Morning,
This week we have received The Summit loot update that we longed for, and other than a few bugs here and there I would say that it was quite successful and received relatively well. However this has only made the DZ even quieter than usual, and further made it so that the loot in there is no longer of high enough quality, and ultimately a waste of most peoples time to farm.
However I have a few thoughts on that front to try and make it so that the DZs become more populated again, this post will not discuss the changes or balancing that PvP requires, purely loot. Summit introduced the new "Pick your own" targeted loot system which is great since it allows people to more accurately farm the pieces of gear that they need, the DZs do not have this luxury. My idea is that we have the same Targeted Loot system as Summit implemented into the Occupied DZ, to incentivise more farming and get the "DZ Eco System" back in order, so that we don't all spend our time PvPing at a checkpoint, instead fights will be more spread apart and people will have a reason to do the landmarks, other than to clear them so they can PvP more effectively. The change however with this targeted loot system though compared to The Summit would be that it has the inclusion of Yaahl and System Corruption, allowing the first precise method to acquiring these sets.
Adding the targeted loot change I suggested above is only one side of the coin with this issue, the other is that the quality of the loot in the DZ is awful, 90% Challenging Level loot with a sprinkling of Heroic Loot from the occasional landmark is not enough to warrant people spending their time in there to farming. The quality of the loot needs to be boosted, this part of my idea is one I'm not sure how to fully do so that it is balanced with PvE farming, I think that roaming packs of enemies in the DZ should only be challenging level, since some players may struggle with Heroic and having Heroic NPCs interfere with a Manhunt run would only cause stress and annoyance. The Landmarks should ALL drop Heroic Level loot from the NPCs, however Named Enemies should drop Legendary Loot, this would include the Supply Drop Enemies and Supply drop crate loot also.
I think that these two minor changes to the DZ loot would dramatically change the DZ and how it operates at the moment, players would be more inclined to farm and go rogue on each other due to the fact players will more frequently have a God Rolled item, whether that be a Gift due to them selecting Providence as their targeted loot or a Matador if Walker and Harris was selected, or even a Hollowman Mask which would now be in the loot pool since Yaahl can be targeted.
This is just one of the thoughts I had that might be able to improve the DZ for a good chunk of the player base, I'm a PvP player at heart with almost all my hours spent in the DZ in both Div1 and 2, and its just sad to see that the DZ has been neglected soo much in this game, The DZ was the OG repayable content in the game for both farming and PvP, Div1 still have people going in to PvP now! Give the DZ more love and people will gravitate back towards the game, a large chunk of the original player base came to the game for the DZ, due to its revolutionary concept.
Thanks for reading.
TLR - Add selectable targeted loot to the Occupied DZ, including Yaahl and System Corruption, and also buffing the quality of the loot in there including Legendary in select places.
I had the same idea, and thought this would be a great update. Dev's, please round table this and discuss it. It makes sense with what the Occupied is about.Originally Posted by CV_MrWombat Go to original post
Biggest understatement of the year. I ran for 10.5 hours in an empty DZ server this past Sunday with about 6-8 different buddies who came and left throughout the day. At times, I would extract 2 items, but 5 "bundles" of DZ Resources grouped up in 25's. To have to go though 125+ items before finding 2 that are good enough to keep is a bit slanted towards the "loot is bad in the DZ" theory.Adding the targeted loot change I suggested above is only one side of the coin with this issue, the other is that the quality of the loot in the DZ is awful, 90% Challenging Level loot with a sprinkling of Heroic Loot from the occasional landmark is not enough to warrant people spending their time in there to farming.
How about this, loot scales to the difficulty of the landmark. The named bosses of each landmark go "up" one tier of loot. So a "hard" landmark has normal NPC's that drop "hard" loot, but the named boss drops "Challanging" loot.I think that roaming packs of enemies in the DZ should only be challenging level, since some players may struggle with Heroic and having Heroic NPCs interfere with a Manhunt run would only cause stress and annoyance. The Landmarks should ALL drop Heroic Level loot from the NPCs, however Named Enemies should drop Legendary Loot, this would include the Supply Drop Enemies and Supply drop crate loot also.
Additionally, the roaming "patrols" should be challenging. The "high threat" ones should go up to Heroic both in difficulty and loot.
We do differ on the Manhunt thing though. I WANT the NPC's to interfere with a Manhunt just to add to the craziness of what that should entail in my mind. lol
Supply Drops should be higher grade sometimes, something along the lines of 80% Heroic rolls with a 20% chance for Legendary rolls. I also think these should go straight to your inventory and NOT be contaminated. Gives us even MORE of an incentive for going after them which could create more encounters among agents.
Finally.... DZ exclusives need to have a boosted roll quality rate by default. So as an example, if you are running a challenging landmark, and a regular NPC drops a piece of Yaal, it needs to have a buff to heroic. To go further in the example, the named boss of that landmark already gets a buff to quality as I said above, now drops a Legendary quality Yaal item because of the double buff. Again, this would ONLY apply to all DZ exclusive items. It's far too hard to get DZ exclusive items as it is now with rolls good enough to use at end game (especially the named ones). How can it be easier to get "exotics" just by the nature of the name alone? In the 10.5 hours on Sunday (when the targeted loot was rifles) my group deconstructed 3 Virginian's because the quality was so bad that none of us 1,000+ SHD level players would use it. We only kept 1, because that's how few we saw.
Been looking for one with max rolled CHD as the 3rd attribute so I can roll weapon damage on it for literally months now. I have tomorrow off so I am literally praying that masks are in the DZ. LOL....or even a Hollowman Mask which would now be in the loot pool since Yaahl can be targeted.
In this time, named items are more rare than exotics by FARRRR. As I touched on above, named items need to have a higher drop rate PERIOD, especially in the Occupied.
Ok, maybe THIS is the understatement of the year. Seriously, you take away the thieves den, and watered down the whole DZ experience with so many other things, and allow the toxic landscape to exist and even promote it with daily/weekly tasks such as "eliminate agents", but kill the rewards for the whole thing in general.Give the DZ more love and people will gravitate back towards the game, a large chunk of the original player base came to the game for the DZ, due to its revolutionary concept.
It's time to show some love to one of the most popular game modes of the Division franchise that is already in the game.
This idea is quite interesting in concept, and a supporting plan should be added.
Every time you kill a named npc enemy you get a level of BUFF,
Every five levels of BUFF increase the difficulty level of the enemy's fall and increase the additional damage to Rouge Agent by 5%.
It can stack up to 10 levels.
After level ten, SUMMIT's optional target drop function can be activated. Death removes all stacks.
Kill a player of level 5 to get 10 dark zone currency, kill a player of level 10 has a 10% chance to drop DZ named.
General setting: The DZ map shows the red name Rouge range is enlarged.
The dark zone communication machine no longer has a cooldown time, and will display the location of these devices on the map. After the player on the same team activates the link, the player's movement speed in a large area of the machine location will be permanently increased by 10%.
Turn off someone else's connected dark area communication machine and establish your own connection. The approximate position of the player who was turned off will be displayed for 60 seconds on the map. (Show player once every 10 seconds)
For the existing communication machines that hack into the dark zone, only the red Rouge will be able to conceal its red name status, and it only takes 10 seconds to stay near the machine to automatically hack in, and the effect lasts for 90 seconds.
Rouge