The Division 2 Public Test Server: Here's What To Expect

The Division 2's public test server is finally here, and with it come a new wave of changes and patch notes.

Following Ubisoft and developer Massive's announcement earlier last week that the upcoming first raid release for The Division 2 has been pushed back to May, the developer has since gone on to announce the arrival of a public test server for players on the PC. According to a post on the r/TheDivision subreddit:

The PTS is a separate client from the regular game, available to all owners of The Division 2 on PC, and everything that happens there is separate from the live game. The server exists only for testing purposes, and nothing you do there carries over to the live game. It’s also periodically reset, so no character progression is saved once the server is brought down.

Due to the PTS being a testing environment, everything that happens there is subject to change before the update comes to the live server. It’s an opportunity for you give us feedback and discuss the changes before they are integrated into the live game. In other words, it’s a place for us all to experiment!

This is good news for PC players of The Division 2, as they will now have access to future content that will be made available to other players on consoles on a later date. This yet-to-officially-release content will only be restricted on the test server. In turn, the development team can see their upcoming game implementations being played out on a larger scale, allowing them to balance as needed.

Massive also outlined the rotation of tests available on the server. A full list can be seen here, but for brevity's sake here are some of the highlights:

Normalizing mechanics

• The Equipment and weapons will be normalized to GS 500 (even if your GS is higher)
• That also means, that they are no longer normalizing for a middle ground, but they are respecting the rolls on your gear. That means when you had an item with a very high crit chance roll, it will be like that in normalized content.
• Skill Power will also be respected and when the mods are active in PVE, they will also be active in normalized content.

Global PVP Modifiers

• The PVP damage modifier will be reduced from 70% to 40% and that will bring the Time to Kill down to what you experience in PVE. This way, you have more time to react.
• The Skill Damage modifier will be increased from 20% to 25%, so that should make your skills more effective.
• Overall the encounters should last longer overall and the skills should be more useful.

Occupied Dark Zone PVP Modifiers

• They have also added a specific ODZ PVP damage modifier
• Currently it sits at 40% - same as the normalized DZ – but they have the ability to specifically fine-tune the ODZ depending on how things change.
• That should also help to lower the Time To Kill in the ODZ

PVP Modifiers for Weapon Archetypes

• They will add specific PVP modifiers for specific weapon types.
• For example, they can specifically buff the Assault Rifle in PVP now.
• That also enables for specific PVP balancing, because the damage of the weapon is overwritten by the PVP Modifiers when you enter PVP content.

Hip fire Changes

• In PVP content you will not be able to crit when you hip-fire
• In PVE it behaves as it is now.

Loot Changes

• NDZ and ODZ will drop less clean loot and more contaminated loot, they want players to engage in the Loot Extraction – loop.
• Named bosses guarantee contaminated loot and higher leveled landmark bosses have the ability to drop multiple items.

Landmark Cooldown

• Landmarks got a cooldown once they are cleared before they become activate again (about a minute)
• That should also encourage more player movement and not just farming the same Landmark.

Dark Zone NPC Balancing

• The NPCs in the Dark Zone will be less lethal, but they will also have more armor.

Rogue Loop Changes

• They removed the Rogue Cooldown when you die
• The Rogue-Toggle cooldown will stay, so you will not be able to spam that.
• Dark Zone Perk was also changed that it will no longer reduce the Rogue Timer cooldown, but you will lose less XP when you die as a rogue agent.

Dark Zone Pouch increased

• You will be able to carry more Contaminated items.
• Default is 6 items per bag
• The Character Perks were also changed – The Tier 1 Perk will increase the bag-size to 8
• The Dark Zone Perk will increase the bag-size to 10 in total.

Preventing Empty Dark Zones

• They plan multiple changes to “guarantee” that you encounter 12 players in a Dark Zone instance.
• They are reducing the amount of Dark Zone Brackets to 2. Everyone below Character Level 30 and everybody in Endgame.
• Not all changes will be implemented with Title Update 3 – there is more in the queue down the line.

Occupied Dark Zone changes

• The ODZ specific damage modifier was already mentioned
• They also lower the XP loss when you die in the ODZ

GS 515 Items will drop in the Dark Zone

• In endgame Dark Zone you will be able to get GS 515 items.

The Division 2's public test server is now live on PC. The game is also available to play on the Xbox One and the PS4, but these consoles cannot access the PTS.