages – but at the moment, there is no auction house in the game and that is also why this is currently not an option.
- It is an interesting idea, but they are very cautious to introduce such a system into the game
Changing droprates for popular items?
- That is not something they want or intend to do.
- They might increase / decrease the droprates of all Collection pieces or Key Fragments but not specific items.
Droprate of Keyfragements
- The droprate of Keys on the PTS was too low and it will be increased to 20% from Named NPCs in the Dark Zone and the Open World. They are also attached to many Commendations.
- They also plan to add them to more places like Underground / Last Stand and so on down the road
- It is the goal to have one Cypher Key for every hour you play, so normally it would take 5-10 hours to get one Cypher Key and also one Encrypted Cache
- But the Droprates are random but should still be rewarding
Known Issues
Lag
- There have been many complaints about lag and performance issues
- Lag is also on their priority list and they also spend a lot of time to find out why there is lag
- Lag can also come from new features that were added to the game and now cause server performance issues.
- Lag can also come from Security Checks to prevent players exploiting Mobile Cover for example
- Right now there is a big investigation going on to look at the Division content landscape to find features and issues that cause these performance issues.
CronusMax
- They are aware of that and are looking into that problem
Contamination on PTS 3
- Yes it is currently too strong and they will change it for launch
SASG Shotguns
- Are still an issue and they are looking into that
FAQs
Are Commendations Retroactive?
- A handful commendations are retroactive (like “Go to Manhattan”) but most of them are not.
- That is because they were not tracked from the beginning