In The Division, Massive will adjust the “Time to kill” and the “Time to be killed” with Update 1.4. This is to make the agents more powerful again.
In the last State of the Game and with a detailed report on the official Division page, the developers outlined how a major current issue will be addressed: Currently, the agents are vastly outmatched by enemies. They can take and deal an extreme amount of damage.
Only a small fraction of all agents can handle this difficulty – those who invest a lot of time into the game and can optimize their gear and stats. For the majority of agents, however, the game is not fun. The opponents are simply too powerful.
Moreover, you need specific gear sets and builds to maximize your character. There are hardly any options available. If you want to be top-notch in the endgame, you need certain equipment. The game offers no flexibility.
“Time to kill” and “Time to be killed” will be adjusted
According to Massive, a lot of data has been collected recently. Now they can shorten the time to kill an enemy and extend the time to be killed by an opponent.
For this, they showed various graphics. In the following, you see how the “Time to kill” currently changes, depending on the difference between your character level and the enemy’s level. “0” means both are at the same level:
In the endgame, starting from level 30, this curve (orange) becomes extremely steep, indicating that the enemies become overwhelmingly strong. Level 12 (blue) is used since it is the “normalized” level. This is the “base” for all balancing efforts. In the upper graph, the agents have “normal” gear, meaning not optimized.
Subsequently, the developers threw around some numbers showing that currently there is too big a gap between “bad” and the “best” agents. It is said that the damage output difference at level 30 with 163 gear in certain situations can be around 264% between players, and damage resistance up to 250%. This does not take talents or skills into account, which make this gap between players even larger. The following diagram should illustrate this significant gap:
Furthermore, they report that mods at level 30 can increase damage output by up to 40%, while at level 12 only by 6%. Damage resistance through mods can be seven times more powerful at level 30 than at level 12. The mods also need to be adjusted in the endgame.
How will the problem be solved?
Overall, the “Time to Kill” and “Time to be killed” curves in the endgame should converge towards those at levels 1-29. The upper orange curve should become similar to the blue one. For this, Massive showed two short videos demonstrating how they can change with Update 1.4:
- The time to kill is expected to be halved. An enemy (level 33) could be taken down in half the time.
- The time to be killed will be three times longer than before (enemy level 33).
You can see the short videos here from minute 5:35:
In the following, you will see how the difference between the current state and the state after Update 1.4 is expected to look. It should be noted that after Update 1.4, there will be no enemies at levels 34 and 35:
A fundamental change that Update 1.4 will bring, addressing these issues, is the World Tiers, or the “World Levels.” We already reported in detail about this yesterday. Here you can find the updated article on the World Levels in The Division with all the information.
