In the State of the Game on April 10th, Massive announced that there will be a PTS before the next major update for The Division 2. Here is the reason.
This is what the State of the Game was about: In the weekly live stream, the developers talked about the state of affairs in The Division 2.
It was about the last update with World Tier 5 and Tidal Basin, the server maintenance on April 11th, and the upcoming updates for The Division 2.
The biggest announcement was the return of the PTS, which should be used for the first time before the raid.
First Test Phase Before the Raid
What are PTS servers anyway? These are “Player Test Servers” that were already used in The Division 1.
- Large updates are made available on special servers to a portion of the players. They can play, test, and explore the content.
- During these test phases, possible bugs, glitches, and balance issues are identified. Moreover, players can provide direct feedback.
- Massive can then address and fix these issues during these phases. Ideally, the new update is largely improved by the time of release.
Which platforms get test servers? Unfortunately, PS4 and Xbox players are out of luck; the test phases will exclusively take place for the PC version.
Why is that? On PC, developers can respond much faster to player feedback and experiment with various builds of the updates. On consoles, this all takes significantly longer due to the certification phases with Microsoft and Sony.
This was already attempted in The Division 1, but it wasn’t satisfactory for the developers. On PC, the best results can be achieved.
When will the first testing take place? The first test phase begins on April 17th.
Can the raid also be tested? No, the raid will not be playable. There will be no spoilers here.
With the PTS, a Fan Wish Comes True
That’s why fans wanted a comeback of the PTS: After the last update, which is now officially referred to as Title Update 2, there were several issues in The Division 2.
- Weird animations,
- issues with projects,
- new bugged stats such as armor damage,
- ammunition for individual weapons, which suddenly drops less frequently
These and other bugs and glitches caused frustration among players. Many criticized that a large part of the problems would have been recognized earlier with the PTS.
More information from the State of the Game:
- Before the raid and the PTS, there should be a patch that addresses the issues mentioned above and brings further fixes.
- Balancing was also discussed. The criticisms of the fans, such as useless gear sets, the discussion about PvP, and other topics are on the radar, but there’s no announcement yet.
- On April 11th, there will be a server maintenance as usual. The maintenance will start at 9:30 AM and is expected to last 3 hours.
- An exploit with the daily and weekly projects has been fixed. These have been active again since April 9th.
What do you think of the announcements?
This bug should also be fixed as soon as possible:
