The Division 2 - Catch All

ruhk wrote:
Honestly the Pestilence is the easiest, but you have to brave the DZ.

The DZ is actually pretty tame compared to the first game. I’m halfway to the DZ level cap and while I encounter other players frequently, I’ve only had run-ins with three rogue agents, only two of which actually attacked. I think most people in the DZ are just focusing on farming.

True, but more people are now in the same instance after the patch and you have more luck getting the Pestilence in the occupied zone. So more risk now than before...

The timing of this raid release isn't amazing for me as I'm really busy Thursday and Saturday, but I'm going to try and get a group together for PC Friday night to poke around and get some experience, open to both guilds. I will post the spots here and edit first come first serve that reply to this thread (Editing/updating as I see them come in). Going to also create a couple reserve spots in case any no-nine-noshows, I'd like to try and form maybe 15-20 minutes earlier to get started at 9. Keep in mind min-gear score to participate (The game's rules) is 490, so please don't claim a spot if you can't actually do it.

Friday 05/17 - 9:00 PM Eastern (8:00 PM Central)

1. Me (casual_alcoholic / AlmostNapThyme)
2. ranalin
3. TheGameguru
4. DiscoMutt01
5. Dfonorow
6. staygold
7. Mikesobe
8. Wayfarer

Reserve 1: Atras
Reserve 2: boseafus

Count me in

I’m in unless there are some other prereqs to get in.

casual_alcoholic wrote:

Friday 05/17 - 9:00 PM Eastern (8:00 PM Central)

I'm typically busy on Friday nights at the local game store, but I might be able to get home in time to be a reserve member for this attempt. If you don't have 8 people by the time I leave work on Friday, I'll be sure to be around by 9.

ranalin wrote:

I've spent 11 hrs total in the DZ. I have had 5 pestilence drops since they released it.

I have spent 197 hours in the game total and have had 2 Merciless, 2 Sweet Dreams drop. It took me weeks to farm for the chatterbox doing runs everyday on all the hyena boxes i knew about in and out of missions.

I have more hours in the DZ and not sure about the total (probably close to that or even more). NOT A SINGLE ONE of those exotics dropped for me...clearly the game hates me XD

Ubisoft's CFO says Division 2 hasn't sold up to expectations but they're apparently pinning their hopes on the raid content?

You know, the raid content 90% of the remaining playerbase will never see if they don't add matchmaking for it. That raid content.

I don't for one second buy their explanation that the raid won't work with rando matchmaking because it will take communication and build planning, BTW, because literally nothing else in the game requires that. If they were capable of designing activities that required more thought or teamwork than "everybody build for DPS and hold down Mouse1" then it would show somewhere else in the game.

When the Div 2 creative and leadership team explain to the higher ups the reasoning for no Raid matchmaking, it has to be through the lens of benefiting the bottom line.

No matchmaking over matchmaking will mean better engagement, better participation rates, bringing back more lapsed players to the game, give a good bump to yearly pass bookings... it has to be something, right? Precious authorship cannot fly in a company as large as Ubisoft.

Personally, I think the decision for no raid matchmaking - barring any technical limitations that we’re unaware of - is stupid. It’s Destiny/Bungie all over again.

Edit: no matchmaking for the initial phase makes sense - serious teams only to build up hype and encourage world’s first completion, etc. But after a couple weeks? Open them floodgates, if it’s not going to kill the game on the backend.

casual_alcoholic wrote:

The timing of this raid release isn't amazing for me as I'm really busy Thursday and Saturday, but I'm going to try and get a group together for PC Friday night to poke around and get some experience, open to both guilds. I will post the spots here and edit first come first serve that reply to this thread (Editing/updating as I see them come in). Going to also create a couple reserve spots in case any no-nine-noshows, I'd like to try and form maybe 15-20 minutes earlier to get started at 9. Keep in mind min-gear score to participate (The game's rules) is 490, so please don't claim a spot if you can't actually do it.

Friday 05/17 - 9:00 PM Eastern (8:00 PM Central)

1. Me (casual_alcoholic / AlmostNapThyme)
2. ranalin
3. TheGameguru
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.

Reserve 1:
Reserve 2:

DiscoMutt01 is in as well (he is my RL friend but doenst participate on this forum)

Well at least they acknowledged that people are upset.
https://forums.ubi.com/showthread.php/2055383-Operation-Dark-Hours-matchmaking

jigsawhc wrote:

Well at least they acknowledged that people are upset.
https://forums.ubi.com/showthread.php/2055383-Operation-Dark-Hours-matchmaking

As I was saying to Ran last night, all they had to do was explicitly state that the initial release is no match making, but there will be LFR available in a month or whatever similar to WoW.
I swear these companies should be way better at player expectation management.

Middcore wrote:

Ubisoft's CFO says Division 2 hasn't sold up to expectations but they're apparently pinning their hopes on the raid content?

You know, the raid content 90% of the remaining playerbase will never see if they don't add matchmaking for it. That raid content.

I don't for one second buy their explanation that the raid won't work with rando matchmaking because it will take communication and build planning, BTW, because literally nothing else in the game requires that. If they were capable of designing activities that required more thought or teamwork than "everybody build for DPS and hold down Mouse1" then it would show somewhere else in the game.

Because you always see the worst. Like that's all you saw in that article you linked...

Here's the important bits...

The Division 2 also saw record highs for engagement per player and season pass, with a 10-fold increase in sales on Uplay compared with The Division.

But in an analyst call, Ubisoft chief financial Frederick Dugeut said that The Division 2 fell short of expectations on consoles in part because of fierce competition in the market. But he said that the first major update in the form of a raid is expected to do well.

I'll be glad if the raid is more than just:
1. Go into room and shoot dudes.
2. Walk to next room
3. Grab ammo
4. Go to step 1.

It must be more than that if it, "requires players to align on their unified goals and strategies, from defining each agent’s build and coordinated efforts on the fly to overcome the unmatched challenge awaiting them at the Washington National Airport." right?

Not to disparage the game, I really like it for what it is. But, I haven't seen anything challenging yet. So, saying that it's an "unmatched challenge" doesn't really mean much to me.

ranalin wrote:

Because you always see the worst.

I'm sorry, do we, like, know each other? Who are you? Is there some personal aspect to this discussion for you I ought to be aware of?

Here's the important bits...
The Division 2 also saw record highs for engagement per player and season pass, with a 10-fold increase in sales on Uplay compared with The Division.

1. "Record highs for engagement per player and season pass" is basically meaningless when we don't know what the metrics for "player engagement" are or what games they're comparing to but it sounds exactly like what I'd expect a CFO to tell investors to put a good spin on disappointing sales.

2. The Division 1 came out on Steam and Division 2 didn't. I didn't even remember you COULD buy games directly through Uplay when Div1 came out in early 2016. Apart from Ubi's own storefront, your options for buying Div2 on PC (barring shady key re-sellers) seem to be GreenManGaming, the Microsoft Store, and Epic, which are all relatively niche players at the moment. If Div2 DIDN'T sell way more on the Uplay store than Div1 did under the circumstances it would be shocking.

Middcore wrote:
ranalin wrote:

Because you always see the worst.

I'm sorry, do we, like, know each other? Who are you? Is there some personal aspect to this discussion for you I ought to be aware of?

Here's the important bits...
The Division 2 also saw record highs for engagement per player and season pass, with a 10-fold increase in sales on Uplay compared with The Division.

1. "Record highs for engagement per player and season pass" is basically meaningless when we don't know what the metrics for "player engagement" are or what games they're comparing to but it sounds exactly like what I'd expect a CFO to tell investors to put a good spin on disappointing sales.

2. The Division 1 came out on Steam and Division 2 didn't. I didn't even remember you COULD buy games directly through Uplay when Div1 came out in early 2016. Apart from Ubi's own storefront, your options for buying Div2 on PC (barring shady key re-sellers) seem to be GreenManGaming, the Microsoft Store, and Epic, which are all relatively niche players at the moment. If Div2 DIDN'T sell way more on the Uplay store than Div1 did under the circumstances it would be shocking.

It's not the first hyperbolic link post you've made about the game. You can add your opinions all you want but don't misrepresent the links you post.

PWAlessi wrote:

Not to disparage the game, I really like it for what it is. But, I haven't seen anything challenging yet. So, saying that it's an "unmatched challenge" doesn't really mean much to me.

That's my big worry because they lowered the overall difficulty. Doing 3-4 player challenging now feels like it was doing 1-2 person on hard. So it will be silly easy for end game or it will absolutely trash people.

From what they said in the pre-launch stream today the raid has a few things that will significantly increase the difficulty:

No radar
Only one respawn token per player
Ammo packs are limited to 2 at a time

They also said that a single person can attempt the raid, but...

Spoiler:

that it isn't possible without 4 players at a minimum.

Besides those tidbits, they were pretty spoiler-safe

ranalin wrote:
Middcore wrote:
ranalin wrote:

Because you always see the worst.

I'm sorry, do we, like, know each other? Who are you? Is there some personal aspect to this discussion for you I ought to be aware of?

Here's the important bits...
The Division 2 also saw record highs for engagement per player and season pass, with a 10-fold increase in sales on Uplay compared with The Division.

1. "Record highs for engagement per player and season pass" is basically meaningless when we don't know what the metrics for "player engagement" are or what games they're comparing to but it sounds exactly like what I'd expect a CFO to tell investors to put a good spin on disappointing sales.

2. The Division 1 came out on Steam and Division 2 didn't. I didn't even remember you COULD buy games directly through Uplay when Div1 came out in early 2016. Apart from Ubi's own storefront, your options for buying Div2 on PC (barring shady key re-sellers) seem to be GreenManGaming, the Microsoft Store, and Epic, which are all relatively niche players at the moment. If Div2 DIDN'T sell way more on the Uplay store than Div1 did under the circumstances it would be shocking.

It's not the first hyperbolic link post you've made about the game. You can add your opinions all you want but don't misrepresent the links you post.

I've just looked through this entire thread going back to when the game released and in that period I don't see a single link I've posted before. Please, show me these hyperbolic link posts I've made.

And I misrepresented nothing. I said that sales weren't what they wanted but they had high hopes for the raid, and that's what the link states. Yes, they also said stuff about engagement, which I don't consider meaningful or relevant for reasons I explained above, and which don't change the facts of what they said about sales and the raid content.

lunchbox12682 wrote:
jigsawhc wrote:

Well at least they acknowledged that people are upset.
https://forums.ubi.com/showthread.php/2055383-Operation-Dark-Hours-matchmaking

As I was saying to Ran last night, all they had to do was explicitly state that the initial release is no match making, but there will be LFR available in a month or whatever similar to WoW.
I swear these companies should be way better at player expectation management.

Yeah, I suspect a huge part of the problem is that the people making the game are working on weekly releases with a year-long plan, and players are judging things on a per-login basis. I think the game is not quite 2 months old, but they have added Tidal Basin (which I feel like it should have been there from the beginning), revamped a ton of gear, re-worked Calibration, and added a Raid. That's a lot of work for them, but Tidal Basin was maybe an hour of play-time, and after it was over, players could go back to complaining about no new content. I hate calling people entitled, but I think the term fits a lot of the player base right now.
The dev team planned on having gear score 515 available in the dark zones, and after the fans complained, they backed off. There has been a lot more talk (and a lot more baseless complaining, but not all of it is unfair) about the lack of match-making; I have no doubt that match making will be available soon - my guess is after the regular maintenance on 5/23. Until then, we can just try to enjoy the game or play something different. There's no need to go back and forth parsing everyone's contributions to the thread.

Atras wrote:

From what they said in the pre-launch stream today the raid has a few things that will significantly increase the difficulty:

No radar
Only one respawn token per player
Ammo packs are limited to 2 at a time

They also said that a single person can attempt the raid, but...

Spoiler:

that it isn't possible without 4 players at a minimum.

Besides those tidbits, they were pretty spoiler-safe

No radar is huge. At least for me. I lean on that all the time.

I'm hoping to have time on Friday evening for the raid as well but for now, I need to just be a maybe. Hopefully I can confirm in the next few hours.

PWAlessi wrote:

I'll be glad if the raid is more than just:
1. Go into room and shoot dudes.
2. Walk to next room
3. Grab ammo
4. Go to step 1.

It must be more than that if it, "requires players to align on their unified goals and strategies, from defining each agent’s build and coordinated efforts on the fly to overcome the unmatched challenge awaiting them at the Washington National Airport." right?

I gotchu, fam (as the kids say)...

1. First phase is a shooting extravaganza. All 8 players must unload their best weapons into the raid mini-boss, probably a mecha terrorist equipped with RPGs for hands. There may be a glowing weak spot.

2. Second phase is a coordinated rolling puzzle because Massive will not be outdone by Bungie's admirable execution of first-person jumping challenges in their own raid content.

3. Final Raid Boss: the boss is impervious to conventional damage for [insert lore reason here]. Raid team must split up to defeat him! 4 players must track down Tom Clancy's DeLorean and travel back in time to assassinate the Raid Boss in his teenage years. The other 4 shmucks have to fight adds for 30 minutes (or however long it takes for the first group to stop screwing up the time travel bit).

4. Final phase: players are challenged to solve some actual long division problems under tight time constraints, all the while clearing out a never-ending mob of adds.

5. Raid complete! Players are showered with loot, most of which barely nudges up their gear score.

In all serious though, I hope I am not underestimating their creativity and I'm very curious to see what kind of new mechanics they show off for the *real* raid.

I've been thinking about this and honestly if they want to make a challenging Raid that rewards dedicated clans, that's awesome.

What I do think would be good for them is to have a less difficult version of the raid that can have matchmaking. Maybe the rewards aren't as plentiful?

Destiny 2 did this with the nightfall. It's a difficult thing with a full group, or you can do the guided games stuff and it's not nearly as difficult but still gives you SOME reward.

I can tell you one thing, matchmaking with randoms to do a difficult thing has always been frustrating in Destiny 2. Doing the forges, playing gambit prime, even the blind well or escalation protocol with crap players is just something to raise blood pressure.

Middcore wrote:

1. "Record highs for engagement per player and season pass" is basically meaningless when we don't know what the metrics for "player engagement" are or what games they're comparing to but it sounds exactly like what I'd expect a CFO to tell investors to put a good spin on disappointing sales.

You realize that these statements were made in investor calls and in earnings reports, which are highly regulated and evaluated constantly by the SEC and other regulators, right?

Looks like there's 0 loot except for completing a boss. You have a week to down all bosses.

cube wrote:
Middcore wrote:

1. "Record highs for engagement per player and season pass" is basically meaningless when we don't know what the metrics for "player engagement" are or what games they're comparing to but it sounds exactly like what I'd expect a CFO to tell investors to put a good spin on disappointing sales.

You realize that these statements were made in investor calls and in earnings reports, which are highly regulated and evaluated constantly by the SEC and other regulators, right?

I'm not saying the statements are false/fraudulent, I'm saying without context it's impossible to evaluate whether they're meaningful.

Imagine a restaurant chain doing their earnings call where they have to tell investors their earnings per restaurant were down across the board. On the other hand, the CFO truthfully reports "data shows our loyal customers are visiting our locations more often." Is the SEC going to come down on the chain for that? No. Does it mean the chain is doing well? Hell no.

"Player engagement" could mean microtransaction sales (which makes Ubi money), or it could mean the average hours played per player (which doesn't). We don't have any way of knowing, as far as I'm aware? "Season pass sales" is more straightforward and is good for them, but when they say they sold a record number of season passes we don't know if they're comparing it to every other Ubisoft game that's had a season pass, or just comparing it to Div1, or maybe, I don't know, just their games with "Tom Clancy's" in the title but not, say, Assassin's Creed.

You also left out "console" in your sales are down.

The specific quote about engagement is from their investor earnings press release, and it reads:

The Division® 2: record highs for engagement per player and season pass, 10-fold increase in sales on Uplay compared with The Division

They had a stronger-than-expected fourth quarter in digital and PRI ("player recurring investments", so purchases of DLC, season passes, in-game items, currency, and in-game advertising sales) mostly because of The Division 2.

Sales for The Division 2 were lower than expected on console because of competition (which I would interpret as Anthem being delayed directly into competition with Division 2), but the PC version saw overall PC sales "on par with" the first game, which was Ubisoft's biggest-ever game launch and the industry's biggest ever first-week launch for a new franchise.

Engagement isn't defined specifically, but it's used in conjunction with: audience, activity, and playtime across all platforms, as well as PRI sales. However, the company saw "record levels" of season pass attach rate with The Division 2 (attach rate being the number of players who bought the game who also bought the season pass). The focus for the game is on long-term post launch growth on the back of all announced post-launch content, not just the upcoming raid.

You can read or listen to all this yourself, if you'd like. The discussion of The Division 2's sales happens about six minutes into the call.

Are clan caches supposed to be difficult to get? Mmmdrop has a reasonable number of high level people in it, and it juuust squeaked over the bronze line last night. What kind of maniacs are getting gold caches?

Also, just venting, I'm irritated that they didn't fix the bug where logging out loses your special ammo, but *did* remove the workaround that switching specialties refills that ammo.

qaraq wrote:

Are clan caches supposed to be difficult to get? Mmmdrop has a reasonable number of high level people in it, and it juuust squeaked over the bronze line last night. What kind of maniacs are getting gold caches?

Also, just venting, I'm irritated that they didn't fix the bug where logging out loses your special ammo, but *did* remove the workaround that switching specialties refills that ammo.

AWJ was getting gold when we had everyone active. There's about 6-8 of us though that made up over 50% of the clan points. When a few of us stopped playing i doubt it.

When i logged on after the patch Tuesday there had been 42 other people that had not logged on yet. So odds of reaching gold again may be slim. With the normal GWJ attrition this isn't a surprise. My vote is we'll give it a couple weeks to see where we stand overall and look into combining the two groups.