No more gray thieves and “clean” loot in dark areas.
Massive revealed in a recent State of the Game Video that they now intend dark areas to be a place for "wolves." To bring this new vision to life, they made sweeping changes to the Three Dark Zones. Before I list all the tweaks, let me start with what hasn't changed: There's still a twelve-player limit in each area, and normalization remains, though it's now limited to damage from players. basic weapons and armor. Now let's get to the real flesh of the update.
Here, VoIP will be enabled by default, but it can be disabled in the options. Massive wants players to be wary of each other, so what better way than to make sure they can all get along? There are no more "gray" thugs and the rogue status will be quicker to switch, so wells won't be able to more easily ambush and attack other operatives in dark areas. This means that the Thieve's Den provider has been deleted. You can also see who is within 100 yards of you via the Social menu.
To better ease the anxious and cautious mood of the dark areas, all loot will now be contaminated, requiring extraction to be kept. More extraction points will be added to help players bait their nefarious counterparts, as extractions will be more frequent after the update. To make Dark Areas a more balanced experience, there will be no Signature Ammo in Dark Areas, so specializations cannot be used to incapacitate other operatives.
There will be more ammo crates in each of the three zones and additional Dark Zone perks to be gained by improving your Dark Zone rating. The division of normal / occupied dark areas has also been removed, with all three areas now sharing the same set of rules. An area will always be “invaded”, but this all means that the Black Defense will be the faction present in that area.
Massive plans to keep the turrets for now, but they will re-evaluate their inclusion after the updated Dark Areas have been a bit live. There will be loot found only in Dark Areas - including Exotic Species - which should motivate Agents to venture inside. In addition, Issac's warning on the SHD network returns, for agents feeling particularly nostalgic.
For small adjustments to dark areas, they can be found in the patch notes here.
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