Higby Outlines this Months Patch - PlanetSide Universe

As promised Matt Higby has posted the PlanetSide 2 Teams plans for this months patch. There's some interesting tidbits in here including a change to how XP works as well as the addition of Tunnels on some bases. Also mentioned a Server Transfer Token:

Happy New Year, I hope you all had a great 2012 and are having an amazing start to 2013. On the Planetside 2 we had a pretty **** fantastic 2012, but we're looking forward to even bigger and better things in 2013! I've said before that while 2012 was the year that Planetside 2 launched, 2013 is the year when we're opening up the afterburners and aiming for the stars. After a well earned rest the team is energized and ready to get back to "kicking *** and fixing bugs. And we're all ou--" er, oh yeah, okay, we've still got some bugs to fix.

While we were out we were still paying attention to the forums as well as twitter, reddit, facebook and all the other places you guys interact with us; we've heard a lot of your excellent feedback, ideas, concerns and consternation. One of the biggest goals of our team has been and continues to be listening to our community and following YOUR direction for what this game needs to become. We're going to be talking a lot more about this philosophy in the coming weeks and how community involvement is going to directly impact our development schedule & priorities as we reveal "our" plan for the next 6 months. For now, we wanted to address some of the biggest issues we're seeing come up over and over again, so that's what we're focused on for January's update.

Check out all of the changes here. John Smedley also revealed via Twitter earlier today that the team is back and they will begin rapidly responding to concerns. He also mentioned the six month plan will be coming soon but not this week.

164 comments

2013-01-08 10:38 PM

Latest Comments

2013-01-10 08:32 AM

Bobby Shaftoe

Re: Higby Outlines this Months Patch

Patch is still 3 weeks away.

Xmas was only 2 and a bit ago and pops were flat/falling despite x3 SC and double XP

2013-01-10 08:51 AM

james

Re: Higby Outlines this Months Patch

Originally Posted by Sledgecrushr

If they can manage a fix this month that keeps players in the game then I think that server mergers probably arent necessary. This is the issue is that folks are playing and then moving on. Im hoping for some good stuff this patch and maybe the server pops will start to rise again.

Server merges are necessary, the game is bleeding players. I see the patch as a good start, but i don't think its enough. Since steam is the only actual numbers posted. The player base on steam has drop from 12k peak to around 9-10k peak in about a week. I would say at the current rate they will be down to 5-6k in three weeks. The amount of players just using the launchers are unknown, but based on no server every go high it can't be much better. This game will die if you don't have near full servers, it just isn't that great with say 500 people on a server.

2013-01-10 09:18 AM

MrBloodworth

Re: Higby Outlines this Months Patch

I need action, not talk of announcing the announcement a 6 month plan.

2013-01-10 10:04 AM

Ironside

Re: Higby Outlines this Months Patch

Adding to a weak foundation isn't going to improve anything,
Where's the fully optimised client that uses all cores.
Infantry rendering needs sorting badly.
Base/Towers redesign
Lattice system
Server merging.
Size matters? like fuck it does, they're probably glad servers are half dead, doesn't impact so much on their weak engine/optimisation, shame on them for making us pay to transfer rather than taking a grip of the situation.

So what we get is some limited optimisation and tweaking of xp to try and change the game play, the rest is just froth.

This game could be so good that's the sad thing

2013-01-10 10:14 AM

Rahabib

Re: Higby Outlines this Months Patch

Originally Posted by MrBloodworth

I need action, not talk of announcing the announcement a 6 month plan.

I think the amount they are giving in this patch shows action. But we have to be resonable to give them some time to get the rest in.

Should they have had metagame in before they took off the beta sticker? Probably, but if you still want to play this game we have to be a bit patient. At least they are giving us a roadmap for the next 6 months to look forward to. If you dont like what you see in that, then by all means give up on the game because it wont be ready anytime soon.

2013-01-10 02:24 PM

Methonius

Re: Higby Outlines this Months Patch

All I hope for is once they get the metagame in and more continents I hope they advertise it a lot so players can come back and see if they like it again. It seems like a lot of players have written the game off already. I am one of the players that hasn't yet though because I still enjoy it and have high hopes that this game will become so much more in the future. Patience is a virtue.

Let the devs do their jobs and all will come in time. No other game out there right now even comes close to what we have right now.

2013-01-10 06:13 PM

Rivenshield

Re: Higby Outlines this Months Patch

Originally Posted by Whiteagle

More then likely they're just indentations, trenches in the ground that get a ground level roof put on them.

We'll see. It'd be neat if they upgraded the engine to allow for actual subterranean structures... but if not, I'm willing to settle for whatever I can get. It was breathtakingly dumb to release an incomplete game. It was... frustrating... to have so much of the advice of the beta testers, vets and non-vets, set at so little value.

So now we have AMS's back, and tunnels. How long before we get a few other essential elements that lets every soldier on Auraxis think with his strategic mind as well as his gamer one? and makes the fight worth fighting beyond the point-and-click carnagefest of a conventional FPS?

They have such a long way to go and so much work to do, and the gamer-nerd Loyalty-Until-Death part of me is worried so sick. It's like having your best childhood friend in the hospital... but you remember the dumb bastard wouldn't be there if he hadn't run out in the street like a drunken frat boy.

2013-01-10 06:30 PM

FreeSpeech

Re: Higby Outlines this Months Patch

Nothing in there about balancing NC with the other factions, tut tut tut.

2013-01-11 07:57 PM

outsider

Re: Higby Outlines this Months Patch

Well patch #2 seems like a pretty bland name. I suggest we call it "Let's go farm at the Crown!".

The Crown is bad enough in draining people away from the continent fight, with the xp changes there is even more reason to stay and fight at the Crown, and more reason to abandon any outfit manoeuvre's that involve leaving that $%&^hole.

What I'm not seeing in this patch is any vision or synergy with meta concerns. I don't really see any chance of balancing attack and defense with the same cert gain system. I thought we wanted this game to be FTP so that the subscribers weren't playing on empty servers and that we had a constant influx of non paying players to fill up the ranks.

Well they're going to go to the crown with this patch, meaning the subscribers are going to end up playing on empty servers unless they go play on a COD size map and attack/defend the Crown.

If we want people to leave that place than defense xp changes cannot be applied there. there are already too many incentives to stay as it is.

I know Smed is releasing the 6 month plan next week, but without it, these patch notes have no meaning other than a list of grips that once fixed won't increase player satisfaction.

It doesn't matter that the reload rate is for HE weapons, or the fact that we get a tunnel from A to B or the spawn rooms have a balconny or that a player is invulnerable to x seconds after a res. All of that is just playing with your doodle until bases and outposts have a higher purpose for fighting over than +x cert gain/hour.

Until then: " Let's go farm at the Crown!"

2013-01-16 04:18 PM

DirtyBird

Re: Higby Outlines this Months Patch

Reading the initial plan for the end of January updates again I really dont see how the game will change for me all that much.
I love playing it but I see my time in game waning and a lot of my team mates have just not bothered to play at all any more.

Its like others have already said it doesnt attack the real problems in game.
They are fixes that really should probably already be in by now.
Nothing mentioned about the flashing screen bug and rendering of all players, not just MAX's for vehicles.

I think I was happy to get any info about fixes at the time but yeah after reading it again its good but not enough.
If its taken this long to get that stuff in I can already guess whats going to be in the 6mth plan.

2013-01-16 09:25 PM

Mathematics

Re: Higby Outlines this Months Patch

Originally Posted by Sunrock

Im' not sure if any one replied to this but could not see on on first page...

Sure you did not misunderstood? "Increases to reload speed" means that the reload speed will be longer.

Increasing the speed of something makes it go faster. How it's worded in the patch notes can be confusing to someone who pays attention to units. However, one can assume that what they wrote is probably not what they meant.

It would've been better for them to say, "We are going to increase the time it takes to reload HE weapons on certain vehicles."

2013-01-25 06:47 PM

Ghoest9

Re: Higby Outlines this Months Patch

Everything is going live as promised except help color blind people.
And they went and edited out of the notes on the officeial site with out saying anything.

2013-01-25 07:28 PM

Crator

Re: Higby Outlines this Months Patch

@Ghoest9 You'd think it would be higher on their list of things to do since it allows more players to participate on par with everyone else. Guess it's hard to implement?

2013-01-25 07:32 PM

duomaxwl

Re: Higby Outlines this Months Patch

Originally Posted by Ghoest9

Everything is going live as promised except help color blind people.
And they went and edited out of the notes on the officeial site with out saying anything.

This makes me sad. The map is a pain in the ass to read and it's a bitch having to one-shot spawn beacons because I can't tell if they are NC or Vanu.

2013-01-26 05:46 AM

EVILoHOMER

Re: Higby Outlines this Months Patch

Have they fixed the indicator of where you are on the map yet? It always used to be so hard to see at first glance which is a big problems. I had friends who didn't think there was one but it turned out it was always hidden in a hot spot lol.