The Division 2 - Interview with the Creative Director on PvE and PvP
After playing The Division 2 game, we've managed to go rogue on Julian Gerighty himself, the creative director of the project. We caught him on a couch and threw all the players' questions at him. We hope to answer YOUR questions... and we know that you expect a lot from the game in both PvE and PvP.
Julian Gerighty has also worked on games such as The Crew, Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory and Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow.
If you also want to play the game before the release and make your own opinion, you can pre-order on Gamesplanet.com to receive your closed BETA key. You can pre-load the BETA right now and to be ready to play on February 7.
Your questions about The Division 2 and Julian Gerighty's answers
Gamesplanet: Can I delete the BETA files or should I keep them to save some time for downloading the final game?
Julian Gerighty: It’s not 100% sure but I think you can delete the beta version. It’s a different set of data between the beta and final version.
GP: How many Gigabytes will you need to download for the beta?
JG: Nothing to communicate at the moment but that will not be small unfortunately. As you have seen, the game is beautiful and there is a lot of assets that will be very difficult to make it small.
GP: Can players who like to play without PvP enjoy the game?
JG: I’m at the same! I’m more of a PvE player than PvP player. I think Division have always been more of PvE game than a PvP game. It has PvP content like the Dark Zone and conflicts but everything else, the other activities and the rest of the map, 80%, is entirely PvE. On top of that, we tweaked the Dark Zone and your time in the Dark Zone will be rewarded even if you don’t engage in PvP activities. I think some of the frustration from the Dark Zone on the first game was going in there, finding some stuffs, having the yellow bag, doing the extraction and then somebody jumps on you. One of the adjustment we made for the Dark Zone PvP for The Division 2 is that it will be only contaminated loot – when you loot something, it will goes directly into your inventory, you can’t lose it. It makes the Dark Zone more of a PvE location because you can get a lot of rewards, very good ones. It’s still very risky as there is other players.
GP: Do the item levels matter in PvP?
JG: We normalized it. The level and build still matter but the min-maxing is squished so the combat is more based on skill. The item level still count but much less. Your build will be more important and how you play it which means it’s more about skill than stats.
GP: I remember one of the issue with Division 1 was when people were camping in order to get noobies in the Dark Zone. I suppose this normalization will help a lot?
JG: Absolutely, we’re doing introduction missions to the Dark Zone which explain the Dark Zone mechanics in solo or solo group phase, no PvP. We’re gonna show new players how it works. Then we we have loots you can lose which makes a better experience overall. We also have automatic turrets outside of the Dark Zone gates to stop people from camping.
The Gamesplanet Ubisoft alliance that defeated the game's first boss
GP: Is it possible for a single player to beat 2 or 3 opponents alone in the Dark Zone ? What kind of skills and tricks could be the most helpful ?
JG: I think it’s gonna be all down to your build and how you manage your build, and what the other players have. We also have the occupied zones.
GP: The new faction?
JG: Exactly. In the Endgame, we’re gonna take one of the Dark Zone, one different every week, and we’re gonna change the rules. No normalization, no friendly fire, all rules are off. It’s really that huge PvP fight that you can expect from big PvP players in the Dark Zone. Normalized Dark Zone for normal people and occupied Dark Zone for Hardcore people.
GP: How will you avoid cheaters from spoiling the Division 2 experience?
JG: This is something we spent a lot of time on this. We got different things. First, a lot more of our game logic is on the server. You can’t tweak it the same way when it’s on the client. Second, we’re working with 2 anti-cheats: one internal and one external. That helps as well. And third, we have zero-tolerance policy for cheaters – if you’re detected cheating, they will be consequences. I’m very very committed to have one of the best approach against cheaters. It’s better for everybody.
GP: What about the weather? We started the mission on daylight and we finished during night. Is there any climate change too like snow?
JG: No snow because it’s in the summer but we have rain, thunderstorm, fog… We have dynamic weather and dynamic day and night.
GP: Do you have key arguments for players who spent 100+ hours on Division 1, to play Division 2?
JG: Great question, 3 things come to mind. One, the living world system create a huge difference. It brings life to every single street within the game. Some of our best activities like control point are in the living world system. And those are replayable hundreds of time, always fresh and you can approach them in different ways – they are a fantastic piece of content. Second thing, I think our approach to End Game is really really new and fresh. Saving a brand new faction and new specializations for End Game, all-new progression for your characters and all-new challenges in the open world as well as in the missions, that’s a game changing here. Third, that’s something you may have felt when you played, we changed the combat, the shooting. We modified the AI, the animations, it feels much more like a shooter. It’s imperceptible when you see a trailer but when you play, you can really feel the difference while not losing our RPG part at the same time. I think those 3 things from the most basic granular in-game features to the most macro endgame focus, that’s really something that makes a difference. And if I’m allowed to put a 4th point, our focus on post-launch commitments where we’re not gonna split the community and we’re gonna provide content for a all year for everybody, that’s something brand new and that I’m excited about.
GP: Talking about content, the Year 1 Pass includes a 7-day Early Access to all Year 1 Episodes, exclusive customization items, additional activities and more to be shared soon. Will it be important for new players to get these?
JG: The way I like to this the 1-Year Pass is Celebration of everything that in the Division. It’s not only early access to the episode but it’s exclusive content in-side mission, exclusive vanities, trinkets for your backpack that is really a celebration to your character and your commitment to The Division 2.
GP: Will it be possible to join player speaking the same language via the matchmaking?
JG: I love that. One thing that we didn’t talk about much is something we invested a lot of time on which is clans. The overall direction for clans was the most simpler and accessible clan system in the game. Within 3 clicks, you can create or join a clan. You can look for a clan based on language, types of players, atmosphere of the group. And the clan is always gonna have clan vanities, clan perks and clan rewards. There is a real reason for you to join a clan and matchmaking with people from your clan.
GP: Are PvP items and PvE items different in term of stats? Is one superior than the other?
JG: It the same pool of items. It’s the challenge of making a game like this to have perfect balance. We know we’re gonna have some items that are gonna be a little bit weak but we’re gonna be reactive to be able to change those things and for The Division 2, we can do hot patches on the server to balance things out versus on Division 1 where we had to do a client patch so everything is much more flexible in terms of us balancing the game.
I think we have to be very transparent about the changes we make, to communicate to the community the changes that are upcoming and the changes that we’ll make but it will be invisible for the players when they will launch the game.
GP: Many thanks for your time and good luck for the launch of the beta!
JG: Thank you and see you soon in Washington D.C.
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