Greetings Agents!
Last week’s State of the Game was a recap on some of the top community issues reported in Update 1.4. This week, we are discussing the Survival Public Test Server and everything that is going on around that!
The PTS for Survival and Update 1.5 went live earlier this week. For more information, read our FAQ and what we are testing in the latest Agent Brief. For those of you who have already tried it, please fill out this Survey and let us know what you think. Be sure to also visit our PTS forums to provide us with any Suggestions & Feedback you have or to report any issues you encounter!
PTS Official Forums
Intelligence Annex #12 was released yesterday and it highlights what you will experience in the Survival game mode. Give it a read or check out the Special Report VOD if you want to learn more!
For everything discussed on the stream this morning, check out the VOD below or listen to it as a podcast!
Today we had a maintenance to restart the servers and deploy a few fixes listed below.
- 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.
As the PTS continues, we are keeping a close eye on all things balancing and the feedback we are receiving. We’ve seen a lot of cool builds pop up which is awesome! Please do not hesitate to provide your feedback on any of the PTS changes over on the PTS Suggestions & Feedback sub forum.
With this first iteration of the PTS, we made some changes to Enemy Armor Damage. Armor has always been a very important stat, and even more so with Update 1.4 due to the percentage mitigation you get from it. We introduced Enemy Armor Damage as a major stat so you can make a choice between being more tanky or dealing a lot of damage. Additionally, we are also testing how this feels against other players in a PVP scenario and are keen to hear what you think about it. Please keep in mind that the modifier for Enemy Armor Damage is calculated differently in PVP and is not a 1:1 ration of effectiveness.
As always, remember that this is a PTS is what is being tested and is not final. Your feedback is going to help us shape and improve upon the final release build!
Tomorrow we will have a maintenance on the PTS server to deploy a patch for the second part of Survival and Update 1.5. Keep an eye out for the Patch notes.
For the beginning part of this testing phase, the Survival game mode will not be accessible. The focus instead will be on testing all the changes and World Tier 5 that is introduced with Update 1.5. Your live server character profile will also be reimported, which means that your character will be reset to how it is on the live server. Additionally, those who did buy the season pass during the PTS will have access to the Survival game mode on the PTS when we enable it again.
Finally, we do not have a date for Survival just yet, as soon as we have anything to share you will know!
WORLD TIER 5
We’ve been following a lot of conversations around the introduction of World Tier 5 with Update 1.5. This is a loot based game and while 1.4 feels like a completely new experience, the level of gear has been around for a long time. World Tier 5 is a conclusion of the changes we made with 1.4 and introduces a fresh start for everyone to gear up and experience the changes together. It’s important to also mention that this isn’t something we are going to do regularly.
SOLO SURVIVAL VS. GROUP
A number of discussions have been brought up regarding Solo vs. Groups since the start of the Survival PTS. There is a system that is in place to prioritizes those who are playing in groups to be matched with other groups, however if that’s not possible the game will start to fill the remaining slots with everyone else who is searching for a game. This may be what some of the community is experiencing when playing the Survival PTS due to the smaller player base.
As always, be sure to join us over on the Official Forums or on the community Reddit if you’re looking for a place to discuss all things related to The Division.
Until next time!
The Division Dev Team