We can barely find a DZ server as it is on PC, and when we find one we're greeted with full blown hackers shooting through buildings across the map and killing you as soon as you come out of the checkpoints.

I know there have been NUMEROUS clips sent in and in game reports filed and these same cheaters have been running around for over a month. It's gotten so bad we can barely find a server with players because they are abandoning the DZ in droves because of the blatant hacking that is left unchecked. It's not even "Oh this player killed me, they must be hacking". The hackers are literally gunning players down through buildings, going solo manhunt on an entire server and wiping everyone before they can get out of the checkpoint.

What gives? Should we just go ahead and uninstall the game and abandon it as it seems the devs have? Consoles may be doing ok, but PC is practically dead and overrun with hackers.

@v4mpir1 I'm starting to make my peace with this fact. The Division franchise quickly became a favorite after the release of the original game. I gave Division 2 a chance based on that. I was somewhat disappointed with the changes, mainly to the DZ, that they made. It's still a decent game though.

It's quickly becoming more and more difficult to log in and play. Aside from the obvious hackers, there's plenty of other issues. The laundry list of bugs that have been present since almost launch and have yet to be fixed is extensive. Apparently they've also managed to introduce more bugs rerunning seasons. Server instability is an everyday thing. Crashes are pretty much an everyday occurence as well.

I tried to set some new goals to keep me playing by starting Hardcore agent and checking off some of those related accomplishments, but with the crash to desktop issue it almost seems like it would be a wasted effort. There's more than one post about players losing their progress due to crashes.

My main issues:

• Crashes. They have to fix the crashes. They disrupt every aspect of gameplay, both PvE and PvP. They've only gotten worse since the "fix", not better.
• Gear rebalance. Both PvP and PvE suffer from the fact that there aren't many options due to some gear being extremely effective and other gear being not really effective at all.
• Cheating. Cheating ruins PvP. Period. This goes for the obvious magic bullet and aimbots all the way down to the glitches players use to boost their performance.
  • Hackers- We all know you can't stop every hacker, but atleast put a little more effort in to policing it. When I see the same hackers running around for months and shooting people through buildings and speed hacking. Something is wrong.
  • Aim Assist- This has fast became a problem on PC. After the video showing how players could activate aim assist while using mouse and keyboard was released, there has been a flood of glass cannon one shot builds in PvP. This needs to be addressed by limiting input to either mouse and keyboard or gamepad. Both should not be able to input without changing a menu setting.
  • Glitches-
    • There are apparently still glitches in the game that allow players to stack talents on weapons and increase damage or apply other talent effects. Someone needs to go back through and make sure that they are vetting how any functions that handle this are working.
    • The chest piece swap is a big issue in PvP as it allows a player to swap to a Perfectly Efficient Chestpiece while kitting and obtain the related bonus(400% bonus over 10s for Firewall), then immediately swap back to a chest piece with a damage talent. It also seems to make the process of applying a kit faster. Huge bonus for a player as it makes them extremely difficult to kill while also allowing them to return to using a damage talent while fighting. Several known streamers and YouTubers now use this as there appears to be no reperussions.

I could go on with a number of issues in the game, but it's just exhausting at this point. Those are a few big one that would at least help. A lot of them are PvP focused because I do a lot of PvP lately due to not wanting to run any number of the same missions for the umpteenth time. I still do some missions and maybe Summit occasionally, but it's gotten pretty stale and PvP is the only thing that is still somewhat dynamic.

@gt-hades

It stays up as long as you have bonus armor. Adrenaline Rush procs for 5 secs. So even if you kill the enemy, it will be up for the entire time.

Intimidate does not drop when Adrenaline Rush refreshes. Even on a single target. I've tested it. You keep your stacks as long as you're in range to get the bonus armor.

Almost every complaint I've seen brought up about the nerf is based on incorrect assumptions.

There are plenty of other talents that proc bonus armor as well. Some are even better IMO. They're just not as lazy.

This mask is pretty lackluster IMO. It's an Improvised gear piece with an additional mod slot rather than a secondary stat. Improvised gear in the Chest, Mask, and Backpack slot is pretty much worse than about any other gear piece you can slot. The only time I would use improvised gear is in gear slots that do not already have mod slots. It allows you to swap the brand set bonus for a mod slot bonus.

For example, Brand Set Mask provides the following

Brand Set Bonus
______________
Primary Stat
______________
Secondary Stat
Secondary Stat
______________
Mod Slot

You get 5 stat bonuses on that piece. The Improvised and Chill Out only provides the following:

Primary Stat
_____________
Secondary Stat
Secondary Stat
_____________
Mod Slot
**********************
Primary Stat
_____________
Secondary Stat
_____________
Mod Slot
Mod Slot

That's only 4 stat bonuses. You're giving up any number of additional bonuses that could be useful. It's not worth it IMO.
If they had made it count towards the Gila Guard set it would have been better

@apexxxero LMFAO! Sure. Thanks for explaining what the Coyote mask does. At SHD level 4,600 I had no idea.

Never said anyone wasn't entitled to their opinion, I just don't think it deserves the wrath the community has put out there crapping on it the way they have. It's a cool concept, just not the most useful which I previously mentioned going so far as to use the word "niche".

The community is crapping on it because it's crap.

Players having been waiting for something, anything for the last year. When they finally announce something, it's delayed twice now. The TU they gave us I wouldn't even call it a TU. It's a very small update at best. Lots of the issues players have been complaining about never got addressed, and now when they add a new piece of gear, it's garbage. Every aspect of it is. The fact that they simply changed an improvised piece to give it 2 mod slots rather than 2 secondary stats shows they put very little effort in to it. They couldn't even be bothered to give it more than a generic icon in inventory. It's just another reminder to the community how left behind and forgotten they are.

Division 2 releaseed in the first quarter of 2019. The game is not even 3 years old and it's practically on life support. Rainbow 6 Siege released in 2015, and it's still getting plenty of support and lots of updates. Assasins Creed Oddysey released in 2017 and they just announced another content update for it. I can't imagine why this community feels the way it does /s

Quoting your SHD level to me like it's supposed to give some sort of validity to your comments is laughable. That's like saying that age is indicative of wisdom.

@echolecter

That's the feeling I get. It's just pointless. That's not even taking in to account the bugs that have been in the game since day 1 and never get fixed. The cheaters completely ruin the PvP in this game.


https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1419958133?t=3h4m30s



This was a group that was playing last night. I timestamped it at the most relevant part. You can watch a little while before and after to see him killing players through buildings and across the map. He speedhacks as well. Sad part is there's multiple players like him that you run in to. Basically the game is unplayable while they're on. There's so few players left on PC that play the DZ because of this that you can't server hop. They are able to follow you around from server to server and continue killing you.

@arnudswazaneger

So they do ban by account, or what you're referring to as GameID. This is the most common way to ban in online gaming. Unfortunately, when games are past their peak years this does little to deter cheaters. At that point a replacement can be aquired for very little money. That's one of the reasons, aside from lack of updating, that cheaters are more prominent in older games.

IP banning doesn't work because IP addresses generally aren't static. Not only that, but due to limitations on the number of IPv4 addresses and the prominence of NAT, it's not an effective means of banning a single account.


HWID banning is a fairly effective means of banning most cheaters. However, hardware ID(HWID) spoofers can be used to manipulate the hardware id to bypass or prevent bans by producing a false ID to the anti-cheat program. The effectiveness of this varies depending on the anit-cheat and the spoofing software.

@dagrommit

Yes, of course, the pandemic. How plenty of other sectors of business and industry maanged to continue to function while working remotely, but the gaming industry fell flat on their face is beyond me. I work in a sector that had to switch to remote and we managed to keep up with our workload, schedule, meetings, and coordinate over Teams, Zoom, WebEx etc. Part of our business deals in client software solutions as well. No issue there either. Maybe things are just different on the other side of the fence.

@dagrommit

Sounds like they didn't have good protocols in place. I don't think I knew anyone that had half their team out or anyone at all that had a "vaccine reaction".
Has to be true though, I don't think I've ever heard anyone call in to work with a BS excuse so they didn't have to come in.

@constructorx

It's only gotten worse lately.

There was some analysis done on the orginial Division game a while back, which turned up some pretty shocking things in regards to online play. Mainly that The Division, which was originally slated for console only, used what is know as a "trusted client" model rather than a server-authoritative model. This means that the information sent by the client is taken as true and passed on to other clients. No validation is performed to make sure the action is possible. While this model is generally considered ok for a console game due to the difficulty in running 3rd party cheats for the average player. It is not recommended on PC due to the trivial nature of running cheats on a PC.

I haven't seen an analysis done on Division 2, but I would assume unless they did a complete rewrite, it is likely very similar. Just doing a few checks myself I can see it still utilizes TCP for gameplay data rather than UDP, just like the first Division. This is what led to the infamamous lag swtiching where the connection could be interrupted and the offending player could fire an entire magazine in to another player. Once they reconnected all of the data packets would arrive, applying the entire amount of damage to the other player.

@jdkzombie

Welcome to the club. Your T-shirt is in the mail.

Meanwhile, enjoy your talking to from the morale brigade.

@raciaiadhesive

Countdown IMO was a huge letdown and disappointment

Agree.

I wouldn't even really call it a New Game Mode. It's more like just a timed mission. Nothing really new or novel. Just some recycled content from various missions and other existing game modes repackaged as something new.

All that hype over a new game mode and we get THIS. It's no wonder they came out on Twitter telling people to temper their expectations.

@dagrommit

We're done here. You're taking this way too personally.

You've came after me, personally at times, in multiple threads. You've done so often in a very patronizing way. You'll have to forgive me if you've apparently rubbed me the wrong way.

@dagrommit

You can try to paint it however you want. I've literally just shown exactly how they said exactly what you tried to argue they didn't say. They originally promised "the most ambitious title update to date" on a specfic timeline, and they've had to amend that at every turn. First, it was pushed back, more than once. Then we were told, just one day before PTS, to not expect some giant comeback update. That's quite the reversal from the original statement.


Keep spinning it however you want. You're just showing how much of a shill you really are. That astroturf needs more tending sock puppet

@raciaiadhesive

@dagrommit Not as big of a waste of time as Countdown.

Have to agree. I was highly disappointed in the new content. It looked like something a small team slapped together in a month or two, not something that had been worked on for the last 6+ months.

@as1r0nimo

One of the reasons for these rebalances was to move away from certain metas that had completely taken over. This would allow more build diversity so that specific builds weren't required to compete. This current change would replace the Shield/InSync meta with the "spotter" meta.

@dagrommit

@apexxxero ah yes, that old classic - pointing out facts makes me a shill. 

Well lookey [censored] here



This was on Yannicks Twitter no less. I'm surprised you don't keep up with that.

People built up their own expectations (rightly or wrongly) over time, but it looks like we're getting what was promised - albeit late.

I'm pretty sure nobody "wrongly" built up their expectations. They were pretty much told it was going to be, and I quote, "This title Update will be one of the most ambitious to date".

That comment didn't age very well chief.

@latenitedelight

@apexxxero oh no, they know [if they read the Forums].

So high likelyhood that they probably don't know.

I can't imagine what person who knows anything about this game looked at it and thought that spotter builds needed a massive damage buff and more utility.
You'll see nothing but spotter/pulse builds in the DZ.

@unknown_merc44

I don't feel like it is, and I feel like the adjustment to Intimidate is not overly punishing in PvE and sorely needed in PvP.

I've played with those builds myself and realize adjustments will be needed to account for the changes, but I don't feel like it will make them impossible to play with.

Pulse builds are definitely going to be the OP meta if things stay the way they are.

Spotter builds are already high damage builds as it is. Add a weapon that AMPLIES more damage on top of that and more pieces that compliment damage to pulsed targets and you have a build type that will outdamage all others by far.

I looked at the update notes, and within a few minutes saw how unbalanced that would be. Who are the people working on balancing that think it's all fine?

Pro Tip: Technician has a weapon mod that constantly pulses any target you aim at. Just in case any devs read this that don't know. There's a pulse drone as well for sharpshooter