In The Division 2 there’s new information about the skills, the agents’ abilities. Massive wants to ensure that these are not OP in PvP.
The Division and Balance: The Division 1 had long-standing issues with overpowered weapons, gear sets, and skills.
For example, the seeker mine was considered overpowered in PvP in early 2017, as it dealt heavy damage with the air detonation mod. Numerous agents complained that they were constantly killed by other players without even seeing them.
Because the seeker mine autonomously finds enemy targets and rolls close to them, only to explode. You just had to activate this skill, and the kills would come by themselves. Massive had to intervene.
Such occurrences should not be repeated in The Division 2
100%-PvP-Team: In an interview with gadgets, Associate Creative Director Chadi El-Zibaoui discusses the skills and their balance. He emphasizes that they have a team of developers focused 100% on the PvP area and are in constant communication with the Massive team to ensure that there will be no “unbalanced skills” in PvP.
Regarding balance, El-Zibaoui states that they will make small tweaks to the skills until the release day of The Division 2. And when the game is in the hands of the players, they will have more data to adjust the skills that feel too powerful.
Separate balancing of PvP and PvE: The developers are pleased to announce that in The Division 2, there is separate balancing for PvE and PvP modes.
In The Division 1, there were constant complaints that nerfs in PvP negatively affected the player experience in PvE.
“In The Division 2, we want to keep PvP competitive and healthy without negatively impacting players who enjoy PvE,” says Massive.
This way, the developers can quickly respond to balance issues in the “Agent versus Agent” combat without having to touch the PvE area.
No OP Skills in PvE either
Top Skills are more challenging: According to El-Zibaoui, the skills offer you a lot of freedom to customize your playstyle thanks to their mods. The approach in development was: “The more powerful the skill, the more challenging it is for the player.”
This means, for instance, if you set up a special turret with high damage output, it won’t automatically shoot at the enemies; instead, you have to trigger the shots yourself.
All Skills in The Division 2: There will be a total of 8 skills, all of which can be modified with different mods. They include:
- Pulse – Pulse Generator
- Turret – Turret
- Hive – Drone Nest
- Chem.-Launcher – Chemical Launcher
- Firefly – Firefly
- Seeker Mine – Seeker Mine
- Drone – Drone
- Shield – Shield
How all the skills will play with the various mods will be revealed at the launch of The Division 2 on March 15, 2019. If you pre-order certain editions, you can start on March 12.
