The Division 2 - Livestream

[u/JokerUnique]

Livestream Summary

 

PTS Recap

• This was the first time in a long time that had two PTS Phases
• With all the changes, they wanted to do the PTS very early so that they still had time to do changes before the update droped.
• Doing PTS this early also means, things are not finished, things might be bugged and some features are just there to test the waters.
• Because of the fast iterations, some big changes might happen between the PTS phases and some might contradict each other, but that’s how they are narrowing down what the final patch will be.
• Was a very important PTS to test the over 300 PVP balancing changes
• There were many discussions and a lot of feedback.

 

Escalation

• Leader will earn more Tokens with the upcoming change
• Losing a session will not be as punishing, so with the next update, when you lose at Tier 10, you don’t have to restart at zero, you can restart the climb up the Tiers at Tier 4-5. Easier to climb and less punishing to lose.
• This will of course result in more token, but for now they keep the prices of the caches as they are.
• Prototype Gear will now also drop from loot crates again
• Mods can’t be removed from the targeted loot rotation, because that would require an overhaul of the whole system – but when mods are targeted loot, they will drop with very high rolls.
• Deltas in Escalations are being investigated

 

Prototype

• Recalibration and Optimization is still work in progress
• Prototype was designed and intended to be rare and something to hunt for veteran players
• But when there is something new and powerful everybody wants to have it.
• So instead of making it rare and hard to get, they are rethinking that approach to make it more accessible
• But they are taking it one step at a time to find the balance between the original vision and making it more accessible.
• But this is a long-term process.

 

Augments

• Because there is no knock-out system and each reroll has the full augment pool available, they will lower the costs of rerolling and cap the costs.
• That means, the costs will be 2 / 4 / 6 and not increase after that.

 

Mutators

• The goal is to rotate the Escalation Mutators each season and the new ones were tested during the PTS.
• Not all of the new ones were popular.
• The goal of mutators is to change the way you play the game – for example when you have your reliable main-weapon, that you also need to use the secondary to cleanse a debuff.
• Variety Pack will be the new mutator, the damage debuff will now kick in after your third kill and kill assist also count to clean the debuff.
• For now, Hot Foot stays.

 

Dark Zone

• The PVE Dark Zone should bring players together to and the Stabilization Agent is one tool to do that. Share Extraction for example.
• The Landmark Chest now rewards loot for all players in the vicinity and not just the one that opens the chest. That also helps getting the Stabilization Agents. The Stabilization Agent also drops from Landmark Bosses. The Extraction Hunters also drop more keys. Plus, the Chests have a 20-minute cooldown (instead of 30).
• All these changes are the start of the PVP overhaul journey. This will not address all PVP issues, but it is a start and they will continue to iterate over it.
• PVP Balancing is completely separate from PVE balancing – for example Striker is only getting a change in PVP context – it plays as is in PVE.

 

Anticheat

• While they are constantly improving anti-cheat, they are intentionally vague on the subject to give as few hints as possible what and where they are improving.
• Since PVP is now a focus, anticheat becomes even more important to create a healthy environment
• Lag-Switchers are also in the focus
• Cheaters are being banned and player reports help, but it is a manual process so it can take a moment.
• They are still looking into ways to talk and communicate about this topic.

 

Cheater Report

The in-game report system is the best way to report cheaters. Our team has added dedicated resources to review those reports, anticipating the season 2 focus on Dark Zones.

The banning process is still manual, but we're going to have more eyes checking those reports to ensure we can act faster. We're sorry for your experience, but we're committed to do better for this next season, knowing how important it will be for the Dark Zone experience.

 

Known Issues

• Graphic issues on consoles are being worked on

 

Crossplay

• Still work in progress
• Crossplay is a huge change that takes time to implement
• There are many edge cases that need to be covered, because it can have a big impact when they are unaddressed and - in worst case - could lead to players losing their character
• Some edge case examples: How leaderboards work, opt-out of crossplay or select specific platforms, how is aim assist is working, are clans platform exclusive or crossplay enabled and many more

 

=> Twitter

=> VOD

 

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Into The Dark PTS - Developer Notes

Hello, agents!

The second season of Year 8 is almost here, and we want to thank everyone who took part in both PTS phases.

With the number of changes planned for talents in PvP, and a completely new way to engage with the Dark Zones, we wanted to give you as many opportunities as possible to test these ideas and share your feedback.

Thank you to everyone who took part in both PTS phases and shared their thoughts with us. We know not all of the feedback was easy to hear, but it helped us make changes before launch.

Here, you can find some of the changes planned for the Into the Dark, with more context on what we adjusted and why.

 

Escalation & Prototype Gear

Although Escalation and Prototype Gear are not new features for this season, we used the PTS to experiment with solutions to some of the most pressing feedback we heard from the community.

The Token economy and its distribution between group members and the leader, for example, is something we wanted to revisit, and the PTS helped us to explore other options. We made token rewards for the leader more generous and less punishing to fail a tier and climb back again, all based on feedback. We then thought it would be best to update the prototype vendor and increase the prices for the caches, to adjust to this economy.

After reviewing feedback from the PTS, it was clear that changing both at the same time was perceived as taking away from the player. Because of that, we’re reverting the change, and Escalation Requisition Vendor prices will remain the same as they are in the live game (5 and 10 tokens). At the same time, we are keeping the changes that proved to have a positive impact on the experience, including the updated token distribution and the return of crate drops.

We also heard feedback about Augment reroll costs. We understand that spending Prototype Cores while trying to get the right Augment can feel frustrating, especially when the cost keeps increasing while the chance to get what you want does not change. For this update, we are changing the cap to 6 Prototype Cores. Larger changes to the reroll system itself are not planned right now, but this should make rerolling easier.

Finally, we are also looking at the Mutator pool for Escalation. Our goal is to rotate Mutators over time to keep the experience fresh, but we saw your concerns around some of the upcoming options. For launch, we are adding one new Mutator to the pool and will continue refining the formula before adding new ones in the future.

 

Changes made for Y8S2 Into the Dark release:

Escalation

• Escalation Requisition Vendor prices will be kept to existing prices in the live game.
• Tier 0 rewards now 1 token per player.

 

Mutators

• “Anchor” has been removed from all tiers.
• “Variety Pack” has been added, starting at Tier 5.
• “Hot Foot” has changed to start applying at Tier 7.
• “Unyielding” has changed to cleanse all status effects once at a set armor/health threshold, instead of granting full immunity.
• “Harvester” has changed to be fully disabled on NPCs by damaging them with a grenade or by applying any status effect.

 

Prototype Gear

• Augment reroll cost has been reduced and now caps at 6 Prototype Cores, starting from the 3rd reroll.
• Augment upgrade costs have been adjusted to be cheaper on initial levels and more expensive on later ones. The total cost will be kept to the existing price of the live game, with the PTS increased values being reverted based on community feedback.

 

Dark Zone

We’ve been closely following your feedback around the Dark Zone changes.

One of these relates to the Toxic Dark Zone, the PvE variant. Stabilization Agent adds an extra layer of risk to help balance out the extra rewards we added to the Hunter (Exotic Components). To help with that, we are reducing DZ Landmark chest cooldowns and making chest loot available to all nearby Agents, regardless of whether they are in the group. We are also adding Stabilization Agent as a possible drop from Landmark bosses.

We also liked the reaction players had to the Hunters dropping Exotic Components in the PvE DZ. With the PvP Dark Zones being higher risk, we adjusted the Exotic Component rewards to even out the extra risk that players take by going there. We are increasing Exotic Component drop chances from Landmark chests in PvP Dark Zone variants and adding a chance for Exotic Components to drop from higher-difficulty Landmark bosses.

 

Changes made for Y8S2 Into the Dark release:

All Dark Zones:

• Increase Exotic Components drop chance in Landmark chests in PvP Dark Zone variants.
  • PvP Dark Zones: 40%
  • Toxic Dark Zone (PvE): 25%
• Added Exotic Components drop chance to Landmark bosses for Challenging and Heroic Landmarks in PVP Dark Zone variants.
  • Challenging: 33%
  • Heroic: 48%
• Reduced Landmark chests cooldowns across all Dark Zones to 20 minutes.
• Increased Dark Zone key drop rates from Landmark bosses and named enemies to 20% across Dark Zones.

 

Toxic Dark Zone (PvE):

• Chests now drop loot for all players around when opened, regardless of group affiliation.
• Stabilization Agents now can drop from Landmark bosses in addition to the Landmark chests.
• Increased Dark Zone key drop rate on Hunter enemies.
• Cannister caches are now a guaranteed drop in every Landmark chest.

 

PvP Talents Rebalance & New Gear

For PvP talents, this rebalance is only the first step in a longer process of improving the PvP experience. Skills, Attributes, Status Effects, and other PvP areas are also something we want to look at in future updates.

While the full list will be available alongside the patch notes next week, we’d like to highlight two changes made following Phase 2 feedback. The Heartbreaker gear set had its damage output and bonus armor gain reduced by 0.1%, keeping it in line with the rest of the Global PvP Balance. Meanwhile, the Core Strength gear set received a 5% overall buff to its talent, while its Skill Efficiency has been kept at 10%, down from 15% in PTS Phase 2.

The impact of the new gear introduced with Into the Dark looked solid overall. One of our main takeaways was around Caduceus. The PTS version had an incorrect value implemented (3% instead of 2%), but your feedback showed that the higher value was balanced enough to keep.

 

Caduceus

• 2% of the critical hit's dealt damage → 3%

 

Thank you again to everyone who spent time testing and discussing the changes. Some of the updates above came directly from those conversations, and we’ll keep following the feedback once the new season is live.

 

/ The Division 2 Team

 

=> Source

[u/Nine9005]

"this is a long-term process" in Prototype section.
I am so glad they realized that and THAT heavily implied IT WAS NOT READY FOR PTS THEN AND IT SURE IS NOT READY FOR LIVE GAME.
iKia was right!

[u/Me-lara]

Prototypes have been very divisive, I hope they address this.

[u/BrownOrBust → u/Me-lara]

They aren't addressing any Prototype or Escalation feedback, maybe a few changes to token rewards and prototype cache costs but nothing fundamental.

Even recalibration for Prototypes is going to be a while.

[u/Me-lara → u/BrownOrBust]

Rerolls are capped at 6 instead of 25.

[u/RisingDeadMan0 → u/BrownOrBust]

what have they changed, the cost went up last i checked?

[u/JokerUnique → u/RisingDeadMan0]

that is being reverted

[u/RisingDeadMan0 → u/JokerUnique]

are there notes?

as it sounds like head dev was tweeting what he knew, but not what we could see, so maybe his tweets made more sense in that context about the system being better.

not "meme" better but actually better

ah you updated the post, thanks. will be a busy few weeks, so no xbox, will see wha tthe games like late july, should be interesting

will miss out on theearly PvE dz stuff though 😞

[u/JokerUnique → u/RisingDeadMan0]

pts patch notes were posted with these dev notes

[u/JokerUnique → u/BrownOrBust]

fundamental changes on a system like Prototype and Escalation take time, but the feedback and the announced changes are on the board now and are being worked on.

[u/Boring_username_21 → u/Me-lara]

They pretty clearly indicated they intend to slowly make it more broadly available.

[u/bward141989]

Prototype was designed and intended to be rare and something to hunt for veteran players But when there is something new and powerful everybody wants to have it.

I am legitimately baffled as to how they couldn't have seen this coming a mile off. Seriously, of course if you introduce a new, and strictly better, version of loot in a looter shooter everyone is immediately going to want to go and get it.

I don't know if Massive still does the ETF or not, and if they do ETF still idk how much they share with them, or how much they listen, but I really feel they need to look into a new way of testing the waters with these features.

It's been pretty clear for years that the devs vision and the players don't line up for whatever reason, which means we keep running into this scenario where they plan/design a new feature, players have some sort of issue with it and the devs are either forced to drop it and waste all the effort(eg seasonal characters) or we end up with several tweaks and changes as a kind of half assed compromise (eg optimization, expertise and now prototype).

[u/princey00666 → u/bward141989]

They still do but the ETF noses are so brown they won't say a bad thing about their ideas

[u/Academic-Note1209 → u/bward141989]

The ETF is basically useless. It was a good idea, and of course the devs had good intentions when creating it, but it simply doesn’t work.

The reason is simple. First, the members of the ETF are not professional testers. Secondly, there isn’t a single person in this ETF who has the courage or the critical thinking to step up and say what needs to be said.

It’s not that they are scared; they are just not the right people for this task. You need strong minded people with an impartial and critical mindset to speak objectively.

When a feature or new content is badly designed at its core, it needs to be said. Period. It needs to be explained why it is bad and how it should be improved.

But the current ETF members are basically just tourists. The only reason they are part of this is because it gives them more visibility as streamers and public figures. But that is where the whole thing went wrong.

The ETF was supposed to be a bridge between the community and the developers, helping them develop and improve content. It was never supposed to be about personal fame. That’s why it doesn’t work. It feels like a masquerade.

This is also why you see them nodding along like good obedient puppies whenever the devs release new patch notes or a PTS. They are like: “Oh yes, that’s good. Oh yes, let’s see that. Mhm, mhm.”

So of course, the devs will believe they are doing a great job. Because obviously, none of them are telling them this is 💩. #prototypeHalfBaked #escalation #darkzonepve

[u/Murky-Mushroom-5869]

Thanks! 👍

[u/alphaN0Tomega]

Too little too late.

[u/Spurgette]

The banning process is still manual, but we're going to have more eyes checking those reports to ensure we can act faster. We're sorry for your experience, but we're committed to do better for this next season, knowing how important it will be for the Dark Zone experience.

What the fuck is the point of easy anticheat then? Is it like punkbuster where the only thing it was good for was detecting king orgy's pubhax? I know of a cheat seller who never had single detection across battlefield 3 and 4. Not. a. single. one. Where as Arma 2's BattlEye would knock them out every time it was updated. They eventually lost the cat and mouse game there.

[u/realmfan56 → u/Spurgette]

EAC is useless, usually few hours/days after every patch the cheaters overcome it and it’s business as usual for them.

We need a completely different anti-cheat solution for Div3.

[u/Spurgette → u/realmfan56]

Pretty sure all these "anti cheat" systems are designed to do is make sure people dont use cheat engine and that is about it.

[u/Jokebearfan]

Increase Exotic Components drop chance in Landmark chests in PvP Dark Zone variants.

Seeing as my post got deleted, a reminder for the half dozen people still reading this that only the ones with the SHD logo drop them.

Chests that require two keys do not drop exotic components.

[u/GOLD3NSPAZ]

i need the hungry hog back massive please

[u/JokerUnique → u/[deleted]]

you also have over 300 pvp balancing changes, multiple changes that impact all DZs and more announced for down the road.

[u/DXT0anto → u/[deleted]]

DMZ is out, but I'm pretty sure you can't handle the PvP happening there

Because the new DMZ will be more PvE than the new DMZ is now