The Division 2’s first raid – Operation Dark Hours, a gruelling 8-player affair that lasts hours at end – went live yesterday, but as Ubisoft confirmed a couple days back, it does not support matchmaking. Instead, you either have to find seven other friends to play with, or play through any clans you might be in. That’s in spite of promises by the developer earlier on that every activity in the game would support matchmaking. In their recent State of Play livestream broadcast (summarized on Reddit), the developers talked about why the decision had been made.
Essentially, as per the developers, the raid is very much designed in a way so as to “test your ability to communicate well”, and requires “great teamwork to beat encounters”. Co-ordination with your teammates is supposed to be key in the raid, especially in the initial days after it’s gone live and everyone’s discovering how to beat it. As such, they decided not to enable matchmaking, so they could “create a good gameplay experience” for all players.
That said, the developers also confirmed that though matchmaking isn’t enabled yet, if feedback from players demands it, they might end up enabling it in the future.
The Division 2 is currently available on PS4, Xbox One, and PC.
