State of the Game: Title Update 3 is Coming Next Week; No Gear Score Increase & More Rewarding Loot

Gear Score

• Gear score won’t be increased beyond 500 for TU3 as most players have yet to reach the cap, or have only just reached the cap and haven’t had time to optimize their builds.
• The decision is meant to encourage players to reach the 500 cap and optimize their loadouts and builds to suit their play style before the raid.
• The rewards for daily Priority Hard and Challenging missions have increased. Once you reach gear score 500, those activities will guarantee gear score 500 drops.
• Heroic Mission bosses, Stronghold bosses, and Bounty bosses, as well as Control Point Alert Level 4 reward containers, guarantee gear score 500 items if your average gear score is at 500.
• Dark Zone contaminated loot does not drop below player’s average gear score. When you reach an average gear score of 500, contaminated loot will guarantee gear score 500 items.
• Loot has been balanced across the board to reduce the chances of items dropping at a lower gear score than that of your character.

Commendations

• Some Daily Login Commendations have been removed because they were unfair to dedicated players who were unable to play every day. The following Commendations have been removed:
  • 28 Days Distinction: Record 672 hours (28 days) of time in-game.
  • Distinguished Service Ribbon: For 30 consecutive days, on each day play for at least one hour and complete one mission.
  • Supreme Response Distinction: For seven consecutive days, on each day complete four main missions and rescue five civilians.
  • Year One Merit: Play on 14 days per month, on a total of 12 months.
  • Division Service Merit: For a total of 100 days, on each day play for at least one hour and deliver 20 resources to control points.
• Vanity patch will be added for those that have already earned the removed Commendations.
• The following Commendations will be added for Operation Dark Hours:
  • Full Deck Distinction: Acquire all Snitch Cards.
  • Distinguished Service Distinction: Complete 30 hours of service.
  • Supreme Response Distinction: Complete all main missions and Strongholds on Hard difficulty (or above).
  • Control Point Takeover Merit: Take over 50 Level 4 Control Points.
  • Invasion Service Merit: Complete 10 Invaded Strongholds.

Crafting

• Increased the base cap for Receiver Components and Protective Fabric crafting materials by 200; caps now start at 350 and end at 600 with all material capacity perks.
• Inaya al-Khaliq in the Base of Operation is now a Crafting Vendor. You can find her next to the Crafting Bench in the White House.
  • Added Specialized and Superior Skill Mod Blueprints to her stock.
  • Added an extra weekly Blueprint to her stock.
  • Moved crafting Blueprints from the Base of Operations vendor to her stock.
  • While Inaya will have a variety of Blueprints available, there are still other sources in the game like Settlements and Control Points.
  • Crafted Exotic weapons will now always upgrade to the maximum Gear Score of the World Tier they are crafted in, when the Upgrade Blueprint is used.

Armor and Gear Sets

• Bonus Armor granted on Defense Attributes significantly increased.
• Armor percent bonuses can now be found as Defense Attribute rolls.
• Health percent bonuses can now be found as Defense Attribute rolls.
• Gear sets
  • Hard Wired
    • Now grants Skill Damage instead of Shock Duration.
  • Ongoing Directive
    • Now grants special ammunition into any weapon, including the weapon currently equipped.
    • Now grants special ammunition on any kill, not just weapon kills.
  • True Patriot
    • Decreased debuff cycle from 4 seconds to 2 seconds.
    • Increased damage dealt to nearby targets when Full Flag is active to 50%.

Loot

• Loot containers will now reset at a preset time of day.
  • Control Point reward container will now also reset with this daily timer.
• Improved quality and quantity of Drone Helicopter loot.
• Slightly reduced the quality of items from Clan Caches.
• Cabinet loot containers now have a chance to contain Dark Zone keys.
• Increased ammunition drop chance from enemy NPCs to limit situations where players would run out of ammunition during prolonged fights on higher difficulty activities.

Missions

• After completing missions, players may opt to look at an activity summary showcasing their performance in that activity and allowing an expanded look at a variety of detailed statistics.
• Difficulty level for Bank Headquarters and Roosevelt Island has been reduced for solo players.

Enemy NPC Changes

• Elite Medic’s Pulse Grenade has been changed.
  • No longer applies disrupt.
  • Reduced Impact radius.
  • The grenade impact radius should now be easier to see.
• Decreased damage of Veteran, Elite and Named NPCs.
• Greatly decreased melee damage of all Tank NPCs.
• Moderately decreased melee damage of all non-Tank NPCs.
• Decreased Thrower NPC’s accuracy with grenades.
• Slightly decreased damage of Elite/Named War Hound.
• NPCs will now be slightly less defensive while in cover and being aimed at by a player.
• Enemy NPCs should no longer be able to stagger players with a melee attack if the player has a Ballistic Shield equipped.
• Drone Helicopter’s health, damage, and movement have all been increased.
• Decreased Outcast Suicide vest explosion radius.
• Lowered NPC damage and health above normal difficulty.
• Increased variety of enemy NPCs at higher difficulty levels.

Friendly NPC Changes

• Civilian Control Point Officers now wear protective body armor.
• Civilians with fully upgraded Settlements now wear combat harnesses and have slightly more health.
• Upgrading a Settlement now slightly increases Civilian damage.
• Civilian NPCs will now stay further away from players in cover, lessening the chance of them taking a player’s preferred cover location.
• Civilian Hostages are now more protective of their lives.

Control Points

• Control Point difficulty has been renamed to conform to the difficulty level names used in the rest of the game (Normal, Hard, Heroic, etc).
• Civilian officer can revive players during Control Point takeovers.
• Players can use the civilian retake icon on the map to respawn after dying. This is only possible before the enemy leader appears.

Rewards

• XP from Bounties has been increased.
• All Settlement Weekly Projects now award blueprints.
• New daily Project: SHD Requisition.
  • Requires crafting ingredients and rewards high quality gear and blueprints.
• Increased the quality of Weekly Project equipment rewards.

Skills

• Assault Drone
  • In PvE, the Drone will now more actively look for a new target once it loses its current target.
• Defender Drone
  • Will now drain more quickly once a shot has been deflected.
• Reinforcer Chem Launcher
  • Reinforcer gas clouds no longer stack.
• Reviver Hive
  • Fixed further occurrences of players not being revived.
  • Revive time slightly increased.
• Riot Foam Chem Launcher
  • Increased base duration of Riot Foam when used against an NPC.
• Scanner Pulse
  • Reduced cooldown from 120 seconds to 90 seconds.

Exotics

• All exotics will have their damaged increased across the board

PvP

• In Conflict, players are now scaled to max World Tier gear score
• Assault Rifles now have a 1.25 PvP damage scaler applied.
• Damage modifier has been reduced on PvP, there is now an increased time to kill.
• Skill modifiers have been increased, so they will be more effective in PvP.

Dark Zone

• Contaminated loot is guaranteed to drop from bosses.
• Higher challenge landmarks can drop more contaminated loot.
• Dark Zone will generally drop more contaminated loot.
• Max bag size is now 10 when fully upgraded.
• Bracketing system will be changed to group players level 1-30 together, while each World Tier will be grouped together. Normalization still occurs.
• You can switch weapons in the Thieves Den to better take advantage of special ammunition.
• Occupied Dark Zone XP loss upon death has been reduced to 35%.