Title Update 8.4 is here for Division 2, and while there's already news on the next State of the Game, I'm happy to report that the new update not only brings significant improvements, but also remedies many of the issues players faced.
Even though my character is decked out (admitedly a glass cannon build), the sponginess of enemies was exhausting, and combined with their damage, made Heroic and Legendary runs pretty much a waste of time. If you also factor in the scaling, so that 4 man teams were a complete no-go, I'm glad to see these issues finally resolved.
There's never been a better time to dive in. Full notes below.
We are still evaluating several changes that are coming in on the server side and will update this post to reflect any changes. Updates are highlighted in BOLD.
Gameplay Changes
- Seasonal Manhunt is changed to allow progress at Normal difficulty and above. This will make playing together easier as all players will gain progress no matter what difficulty was set by the group leader.
- Seasonal Manhunt is receiving a button in the Manhunt UI that allows players to reset the Manhunt to replay it. This allows players to reset the progress specifically and without changing the Global Difficulty.
- This also means changing the Global Difficulty will not reset the Seasonal Manhunt and players are required to reset it via the Seasonal Manhunt UI.
- Coyote’s Mask will drop from Coyote with an increased drop chance on higher difficulties.
- We are also looking into providing the Mask for players that have not received them even though they reached Season Rank 35.
- Increasing the reward quality for the following Open World Activities to be in line with other activities: Public Execution, Settlement Blockade and Propaganda Broadcast.
- Reward caches from Conflict matches at maximum level are now of High-End quality.
Balancing Changes:
Developer Note: The game was tuned in a way that playing the exact same enemy composition at higher difficulties and higher player counts would match to the expected gear of that difficulty and extra players added. However, since the game also adds more Elites and Veterans to accommodate higher difficulty and player counts, this caused tuning to overcompensate health and damage higher than intended. We are thus lowering many of these values.
- Reduce NPC Damage output for all difficulties.
- This applies to all NPCs and activities and enemies will do less damage to players compared to their current damage output.
- Reduce NPC Health and Amor for group scaling.
- Enemy Health and Armor scaling for 2-, 3- and 4-player groups based on Veterancy.
- This means Red, Veteran, Elite and Named enemies will have their Health and Armor reduced compared to their current values.
- Additionally, we are adjusting Health and Armor based on activity difficulty.
- This applies to Hard and Challenging difficulties where enemies will have lower Health and Armor compared to their current values.
- An exception are Heroic and Legendary difficulty enemies which will have their Health and Armor increased to compensate for the group scaling reductions to their values.
Developer Note: We still intend Heroic and Legendary to be very challenging. Therefore, we are increasing the base difficulty to account for the health reductions for co-op scaling. Compared to now this means Heroic and Legendary will be a bit harder for solo players and 2-player groups, 3-player difficulty will stay roughly the same, and 4-player difficulty will be easier.
- Black Tusk specific adjustments which went live earlier last week
- Reduced the health of Warhounds.
- Reduced damage of Warhound Sniper.
- Reduced the damage of the 360 spin of Warhound minigun.
- Increased the intention icon duration of the 360 spin from Warhound Minigun to give players more time to react.
- Reduced weak point health of Warhound Grenadier’s Control Unit.
- Support Station
- Reduced Base Health of Support Station.
- Adjusted health scaling of Support Station with Veterancies.
- Increased likelihood of Support Stations being deployed in the open (away from cover).
- EMP effects will now damage the Support Station.
Lvl 30 WT1-WT5 Content
- NPC Damage, Health and Armor will receive additional reductions.
Developer Note: Pre-Warlords of New York content has lower maximum values to weapon damage, skill damage, and armor (etc.) than level 31+ content so difficulty is now tuned separately for pre-expansion world tier content.
PvP Balance Changes:
- All PvP weapon damage: - 20%
- PvP Rifles: an additional -10%
- PvP MMRs: an additional -10%
Skills
- Cluster Seeker Mine:
- Reduced distance to bull charge from 12m to 10m.
- Reduced distance from end to explode from 6m to 4m.
Developer Note: These changes should make the Cluster Seeker Mine feel a bit more responsive.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed missing dialogue localization for Brazilian Portuguese on Stadia.
- Fixed an issue causing developer UI elements being visible in the Language and Settings menu.
- Implemented improvements for data streaming issues on PlayStation 4.
- Fixed an issue that could cause in-game settings to reset after a player respawns.
- Fixed an issue causing the Seasonal Manhunt progress to reset when changing Directives.
- Fixed an issue causing the Apparel Event Urban Jungle schedule to not show correctly in-game.
- Fixed an issue causing Target Intel to be delivered to the mailbox. This was now removed as Target Intel is no longer used in the game.
- Fixed an issue causing the Sticky Bomb to not do damage under certain circumstances.
- Fixed an issue causing the Shock Trap deploys to be very close together when launched.
- Fixed an issue causing Global Difficulty to affect the Operation Dark Hours raid.
- Fixed an issue causing Specializations to not unlock while owning the Ultimate Edition or having purchased the Year 1 Bundle.
- Fixed an issue causing Season rewards to be skipped and instead giving players duplicates when gaining multiple Season Levels.
- Fixed an issue causing the objective “Complete the Roosevelt Island Mission on Hard or Higher Difficulty” to not count towards the Daily Project Outcast Hunt.
- Fixed an issue that could cause the Level 35 Season reward to not be delivered.
- Fixed an issue causing unintended Health values on Shields.
- Fixed an issue causing Season Ranks to be reset.
- Fixed an issue that caused League Mission Timers to reset when a Rogue encounter wiped the group.
- Fixed an issue causing the Hard Wired talents to not work correctly.
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