The Division 2 Game Community Developer Chris Gansler and 3C designer, Fredrik Thylander talked about the changes that will be introduced with the “Invasion: Battle for D.C.” update on Friday. The update is the first “expansion” that will be released introducing World Tier 5 loot into the game. To go along with the Invasion: Battle for D.C. content update their will be a patch released fixing bugs, adding new weapon skins, adding apparel and much more.
The patch is expected to be released during regular maintenance work on April 5, 2019 at 9:30 am CET – 12:30 CET. During this time players will be unable to play The Division 2 until the 3 hour maintenance period has completed.
The Division 2 State of the Game April 3 Summary
Apparel Event
After seeing the complaints about character customization and uniqueness it appears The Division 2 will be having an apparel event. The apparel event will allow players to unlock unique apparel to set them apart from other agents.
- First apparel event will last 4 weeks (April 5th – May 2nd) where players can get Special Event Caches.
- The Special Event Caches contain cool new outfits and other things like emotes.
- You can also get Masks from these caches.
- Everybody will get one Special Event Cache for free in the first week – if you log in before Thursday.
- Year 1 Pass owners get three additional free caches when they log in during the event.
- There will be ways to gain more free caches – like specific projects that you can finish.
- Special Event Caches don’t have any duplicates.
Bug Fixes
During the State of the Game a few bugs were mentioned, that should be fixed with the April 5th update. Keep in mind their more be more bugs that they are fixing and did not cover in today’s stream.
- When your Crafting Station is stuck on a lower World Tier, that will be fixed with this update.
- You will get a sensitivity slider for when you zoom in.
- Field of View slider will also be added with this update.
- There will be many more bug fixes that will be listed in the Patch Notes
Balancing Changes
With the release of the latest “Invasion: Battle for D.C.” content The Division 2 will see it’s first balancing update. The update aims to make PVP and the dark zone more balanced, allowing players to use more custom builds.
- Keep in mind, it is very early in the lifecycle so this is a first step in balancing to address some peaks.
- There is also a lot of talk about PVP – this update will not focus specifically on PVP balance, this is something for a later date – but some of the small changes will, of course, impact PVP.
- The Sniper M700 and the Rifle MK17 will get a damage reduction.
- Crit Damage and Headshot Damage will be lowered across all existing gear, so if you have equipment with these stats on it, they will be different when you log in on Friday.
- “Safeguard Talent” (extra healing) will get an internal cooldown so that it can’t be up all the time
- Demolitionist Talent “Crisis Response” (when armor breaks you replenish your ammo) will also get an internal cooldown.
Skill Changes
Some of the skills in The Division 2 will be reworked to make them more balanced and used.
Sniper Turret
- Sniper Turret has been reworked
- You will have a button above an enemy and the Turret will then shoot that NPC and it will automatically track it.
- When you aim at the same NPC you can also specifically control where the shot will go (headshot or weakpoint etc)
- That should make the Sniper Turret more accessible.
Chem Launcher
- The handling of the Chem Launcher has been a bit awkward.
- Now when you activate the Chem Launcher, it will activate and you can use it like a weapon until you put it away.
- That should also give you more control about the skill
FireFly
- Aiming mechanism has been reworked, so you can mark targets faster
Skill Mods
- The Bonuses you get from the Skill Mods correlate now with the amount of Skill Power required to unlock them.
- They are now within the bounds of the Skill Power that you can get on your gear and they also changed the amount of Skill Power that you get on your gear.
- So even when you have less Skill Power on your gear when you log in on Friday, don’t panic, you may be able to unlock a lot of mods that you could before.
- With these changes skill builds should become a lot more viable.
Weapon Mods changes
Currently in The Division 2 all weapon mods had a positive and a negative effect to them. However, that is going to be changing. The new weapon mods will not always have a negative, but they may have lower values to balance them out.
- All weapon mods got new values, new positives, more in line what they would do in real life
- They also have lower values – since they don’t have their drawbacks anymore.
- The only time there are negatives now on the Weapon Mods is when there are multiple mods – like magazines – one of them will have higher positive values, but also some negative values.
- For every slot, there is a mod for every type of stat that has no negative values.
- Now you can choose the mods you want to use and that should also be more fun.
Other Changes
- Sharpshooter Signature Weapon has a faster lock – on, so if you had the feeling that you often missed the shot with the signature weapon, this should be addressed.
- LVOA-C, the Lightweight M4, the Shotgun AA12, LMG MG5 got a buff
Patch Notes
During the State of the Game stream they announced their would be very extensive patch notes released when the update comes out. Once they are released we will summarize and post them on April 5, 2019.
