History YMMV / TheDivision2

** PvP [[StopHavingFunGuys players]] haven't taken too kindly to the new Dark Zone, having been split up into three relatively small areas and reducing the player count from 24 to 12. A number of gameplay changes also seem specifically targeted against [=PvPers=], such as the effective removal of [[https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=the+division+chicken+dance chicken dancing]] by implementing [[https://youtu.be/nJ53uTiFQH8?t=998 a skidding animation]] when turning around during a sprint, the removal of instant healing options (e.g. First Aid), and having only one type of special grenade per Specialization (as opposed to everyone having six different grenade types). Most of the outrage from this crowd revolves around, ironically, being forced to use cover in a cover-based shooter thanks to all of these changes.

--> "It's a complex issue to solve, but in the interest of transparency, here's our thought process. The way to take the least damage in the game is to kill everything that could do damage to you. So the players damage output ends up also mitigating a lot of incoming damage in that indirect way. Further, the faster you burst an enemy down, the less time you have to spend popped up from cover."

** Much of the game's early lifespan was plagued with this type of criticism, with almost all enemy [=NPCs=] having their damage and health overtuned and a few AI-related bugs only compounded the problem. After nerfing both players and enemies a number of times, there was a large swathe of time where [[ItsEasySoItSucks the opposite was true]], then the game's criticism went straight back to this again after ''Warlords of New York'' came out, and it's only gotten worse since then with Massive's repeated insistence on nerfing anything that could be even remotely construed as giving the player enough of an advantage to push the game below "gruelling and mind-numbing [[DamageSpongeBoss Damage Sponge]] [[{{Mook}} Mooks]] that can OneHitKill players at any moment" in terms of difficulty (read: basically everything that isn't a straight DPS build, and even then those aren't safe).

-->Despite the meme potential (sorry, Reddit), Rushers do not curse as much while rushing the player anymore.

--> '''Agent Kelso''': The attack came from Jefferson Plaza. You know what to do... Kill them all.

* RootingForTheEmpire: [[spoiler:After the Warlords of New York ended with a new Rogue Division Agent network being established, some players wishes that for the next game, going rogue isn't just a Dark Zone gimmick but a whole new accessible storyline as well, due to even fan favorite characters like Faye Lau went rogue as well as the annoyingness of ISAC(see The Scrappy below). It didn't help that Aaron Keener's [[https://thedivision.fandom.com/wiki/Rogue_Division_Agents lieutenants as well as other rogue agents]] as featured in Warlords of New York embodies EvilIsCool]]. As well as how ANNA, the Rogue Network, sounds more pleasant than ISAC.

** Level 40. By continuing to the expansion's story, the World Tier is removed, returning into a conventional level 30-40 progression. By the time the expansion ended, there is a new leveling system, SHD Level, which features a more incremental addition instead of flat ones. There is also how in the hard cap of Level 40, equipment stats vary more wildly and gear optimization is often extremely encouraged, as now even [[{{Mook}} "red-bar"]] type enemies often has additional green armor bar.

*** Outcast Heavies are arguably even worse. Thet trade out the [=LMG=] for a [[OneHitKill one-shot]] [[DropTheHammer Sledgehammer]] and can move [[LightningBruiser surprisingly fast]], considering all the armor that they're wearing. They make it pretty much impossible to stay in cover for more than a few seconds before you have to sprint away from them.

* EvilIsSexy:
** Wyvern is a beautiful blonde special operations soldier who is one of the Black Tusk's most ruthless killers.
** Despite being described as "Looks like the President of the PTA", she is a beautiful SensualSlav Russian woman with blonde hair and an impeccable style. She is also the GreaterScopeVillain of ''The Division 2.''
* GoddamnedBats:
** True Sons riot foam units. They don't show up often and hardly deal any damage on their own, but if one gets in too close, expect to get ensnared and promptly killed off by other nearby enemies if there are any around.
** Remote-controlled explosive cars. Easy to deal with but also very easy to miss due to its small size and speed, their movement often hidden behind covers until its too late.
** The ''Warlords of New York'' expansion added several of these:
*** The Black Tusk got a new healer unit added to their ranks, possessing a device that acts somewhat like the Division's Restorer Hive (ISAC even identifies it as such when one is in play). They are especially annoying on Heroic difficulty in a four-man group, where their heals can potentially outpace the party's damage output.
*** Black Tusk Warhounds also got an upgrade, getting two new varieties with different weapons equipped. The minigun Warhound is basically a Black Tusk Tank [[LightningBruiser without the mobility penalty]] its heavy armor would otherwise imply, and they also have Buddy & Lucy's SpinAttack from the Operation: Dark Hours raid. The other Warhound type comes armed with a grenade launcher which, unlike BT Throwers, is [[GrenadeSpam capable of rapid fire]]. The EliteMook variation also comes armed with [[ShockAndAwe shock grenades]].
*** The Cleaners have vastly more annoying Controllers than any previously featured faction. Controllers marked with a wrench icon come armed with tar-launching mortar turrets that simultaneously ensnare and burn targets, while the signal icon Controllers have bombadier drones with incendiary payloads. On Heroic difficulty or higher, their skills go from being merely annoying to extremely lethal.
*** The Rikers have the Leader, an archetype exclusive to them. In lieu of a Medic type, these guys instantly overheal all of their nearby allies the instant they spawn; no animation, indicators, or any chance to preemtively stop this skill. Also, their Rushers have been upgraded to [[GunsAkimbo dual wielding Uzis]], making them more of a threat than even the Black Tusk Rushers.

* MoralEventHorizon: While the True Sons weren't exactly the nicest people to begin with, they cement their irredeemably evil status when [[spoiler:they use chemical weapons to exterminate the survivors taking shelter at the Castle Settlement. This is especially egregious as the True Sons did so under orders from General Ridgeway solely because the man leading the Castle was an ex-member of their organization. Even Ridgeway's own people wonder why they're bothering to attack it as they're no threat.]]

* ParanoiaFuel:
** If you stop to think about the whole 'invasion' arc, you start getting a little nervous. The Black Tusk are revealed to have played a larger role in events than first imagined, including [[spoiler:sabotaging the SHD Network, arranging the 'suicide' of President Mendez, and supplying arms to the Hyenas to keep Washington in chaos]]. But ultimately, Black Tusk are ''mercenaries'': who's picking up their tab? Who paid them to do all this, and ''why''? Who profits by their campaign?

** In a sort of twofer, the developers addressed a concern about the Division 2, while also addressing a common criticism of the first game's Endgame. A player discovered that one of the weapon attachments came with a minus fifty percent Damage to Elites, and considering that the high-level endgame activities in the first game turn every single enemy into an Elite, many players raised concerns about the design philosophy of such an utterly terrible stat, and why the developers could have possibly thought that this was a good idea. The developers [[https://twitter.com/Thylander/status/1093979671165890561?s=19 responded]] by informing players that in the first game, high-difficulty activities turned all enemies into Elites, but that this was no longer the case in the second game, and that even high-level endgame activities would still feature plenty of red-bar "normal" enemies. Not only did this make many players feel better but also excited at the prospect of an endgame that isn't an endless parade of Elite enemies.

** People were not happy when a May 2020 ContentLeak revealed [[https://www.reddit.com/r/thedivision/comments/gpmlkm/waring_major_spoiler_alert_future_of_the_seasonal/ what Massive was planning for the game]]: ''four seasons'' of Manhunts. The first season was already getting criticized for doing almost nothing new, save for moving the Cleaners to DC with no other changes and a new variation of the Roosevelt Island mission, which was also criticized for having FakeDifficulty even on Normal due to instant kill [=EMPs=] that can only be disabled by standing next to them. With the second Manhunt playing out in a similar fashion (Outcasts moved to NYC, Manhunt targets get [[spoiler:Eclipse Protocol]] grenades, which are essentially glorified Chem Launcher rounds that are thrown instead of shot, and [[spoiler:Tidal Basin but with Eclipse all over the place]]), the playerbase predictably didn't hold high expectations for the other seasonal Manhunts.

* WhatDoYouMeanItsNotPolitical: The developers took quite a bit of flak after one of their spokespeople said that no political message was intended, which others took to be ImplausibleDeniability given that Creator/TomClancy (the premiere name on the game) was famous precisely for politically-themed thrillers. They most likely meant that the game is not a statement on recent real-world politics, unlike for example ''VideoGame/WolfensteinIITheNewColossus'' which was often interpreted as (and even marketed as) an allegory for current political events.

* TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodCharacter: A lot of build-up was made for Aaron Keener's plans in ''The Division'' with him depicted as an incredibly savvy, dangerous, and ruthless political operator. With ''Warlords of New York'', we finally find out what his plan is, [[spoiler: to just use a bunch of Dollar Flu bombs to kill people until they do what he says.]] Many fans felt that his CharacterDerailment was a case of wasting a perfectly good villain, especially since he dies at the end of the expansion.

* TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodPlot: Much of the base game is building up to the arrival of the [[spoiler: Black Tusks]] but they have almost no initial development or reasons for doing what they're doing. Likewise, much of the history of how Washington D.C. as well as the Federal government collapsed is restricted to optional content. It's not until the expansion seasons that anything resembling a plot about how [[spoiler: the Black Tusks helped bring down the United States]] becomes clear.

* EvilIsSexy: Despite being described as "someone who should be at the PTA", she is a beautiful SensualSlav Russian woman with blonde hair and an impeccable style. She is also the GreaterScopeVillain of ''The Division 2.''

* AlternateCharacterInterpretation:

* TheyWastedAGoodPlot: Much of the base game is building up to the arrival of the [[spoiler: Black Tusks]] but they have almost no initial development or reasons for doing what they're doing. Likewise, much of the history of how Washington D.C. as well as the Federal government collapsed is restricted to optional content. It's not until the expansion seasons that anything resembling a plot about how [[spoiler: the Black Tusks helped bring down the United States]] becomes clear.

* MoralEventHorizon: While the True Sons weren't exactly the nicest people to begin with, they cement their irredeemably evil status when [[spoiler:they use chemical weapons to exterminate the survivors taking shelter at the Castle Settlement.]]

* PlayTheGameSkipTheStory: The game's story is extremely threadbare and is downright ClicheStorm, with no real overarching narrative connecting the missions, which are more like episodes loosely tied together by the vague premise of taking back DC from the various factions, with basically nothing in terms of plot twists or intrigue. However, the actual gameplay is so good that most players don't really care about the nearly nonexistent story.
** A point several reviews have made, such as the UK edition of [=PCGamer=], is that the story never makes you stop and pay attention to it; instead putting focus on combat and the loot grind. There's a lot of story in the game if you poke around, but you're never stopped and forced to listen.

** The Hard Wired Gear Set, unlike its other two counterparts, isn't dropped randomly from Black Tusk enemies. Instead, specific components for it are farmed from specific missions, while its common crafting material, Hard Wired Tech, is dropped by Black Tusk enemies. Each gear piece requires one component and 10 Hard Wired Tech, and the latter is capped to 30, forcing players to farm more at some point if they want to craft all six gear pieces. As if that wasn't enough, the blueprints for the set are [[DoubleUnlock unlocked through a Goal Project that requires said crafting materials]]. To add insult to injury, Hard Wired [[TierInducedScrappy is just as underperforming damage-wise as the other two Gear Sets]].

* TierInducedScrappy:
** The three Gear Sets that came with the Tidal Basin update seem to have fallen into this; with the general consensus being that the Set Abilities are too situational, weak, and/or gimmicky to be worth giving up the Talents that come with High-End gear.
*** True Patriot is ostensibly a debuff-inflicting set, yet said debuffs hardly have an effect. The damage-decreasing Red debuff doesn't help in content where every enemy is very capable of inflicting a OneHitKill (basically every Challenging difficulty mission worth farming), the [[LifeDrain armor-leeching]] White debuff restores mere pixels of armor per shot, and the [[CooldownManipulation skill cooldown-reducing]] Blue debuff is better served by plain old cooldown reduction attributes and Brand Set bonuses.
*** Ongoing Directive has it ''slightly'' better, but not by much. Its 5 piece bonus "vacuums" armor, grenades and ammunition near the player every 30 seconds, which is arguably only useful in Challenging or harder missions (again) where risking one's life to grab that single Signature Weapon round is 99% not worth it. Meanwhile, its 6 piece bonus gives a scant ''three'' rounds of [[StatusEffects status-inflicting]] rounds of [[LuckBasedMission a random type to a random holstered weapon]], which ends up only being useful when [[ShockAndAwe shock ammo]] is involved.
*** Last but not least is Hard Wired, whose 5 piece bonus turns skills that are deployed on the ground into [[ShockAndAwe makeshift shock mines]]. Although this sounds broken on paper, it takes way too long for its effects to activate, all the while giving itself away with lightning effects that even the blindest PlayerVersusPlayer agent can't miss. Its 6 piece bonus offers [[CooldownManipulation skill cooldown resets]] for both equipped skills under the condition that the set's user either kills an enemy with a skill or heals an allied agent from zero armor to full. The problem with the former is that skill cooldowns don't begin until a skill is destroyed, necessitating the need to juggle skills [[HistoryRepeats (a la Division 1's 6 piece Tactician set)]] and most competent agents run their own heals anyway, rendering the latter benefit moot. This got updated so that the focus is on switching between gadgets with a hard 30 second cooldown on the skill reset so its usable without letting you just throw them out constantly.
** High-End (gold/yellow) Armor Mods have become this. Many players prefer to use Specialized (blue) Mods. This is because Blue Mods are generic, so they can fit into any slot, and they offer stronger, but fewer, bonuses compared to High-End Mods. A Blue might give plus five percent Weapon Damage; while a High-End might give one percent bonus Weapon Damage, one point five percent Crit Chance, and one percent Assault Rifle Damage.

--> '''Agent Kelso''': The attack came from Jefferson Plaza. You know what to do... [[KillEmAll Kill them all]].

** The mere existence of a ''VideoGame/GirlsFrontline'' {{Crossover}} [[https://www.reddit.com/r/girlsfrontline/comments/galbj8/sunborn_girls_frontline_announced_upcoming/ announced in April 2020]] [[https://www.reddit.com/r/thedivision/comments/jwifo9/hello_from_girls_frontline_were_having_a_collab/?sort=controversial sparked some controversy]], perhaps unsurprisingly for a game with a predominantly Western player base. As with a lot of anime-related controversies, the backlash revolves around assumed [[AllAnimeIsNaughtyTentacles pedophile baiting]] and/or [[AnimationAgeGhetto pandering to kids shows]], finding themselves contending with people who are just a bit too enthusiastic of ''Girls[='=] Frontline''[='=]s {{Moe}} aspects. Caught in the middle are ''GFL'' players who simply appreciate the grim, post-apocalyptic plot of both ''TD2'' and ''GFL'' and people who just don't know and/or care about ''GFL'' in general, wondering what all the fuss is about.

*** Last but not least is Hard Wired, whose 5 piece bonus turns skills that are deployed on the ground into [[ShockAndAwe makeshift shock mines]]. Although this sounds broken on paper, it takes way too long for its effects to activate, all the while giving itself away with lightning effects that even the blindest PlayerVersusPlayer agent can't miss. Its 6 piece bonus offers [[CooldownManipulation skill cooldown resets]] for both equipped skills under the condition that the set's user either kills an enemy with a skill or heals an allied agent from zero armor to full. The problem with the former is that skill cooldowns don't begin until a skill is destroyed, necessitating the need to juggle skills [[HistoryRepeats (a la Division 1's 6 piece Tactician set)]] and most competent agents run their own heals anyway, rendering the latter benefit moot.

* ShockingSwerve: If you're ''really'' paying attention, the existence of the Black Tusk before their appearance in the story's ending cinematic isn't entirely a surprise. Even if you ''had'', however, you're unlikely to guess that, after completing the story, you've suddenly [[spoiler:lost control of the entire map without a fight]]. It doesn't help that there's barely any acknowledgement of the transition in-game, as if it's been the status quo all along, and only some scattered breadcrumbs over the new missions fill in any gaps about what happened to your goals in the final mission.

* AnticlimaxBoss: Given how Aaron Keener was repeatedly built up to be some sort of [[TheChessmaster Chessmaster]] HiddenAgendaVillain who was always one step ahead of the Division, some fans found it rather anti-climactic that [[spoiler:at the end of ''Warlords of New York'', Keener is easily tracked and cornered in his hideout on Liberty Island, and the grand scheme he was planning was simply loading bioweapons on missiles to use against his enemies. His actual boss fight also isn't anything particularly special.]]
** The final mission of the End of Watch Manhunt has one of these. [[spoiler:Faye Lau is the last boss. However, the way she is fought makes Aaron Keener's boss fight actually good in comparison. Basically, after you disable the helicopter, you just shoot Faye and she will die. That's it. Nothing special. No cutscenes, no plot twists, etc. The closest thing to anything interesting happening is a wall of grenade launcher Warhounds backing her up and spraying everywhere as a form of FakeDifficulty. As a result, the fanbases went rabid against Massive and Ubisoft for killing off Faye Lau in such a cheap and undignified way. However, there are still evidence that this isn't the case and that Faye actually faked her death.]]

* GameBreakingBug:
** Memory leaks plagued both the private and open betas, with all the symptoms that entails - decreased pop-in distance, [=90s=]-era low polygon models, blurry textures, missing sound effects and music, and eventually plain old crashing. The release version of the game still has memory leaks, but in a far more manageable magnitude than before, with symptoms first cropping up after several hours-long sessions rather than several minutes... Unless you play on low spec PC.
** For a little while after the game launched, Skills were bugged in a way that would make them disappear a few seconds after being activated, and then going on a twenty-second cooldown. The Fixer Drone, in particular, had a tendency to completely crash the game if left active for long enough. Luckily, both of these bugs were squashed on release day.
** Skill Mods were bugged upon release. They worked just fine but required an insanely high amount of Skill Power to actually use. High-End skill mods often required upwards of six thousand Skill Power to use them, and it was absurdly difficult to get that amount of Skill Power.
** The game has a tendency to glitch at random and not register your shots hitting enemies during PvE while the enemies can still hit you. This bug was discovered back in June and still hasn't been patched and the only way for this to go away is for you to survive during a firefight and keep trying until bullet detection is working again. Fortunately, your Skills (Turrets, Drones, Seeker Mines, etc.) and melee attacks still register.
** After the Warlords of New York expansion released, many players reported being unable to talk to [=NPCs=] in safehouses, which were essential steps to continuing the initial questline, so players were stranded and unable to progress. The developers mentioned that this was an issue with their servers and that the only way to get around the issue at present was to keep fast-traveling to the safehouse and hope to load into an instance hosted on a server that didn't have the issue.
** A rare game-breaker that affected players positively was a damage-increasing bug introduced in Title Update 8. It initially involved activating a ballistic shield on the same frame as getting on a mounted turret (and could be done multiple times to stack damage increases), but has since evolved to something beyond the developers' control after about half a dozen emergency patches in the span of two weeks. The devs eventually gave up and implemented a controversial ban and blanket server rollback to try and reel in the bug.

* HarsherInHindsight:
** One of the radio collectibles located in Kenly College describes the general lack of care shown by its students back in the early days of the Green Poison outbreak, getting drunk and spreading the infection at dorm parties. The real-life American populace also displayed a similar lack of care come March 2020 regarding [[UsefulNotes/CoronavirusDisease2019Pandemic the COVID-19 outbreak]]. Although the apathy wasn't limited to just reckless college students, American mainstream media tended to place the blame at their feet thanks to the poor timing of spring break for colleges all over the country.
** Like the original ''VideoGame/TheDivision'', the coronavirus pandemic, coupled with civil unrest cumulating in areas of major U.S. cities being functionally controlled by armed non-state actors (who are, to top it off, often decked out in gas masks), has resulted in the game feeling a lot more timely.
** The U.S. government doing [[https://www.reddit.com/r/thedivision/comments/hq68mo/im_just_saying_she_seemed_to_have_the_right_idea/ everything they can behind-the-scenes to ensure the proliferation of the Green Poison]] over the course of both games comes off as this trope in the wake of a leak of an internal meeting, reporting that UsefulNotes/DonaldTrump allegedly considered the idea of letting COVID-19 [[https://duckduckgo.com/?t=lm&q=donald+trump+wash+over&ia=web "wash over" America]], with [[ConspiracyTheorist conspiracy theorists]] speculating that he was hoping for it to kill off his political competitors.
** An entire faction of anti-vaxxers and conspiracy theorists seeking to spread the plague further as one part fucked-up revenge against the US government and one part mental illness has, unfortunately, sprung to life in the US.
** The entire Capitol Building mission became more relevant after the recent Capitol building raid by alt-right groups in January 6th, 2021. The devs even spoke out about this, stating that ''The Division 2'' was not meant to be political - which a few gaming journalists called bullshit on, as the Capitol Building mission is occupied by what are essentially alt-right anti-vaxxers hellbent on overthrowing the United States government.

*** Ongoing Directive has it ''slightly'' better, but not by much. Its 5 piece bonus "vacuums" armor, grenades and ammunition near the player every 30 seconds, which is arguably only useful in Challenging or harder missions (again) where risking one's life to grab that single Signature Weapon round is 99% not worth it. Meanwhile, its 6 piece bonus gives a scant ''three'' rounds of [[StandardStatusEffects status-inflicting]] rounds of [[LuckBasedMission a random type to a random holstered weapon]], which ends up only being useful when [[ShockAndAwe shock ammo]] is involved.

* MemeticBadass: Kestrel, from the Season 4 Manhunt. He's ''supposed'' to be a bog-standard Rogue Agent, but various bugs in his pathfinding [[https://www.reddit.com/r/thedivision/comments/krhybj/my_famous_standoff_with_kestrel/ enable him to do a lot of crazy stuff]], like phase through walls, teleport, float, [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking and moonwalk]]. The fanbase ended up comparing Kestrel to [[Film/TheMatrix Agent Smith]], treating the glitches like it's legendary dodging skill in-universe.

* RootingForTheEmpire: [[spoiler:After the Warlords of New York ended with a new Rogue Division Agent network being established, some players wishes that for the next game, going rogue isn't just a Dark Zone gimmick but a whole new accessible storyline as well, due to even fan favorite characters like Faye Lau went rogue as well as the annoyingness of ISAC(see The Scrappy below). It didn't help that Aaron Keener's [[https://thedivision.fandom.com/wiki/Rogue_Division_Agents lieutenants as well as other rogue agents]] as featured in Warlords of New York embodies EvilIsCool.]]
* TheScrappy: ISAC, for his complete lack of personality and his tendency of voicing everything as well as never having to shut up at any moment. At one point in a mission even [[MissionControl Manny Ortega]] said it's a "stupid pocket watch" after ISAC saying how pretty much escape is impossible and Manny suggests the agent to improvise... which works.

* EvenBetterSequel: Some that played The Division 2 primarily for the PVE content are pleased that early game enemies are no longer bullet sponges and those that do are justified with the armor plating and boss-tier levels, as the overall pre-postgame experience has a more plausible and steady leveling curve meant to ease up newcomers and make returning players feel like it's the first time playing. The fact that finally, BodyArmorAsHitPoints are no longer enemy exclusive (as opposed to how in the first game, armors available for the players are merely adding health and applying percentage based damage reduction) is the cherry on top. There is also how the combat zones tend to be wide, large, and sprawling compared to the combat zones of the first game.