stitchlo

I mean, someone post something on the internet and you guys are here telling people stop playing won‘t help. Then I will say, stop playing the game definitely get your attention and it will be helpful on fixing the game. And maybe you should hear what a veteran said rather than hear some newbie who don’t even know how to put their gear together. Btw, I am welcome if the development team play legendary difficulty on stream, and tell me the same bs you said right here. I don’t care you put all your gear pieces to god roll, just play it once and tell me the same thing again. I dare you will try. Keep up the good work, you guys just ruining the game, nothing serious. I would like to see after borderland 3 release, how much your ‘data’ will get worse. Oh, you remind me, about the endless progression system, take a look at borderland 3. In case if you guys don’t know how to fix the game, I believe borderland, poe or maybe just take a look on division 1, your own work and creation, I guess you guys may find out why the current state of the game make player disappointed.

Something extra though, maybe you should realise division2 is a pve game, I do know some player enjoy pvp but plz stop balance your skill and perks with pvp concept and make a division agent like kids playing nerf gun when the enemy using all the fancy tech and god-like guns.

You have our attention. Sure, if we have 0 players that also gets attention but it won't change things more quickly. Some changes need time and that's all I'm trying to say. And again, if you're not having fun that's valid feedback. But if you just stop playing because you believe it will somehow make things better, it does not.

Also: PvE and PvP are balanced separately. We can adjust skills and other things for PVP specifically.

Bill_Dexhart

Difficulty: Challenging/Heroic

No Directives

Coordinated Co-op

I have 2 builds. One focused on 3 yellow and 3 reds that has nice rolls. The other build is a work in progress shield build. I expect to be squishy but 2/3 shots.

I have a friend who used a full skill build with the chem launcher and revive hive.

My other friends build I don't know much about but he has at least 1.2 mil armor and he says he doesn't see the difference between 600k and 1.2 mil and I don't either.

Thanks a lot for the details!

onframe

Reddit has a huge design flaw with upvote system, only 1 opinion gets through sometimes, that's why it would be nice if mods here pinned FAQ/Guide thread on top page including some guides for current update to help new/returning players.

After each update we see emotional reaction, it's a bit sad because new players might get a wrong idea as well and this game really deserved Destiny 2 levels of attention I feel.

Anyway good luck with development, I'm sure you guys already have some nice data on how it all went after release, also Manhunt system looks good as much as I managed to try it, feels like a new PVE mode in a way.

Thanks! I actually also look at heavily downvoted comments in these discussions to check if there are some other opinions. The voting system definitely has some flaws but we still get a lot of good interactions out of reddit.

randomZ0MBIE

OP here. I am by no means trying to be combative or antagonistic. Just want to get that out of the way first.

But up until now the dev response has been "It's too early tell. Grind more, and optimize."

You didn't even acknowledge the possibility that there was something wrong until people here started talking about leaving the game.

I understand game development can be a difficult process, with a lot moving parts. I also understand that a development studio can be an ungainly beast that takes time and effort to get moving. I was actually a programmer at a certain studio in Dallas, Tx. before I left the industry to get a medical degree.

Most of us would just like to know if this going to resolved, and if so, what is that resolution going to like. This way we can decide if we want to stay and tough it out, or move on to greener pastures.

Edit: I forgot to add people were already speed running Heroic a few days after launch, I was one of them. Most of the complaints here stem from the tedium and frustration involved with completing missions on the higher difficulties not the actual challenge.

I think that's not really fair. We have talked about the game difficulty as early as last week on State of the Game. What we don't want to do is go back to the difficulty levels of TD2 before the expansion. If we blanket nerf everything we likely will have to follow-up with blanket buffs afterwards. We don't believe it's the right way to go.

If you feel that a week is not quick enough, when a majority of the player base hasn't even reached the max level, then I can't offer you exact changes for everything yet. If you believe you need to take a break because you're not enjoying yourself that's totally fine. I just want to say again that stopping to play to proof a point doesn't really do anything to speed up our processes. Software development, especially balance, takes time.

yasuoionia

LOL, I have 80%+40% weapon dmg 60% CHC 130% CHD 85% headshot dmg, yet your develop team is still playing lvl31-40 content telling us it is not hard at all? How about you run a 4 man heroic mission and go live I really wish to see please teach me how to play this game please :) heroic drops are no difference from normal or hard drops, your team is a joke. YOU should play this game, not just look at the data and the codes and act tough towards your playerbase, unless you want div1 1.4 to happen again. What you are doing now is USELESS.

I think you misunderstand what a Community Manager is and how they are not part of balancing the game. I also don't quite get if you're trying to say you're struggling with the stats you have or if the stats you have are so good that you're not struggling.

You can watch me play after the maintenance and I have played since the launch of the game. But, and here is what you seem to misunderstand, it doesn't matter how much I play because I'm here to take on your feedback and send it to the devs.

If you have any constructive feedback please send it over. So far your comment hasn't been helpful at all. :(

Bill_Dexhart

There's no difference between 600k armor and 1.6 mil. We all get shredded in 2 hits and the AI pushes you constantly despite being shot at by the whole team.

What difficulty are you playing in and are you using any Directives? Is it coordinated co-op or solo? Have you tried different setups, e.g. with a dedicated agent for healing?

If you have a little more details I can take that to the team.

randomZ0MBIE

I'm sorry to hit you back up like this. I don't necessarily expect you to read this, it is more a thing I want to say, just to say it.

Up until now your game has existed as a particular entity. When people logged in to play it, they expect the systems to be designed a certain way, they expect the mechanics to work certain way, and they expect the game-play to feel a certain way as they play it.

It sounds like you have decided that you want to change that so you can refocus your attention toward a different demographic. That is fine, you are well within your rights as a creative entity to do that. But if you are going to change the core experience of the game such so that it is clearly scaled for that new demographic, you should also be prepared for a portion of your current and previous play-base to become displeased, and possibly leave out of frustration and discontent.

I believe this current situation is a small general idea of what that unhappiness would look like.

I think it's fair to say that the intention of our changes haven't been clear to all players and the same can be said to pre-WONY The Division 2. I think a lot of people didn't think that Challenging or Heroic were actually either of these difficulties because they were much easier than anticipated.

It will take some time to make sure everybody understands what the intentions were and we also simply have to make adjustments in certain areas to keep what we had in mind alive while also making sure that the difficulty is not simply NPC health and them melee-ing everybody to death.

Baelorn

it's also clear that there seems to be a difficulty spike for players that happens somewhere between hard and challenging and causes frustration

The difficulty is all over the place even on Hard. Sometimes I'm taking down Bosses/Named NPCs like it is Normal and other times I'll come up against regular enemies(Purple/Red) that make it feel like Heroic.

It doesn't help that this patch note doesn't seem to be true in practice:

Item power, quality and quantity now scales more strongly with difficulty.

While you will see less loot drops overall the quality of items you acquire will be higher and you have the option to increase the quality by tackling harder challenges.

My gear hasn't changed much since I upped the Difficulty because I am finding zero upgrades playing on Hard. My recal library is stocked with good individual rolls but I have no pieces worth using those rolls on. I've played ~20 hours in the past few days and have nothing to show for it. That should not be happening.

I finally got an Exotic(Chameleon) earlier and it was worthless. Terrible rolls across the board and low base damage. Not even an upgrade and it's the only Exotic weapon I've gotten since WoNY dropped.

I also hope you're looking at the people who are able to do Heroic right now and seeing how many of them have near-perfect gear from the early DZ bug because that is not at all representative of the loot the rest of us are getting.

A bit off-topic but still relevant: Many of the old missions were clearly designed for a totally different state of balance and they need to be re-tuned if things stay the way they are now. DARPA Labs is a serious offender of this with the number of enemies and how often you are forced from cover.

Loot is something we can look at as well. The details on that are important and I think many players are getting better at sharing those with us. Having good rolls on items that are overall not great is something we can have a look at. Obviously RNG is something that plays a part in that and the way your previously put a build together might also not be how it is working now.

You should be able to gear up in normal to tackle hard, do hard and get better rolls and be able to do challenging. If it's something that is taking too long to do, we can also have a look at that. I do want to say that we're just a week in and I have the feeling that some of the negativity also comes from players expecting to be legendary ready by now, without having put in a lot of time.

onframe

I really encourage you to not take reddit to heart, we see a reactionary thing here, if you type Warlords of New York build in Youtube, you see all bunch of amazing guides, listed some of them here.

https://www.reddit.com/r/thedivision/comments/fg9tdb/this_subreddit_should_have_sticky_thread_with/

You guys did an amazing job with new gear, of course nothing is perfect, but we see more builds, and tank/healer roles finally comes through so it's a really good start to build on it further, with some tweaks it will be amazing, positives far outshine the negatives. Also there is completely different community reaction on discord, we see much more engagement with current difficulty and gear system, people come up with crazy stuff.

Keep it up guys, stay motivated! And fix Hard Wired backpack talent!!! :D

We definitely look at more than just reddit and our own data also shows a lot of things that are working well. I personally believe that coming here and talking with the reddit community is important though. We will do changes that "reddit" doesn't like or don't do things people on here would like. As long as we explain what we want to do and why it should help all communities.

imgrundz

Can y'all please consider explaining why PvP was made to feel like CoD? TTK in PvE is long, but PvP is .2 seconds. Even with 1.4 million armor, TTK is still .2 seconds. I can shred through a 10 mil shield in about a clip fully proc-ed and that's just not right. Please talk about PvP modifiers, because even though a lot of PvE-ers are in the DZ for farming, A LOT of PvP-ers have just flat out left with this TTK change. It feels really bad to play considering what this game is about -- building. Armor feels meaningless in PvP. Engagements are so short-winded, they become unrewarding. I want to work to down a tank, I don't want to kill anyone in 1/2 a clip.

It's an interesting discussion to be had. I've had PVPers reach out to me and say they enjoy the current TTK and we obviously have heard the opposite as well. I think Yannick mentioned last week that we do want to look into this and see if we can make small adjustments and see how that works out.

garliccrisps

stopping to play to proof a point doesn't really help anybody

Helps me stay sane.

That infers that you're not having fun with the game or the overall situation causes you anger and frustration. That's totally different and stopping the activity causing that is a great solution. But just stopping because you think something will change because of that is not helping.

I just want to drop in here and say that stopping to play to proof a point doesn't really help anybody. We appreciate player feedback and we are looking into our own data, as well as the reports we're seeing on reddit, social media and our forums.

If you're not having fun and you stop playing, totally fair. If you just stop playing because you feel it will speed up some magic process, it doesn't. We have started work on changes but we also want to make sure that we tell you why we make changes and what our intentions with the current difficulty are. Currently it seems like we didn't make it clear enough that you shouldn't be able to speed run heroic a few days after the expansion launches but it's also clear that there seems to be a difficulty spike for players that happens somewhere between hard and challenging and causes frustration.

We'll have more details and talk about this topic more this week.

UserProv_Minotaur

Maybe have levels before you get the ANNA watch should award proficiency caches?

Also, what happened to leveling up awarding proficiency caches?

You get Field Proficiency from Level 31 - 40. At Level 40 you don't get any of these but have the Season Levels that have gear as reward.

Drosophiler

Thank you for the clarification Chris. Could you please also comment on why specializations points were decreased from 3 to 1 for leveling up? People like me that cannot play as much as we would like are really struggling to level up specializations. Thanks

We increased the points for Bounties on Friday, so you get a bit more points. SHD Levels provide one point and if you feel it's too little currently I can take that to the team. Let me know what you feel would give you a different experience and what you generally play.

brambo93

this is a BIG change! u need to mention in the next patch note!

It's on the known issues list.

Aidenfred

Just out of curiosity, why exploits can be fixed in a temporary maintenance while bugs affecting players need a scheduled patch, even some of them are probably game breaking?

Also, we're aware of the stealth nerf of the guild vendor items, but you guys never mentioned this part during the temporary maintenance? This would really increase the distrust between the developer team and the player community.

I don't understand what a temporary maintenance is. We fixed the exploit in the same maintenance as the UI issue with players being stuck in the inventory. Both needed a full maintenance.

I can check on the Vendor items, if we changed it it was most likely not mentioned because the maintenance was done later than expected and we most likely didn't communicate it correctly internally.

Bizzerker_Bauer

Could I ask what the skill Safeguard does then? It says that it boosts total skill repair by 100%, but only does so while you're already at full armor.

So you can repair other players' armor. It's to support others.

Hungry_Grump

Do you have a fix for the chem launcher heal as well? I doubt it's intentional to burst heal my allies, but only HoT myself...

There should be no Burst Heal on the Chem launcher and from what I can tell it hasn't had one since TU6. Do you have any video from EP3 where it still had Burst Heal? We want to make sure that TU7 not accidentally re-introduced it.

Drosophiler

Here is exactly what it was said, minute 38 in the SOTG of February 12 https://youtu.be/fsTi1LppEuQ

Yes, we are talking about this right now. Drew had different information at the moment and Trick confirmed with me that it wasn't planned like that. We are looking into making adjustments though.

RyusekiV3

Stim for dmg/movement speed also does nothing, it shows the buff being applied but it doesn't do anything at all. They also nerfed the ever living hell out of the duration.

The Booster Hive description incorrectly states that it grants the player increased movement speed and a cool down reduction. The reworked Booster Hive grants increased weapon damage and weapon handling.

We mention this in the Known-Issues list but obviously want to fix this as soon as wecan.