Connery Post patch review

First off I would like to thank the Devs for this much needed patch. Now lets get down to business.

The Good:

After playing with today's patch for several hours against overwhelming odds, with the NC owning most of Indar with 40%+ population, I have to say that fighting alongside my fellow TR today against the NC horde was the most fun I've had since beta. With the NC so close to warp-gating us, I've never seen the TR on Connery fight with such purpose before. Sure we have always fought hard but by losing the North warp-gate advantage every territory we gained was extremely valuable and the loss of one a heavy blow. The NC put up one heck of a fight but by the time I logged off we had about a fourth of the map. Which is pretty normal for the SW Empire. Also I should mention 2 server resets did give the TR a helping hand in pushing out, but given that we were slowly pushing forward anyway, I think its safe to say that those resets only hastened the inevitable.

Spawn Rooms:

The new spawn rooms are fantastic overall. Though in the Bio labs they did not seem to actually make too much of a difference given the few firing angles the defenders are given. At the outposts however the wide doors and multiple entrances saved the TR from defeat several times today, whereas with the old design the NC would of had the 2 spawn doors locked down in no time. While they are not perfect, they give the defenders much more of a chance to push out compared to the old design.

Experience Changes:
I earned around 100 certs today, and I love the changes they made for experience. Nothing like getting 500+ XP for killing an enemy sundy(Though perhaps a bit much). The 25 xp for newly spawned helps cut out incentive for camping and it really is nice getting the kill on a high threat target that nets you 300 xp.

Faction only JumpPads:
Nuff said....

Warp-gate Reposition:
This was obviously a much needed change of pace, and should be done every few months.

Spotting Nerf:
This cut down spotting spam drastically.

The Hotspots:
The little blips aren't really all that great, but they are not that bad either. Hexes still state the approximate amount of enemy resistance and the blips on them just help one quickly gauge action across the map without even having to hover over anything.

The Bad:

The Hud:
The new colors are very confusing, as a TR player the blue for friendly that I saw on some terminals really threw me off. Now while I applaud SOE for allowing us to change the colors of enemy factions, the default was a pretty disorienting at times.

The little changes showing the cert bar and a friendlies squad number were nice additions though.

The LAG!:
Now I play on a pretty high end computer and even my machine was lagging out at times, people less fortunate probably had about 10 or less FPS today. The Minimap was a seizure, people and vehicles were warping around. In a nutshell the server was having a heart attack. Its really bad.....


Now with a lot of the other changes, like the nerfs to the magrider and the buffs to the prowler it may take some time to analyze the affect they have. Though I will say that i noticed the buff to the Vanguard top Armor......

In Conclusion:
This was a good patch that brought a lot of great features, however unless you play the game on a beast of a rig, this patch might have broke the game for you. From what I've heard from others it is almost unplayable with the amount of lag they are getting. Even my high end computer crashed 3-4 times and locked up once or twice. But again, overall it was a good patch as far as content, however its delivery....not so much. I've never played an MMO that had patches that caused so many problems before. Though at least some of the lag could be chalked up to the resurgence of Connery's population.

So what do you all think? (Be constructive)

I found it pretty hilarious that Indar had a queue (for NC anyway)

probably for the best, Esamir is fairly lively now

You logged too soon! TR managed to cap Dahaka and Suarva using a heavy armor push, every time we took down a prowler it seemed like two replaced it. We had some serious fighting in the northwest corner of the map for a long period of time before the NC rallied back to push the TR south.

As I type now it looks like TR is pushing HVAR hard trying to reconnect Allatum and the VS send small squads taking northeast bases.

Every time we get you to 1 base the vs start ghost capping our bases instead of helping take your bonus away. VS on Connery are the empty base capping pros they have lots of practice on Amerish. So really you should thank them. So much for the "smarter" players being VS theory.

Sweet, I might have to log back on soon. Also has anyone else noticed that HA Rocket Spam is a great tactic to use against enemy tank columns? Get 30+ Ha's with Engie support and they can take out a platoon or more of heavy armor by just firing down range. The TR used this at Arc Engineering today and it worked wonders.

It is a great long range tactic but if you get close the lock on time will work against it.

That's very true, though it is mitigated some if you use dumbfire rockets(i still use them). Also regarding your comment towards the VS, yeah on Connery the VS seem to be obsessed with ghost capping, though as soon as the crown is within reach they seem to beeline for it.

Ya you can tell they cap empty's alot cause I stopped 3 caps by myself where there were 3 or more people. In other words they are bad.
Because I am above average at best.

Apart from the lag (which I can understand must be a pain for the devs to figure out and handle) this patch is great. I had some very fun small base fights today, and though I was a bit unsure of the new warp gate...well it was good. Fights in places I never fought before.

The only reason I was hesitant about warp gate changes is a loss of "ownership feeling" This is MY territory kind of thing (I played Dark Ages of Camelot and Warhammer Online and the former had home turf, the latter did not, and the former ROCKED, the former, at 100 million budget, did NOT rock).

But so far so good on this patch. Good work Sony.

Me and my outfit defeinitely wouldn't know anything about organizing and orchestrating that

>.>
<.<

But anyways I agree with your critique, great patch once all the rough spots are smoothed over

What I want to know is where the heck were all the TR today? Ive never seen a pop of 50% NC 35% VS and 15% TR. They all seemed to be on esamir too while NC and VS slugged it out on indar and amerish.

What server was this?(As i don't think the numbers were like that on Connery today) Those are some pretty interesting numbers, though I guess the 50% NC is not that surprising

Is this server pop or Indar pop? I haven't seen us go to 50 yet today, usually fairly even with TR to be honest and VS jumping between 23-29% on Indar.

I spent most of the patch testing out my smg on the nc hoard.
While it's not a bad weapon, I find the increased range compared to the shotgun is not worth being not nearly as effective in cqc.

TL;DR

Your patch review doesn't matter.

it was odd, before we TR were the majority. Then after the event the NC had about the same or few percentage higher, and now all of the sudden the NC has a greater number. My theory is that a lot of TR didn't like the new warpgate positioning and just rolled a NC character. Betrayal!

It was Connery at about noon pst, 3 pm and 7pm, the three times I logged on today give or take 5-10% sway depending on time. Latter in day had more TR and less NC

Server pop*

I haven't had this much fun in PS2 since beta. I love the changes to make spawn camping harder and less rewarding, plus the warpgate rotation was a refreshing change.

This, although the lag made it impossible to try flying thru beggars canyon.

Beggars Canyon is fun to fly through. I almost envy you VS. 666th air wing normally holds death races through the tunnel.