
Today’s State of the Game episode was mainly about Update 1.5 and the PTS. The developers have also tried to explain their decisions regarding the increased Gear Score and Enemy Armor Damage in PvP.
In addition, the following three bugs have been fixed during the maintenance downtime:
- Fixed a bug where players below level 30 could obtain High-End rewards from vendor sealed caches.
- Fixed a bug where Gear Score calculations placed players into the wrong World Tier.
- Fixed a bug where player’s Underground Rank would exceed Rank 40 in certain conditions.
Intelligence Annex #12: Into the Storm

A new Intelligence Annex #12 with the name “Into the Storm” introduces players to the new Survival game mode. Most of the information has been already covered a few days ago, however the images in there are – as always – very impressive and in high resolution, so more than worth to check out!
Increased Stash Size
But that’s not all. It was also announced that the stash size will be finally increased within the next update, from 70 to 150 slots! Lots of players have waited for such a change and will definitely appreciate it as the balancing of items and Gear Sets as well as the increased loot drop chance is better than ever.
PTS
However players seem to be not so amused about the new maximum Gear Score of 256/World Tier 5. The reason for that is most likely because Update 1.4 was just released 2 weeks ago and already changed the entire GS system. The developers say that this is only an exception in order to create a solid base and a fresh start for everybody. Based on that, new adjustments to the GS will be only made when new content becomes available – so probably with “Last Stand” early 2017.
Furthermore players kept asking why Enemy Armor Damage will be a Major gear attribute in 1.5 and the answer to that seems reasonable. Due to the heavy changes to Time to Kill and overall balancing in 1.4, the Armor attribute is currently the best one you can probably get on your items. Players now have to decide whether they want to go full tank (focus on Armor), or want to deal damage in PvE and/or PvP (focus on Enemy Armor Damage).

In general the developers are observing all the changes on the PTS very closely, especially those who are now working in PvP (includes the Stagger effect from Shotguns).
Also the Matchmaking for Survival seems to be not working well at the moment as the system in place tries to match groups first and if no ones are available anymore, solo players will get matched with them, leading to an more or less unfair situation for them. This is mainly caused by the smaller player base on the PTS right now. Speaking about Survival, the new game mode will be deactivated for a couple of days to ensure that players are also testing parts of Update 1.5 and not only the Survival DLC.
Besides that you might have already found pieces of the new Gear Set called FrontLine. Switching between SMGs and your Pistol is not working and this is, according to the developers, intended, simply to prevent players from only focusing on this Gear Set for Ballistic Shield builds.

A new patch with bugfixes for the PTS is expected to be deployed tomorrow. Unfortunately there are no patch notes available, but at least the following things will be changed/fixed (partially confirmed):
- Named Weapons will start to drop everywhere and not only in Survival game mode
- The buff to the Tactical Link Signature Skill will be removed
- Issues when using the Xbox controller will get fixed
Moreover the characters from the live server will be re-imported on the PTS with this second update, which means that your characters on the PTS will be wiped. At the same time players who just have bought the Season Pass will have access once the game mode will be unlocked and available again.