https://www.reddit.com/r/thedivision/comments/4cmr76/special_report_about_the_next_update_incursions/

This conflicts with my playing of Dark Souls 3... The things that peaked my interest from the live stream updates

-item trading (maybe some nice person will gift me a Midas or HE Aug)

-no checkpoints in Incursions meaning if your group wipes, you restart the whole thing over (PUG groups not welcomed it seems). Difficulty even on hard is as hard as challenging mode.

-more daily mission types to earn PC (kill a certain amount of X or community goals)

-4 new gear sets (yay more grinding...)

So the next update will mainly be co-op focused. I've played the campaign entirely solo and have been doing PUG dailys and CMs so this really bums me out as I don't have a regular group to run with. Looks like I will be playing Dark Souls 3 instead.

I thought most of that stuff sounded really neat and it helps put some more meat on the bones.

I have a weird relationship with the Division where I play and play and feel surprised at how much fun I'm having running the same missions over and over. Then one thing can happen that will make me consider never turning it on again. That one time I was recalibrating an item, lost connection to the server mid-calibration and when I logged back in all my Phoenix credits got erased I thought "well thats it I'm done." Yesterday I did all the daily missions and then decided to jump in for the challenging. Russian Consulate, sure I've done it just the day before but whatever - I did just add 10k more damage on my sniper rifle with a +15% damage magazine so this should be slightly easier. After all I just did the Power Plant the other day and that is annoyingly stressful with the timer and all. So I load up with 3 other doods, and we just get completely wiped right at the metal detectors. I mean I just did this, I remember how hard it was, and I have gotten several pieces of new gear with more armor and higher DPS stats, and yet these enemies just destroyed me. Shotgunners instantly downed me with one shot from across the room when I was at full health. After we all wiped for the third time I just turned off my console and thought "well thats that!"

I'll probably try running the challenging today and see how that will go. Dark Souls is coming out soon and on a purely abstract level I'm starting to question what it is that I'm getting out of the game at this point. So far I was enjoying the progression through the plot. Then I liked getting the Superior gear. Now, as @mike mentioned in another thread it is a little bit of spinning my wheels in place. I don't feel it as hard as he does, but I am getting there where maybe that hour I spend each day making arbitrary numbers go up in a videogame could be better utilized experiencing something new, instead of speedrunning the same stuff over and over in hopes of getting new gear, so I can do the same loops just a bit faster.

Copy/Paste from dupe thread created at the same time as this one:

So the patch details for the first (free - no season pass required) big content update were discussed on the Massive livestream yesterday. Here's a quick summary vid.

Sounds like the Incursion is going to include a Hard mode (at level cap - so probably something tuned around Hard missions as those seem to be meant for ilvl30 purples, but Incursions are tweaked to require coordination) and a Challenging mode (I still hate the Russian Consulate on Challenging when matching with randos, this sounds like it's one step beyond the hardest missions and, again, strong coordination required to progress). But there will be matchmaking so if you need to find group members, you can. There are no checkpoints so you've got to do it all in a single run.

Speaking of item levels, the Gear Score (which is already in the UI for the Incursion location) is going to replace ilvls (and the lvl30 indicator for team-mates doing end-game activities) in the UI when the patch arrives. And the rewards for Incursions will be dropping gear [note: sets also drop in other high-end activities - this isn't just Incursion loot] sets which synergise (so far, so MMO) and are grouped by role/boost stat [with a PvP set too] (and equip 4/6 items to get a new talent from that set). Current high-end gear isn't all going away, because sets don't have per-item gear talents so you might want to keep some of it. The Challenging Incursion will be tuned expecting you've already got a gear set (and bonuses) from the Hard incursion (again, MMO progression taken straight out of something like WoW). The Hard mode suggests the gear score you should have, the Challenging mode is a gear lock: you can't start it without having at least good gear to stop people glitch-hunting or queueing to try and be carried through. Just like Challenge mode missions, you get a boosted reward package for the first time you complete an Incursion (but here it is a weekly timer).

Outside of this, the assignments (if you played the beta: kill X of [enemy] or assassinate [Y] were common formats) are finally arriving with daily and weekly timers on completion. Phoenix Credits are rewarded plus crafting mats. Again, this is rounding out the MMO standard quick and longer path loops to give people something to do that eventually ends up with end-game loot while chatting or waiting to group with friends. I'm wondering if we do get clans in the May update as that would make a lot more sense to give people a larger chat group while doing assignments. So those will also include DZ tasks for people wanting more reasons to be in there.

Speaking of, the DZ also gets a new activity type in supply drops: sealed cargo dropped into the DZ (at random locations) with end-game gear and quickly defended by high-level enemies. This is the only DZ gear you don't need to decontaminate but you have to wait for a drop to happen and then fight your way to the crate to get it.

The same day as the Destiny update huh? I figured that might happen. And I also have Dark Souls that day so my last few weeks of college could be in danger here.

Wait. The same day as Dark Souls III? Sucks to be the Division I guess.

@shivoa: Assignments and Supply Drops seem like really good changes. The assignments seem very similar to the Bounty system from Destiny and other games so that will give us small things to complete while we are doing other activities which will be nice. Couple of friends, Pyrodactyl and il_Exile_li, were talking about a similar idea to what Supply Drops sound like they are the other day hoping they would implement something like this. I wonder how it will play out though. Will it be first to open the chest gets the rewards, if so people will ignore the mobs and just bolt for the chest and then deal with the mobs afterwards, or ideally will opening the chest be rewarded to the team that kills or does the most damage to the AI that drops with the Supply Drop. Or even the most damage dealt in that lifetime, in other words, if they die it resets their chance at the loot, so rogues could kill their way to the loot at the end of the event. It will be interesting to see how it plays out. Either way it will make the DZ a lot more interesting and fun. I'm going to have a hard time deciding what to play on April 12th now, probably depends on whether my groups play The Division or Destiny, but I think they will jump on The Division because of the Incursions.

@hestilllives19: My guess is enemies tuned to be able to 1-shot anyone who is exposed long enough to do the open timer - you can run in but even with a Stamina build, you'll be dead before you get any loot. I wouldn't be shocked if the chest is a 5-second timer to open with damage resetting the count.

I think, TBH, I'll be waiting for strat guides to emerge before jumping into the Incursion. Banging my head against a new encounter and trying to find the golden strat to trivialise anything annoying about it with a group (even friends) is rarely where I find fun in hard co-op content. Give me known strats and make it a question of competent group execution and I'm happy. Everyone working in sync with known responses to every fight phase and special ability and I find it far more fun to play.

@shivoa: There is definitely something both exhilarating and rage inducing about doing Day 1 PvE content like Incursions, at least if Destiny's Raids are any indication. I think my group will give it a go for sure, I hope we finish, it honestly didn't look that hard on just the hard difficulty. But if we can't get it done in a reasonable timeframe, I'm not above checking out Reddit and Twitch on how to finish those encounters.

Wonder if they planned on getting it same day as the Destiny update. Wouldn't seem very smart if you ask me.

I, myself, will be going back to Destiny after a several months long hiatus. I was basically done with everything apart from getting to the damn lighthouse and getting like 1 or 2 more light levels to reach 320, which just seemed pointless.

I was hoping that The Division would grab me in the same way Destiny inexplicably did, and while I still enjoy it, that's just not the case. I'll be going back to it though, no doubt.

So I'm a vanilla WoW dabbler (never got past level 34 :) ), lapsed Destiny player, and enthusiastic The Division agent. So Destiny was my first dive into what endgame MMO mechanics kinda look like. Without a good MMO reference point, I'me left wondering how clans built into the game would give people larger chat groups while doing assignments. As far as I knew, WoW and Destiny didn't have any integrated clan mechanics. Destiny offered clans a web UI for discussion and inspecting each other's equipment, but it wasn't integrated into the game in a meaningful way, right?

I was under the naive impression that clans generally existed on websites with forums and served to organize play sessions and voice chat channels outside of the given game's interface. Is that totally wrong? I'm genuinely curious.

It would be awesome to join a clan and upon logging into The Division or Destiny, see a list of clanmates and be able to organize groups/fireteams or alternately jump into a clan-wide voice chat while farming or doing assignments/bounties.

@thatdudeguy: With WoW the guilds did (at least in the olden days, not played for a few expansions and I think in-game voice chat for guilds that people actually occasionally used was possibly just getting added around when I left the game) provide a critical text-chat channel [I play the Division on PC so console equivalent would probably be voice channels]. Most of the time that I was playing WoW that was the main chat I was logged into (the Division have public chat channels for social areas, even if they're barely used - they seem just as worthless as Barrens chat) as I played. I also was part of guilds quite often where logging into Vent/TS/Mumble server was the standard way to start an evening and just chat with friends (so replicating the friendslist/party chat stuff on consoles but with a looser list than just friends). So even solo activities weren't really solo, they were the stuff you were doing while chatting about your day etc.

The thing I find central to in-game guilds (or even games with static servers so you log in to play with a specific group) is they generate a community like your local pub. It's larger than a friends list, it's a friends and friends of friends list (effectively). Most everyone is either someone you know or knowns someone you know (and so has chosen to group up), baring a few randos who (the supposition is) wish to get to know people. Being larger then a friends list, it means you can log in basically whenever and there's likely be someone else there to chat to. But it's small enough to be a community.

Right now I use the uPlay friends list to track people playing (via stuff like the forum thread here to find people to add as friends) but it's not the same without a social channel that's default-on where a cohesive group is chatting. Yes, it's easier to group up with people on my friends list but if people were just chatting away then it would be far more likely (in my experience) for someone to casually mention maybe doing a Heroic (ie Challenging mission, soon to be Incursion) and a group to organically form from people saying they'd be up for doing that. I really feel the lack of such a social channel (even if text-only) when doing solo stuff in the Division but not actively seeking out an isolated experience (which I'd get by logging out of chat if I wanted to - because sometimes it's good to be isolated in this game to fit the theme).

@thatdudeguy: In game Clan tools is something I've wanted from Destiny since Day 1. Giantbomb has several amazing Destiny clans but its hard to get people together using their website and so people fell away a lot quicker than if they had in game clan tools. In all honesty, I think Destiny would have had at least 20% better retention of players with in game clan tools. So if either they or The Division add that, I would be thrilled. But thinking The Division will add it before Destiny, and Destiny will ever add that at all, I feel is a bit of a pipe dream at this point. Bungie seems to not want to add that on principle for some unknown reason, as they have shown the ease at which they can make small changes like that to their UI. At the same time Massive has so many other more pressing issues going wrong with their grouping of friends at the moment, they honestly need to do some serious addressing of that stuff first.

Some new info came out of the State of Game stream today that will be included in the update.

Division Tech

• Can drop from NPCs

Backpack Issue

• No modded items in the Inventory
• It should be fixed and it will be patched in the 1.1 update
• But can also have other fallout, but it is under investigation.

Cheating

• Cheating report helps and they are also asking for reports from the community
• Can be reported in-game after 1.1
• They are also scanning themselves with server side tracking
• Suspension and banning is happening
• It is not perfect, but they are working on. Better solutions will be implemented in the future.
• There is a 3 day suspension, then there is a second chance, but then it is a permanent ban
• There were also many false reports because some Players are very high geared (the new Dark Zone Bracket in level 30 will probably help the situation)
• /report (Username) to report player in game after 1.1

Stats

• Completion Rate: 41% of all character created have the story completed (only 8% of those went to the last Echo)
• 37% of all character have reached level 30%

News next week

• New Podcast about Incursions / Endgame / Balancing will be released later this week.
• New Article about Gear Sets and Incursions
• Next Update can be downloaded during maintenance on April 12

Incursion update 1.1 Preview

• Falcon Lost is the new Incursion that will be released next week
• 4 Gear Sets (1 Dark Zone / 3 more PvE Focused)
• More information about that during this week
• Gear Score will be implemented
• Assignments are daily and weekly activities (new every day) Dark Zone / PVE / Crafting
• Supply Drops in the Dark Zone. That are guarded by NPCs
• Trading among team-members (give feedback if it not OK)

Patchnotes for 1.1 will be released later today – these are the highlights

Phoenix Credits changes will be included

• Level 30 enemies drop 1-3 Credits
• Level 31 enemies drop 2-4 Credits
• Level 32 enemies drop 3-5 Credits

Blueprints

• New Level 31 / 32 Blueprints

Crafting

• Older Blueprints will not require Division Tech anymore
• The New ones will need Division Tech

Dark Zone changes

• Items can be bought with these Dark Zone Ranks (15 / 25 / 40 / 75 / 90) more granular DZ Ranks
• New Dark Zone Brackets (below 160 / above 160)
• 160 = almost full high end gear equipped.

This is some good news for solo players. Current Dark Zone blueprints will move to the BoO special vendor and not require Division Tech. This makes me the most happy since grinding in the Dark Zone has been the least fun and most annoying part of the game. PC dropping from NPCs as well will hopefully help people who don't want to/can't farm challenge mode missions

Using Gear Score for bracketing the DZ sounds good (and GS is already confirmed to include backpack equipment so you can't sneak in and then change over to high-end stuff after matchmaking). As does more tiers of DZ reward stuff (although I have to wonder how many people are left who aren't in 100% ilvl30/31 purples or yellows right now - I guess that is improving the ramp for players who buy the game after today).

ilvl32 blueprints eh? I wonder if the Phoenix Credit balances are being reset because otherwise everyone should definitely stockpile and get themselves those on day 1 (also Division Tech becomes something other than a thing you convert to fill mats holes - guess it might be time to do some farming before the patch). Basing expectations on the jump from ilvl30 to ilvl31 gear makes it look like ilvl32 will be very much worth moving to (especially for a new weapon as those aren't being replaced by the potential for Gear Set drops).

Didn't see the stream so not sure what the backpack/mods note means. I'd love it if mods moved away from using up inventory slots (like cosmetics do) but it sounds like a bug being fixed (possibly related to high-end backpack crafting bug) so maybe things get worse not better in the patch (if loading weapons with mods and dumping them into inventory is the root cause of the backpack bug).

Boom! Big change, should be interesting to see people now looking how to quickly farm credits to pay for respecs rather than using precious PCs to get that done in the end-game (I know I've been putting off doing many respecs due to saving PCs while my lower tier gear I always respect to get the best stat balance I can).

@shivoa: I've got nearly a million credits from just farming dailys and challenge missions even after paying 650K for my useless Pahkan. Money is so easy to come buy and theres nothing worth buying once you reach 30 so this is very much welcomed. But I bet the re-roll prices will be much higher to balance this out. Currently a superior reroll first cost I think 11K so a HE re-roll I'm guessing will start at 50k-100k.

Hit a wall around level 20, but I am interested in seeing endgame at least once. Once I hit max level how much grinding should I expect to do before being eligible for an Incursion?

@ballsleon: We don't yet know what the Gear Score requirements mean but ask again after the patch and we'll know. Also the Hard Incursions (vs Challenging) only advises a Gear Score rather than forcing you to have one so as long as your team doesn't mind carrying you slightly (they will see your Gear Score after the patch once you hit lvl30) then you should be fine and grab gear that way.

Right now I've held my own doing Challenging daily missions in mainly ilvl30 purples when testing a spec/build for which I had nothing better (couple of yellows or ilvl31s push that up to "am definitely in the stronger half of the randos sleepwalking through the mission"). So getting to 30 isn't the end of the road but it shouldn't be hard to get to where you need to be (purples drop like rain from the dailies, there are new dailies and weekly coming in the patch, challenging missions guarantee a yellow drop for every completion, Phoenix purchased upgrades aren't that expensive). Depending your luck on how nicely the stats synergise on the drops, you could have pretty nice gear in a few days of light playing once you hit the cap. Or, if you prefer the DZ, you can really far that out quickly extracting mountains of purples (also DZ credits buy ilvl30 purples from the vendor to fill any holes you're getting no luck with drops for).

Holy crap they just released the patch notes and crafting just got a serious nerf to the point it will be more grindy...

https://www.reddit.com/r/thedivision/comments/4dh6yv/the_division_update_11_incursions_patch_notes/

Increased costs for converting crafting materials and crafting High-End items:

• 10 Standard (Green) materials instead of 5 to craft 1 Specialized (Blue) material
• 15 Specialized (Blue) materials instead of 5 to craft 1 High-End (Gold) material
• 10 High-End (Gold) materials instead of 8 to craft 1 lvl 31 High-End (Gold) item

Changed deconstruction yield of Standard (Green) and High-End (Gold) items:

• Deconstructing a Standard (Green) item yields 1 Standard material instead of 2
• Deconstructing a High-End (Gold) item yields 1 High-End material instead of 2

This is nearly 2-3 times the amount of mats required and less from deconstruction. WTF... Not happy at all.

It should cost DZ credits. There is literally no way to spend DZ credits on anything ever.

I guess that's one way to fix the mats economy (fastest way to farm high-end mats: use a lvl4 alt to buy full stash of store greens, sent to main, deconstruct, repeat).

Hopefully everyone will up-convert their stash before the 1.1 patch hits.

Stats

• Completion Rate: 41% of all character created have the story completed (only 8% of those went to the last Echo
• 37% of all character have reached level 30%

Probably 41% is pretty good. Yet... Jesus, Ubi, don't count some of out right away. Some players, like myself will need a few weeks....not everyone has the time to plow through this game in under a month. I'm at level 26, because I just can't play every day or for very long.

Agreed, if you run the numbers this is an over 300% increase in the amount of weapons you have to break down to create an equivalent high-end item. It's actually mental.

Huge PSA: Convert all your crafting materials to High-End ASAP before this patch hits. Real dick move for casual players too.

It's hilarious as well, all people wanted was a quicker way to automatically convert low tier mats upwards when crafting gear instead of doing it 1-by-1. Instead they ramped up the grinding massively. Nice.

http://tomclancy-thedivision.ubi.com/game/en-GB/news/detail.aspx?c=tcm:154-245982-16&ct=tcm:148-76770-32

Drop rate of High End gear from Named NPCs LVL30+ Increased to 100%

YAY!?..... I wonder if this means more strict exploit farming punishments as well. All hail Bullet King/Finch/Hutch/Scarecrow!

Yep, this is what I wanted and hoped from (and good job to the devs for quickly explaining exactly why the old deconstructing/convert cycle had to go away - it really was something that couldn't stay there as it broke the economy).

Also we now know what high end gear is in Gear Score: 163/182/204. That's either a typo (for 201 or previously when the noted 182 is ilvl31 yellows) or that's a non-linear scale on gear. So expect the end-game to slowly explode with stat inflation. Even if we never get beyond ilvl36 gear (ie no expansion main level cap increases; rather ilvl32 added now, more 32 and 33 added next month, then we have the 3 paid expansions where they could up the level cap or just give another ilvl tier) then expect the final game to offer some staggeringly big numbers to trivialise the older content (so we'll be able to go back to old incursions and stomp them - wonder if they patch in a tier above Challenging or make new missions with Challenging mode go to Challenging+ or something to indicate they're for expansion-geared characters?).

Anyway, this is a good change to allow for an actual loot drop game. Want a random ilvl30 yellow: find a named lvl30 enemy. Unhappy with that? Find a higher level named to kill :D

I also like that they're being explicit about named having their own drop tables: "New drop tables have been designed to grant you just enough control to focus your efforts on specific NPCs, depending on your need. Each named NPC will now have more chances to grant a specific type of High-End item. By discovering the specificities of each named NPC, you will quickly learn which ones you should focus on in order to obtain specific items."

So you'll be able to say, "oh, here comes [X] - definitely want to get him down because his loot table is kneepads and I need me some of those". Directed farming for the drops that either are what you crave or will be direct mats for what you crave (and with high drop rates comes faster mats without it being trash for the endless deconstructing/convert cycle). That also means you'll likely be selling more purples etc rather than using them for mats and that'll be your income for rerolling your high-ends with the reforging changes. It's all coming together - the patch isn't just "clueless devs randomly changing stuff to ruin the game".

I have a group of devs I trust and Massive is one of them.

Update notes and discussion in video form for people who prefer audio and commentary (rather than small, narrow white text on back backgrounds):

@shivoa: It's fun to see the subreddit for the division trip over themselves in excitement after 4 days of pissing and moaning about the crafting changes.

But, correct me if I'm wrong, you get 2 HE components from deconstrructing a gold item? It seems like guaranteeing golds from named enemies basically makes the crafting change a bit redundant, given that on a good day, depending what the challenging daily is, it would probably only take 2.5 hours to get together the components needed to craft something, and I'm by no means a pro player. (EDIT: Just spotted that golds will only give 1 mat now so n/m)

I'm going to be really interested to see what the DZ will be like in the future. At the moment I've only had negative pvp experiences. I don't necessarily mind when people stomp me at the extraction point, but I so often get shot down by an opportunist for no gain. Nonetheless, I've been able to potter around solo in the DZ and do pretty well; it's a tense and mostly enjoyable experience. I'm not sure I'll enjoy it as much if shit is popping off every second. I feel like with the increase of good loot flowing around, they need to rebalance the punishments for going rogue?

This is a good start, although I don't think it does much for people who play like I do. Grinding the same mission and killing the same named boss over and over is much less interesting to me than playing around in the open world. I'm not a fan of PVP, and I don't have a full squad of friends to roll around the DZ with anyway.

Also, I hope they reconsider the change they made with patch 1.0.2 to named enemies in the open world (they no longer respawn). Having them respawn every 24 hours with the daily reset doesn't seem unreasonable to me.

If they buff drop rates for non-named enemies, and allow open world named enemies to respawn with the daily reset then it wouldn't matter how you play - PVE open world, PVE daily grind, PVP DZ - everyone has a better chance at better loot.

@bane: There re named enemies in the open world too, aren't there?

@thomasnash: There are a number of named bosses in the world, but if you kill them once they're gone forever.

@mike: Ah, I ran into one earlier when I was looking for collectibles and was a bit surprised so I thought maybe they respawned. Obviously it just shows how little I explored when I was running through the main game...

@humanity: I know it's super late reply but the strat with shotgunners is to use flash bang sticky bombs and the smoke seeker mines and focus on them first before dealing with the other guys. I know it's easier said than done and that mission in general is a pain in challenging difficulty but with enough coordination you'll get it down.

@gaspower: Yah I've done that mission a number of times. In fact I've sort of moved on from the Division for the moment to focus on newer games. Thanks for the strat though, I did end up using flash grenades for a while when I did still play.

Gear Set details have now dropped.

It's not just a 4-piece talent. You're getting partial credit (secondary boosts) at 2-pieces and 3-pieces. And then you've also got 2 more slots (to finish your 6-piece loadout) for HE ilvl32 (GS 204) with individual talents or maybe even getting 2 pieces of another set for the 2-piece (50% scavenging boost from those RNG drops anyone? Go find those 2 pieces of the PvP set to activate). News in video form with analysis: