After today’s quick fix of the DeadEYE Gear Set bug – thanks to the developers for the fast update at this point to keep at least some sort of balance in the Dark Zone – let’s have a look at the current State of the Game which was live streamed during yesterday’s maintenance downtime.
Contents
PvP Damage Increase
The weapon damage increase of +20% in PvP encounters has changed the game a lot, but overall it seems to be a step into the right direction. It basically reduced the time to kill other players in the Dark Zone.
At the same time the developers agree that the damage scaling of NPCs is by far not at the point they want it to be and that they are working on a solution for this. However, this could take a while.
Non-Collectible ECHOs
Two Side Mission related bugs were already addressed with the maintenance on Thursday. Besides that and although you might still see 1 or 2 ECHOs on your mega-map, this doesn’t necessarily mean that you don’t have collected them yet as they still count for the achievements and the unique outfits you can unlock. You can verify its completion state by opening your Intel menu and checking which ECHOs are still missing. Then you would have to pick those up again at the on your map marked locations.
Weapons
“Shotguns should be really powerful at close range”, said Community Developer Hamish Bode during the stream. What he has probably missed out since the deployment of update 1.3 is that Shotguns can now one-shot people in the Dark Zone in case the player is properly equipped. In our opinion this damage output is definitely too high and overpowered and while it honestly feels godlike to drop people this way with ease, it shouldn’t be possible to do so as stacking Health and Armor is the last thing we want to do when building end-game builds for our characters.
We will see how and if they will change this in the future, but hopefully they find a right and more important balanced way for this weapon archetype. Changing this would of course require some kind of nerfs or if you don’t want to call it like that – balancing adjustments, either regarding the +30% damage increase versus players for Shotguns or the way these weapons work with Gear Sets like the already nerfed Sentry’s Call or Striker’s Battlegear. Anyway, a nerf of this is necessary.
In terms of Assault Rifles, the G36 and LVOA-C are still pretty good weapons in PvE as well as PvP fights while the same could be applied to SMGs with the recently added PP-19 and the really strong MP-7.
B.L.I.N.D. System Battle Rifle
The during E3 recorded gameplay videos have revealed a new semi-automatic B.L.I.N.D. System Battle Rifle which wasn’t added with the last update 1.3.
Although there is no ETA for realising it, it’s being worked on and the Sentry’s Call Gear Set will most likely work with it. As its name supposes, it will also synergize with the same named B.L.I.N.D. Gear Set.
Four Horsemen Grind
The Four Horsemen Cleaner Elites you will encounter in the Dragon’s Nest Incursion are farmed a lot by players these days, while the main objective is simply ignored. The developers consider this farming strategy as legitimate and say that you won’t see a lot Gear Sets dropping there.
Without commenting this… it’s, besides the Dark Zone and Underground, probably one of the most effective ways to obtain new weapons, Gear Sets and a lot of Division Credits right now.
Misc
- The next State of the Game talk will be in 3 weeks because the whole community team is on vacation.
- Recalibration costs for broken AlphaBridge set gloves will be returned.
