Played from a third-person perspective, the game is a cover-based third-person shooter with up to four players being able to complete missions together.[1] The game takes place in Washington D.C. seven months after its predecessor, in which a civil war between survivors and villainous bands of marauders breaks out.[2] In the beginning of the game, players create their own Division agent by customizing the character's gender and appearance.[3] In the game, players are equipped with different firearms, including assault rifles, sniper rifles and SMGs, and explosives like grenades to defeat enemies. These weapons are classified into different tiers and rarity. High-quality guns are difficult to obtain, but they have better weapon stats and "talents" that further help boost players' performance. The weapon stats include the following 7 domains: Damage, Rounds Per Minute, Magazine Size, Accuracy, Stability, Reload Time, and Damage Drop Off.[4] These weapons can be further customized with different attachments like scopes, iron sights and barrel attachments.[5] The game also features a variety of gear and armor. Wearing gear from the same brand gives players a small performance boost.[6] As players complete missions, they gain loot and experience points (XP). With sufficient XP, they level up and gain SHD Tech, a currency to unlock new skills.[7] These skills include deploying gun turrets, shields and combat drones, or gaining access to weapons like seeker mines and chem launchers. Each skill has unique mods that change its functionality.[8] The game also introduces new enemy types, including healers and characters that shoot foam at players.[9] Players can request backup during missions, which allows other players to join their sessions.[10] Players can also join a clan, which can accommodate at most 50 players. The actions of individual members of a clan contribute to clan XP, which can be used to upgrade the clan for additional gameplay benefits.[11] Washington D.C. is an open world for players to explore. Players can recruit non-playable characters by completing missions and providing supplies to different settlements. Recruiting them unlocks new features, including projects, which are fetch quests that reward players with gear, XP, and blueprints for crafting, which can be accessed in the base of operation, the White House. Upgrading settlements enables their expansion to include more facilities and gives players gameplay benefits such as access to their gear stash or fast travel.[12] Another way to fast travel is to use the safehouses players have discovered.[13] Once a safehouse is discovered, locations of several SHD tech caches would be revealed. Finding them grants players SHD tech cache points, which can be used to unlock new perks that further enhance players' combat performance as well as granting advantages such as XP bonuses.[14] Players can also liberate enemies' control points and call civilian reinforcements to assist in battle,[6] participate in world events[15] such as stopping public executions and capturing resource convoys,[16] and collect different collectibles including comms, relics and artifacts, and Echoes.[17] Players also encounter different weapon vendors in the game. They can sell trinkets, which are unusable junk items that players had collected, and unwanted gear to them in order to earn E-credits, the game's currency which can used to purchase new weapons, crafting and resetting appearances.[18] The Division 2 features three Dark Zones, each of which supports up to 12 players. Dark Zones are areas in which players defeat tough enemies for valuable and rare loot, though the loot can be taken by other players. Upon entering a Dark Zone, players' gear become normalized to ensure that all players are in a level playing field. Non-contaminated loot belong to players once they are collected, but contaminated loot need to be extracted by a helicopter and players need to defend the extraction point from AI enemies and other players.[19] When one player breaks into a Dark Zone chest or steals a Dark Zone supply drop, the player and his team will become rogue. Rogue players can attack other players in the same session to steal their loot and gain XP. Once they eliminate another player, they become "disavowed", which alerts other non-rogue players. If the disavowed rogue eliminate more players, they became Manhunt Rogue in which players who kill the rogue agent will receive a huge bounty.[20] Rogue status can be removed by surviving in the Dark Zone for a period of time or accessing the Thieves' Dens (for rogues) and Manhunt terminals (for Manhunt rogues).[21] The Dark Zone has its own progression system. DZ XP, which are earned by killing enemies and rogues, and can be used to unlock perks and gameplay advantages like a reduced rogue timer.[22] When a player reaches level 30 and finishes the game's campaign, the game-world is divided into 'world tiers', which serve as different chapters and thresholds for further increasing the game's difficulty. Levels are replaced by Gear Score, which is calculated based on the stats, attributes, and talents of all the weapons and armor players have. In the endgame, a new enemy faction named the Black Tusk retakes all the control points players had previously liberated.[23] Players can access the Invaded missions, which are levels in the campaign with harder enemies. By completing Invaded missions and having sufficient Gear Score, players can then liberate a stronghold, which would then allow players to unlock the next world tier.[24] Players can also encounter 52 bosses, collectively known as the Deck of 52; each boss will drop a collectible card for players to collect once they are defeated.[16] When players reach the endgame, they can unlock more skills by specializing their character to a specific class: the Sharpshooter, the Demolitionist, and the Survivalist. Each specialization has its own signature weapon; a Survivalist with a crossbow, a Sharpshooter with a TAC-50 Anti-materiel sniper rifle and a Demolitionist with a M32A1 grenade launcher.[25] Players can also enter Occupied Dark Zones, in which weapons are no longer normalized, friendly fire is activated, AI enemies become more difficult to kill, and players are no longer notified when other players turn rogue.[22] The game also features raids, which can be completed by up to eight players.[26]
