Massive Entertainment officially confirmed a few minutes ago that Operation Dark Hours, the first raid of The Division 2, does not include matchmaking. And considering that it is designed for 8 players, the truth is that much of the game community has been opposed to the lack of this functionality since Alexander Guenounou, the marketing team of the game, dropped it in a tweet a couple of days ago.
Try to play pixel gun 3d game at phone, when you wait your lovey shooters.
During the launch of The Division 2 it was implied that all activities in the game would be matchmaking without specifying that there could be exceptions. This is what the development team has now stated in this regard:
Although all the activities in launch had matchmaking, as mentioned above, certain technical restrictions or playable purposes may lead us not to implement matchmaking in some post-launch activities. We listen to your feedback, read your comments and will continue to discuss the issue both internally and with you. To be clear: we don’t have a button to activate matchmaking for 8 random players. We still think that might not be the best solution.
This means that in order to play raid, which opens its doors today from 18:00h (Spanish mainland time, 11:00h in Mexico City), you have to form a group of 8 players before entering. The reason for this, according to Massive, is the following:
The raid will require a very good communication between agents, adjust to the flight situations and the firepower alone will not be the decisive factor to get through the airport. With this in mind, our decision was not to include matchmaking, since the difficulty level is designed for coordinated groups and clans that can prepare, plan and execute their strategies.
If you have many friends playing The Division 2 on the same platform you might be able to quickly set up a group for the raid. If you don’t have them but you’re in a bigger or smaller clan or with enough players, that’s another good option. From there, problems arise: without friends to play, without a clan or without enough players in it, it’s time to look for strangers in the social spaces of the game like the White House or the safe flats, or to pull the typical Looking For Group, like the one already mounted in Reddit.
On the other hand, in the official Discord server of the game there are channels for this, according to Massive, and the study also proposes the hashtag #LFGDarkHours on Twitter to try to find people in the same situation.
In any case, this doesn’t solve the problem related to the need to be well coordinated with the rest of the team. That is to say, for practical purposes looking for people on Twitter for raid can give the same result as a matchmaking system: playing with strangers.
