Ubisoft Entertainment and Massive Entertainment recently announced that they would be delaying Tom Clancy’s The Division 2‘s first raid until next month, and while players were surely disappointed to learn of this, it’s always good to get all of those ducks in a row, even if it takes a little longer. That said, the devs also revealed that they would be implementing a Public Test Server for those playing on PC to try out patches and whatnot before they are injected into the live game. Now that the PTS has arrived, it’s time to learn what exactly is being tested.
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In a post on the game’s subreddit, Massive outlined what is currently in the rotation of tests being carried out on The Division 2 PTS. Many tweaks to mechanics are present as well as Dark Zone, PVP modifiers, Exotics, Talent, and Gear changes. There’s a lot to unpack, which you can check out the full post right here. There are a few of the highlights listed below.
Normalizing mechanics
The Equipment and weapons will be normalized to GS 500 (even if your GS is higher)
That also means, that they are no longer normalizing for a middle ground, but they are respecting the rolls on your gear. That means when you had an item with a very high crit chance roll, it will be like that in normalized content.
Skill Power will also be respected and when the mods are active in PVE, they will also be active in normalized content.
Global PVP Modifiers
The PVP damage modifier will be reduced from 70% to 40% and that will bring the Time to Kill down to what you experience in PVE. This way, you have more time to react.
The Skill Damage modifier will be increased from 20% to 25%, so that should make your skills more effective.
Overall the encounters should last longer overall and the skills should be more useful.
Occupied Dark Zone PVP Modifiers
They have also added a specific ODZ PVP damage modifier
Currently it sits at 40% – same as the normalized DZ – but they have the ability to specifically fine-tune the ODZ depending on how things change.
That should also help to lower the Time To Kill in the ODZ
PVP Modifiers for Weapon Archetypes
They will add specific PVP modifiers for specific weapon types.
For example, they can specifically buff the Assault Rifle in PVP now.
That also enables for specific PVP balancing, because the damage of the weapon is overwritten by the PVP Modifiers when you enter PVP content.
Hip fire Changes
In PVP content you will not be able to crit when you hip-fire
In PVE it behaves as it is now.
Dark Zone
Loot Changes
NDZ and ODZ will drop less clean loot and more contaminated loot, they want players to engage in the Loot Extraction – loop.
Named bosses guarantee contaminated loot and higher leveled landmark bosses have the ability to drop multiple items.
Landmark Cooldown
Landmarks got a cooldown once they are cleared before they become activate again (about a minute)
That should also encourage more player movement and not just farming the same Landmark.
Dark Zone NPC Balancing
The NPCs in the Dark Zone will be less lethal, but they will also have more armor.
Rogue Loop Changes
They removed the Rogue Cooldown when you die
The Rogue-Toggle cooldown will stay, so you will not be able to spam that.
Dark Zone Perk was also changed that it will no longer reduce the Rogue Timer cooldown, but you will lose less XP when you die as a rogue agent.
Dark Zone Pouch increased
You will be able to carry more Contaminated items.
Default is 6 items per bag
The Character Perks were also changed – The Tier 1 Perk will increase the bag-size to 8
The Dark Zone Perk will increase the bag-size to 10 in total.
Preventing Empty Dark Zones
They plan multiple changes to “guarantee” that you encounter 12 players in a Dark Zone instance.
They are reducing the amount of Dark Zone Brackets to 2. Everyone below Character Level 30 and everybody in Endgame.
Not all changes will be implemented with Title Update 3 – there is more in the queue down the line.
Occupied Dark Zone changes
The ODZ specific damage modifier was already mentioned
They also lower the XP loss when you die in the ODZ
GS 515 Items will drop in the Dark Zone
In endgame Dark Zone you will be able to get GS 515 items.
The Division 2 is currently available on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. For more on the game, check out some of our previous coverage.
What do you think about all of this? Have you been checking out the PTS for The Division 2? Are you glad that Massive has decided to implement some testing for their patches? Sound off in the comment section below, or feel free to hit me up over on Twitter @anarkE7!
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