Just a few weeks ago, Ubisoft announced that it was delaying The Division 2’s big title update #3 to sometime in May in order to do further testing. Well, it seems we now know just when in May it’ll be! In yesterday’s State of the Game, Ubisoft announced that The Division 2 upcoming changes in title update #3 will be rolled out next week!

While we already have a big list of changes coming to The Division 2 in title update #3, a new host of gameplay tweaks, bug fixes and more have been revealed yesterday as well. Check out the list below for The Division 2 upcoming changes (via Reddit):

Title Update 3 – Changes

These are some of the highlighted changes – the PTS Patch Notes are linked at the bottom for the complete list.

The final patch notes will drop next week.

Matchmaking in Down Under

• They have a data center in Sydney
• The goal is that they can play together
• There are not as many players there than in other areas and therefore the chances that you find other players that are doing exactly the same activity on the same level etc is therefore smaller.
• They made many changes to the matchmaking in that area since launch – first they matchmade players to Asia, but then there were language barriers, then they matchmade them to America.
• But the feedback was, that the Australian players prefer good performance over fast matchmaking, so they reverted that change, so now the matchmaking focuses back on the Australia servers – but it can take longer until you find a group.
• This is the solution at the moment – but they continue to improve the situation.

 

GS 500+ Topic

There has been a lot of discussion about how the next higher Gear Score will be added to the game. You can read * about it in the “Developer Update: Gear Score in Title Update 3” below. * TLDR: It is not the right time now.

 

GS 500 Farmlocations

• Contaminated Loot in the Dark Zone (once you have reached GS 500)
• Heroic Difficulty Mission Bosses, Stronghold Bosses, Bounty Bosses and Control Points Level 4 will give you containers that will guarantee GS 500 drops when the player has reached GS 500.
• The Daily Mission will also guarantee GS 500 items (once the player has reached GS 500).

 

Some time-sensitive Commendations have been removed / New ones added

• The Commendations “Consecutive Days Playtime” and similar ones have been removed
• They did not provide a good player experience and they did not want to force players to play the game with requirements that are also difficult to track because of timezones etc.
• Unlocked commendations will stay visible
• A vanity patch will be added to compensate for lost time.
• They will add other commendations where you can prove your dedication to the game without the login-requirement. (30-day playtime in total etc)

 

Crafting

• Increased the base cap for Receiver Components and Protective Fabric crafting materials by 200, meaning that their caps now start at 350 and end at 600 with all material capacity perks.
• Inaya al-Khaliq in the Base of Operation is now a Crafting Vendor, she can be found next to the Crafting Bench in the White House.
• The goal is also to make blueprints more accessible.
• Crafted Exotic weapons will now always upgrade to the maximum Gear Score of the World Tier they are crafted in, when the Upgrade Blueprint is used.

 

Gear Changes

Among other things, they want to make the Gear Sets a more viable choice and also that players are able to invest in armor and also feel tankier than they are now.

• Gear will now include better defensive rolls.
  • Gear sets
    • Hard Wired
      • Now grants Skill Damage instead of Shock Duration.
    • Ongoing Directive
      • Now grants special ammunition into any weapon, including the weapon currently equipped.
      • Now grants special ammunition on any kill, not just weapon kills.
    • True Patriot
      • Decreased debuff cycle from 4 seconds to 2 seconds.
      • Increased damage dealt to nearby targets when Full Flag is active to 50%.

 

Loot Changes

• Improved quality and quantity of Drone Helicopter loot.
• Slightly reduced the maximum available loot from Clan Caches.
• Increased ammunition drop chance from enemy NPCs to decrease situations where players would run out of ammunition during prolonged fights on higher difficulty activities.
• Lowered the chances that the loot drops with lower GS than the average GS of the player.
• Heroic Difficulty Mission Bosses, Stronghold Bosses, Bounty Bosses and Control Points Level 4 will give you containers that will guarantee GS 500 drops when the player has reached GS 500.
• Dark Zone
  • Contaminated loot will drop below the players GS and will guarantee GS 500 when the player has reached that GS.

 

Exotics

Exotics are having their damage increased across the board.

 

Post Mission Summary Screen

• After completing a mission, players have the option to look at a mission summary and evaluate how they performed based on a variety of statistics.

 

New mods: Auxiliary Skill Battery

• Auxiliary Skill Batteries fit in Skill mod slots and grant Skill Power that will allow you to unlock mods with higher Skill Power Requirement.

 

Recalibration remake

Recalibration has been changed to allow for the majority of stats to be moved as they are, from one item to another, while making it less likely to reach the cap of the stat moved. To achieve this goal, we’re expressing the recalibrated power as a separate number, next to the gear score. As such, the recalibration will no longer increase the gear score of the item. All existing recalibrated items will have their recalibrated additional gear score converted to the new format.

 

Enemy NPC Changes

• Decreased damage of Veteran, Elite and Named NPCs.
• Greatly reduced the melee damage of Tank NPCs
• Moderately decreased melee damage of all other NPCs.
• Accuracy of Grenade Throwers has been reduced
• Enemy NPCs should no longer be able to stagger players with a melee attack if the player has a Ballistic Shield equipped.

 

Friendly NPC Changes

• Civilians now wear protective gear.
• Upgrading a settlement also increases the Civilians damage
• Civilian hostages are now more protective of their lives

 

Control Points

• The Alert Level impact will now be more clearly communicated (hard – heroic)
• Hostile patrols and convoys are now communicated better during takeovers
• Civilian Officers can revive you during takeovers.
• Civilian Takeover can now be used as respawn point
• You can fast travel to friendly takeovers and convoys

 

Skills

• Skills
  • Assault Drone
    • PvE: The Drone will now more actively look for a new target once it loses its current target.
  • Defender Drone
    • Will now drain more quickly once a shot has been deflected.
  • Reinforcer Chem Launcher
    • Reinforcer gas clouds do not stack anymore.
  • Reviver Hive
    • Fixed further occurrences of players not being revived.
    • Revive time slightly increased.
  • Riot Foam Chem Launcher
    • Increased base duration of Riot Foam when used against an NPC.
  • Scanner Pulse
    • Reduced cooldown from 120 seconds to 90 seconds.

Conflict

• Conflict
  • Armor boost
    • Boost provided reduced by 50%.

 

PVP Balancing (Among other things)

• Players are now normalized to GS 500
• Assault Rifles have now a 1.25 PVP damage scaler applied
• PVP Damage modifier has been decreased (longer time to kill)
• Skill modifier has been increased (Skill do more damage)

 

Dark Zone

• Dark Zone
  • Contaminated loot
    • Bosses now guarantee a contaminated loot drop.
    • Higher challenge landmarks can drop multiple contaminated items.
    • Basic, Veteran and Elite NPCs have their drop rate lowered, but now have a very high chance to drop contaminated loot.
  • Dark Zone bag size
    • Default bag size increased to 6.
    • Tier 1 perk Bag Space now increases bag size to 8.
    • Tier 4 perk Bounceback now reduces Dark Zone XP lost on death.
    • Tier 10 perk increases bag size to 10.
  • Dark Zone brackets
    • Reduced bracketing to:
      • Level 1 – 30.
      • Players in World Tiers.
  • Rogue
    • Removed cooldown.
      • There is still a 5 second toggle cooldown.
  • Occupied Dark Zone
    • Damage modifiers
      • Added a separate PvP damage modifier.
    • XP
      • Reduced DZXP loss to 35% of the XP in your current Dark Zone rank when being killed.

 

Console Performance improvements

• The streaming of textures has been improved for consoles

Bear in mind, this is NOT the full list of patch notes. If you’re a The Division 2 player, you should be on the lookout next week since the patch will change a ton of things in the game, as well as add new content. If past updates are anything to go by, expect it to be out by Tuesday.

In case you’re trying to log in to The Division 2 but can’t, don’t worry! There’s nothing wrong with the game’s servers, but rather, it’s just your weekly The Division 2 maintenance period!

Here’s the full The Division 2 maintenance May 9 schedule:

• 09:30 AM CEST
• 03:30 AM EDT
• 00:30 AM PDT

Expected downtime is two hours, so there’s a chance the servers could be back up before then, or a few minutes after.

While you’re waiting for the servers to be back up, did you know that the Gear Score won’t be increased past 500 in title update #3? Ubisoft has confirmed it and here’s their explanation. Speaking of title update #3, check out a big chunk of the upcoming changes right here.

Source: Ubisoft forums

More The Division 2 Reading:

• Here Are Some of the Best The Division 2 Tips From the Community
• The Division 2 Cosmetics List – Check What You’re Missing Now
• The Division 2 Weapon Talents, Gear Talents, Gear Set Bonus List

With Ubisoft pushing back The Division 2’s next major update (title update #3) sometime this month, some might have assumed that the gear score in the game will be upped as part of the patch. Well, you assumed wrong. In a new post on the game’s official site, Ubisoft has revealed that The Division 2 gear score update will not be happening with this month’s big patch and explained why.

With the plethora of PvE and PvP changes in TU3 we want to improve the Dark Zone experience, making it more fun and rewarding. Taking those changes into account, we decided that it is too early to introduce higher Gear Score items. We want to make sure the next Gear Score increase feels completely natural and comes at a time that is right for the game.

In addition to that statement, Ubisoft listed a few key issues that they think will arise if they increase the Gear Score this soon:

• Gear Score 500 items would have been outdated immediately, and all the effort you put into min/maxing and farming your builds would have been wasted just as the Raid goes live. We don’t want to invalidate your progression and we heard that feedback loud and clear from our community. Your gear and your builds are important to you and to us.
• The statistical increase in stats would have made gear better but we don’t want the focus to be on constantly chasing a higher Gear Score, when it should be about finding a playstyle and build that you enjoy.

Ubisoft has alos mentioned that the upcoming Raid called Operation Dark Hours will give Gear Score 500 rewards as well.

Operation Dark Hours, the 8-player Raid coming in TU3, will also provide Gear Score 500 rewards.The raid will offer exclusive loot, including new gear sets and an Exotic weapon. We’re very excited for you to experience the first Raid in The Division history, which we hope will be a great addition to the end game.

Moving forward, to make it clearer where to get Gear Score 500 items, we’ve made the following changes in Title Update 3.

• We have increased the rewards for daily Priority Hard and Challenging missions. Once you’ve reached Gear Score 500, those activities will guarantee Gear Score 500 drops.
• Heroic Mission bosses, Stronghold bosses and Bounty bosses, as well as Control Point Alert Level 4 reward containers guarantee Gear Score 500 items if your average Gear Score is at 500.
• DZ contaminated loot does not drop below player’s average Gear Score. When you’ve reached an average Gear Score of 500, Contaminated loot will guarantee Gear Score 500 items.
• We’ve balanced loot across the board to reduce the chances of items dropping at a lower Gear Score than that of your character.

Is this OK for you? Or were you expecting the Gear Score to be upped in this month’s big patch?

In case you didn’t play The Division, Ubisoft Massive regularly held what the studio called “State of the Game” livestreams where they talked about the game, upcoming content, and more.

Thankfully, the studio is continuing this with The Division 2! If you’re curious, you can watch The Division 2 State of the Game livestream below.

As you can see, this is episode #116, which means Ubisoft Massive is still regularly doing this. If you can’t watch the full episode, which lasts quite some time, don’t fret! We’ll get the relevant news and round up for you shortly.

More The Division 2 Reading on MP1st:

• Here Are Some of the Best The Division 2 Tips From the Community
• The Division 2 Hunter Mask Location Guide
• The Division 2 Faction Key Locations Guide