Expertise's current phase is one of the best examples how devs can make
a good idea valueless. After 10k SHD and 4500 playing hours, I hoped so-
me new thing which compensate the game lack of balancing in some areas.
I was wrong, again.

Let we see, how Expertise works currently:

Player need to use an item (weapon, gear, skill etc) to gain proficiency on it,
and get expertise point for each rank gained on an item. This can be speed
up by donating the same item or donating crafting materials. This is fine, a
long grind as expected, no one question this mechanic.

To upgrade an item to your current expertise level, you need to pay its price.
This is generic crafting materials for the first levels, and changes exotic com-
ponents, shd calibration and field recon data at ~halfway. The price is insane,
high, related to how much work and how hard (RNG) to aquire. If I suppose
player get 1 exotic component per hour (super lucky), it takes hundred hours
to collect one upgrade.

Here comes the biggest weakpoint which destroy the whole system:
The reward. The reward is cricitally low. Currently the max expertise system
max level is 23. On this level, player get 140k armor if level up to max all the
equipped gears. This is less than a blue core. Not affect the gameplay, player
won't be tougher, still 1-shot in full group. Simply not worth it to spend a single
second with the expertise. There are topic on the forum which says "you don't
need to upgrade all to max". In this case, you get 10-20-30k armor to your
660k original. Even more not worth it to spend a second with it. No one will
spend thousands of hours with grinding to get 140k armor who has some sign
of brain.

Weapons get ~10% final damage on max expertise level, which is a bit better.
Some skills got great choices of bonus, others got useless one, also the amount
is pretty low.

The final consequence is obvious: Expertise system destroyed before go live.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

And here is an idea which able to resurrect it:

At first, PvE and PvP expertise upgrades must be handled separatelly and
differently. While not fully separated and crosstalk between settings, one of
the mode will suffer from another. Division 2 would be a great PvE and a
great PvP game in one, if this single step inserted into the process. I never
play PvP, not my style, but agree the huge amount of armor reward kill the
PvP, but low amount of armor reward kill the expertise in PvE.


First part: the proficiency ranking and gaining expertise points. This really
on place, be long, be hard, be exhausing, the reward will sweeter. No need
more details, I would leave as is.

Second part: Upgrades and reward. I still strictly write about PvE rewards,
PvP rewards must be different.

First, I would adjust the expertise max level to 25. This is a nice number,
easier calculate with.

Weapons:
The 10% weapon bonus is fine, i would just give a small boost. Every upgrade
increase 0.5% BASE weapon damage (aka standalone multiplier). This results
12.5% damage output increment. This number is not so big, but in a well assemb-
led loadout counts much.
Because only the weapon damage boost not changes anything in gameplay, every
weapon class, named and exotic weapon would get an unique boost.
Some example:
Pestilence: +1 stack per upgrade, up to 75.
Bullet King: +0.5% weapon handling, up to 12.5%
Scorpio: +0.1s base status effect duration (because NPC got HPZ)
Regulus: +0.1m explosion radius

Skills:
Skill buffs would be multiplicative instead current method (just added after tier bonus),
also some would get better bonus:
Reviver hive: +1% armor repair on revive
Firestarter chem: +1% burn duration (not ignite damage, that's useless)
Assault turret/striker drone: +0.5% base damage
Shield: 1% damage reduction (NPC bullets deal less damage on shield)

Gears:
As I wrote, 140k armor is sounds like a bad joke. My personal opinion is an armor
which equals 3 blue core at max level of all 6 gears is much more acceptable.
This amount is based on groupscale (enemies have ~71% more damage output
in a full group compared to solo).
Each level gives 3k armor to a gear. This results 75k on lvl25, and total 450k armor.
This is still less than 3 blue core, but sensible in gameplay. With the original 660k
armor this is 1110k, with the 10% total armor from watch this is 1221k, 1.2M armor.
This amount is much more better.
Same as weapons, every brand, gearset, named and exotic would get an unique
bonus too, some example:
Negotiator's dilemma: 0.1% CHC per level, total 10% CHC on 4 piece.
Eclipse protocol: 0.15% status effect per level, total 15% on 4 pieces
Tardigrade: -1% cooldown per groupmate
Vile: +1% base tick damage
Forge: +1% shield health
Contractor: +0.4% weapon handling (10% total)
Airaldi: 0.2% headshot damage, total 15% on 3 pieces
Petrov: 0.2% rate of fire, total 15% on 3 pieces
These small amount of unique bonuses are mandatory, the armor improvement
alone not enought to make players stay, also the Expertise with plain weapon damage
and armor bonus is too simple and monotonous.

As title said, unable to upgrade any skill from lvl1 to lvl2, because it needs 350 filaments. The cap is 300, so cannot do it by any ways. Seriously need to adjust material caps once these expertise need lot of materials.

@homeyguacamoley
Partially agree. Many players don't know how to play legendary, but this not means full red or yellow build not viable without blue cores. Yellow build can give targets to NPCs instead even the tank player, capacitor 1 mag can break chunga's backpack (priority target...), 2 skills can drain chunga stingers instead players (hive priorize skills first then players), turrets are priority targets for suicide drones, yellow are the safest builds. A red dilemma easily can melt on legendary, but not alone. If you cannot provide distraction (T0 turret/drone in a full group not worth it to deploy, 1-shot both), you will get melted in second. If you play tank, it much more easier if there are some skill deployed, you get less attention.
My favorite legendary mission is the Capitol, I use to run to tower without getting a single shot, this easily can performed by a T6 decoy, ignoring the chunga/dog wave completely. 99% of player jump to cover asap when NPCs are out, deploy skills or try to shoot cover. This slow it down, especially when the 3rd wave comes and supports able to deploy the stations.

Quote from Expertise official post:

Through this feature, we want to encourage players to experience new builds and playstyles without penalizing those who prefer to stick to their favorite one.

140k armor can be anything, but not gamechanger, this not make you
able to experience new builds with. (You can experience new builds,
but that's won't be related to expertise). The ~10% final damage boost
for weapons not a big amount, and only full red build can benefit from
it, for full yellow/blue are still shoot snowballs. Some skills got good
attribute boost choice, a turret/drone build with both skill on expertise
lvl 20 results you can swap 1 yellow core to other without loosing da-
mage. This may apply to some other skill builds too, but skill players
use to target max damage output for their skill, so why they should
swap and loose other bonus from the yellow core?

@xcel30
Equipped Dilemma, Ceska and Belstone. Pestilence, Carbine7, TDI Kard, Scanner Pulse, Reviver Hive.
Other loadout: Rigger, Mukarami, China, Capacitor, Test Subject
Rest of inventory empty.
Stash empty.

PC: i7-7700K, GTX 1070 8GB, 64GB RAM
Clean Windows install (LTSC 2019, legal), drivers via Windows update, updated to 2022-04
nVidia driver
Total commander (not running)
Ubisoft Client
Ghost Recon Breakpoint
Division 2
Division 2 PTS
EAC installed by Division games
Firefox (currently Running)
No other software at all, no antivirus (except ELAM), no overlay stuff.
This is a very clear window, maybe one of the purest in the playerbase, so the software background musn't be an issue.

Edit:
OMG.
"Press space to start.....". 04 in queue.....(character select)....(loading screen)... "Safe area ent.... Press space to start...".
This is really serious.

@tk105
Tom Clancy's The Division 2 PTS(D)

@inv_dalerium You are wrong. 10% final means your final damage change this amount.
You have weapon damage in same category from:
Weapon itself: max 15%
Specialization: max 15%
Watch: max 10%
Red cores: max 15% per core, up to 90%
Brand bonus: Max 10% (like Petrov from LMG)

In a red build, you may have 130% by default (6 red cores, watch, specialization and the weapon itself)
This results a 2.3x multiplier for your weapon base damage.
If you get 20% from expertise, this multiplier will 2.5x. The difference is 2.5/2.3 = 1.086, so your final damage
change is +8.6%
(This is the "weapon damage" multiplier, the other multiplier like total weapon damage, glass cannon has
effect on final damage, but the exact difference ratio not changes)

The 20% from expertise would be 20% final, if it modify the base damage (no add as weapon damage), or
add as a standalone multiplier.

@bladdimaerri
You are lucky. I haven't step out from BoO yet, and got 20+ delta in last 4 hours since PTS started. It may be more if I not logout and login after some minutes to save progress instead loose last few minute progress on delta (by Massive's DB sync method).

@littlebullsheit
"There is no option to optimize gear and system/skill mods. The option is there only for gear sets and weapons."

This is intented. If you want better mods, you need to farm them, unfortunately.

I never complained about anything in the game, but need to note that these material amount - especially exotic components (which cannot be gained by scavenging points at all) - are insane. I agree there should not be easy to level up an item, but honestly, if you want to level up a single loadout, you need 880 exotic components (and still not talk about other mats). Assume you get 1 exotic per hour, if you directly farm (so no fun, just boring robotic farming), you spend 880 hours, which 110 days if you (can) spend 8 hours per day. Like a second job, need to do things. If you want some fun too, this time increase.

@silverp07

Account shared materials not covers all materials, it basically share only crafting materials.

Materials/resources not shared: food/water/component, faction/dz keys, normal/dz currency (countdown currency always shared between chars), exotic parts (need to collect them on each character separatelly), Trinkets, attachments (need to craft them on each character).

@BloodDancer_YXT

This is not the place what you're lookin for.

If you check the objective, a small yellow arrow hints the objective is above you, so you won't need to go deeper.

If your agent loged in or was online after manhunt expired past week, but maintenance not started yet (about 45 min timeframe), then that agent affected by this bug.

To get Anderson map location back, the solution is very very easy: Find a friend or someone who still have the manhunt icon at Pentco (wasn't online
at the mentioned time), and run the Anderson together in his/her session on any difficulty (yes, you'll get an exo). After finished, the Anderson icon become visible on map again.

@Ubi-Cintre
Hi. It's not a game bug, it's a game settings misconfiguration. GUID 535 and 536 maybe had been replaced accidentally, please check it. (You really see nothing from a single screenshot).

Hacienda based on real population, really the price of the range is the population. If workforce would fulfill it, it become super easy.
With the new mail feature, you need to spread population in many islands to fulfill regional mail, or you loose 15% of max population
of a house. It's a passive thing, only need to set a mail route, these residents not consume any goods, so a win for a small one-time work.

I put some houses (40 jornalero residence with basic and some lifestyle needs fulfilled), Saint and Papal in town hall and done, already over 1000 jornaleros.
I supply their needs with a single trade ship, production happen on other island.

@hundreAd1800 Multiplied by cycle time, 23 / 0,75min (45 sec) = 30.66666 = 31

Temporary workaround: Once it happens, go to research center item craft menu, start search anything, like "shopping", when autocomplete hits show up, click on one. Search box will filled and an X appear on the right side of the box. Click on the X, which clean the search box, then you can leave the research center. Items will available until bug not triggers again. Savegames not store this bug, so no reason to provide savegame.Also need to note, save and reload without restarting the game itself not fix the bug.

@Ubi-Ciel
This is still a bug. All green bars calculated with available productivity, like include all trade union, palace etc boosts. Here the productivity depend on population nearby, so green bar max should be calculated by sum of performance with actual residents in range of each post box/office. Current max is the sum of post offices and post boxes count on the island, which is bad because with current store amount, post box needed to place around the island without any population in range to raise mail storage, and all counted as 1.

@Asterix201252 This is why I wrote focus on a single harbour. 4t/s for an advanced pier or 34t/s (without docklands range, but in same harbour) a significant difference. Advanced piers are costly in old and new world (but no increased maintenance on Arctic, same as a normal pier!), but they not force ships with selected goods to trade there, they only provide a free slot for ships with selected goods if they not get free slots once they arrive. A ship with Coal not forced to select the advanced pier with Coal set to trade there, ship can select trading post too, if no other ship trading/waiting there, and locks the pier during trade for other ships without Coal.

Local mail consumption anywhere else higher than regional mail, looks like for Obreros the local and regional values are replaced. Maybe this is a mistake and not intented.

Another possible mistake is the lvl3 skyscraper regional mail provide 44 residents, which not follows the math formula used on others. The suspected value should be 48.