The Division 2’s recently launched 1.04 update greatly enhanced the sequel’s endgame potential. However, it also introduced a host of noticeable problems, including an unintended scarcity of special ammo. In the wake of these problems, fans are understandably curious as to why The Division 2 doesn’t have a public testing environment.
The Division 2 PTS Fan Requests
For the most part, update 1.04 went off without a hitch. Unfortunately, for all the good the update did, it also unintentionally broke some other parts of the game. As we mentioned above, the special ammo needed for endgame specialization weapons is now dropping much less frequently. Enemy NPC’s have also been “t-posing” upon death at a semi-frequent rate, which can be distracting during intense skirmishes.
The update even triggered an exploit which allowed players to redeem certain Project completions multiple times. Ubisoft had to take The Division 2’s servers down for emergency maintenance multiple times to correct the issue. For a while, all daily and weekly Projects were also disabled to further contain the exploit.
As fans pointed out in Reddit threads like this one and this one, all of the above was avoidable. The original Division made use of a public test server were players could test out new updates and features. The 1.04 update’s semi-rocky launch has made it clear the sequel could also benefit from a similar PTS environment.
A PTS would also help Ubisoft gather feedback on major changes to essential game systems. Players are unhappy about the ways World Tier 5 handles scaling loot drops even though they’re working as intended. If Ubisoft had demoed such changes and found out how unpopular they are, yet another problem could have been avoided.
This isn’t to say that The Division 2 is in a broken or irredeemable state, far from it. It’s just disappointing that Ubisoft deployed update 1.04 without doing its due diligence. Implementing a Division 2 PTS likely isn’t a high priority for Ubisoft at this point, but maybe it should be.