The Division 2’s first raid is easily beaten on PC, close to impossible to finish on console

Five hours. That’s how long it took for PC players to work their way through the first raid for The Division 2, as a team of eight players took on Operation Dark Hours and paved the way for other squads to reach one of the more challenging finish lines in Ubisoft’s massive new sandbox. With plenty of grunts, hazards and a quartet of bosses to fight, anyone playing through Operation Dark Hours most likely left the experience with armpits that were soggier than a Louisiana swamp when they put their mouse and keyboard down.

Over on the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 side of The Division 2, it was a whole other story. The five-hour mark came and went, with teams no closer to victory than when they had first started. Then ten hours passed and still there was no sign of a raid being completed. Fifteen hours. Twenty. Two days and still nothing. By the time that hour 36 had finally ticked by, a team on PS4 had managed to do the impossible.

So what gives? What made Operation Dark Hours so brutally unforgiving? Numerous theories were posted on the subreddit for The Division 2, with some players thinking that the main hurdle was a technological one, born from frame rate and controller limitations on that platform. Operation Dark Hours is quickly earning a reputation for being absolutely merciless on uncoordinated players, as enemies only have the briefest of windows open for when an actual piece of precision marksmanship can damage them.

Combined with how PC players have a natural advantage in being able to spin their agent around to take on enemies thanks to quick mouse controls as opposed to console players who have to steer with analogue sticks that shave precious seconds off of reaction speeds, and some of those conspiracy criticisms do make sense. Or as some players reckon, the Raid just wasn’t designed for console to begin with, hence its unforgiving nature.

“It’s the lack of precision and smoothness console players have in comparison to playing on a PC,” a UK-based player named Sang, who had experience on both console and PC for The Division 2, said to Kotaku. 

PC players do have the distinct advantage of a mouse and keyboard where they can land those important accurate headshots. Playing TD2 on consoles are also limited to 30fps (and sometimes lowers with some frame drops) and PC players can enjoy much higher framerates and it makes a world of difference.

More than that, players still need to find a build and agent specialisation that will help them survive the trials ahead, as well as the best possible guns with which they can inflict massive damage on bosses who can wipe your entire team out in seconds. The most important factor though? Actual teamwork, which is something that many console agents were lacking at first.

As for PC players, now that they’ve nailed the routine and know what to expect, Operation Dark Hours is taking around half an hour to get through.

Last Updated: May 20, 2019