[Megathread] The Division 2

[Edge-]

It's really unusual. I'm not saying Ubi/Massive are saints or anything. And guaranteed I'd rather MTX wasn't in the game at all. But as long as it has to be(for whatever reason) it definitely could be a LOT worse than it is.

Pretty much this. Even with cosmetics most can be directly purchased via in-game currency you earn from getting duplicate cosmetic drops from the crates, Textiles. And you get a crate every 4 watch levels. So you can still directly get a huge number of the cosmetics, with only a handful realistically being locked in lockboxes or for premium currency only in the cash shop.

I actually bought the annual pass for this season (got it free last season because I had a special edition of the game I got for free with my replacement graphics card) and it's darned cheap, $10, and as you said is totally optional with most of the "big" rewards like crafting plans being a part of the free track.

Base game - Frequently on sale for $5 or less.

Expansion - $30 I think, but also frequently on sole for less, and bundled with the base game for a discount as well. It's a solid amount of content included with it for free, and gives access to more free content like the Summit that's coming with the next update.

Season pass - I guess they still sell it, I think all it grants is immediate access to the 3 latest specializations (minigunner, tactician, flamethrower). You can unlock all three in-game without too much difficulty (I've done tactician, on the last stage for gunner, and just starting flamethrower as I largely progress via "accident" in normal gameplay).

Loot boxes - Lockboxes, as they don't actually contain any "loot". Purely cosmetic, and the default ones are granted every 4 watch levels which doesn't take too long to get (especially with double XP for 20 levels after a manhunt update). They occasionally run premium events, but those also seem to come with free keys until you unlock everything. There are separate premium boxes like the one live now that are premium currency only, but meh. Cosmetics.

Item shop - Yep, they allow you to directly purchase stuff rather than just rly on RNG lockboxes. That's actually great! You can do it with premium currency, or with the Textiles you get from duplicate cosmetic drops. Given the frequency you get boxes with normal play you can unlock the stuff you want at a steady clip.

Battle pass - Largely a bunch of cosmetic bonus rewards, with some occasional faction keys for in-game lockboxes, and you can get the keys from doing bounties easily so it's not like they're of much value.

For the number of ways they have to monetize the game, the monetization is surprisingly low-key and not really in your face. Outside of buying the second battle pass for $10, I haven't spent a penny on the game because I honestly feel that I can pretty easily unlock whatever cosmetics I want through normal gameplay. So I get being "sticker shocked" by looking at it all from a distance, but in-action it's probably one of the more fair models I've seen in a while now that they're not charging for each DLC update. Unless they start making DLC expansions for $30 a year every year, I'm totes fine with this approach, even with the slower/smaller cadence of content updates compared to some other games.

[SirCowdog]

Hmm.....pistol builds looking good in TU11.

New pistol that gives a skill tier. Technician. Exotic backpack that gives buffs for picking up trophies. All red.

Thats a tier 2 bulwark(more than enough for anything) combined with all DPS.

Honestly, that exotic backpack alone is going to be insane for solo where many runs only last 10 minutes anyway. I wonder how stopping to pick up trophies will effect speed runs?

[Edge-]

https://www.reddit.com/r/thedivision...tember_4_2020/

Patch notes are up! Some thoughts as I read through them -

Seriously, this update looks to be the close quarters update in a big way. Almost every new piece of gear/weapon is designed for close quarters fighting.

Mod changes - Yay neutral mods! and yay for defensive mods getting buffed up to 20% caps! They should actually be somewhat appealing now with double the power.

Rainbow changes - Glad they went back on the first roll 100% matching the core. Should help with rainbow loot without totally killing gear for niche builds.

No more refreshing the HH buff when weapon swapping, RIP.

And that's it for now. Seems shorter than expected, but I imagine we'll see more notes as they update the PTS with newer builds leading into launch.

Still hype for Summit, and kinda eager to work on some close quarters SMG/shotgun builds with the new gear. I'm just hoping that the Summit won't be all close quarters combat constantly punching MMR builds in the balls.

- - - Updated - - -

https://www.reddit.com/r/thedivision...mit_floor_100/

PTS gonna PTS. Some clan got to floor 100 already, which is pretty darned impressive. THE LINK IS SPOILERS AND SO IS THE TEXT BELOW -

Top floor is hunters I guess, which I don't think I've ever fought. Only rogues, and I guess hunters are harder? Appears to scale based off group size, so I imagine it's 1-2 for solo play, adding one more for each additional player in the group. However right now they're hilariously broken and functionally wall hacking. I will say that at least the top floor looks MUCH more open than I thought. If the other floors are somewhat similar, then hopefully my fears that the whole thing will be very anti-MMR friendly will be unfounded

[SirCowdog]

PTS gonna PTS. Some clan got to floor 100 already, which is pretty darned impressive. THE LINK IS SPOILERS AND SO IS THE TEXT BELOW -

Top floor is hunters I guess, which I don't think I've ever fought. Only rogues, and I guess hunters are harder? Appears to scale based off group size, so I imagine it's 1-2 for solo play, adding one more for each additional player in the group. However right now they're hilariously broken and functionally wall hacking. I will say that at least the top floor looks MUCH more open than I thought. If the other floors are somewhat similar, then hopefully my fears that the whole thing will be very anti-MMR friendly will be unfounded

Hunters don't exist in Division 2 that I'm aware of, outside the special events when tracking down masks. They were mostly a thing from Division 1. It'll be interesting to see how they're implemented into actual encounters.

For that clan that already reached level 100, I do wonder if they're using exploits that still exist, or if they're really just that good. Or perhaps it's just that the new gear is REALLY strong.

What concerns me is that the devs appear to not really know how to make content that presents actual long-term challenge for top-end players, and by extension, high-tier players like myself. I'm not soloing legendary right now, but I can see it from where I'm at right now. And that doesn't even consider the new exotics and gearsets that will probably get me the build I need to do it.

If Skyscraper has to resort to more terrain-ignoring effects and raw damage that breaks the rules of the game.....that's worrisome. I'm sure it will be fun for a little while. But maybe not as long as it should. If all we have is this and re-used season 3 events....well. There are a lot of exremely good games coming with the new console generation, as well as the WoW expansion. Specifically there's Outriders and the Anthem remaster to contend with. While I don't have a lot of faith in Anthem for obvious reasons, Outriders is looking good.

Basically what I'm saying is that as good as Summit might be initially, Division 2 is going to have to keep up this level of work to stay competitive. Or drop a Div3 announcement and put Div2 on the back-burner.

Then again, maybe I'm just reading too much into it.

[Edge-]

To the second bit of your spoiler comment, apparently there's not much in the way of diversity in Summit right now. Reading a handful of posts saying that enemies are largely all AR-based and you get little in the way of diversity, so floors largely play out almost all the same which...if true and is unchanged for launch will likely kill my interest in it pretty quick. Hoping they'll be adding more to the PTS once the get the initial crop of issues resolved.

I agree that Massive needs to step up to compete with the next waves of looter shooter-esque games. I've been vocally critical at the slow update cadence (this is realistically the first content update post-WoNY. Manhunt is nice and all but not really proper new content or really repeatable, and the raid serves only a tiny part of the playerbase), and this is coming almost a full 6 months after launch. I'm still plenty skeptical about the Anthem rework and folks giving it a serious second chance, but some other games like Outriders is definitely looking very good, and existing games like Destiny 2 seem to be going strong while Division 2 stumbles.

I'm going to try to find some videos of it, but I'm growing increasingly worried that it'll be a far less interesting/exciting version of Underground. Underground is fantastic, don't get me wrong, but it should be a minimum-bar for quality for Summit. They have years of additional experience and hopefully more tools that should allow them to create better content than they could when they were first figuring out how to make a game like this years ago.

Edit: Damn man, sounds like they didn't do much internal QA on this before hitting the PTS. Reading reports that much of what they tweaked/added is broken - Exotic backpack has visual bugs with the longterm buff, Headhunter doesn't refresh at all, inventory is bugged, getting to Summit is borked most of the time...PTS and all, but like, it feels like every update is rushed out to the PTS even if it's been in the works for a while.

Reading more on some feedback, apparently the idea to ignore world difficulty and start on "normal" makes the lower floors a functional "one and done" in addition to be boring AF. This was a big concern for me, because it really does carve up the mode pointlessly. Folks that like easier modes have access to only a few sets of floors, while folks looking for a challenge have to slog through a bunch of easy floors and similarly have only a few sets of floors at the appropriate difficulty.

Same goes for the whole thing having a single targeted loot pool, rather than one rotating by sets of floors (WHICH WOULD BE REAL NICE PAIRED UP WITH THE WHOLE THING BEING SET TO YOUR WORLD DIFFICULTY) or some other system to provide a bit more flexibility.

And I do hope they add some daily/weekly projects to it. I really do miss having a ton of projects available to work on from vanilla to only really having 1 PvE daily/weekly and the exotic weekly. I have the battle pass daily too which helps, but man would it be awesome to get more weekly missions to tinker away with that involved doing Summit.

[SirCowdog]

To the second bit of your spoiler comment, apparently there's not much in the way of diversity in Summit right now. Reading a handful of posts saying that enemies are largely all AR-based and you get little in the way of diversity, so floors largely play out almost all the same which...if true and is unchanged for launch will likely kill my interest in it pretty quick. Hoping they'll be adding more to the PTS once the get the initial crop of issues resolved.

I agree that Massive needs to step up to compete with the next waves of looter shooter-esque games. I've been vocally critical at the slow update cadence (this is realistically the first content update post-WoNY. Manhunt is nice and all but not really proper new content or really repeatable, and the raid serves only a tiny part of the playerbase), and this is coming almost a full 6 months after launch. I'm still plenty skeptical about the Anthem rework and folks giving it a serious second chance, but some other games like Outriders is definitely looking very good, and existing games like Destiny 2 seem to be going strong while Division 2 stumbles.

I'm going to try to find some videos of it, but I'm growing increasingly worried that it'll be a far less interesting/exciting version of Underground. Underground is fantastic, don't get me wrong, but it should be a minimum-bar for quality for Summit. They have years of additional experience and hopefully more tools that should allow them to create better content than they could when they were first figuring out how to make a game like this years ago.

Edit: Damn man, sounds like they didn't do much internal QA on this before hitting the PTS. Reading reports that much of what they tweaked/added is broken - Exotic backpack has visual bugs with the longterm buff, Headhunter doesn't refresh at all, inventory is bugged, getting to Summit is borked most of the time...PTS and all, but like, it feels like every update is rushed out to the PTS even if it's been in the works for a while.

Reading more on some feedback, apparently the idea to ignore world difficulty and start on "normal" makes the lower floors a functional "one and done" in addition to be boring AF. This was a big concern for me, because it really does carve up the mode pointlessly. Folks that like easier modes have access to only a few sets of floors, while folks looking for a challenge have to slog through a bunch of easy floors and similarly have only a few sets of floors at the appropriate difficulty.

Same goes for the whole thing having a single targeted loot pool, rather than one rotating by sets of floors (WHICH WOULD BE REAL NICE PAIRED UP WITH THE WHOLE THING BEING SET TO YOUR WORLD DIFFICULTY) or some other system to provide a bit more flexibility.

And I do hope they add some daily/weekly projects to it. I really do miss having a ton of projects available to work on from vanilla to only really having 1 PvE daily/weekly and the exotic weekly. I have the battle pass daily too which helps, but man would it be awesome to get more weekly missions to tinker away with that involved doing Summit.

I think it might be better for us to think of the PTS more like a true oldschool Beta phase rather than a live build candidate that just needs some tweaks. That's what it feels like to me, anyway.

And I agree about adding more to the mode than just a few clickable objects and "kill all the dudes" objectives. I'd love to see some capture and hold events, random turrets like the final stage of Tombs, drone waves from DARPA, emp pulses from the previoud manhunt, etc.

They really should be using all of the things found in other places, even the raids, and turning them into events or entire floors.

As for difficulty, I think they should have made it so you pick a starting difficulty on floor 1(Norm, Hard, Chal, Hero, Legend), and each floor adds more health and damage each time you move up a floor, and every 10 floors the ratio of elites goes up.

I don't know. You're right that they need more to this mode to make it interesting enough to last.

[Nutri]

Summit looks nice.
I've uninstalled a couple of weeks ago, TU11 looks like a good moment to reinstall and give it another go.

I'm completely engulfed in Satisfactory atm, it'll be quite a swing to jump back into a 3rd person looter/shooter

Well looks like I’ll wait a month or so after Summit releases to read if its worth it or not.

[KrayZ33]

What concerns me is that the devs appear to not really know how to make content that presents actual long-term challenge for top-end players, and by extension, high-tier players like myself. I'm not soloing legendary right now, but I can see it from where I'm at right now. And that doesn't even consider the new exotics and gearsets that will probably get me the build I need to do it.

If Skyscraper has to resort to more terrain-ignoring effects and raw damage that breaks the rules of the game.....that's worrisome. I'm sure it will be fun for a little while. But maybe not as long as it should. If all we have is this and re-used season 3 events....well. There are a lot of exremely good games coming with the new console generation, as well as the WoW expansion. Specifically there's Outriders and the Anthem remaster to contend with. While I don't have a lot of faith in Anthem for obvious reasons, Outriders is looking good.

Basically what I'm saying is that as good as Summit might be initially, Division 2 is going to have to keep up this level of work to stay competitive. Or drop a Div3 announcement and put Div2 on the back-burner.

Then again, maybe I'm just reading too much into it.

There is really no need for "long term challenge"-modes if there were enough methods to create your own spec/character/build.
Warframe isn't "difficult" either but you can have fun farming the same shit every day by using a different frame and different weapons.

And tbh, I'm not expecting long term challenge when I'm playing a looter-shooter. But I'd expect a lot of interesting builds and stuff, something the game lacks too.

[SirCowdog]

There is really no need for "long term challenge"-modes if there were enough methods to create your own spec/character/build.
Warframe isn't "difficult" either but you can have fun farming the same shit every day by using a different frame and different weapons.

That's actually a really good point. Targeted loot could be A LOT better than it is right now. And targeted loot gets worse every time they add a new brand or set.

I shouldn't be, but I'm actually surprised they haven't done anything about that so far.

[Haligy]

so how is summit for you good endgame activity or ?

[Coldkil]

so how is summit for you good endgame activity or ?

I can tell you when it's out Seems good on paper, but i think it's gonna be "Kenly College 2.0" where you're going there just for getting the related exotics, and maybe if the targeted loot is something you need.

I expect new season to have multiple events in Summit to make people actually go there.

[Edge-]

I can tell you when it's out Seems good on paper, but i think it's gonna be "Kenly College 2.0" where you're going there just for getting the related exotics, and maybe if the targeted loot is something you need.

I expect new season to have multiple events in Summit to make people actually go there.

I hope it's not Kenly 2.0...because despite my strong dislike of that zone in general (still haven't even completed the last wing) it's such a monumental waste of resources and content. About all I can say for it is that I'm sick of Manny or whatever telling me that my transpo to Kenly is ready whenever it's up.

No SOTG this week but it's coming back next week. REALLY hoping to see some big improvements coming for Summit in it, because based off of everything I've read and what bits I've seen of some of it it's...rough, and not in a good way. It honestly makes me think it was whipped together in a pretty short amount of time, because it seems so repetitive and devoid of character/surprise/fun.

[Witchblade77]

oh god, if its like Kenly college then no thank you. I did Kenly twice. once solo, and once with SO. for exotic, lore bits and backpack dangles (which only needs to be done once)... and then that very exotic dropped for both of us in one of the added exotic caches :/ that place is just varying degrees of tedious and downright annoying IMO.

they have a fairly decent formula in Underground. it could use some sprucing up, but overall, at first Summit sounded like underground and so it sounded like it could be at least entertaining for a bit. or so I hoped...

[Coldkil]

I hope it's not Kenly 2.0...because despite my strong dislike of that zone in general (still haven't even completed the last wing) it's such a monumental waste of resources and content. About all I can say for it is that I'm sick of Manny or whatever telling me that my transpo to Kenly is ready whenever it's up.

The point is how valuable is to rerun it. Example, if targeted loot is the same for all floors, i'm going there only when there's stuff i need. Also, once you get the exotics from there you don't have to redo it again (since it's easier to reroll than to craft/find another).

It won't be 100% like Kenly but i think they're gonna add event/leagues that will require running it so in a way or another you're gonna do it.

[Edge-]

https://www.reddit.com/r/thedivision...mmit_feedback/

PTS update coming tomorrow, Summit update going live in Sept 22...this ain't a lot of time for them to work on big improvements, but here's what's coming for tomorrow and I suppose the update itself -

Added greater variety and diversity in objective types as you progress through The Summit.

Changed the Hostage revive timer to be longer, giving more leeway to reach them before the objective fails.

Increased the radius of the hack zone for EMP objectives.

Increased the amount of loot caches scattered around the building, which contents scale with difficulty.

Reduced number of directives on Legendary Floors 91-100. Now has 3 random directives (previously had 4).

Fixed an issue which allowed players to finish the 100th floor without actually killing the enemies .

Fixed an issue causing only one type of enemy to spawn on Legendary difficulty.

Fixed an issue causing enemies to shoot through walls on the 100th floor.

Some alright changes, but far, far, far from what they need to do. Full notes tomorrow, and I hope they just "forgot" to add some of the bigger changes/improvements.

Apparently they'll be improving it after launch, but before the next TU patch. This update is seeming less and less exciting and I'm losing more and more faith in Massive as a developer.

[SirCowdog]

https://www.reddit.com/r/thedivision...mmit_feedback/

PTS update coming tomorrow, Summit update going live in Sept 22...this ain't a lot of time for them to work on big improvements, but here's what's coming for tomorrow and I suppose the update itself -



Some alright changes, but far, far, far from what they need to do. Full notes tomorrow, and I hope they just "forgot" to add some of the bigger changes/improvements.

Apparently they'll be improving it after launch, but before the next TU patch. This update is seeming less and less exciting and I'm losing more and more faith in Massive as a developer.

I'm concerned that they're only doing tweaks and bugfixes, and not addressing some of the core issues with the game mode. Like Coldkil said, targeted loot is a problem already. Replayability is already a problem.

This isn't looking good for more than a handful of playthroughs.

[Edge-]

I'm concerned that they're only doing tweaks and bugfixes, and not addressing some of the core issues with the game mode. Like Coldkil said, targeted loot is a problem already. Replayability is already a problem.

This isn't looking good for more than a handful of playthroughs.

Well, they're on a tight timeline so I doubt they have the bandwidth to introduce bigger changes and get them tested for launch. What's on the PTS seems largely to be what we're getting with some tweaks.

I still don't know why they bothered with 100 floors when only 20 will ever be relevant to the player at any given time. Make the whole thing scale with difficulty and set different targeted loot every 20 floors.

It's sounding like we'll have to hope they can fix it post-launch. But damn if the first proper content update in 6 months since the launch of WoNY (I don't count raids) isn't underwhelming as fuck so far.

[SirCowdog]

Well, they're on a tight timeline so I doubt they have the bandwidth to introduce bigger changes and get them tested for launch. What's on the PTS seems largely to be what we're getting with some tweaks.

I still don't know why they bothered with 100 floors when only 20 will ever be relevant to the player at any given time. Make the whole thing scale with difficulty and set different targeted loot every 20 floors.

It's sounding like we'll have to hope they can fix it post-launch. But damn if the first proper content update in 6 months since the launch of WoNY (I don't count raids) isn't underwhelming as fuck so far.

Yeah, I'm honestly more excited for the new gear than I am for the game mode. XD

[Edge-]

Yeah, I'm honestly more excited for the new gear than I am for the game mode. XD

I sorta am too because I'll likely try to finally start building short range builds, but without anything to really work towards I don't think I'll stick around too much. Will likely at least stay for the next manhunt and Season 3, but unless things change I ain't buyin the battle pass thingy this time. $10 is cheap and all and the bonuses are nice, but I am not terribly inclined to support poor quality content.

Which is a catch 22, because if people don't spend they can't justify bigger work on the game, so we get smaller/less exciting updates which lead less people to play/spend etc. etc.

Man, I hate the notion of sequels with these games since they undermine the whole purpose of them being online worlds that are built upon and all...but damn if I don't want to see another studio (RED STORM?!) take a crack at the next sequel and hope that the same nonsense mistakes are made a third time in a row.

They've got a lot more competition coming around the corner, both directly and indirectly, and they're gonna need to find a way to keep players in TD2. I want the game to do well because it's got a fantastic skeleton that it's built upon, it's just disappointing that Massive seems to keep bloody dropping the ball left and right.

But hey, at least we've got the cosmetic update! That'll kill some time leveling a new character to unlock all the gray/green/blue/purple cosmetics that don't drop anymore on my main.

[Coldkil]

What the fuck. (from the TU11 PTS phase 2)

Eclipse Protocol

Lowered Indirect Transmission on kill status effect spread from 15m to 10m.

Proliferation now increases the range of Indirect Transmission from 10m to 15m.

Increased Symptom Aggravator damage amplification from 15% to 30%.

EDIT: Enforcer/Firewall/exotic chest/Eclipse backpack build incoming. Because fuck you and also your enemies.