PTS Patch Notes - 8/1

Discussion in 'Test Server: Announcements' started by d_carey, Aug 2, 2014.

  1. d_carey Developer

    Directives
    We've added a brand new prestige/achievement-style system.
    Showcase Your Honors: Build up your Directive Score and show off your prowess with others!
    Ramp Up Stats: Earn points and certs with each Directive Tier completion (4 per Directive Tree)
    Build Your Arsenal: Obtain exclusive Auraxium prestige weapons and appearance items upon each Directive Tree completion
    Choose Your Direction: Directives reinforce all roles available in game; from aircraft to tanks to grunts to generals, there are options every soldier!

    >>We'll post a very detailed explanation with the Live patch notes

    New Ribbons
    Resupply: resupplying ammunition to friendly players, including vehicle resupplies.
    Savior: saving your teammates from certain death.
    Air Deterrence: surface-to-air damage inflicted against enemy aircraft.
    Air Superiority: air-to-air ESF vs ESF kills.
    Anti-Tank: destroying enemy tanks.
    Recon: motion sensor and scout radar assists.
    Spotter: spot assists.
    AMS Support: Sunderer AMS spawns.
    Marksman: infantry vs infantry kills at ranges >= 70m
    Vehicular Combat: roadkill and ram kills while in a vehicle.
    Point Control: capturing control consoles.
    Objective Support: overloading, stabilizing, and destroying generators.
    Squad Spawn: providing a spawn your squad members via beacon, Sunderer, or Galaxy.
    Deploy: deploy bonuses from transporting friendly players who then get kills.

    Faction Pistols
    >>Pending write up

    Resource Consolidation
    The three resource types have been consolidated down to one; Nanites.
    Infantry resources, Mechanized resources, and Aerospace resources have all been combed into a single new resource called Nanites
    Nanite income has replaced all other resource incomes and occurs at a steady 60 resources per minute.
    Resource boosts such as those from Membership now apply to Nanites.
    Nanite income is tied to the warpgates, so it does not change with territory ownership or vary by continent.
    New players will start with 600 nanites.
    Consumable stack sizes have been reduced to the max possible carrying capacity. Players who have more than the new stack size will still have all the consumables they purchased previously, but will be unable to purchase more until they drop below the new stack limit.
    All vehicles and MAX now cost Nanites to be created. Vehicle and MAX costs have been rebalanced to account for the consolidation.
    Infantry consumables are now purchased with Nanites. Costs of consumables have been rebalanced.
    Acquisition timers have been removed from vehicles and MAX. The ability to pull additional vehicles and MAX is now purely based on available resources to the player.
    Acquisition timer cert lines have been deprecated,and all certs spent on them refunded.
    Auto resupply is now defaulted to on for all items.
    You can now see your current value of Nanites on the lower sections of the Mini Map.

    Spawning Improvements
    Quick Deploy: The death recap screen now has a quick deploy option.
    When you spawn at a location it will become your quick spawn location, respawning at that location will be 5 seconds quicker than a normal respawn.
    When your quick spawn location becomes invalidated (destroyed/capped/too far away) a new one will be chosen based on your death location.
    Quick spawn can be bypassed using Escape or Mouse Click. Those will open the Deploy Screen as normal to pick a new class or deploy location.
    Respawning at Facilities or Sunderers that are within 300m of your death location should no longer require a loading screen.
    The canopies on top of most spawn rooms has been removed. This will allow you to shoot up out of the spawn rooms a little easier, hopefully shooing away those pesky Liberator campers.
    The painfields around most spawn rooms have been increased in size. This should force campers to back up a bit.
    New defensive certification for Sunderer: Deployment Shield
    Generates a shield for the Sunderer when deployed that will absorb up to a certain amount of damage, but will regenerate over time. Damage done to the Sunderer or the shield will delay the shields regeneration for several seconds.

    Outfits & Recruitment Polish
    We polished up the interface, bug fixed, and added a couple things to Outfits and Recruitment.
    Outfit Leaders now have the ability to give permissions to set the Outfit Decal, Update Recruitment Details, and Manage Recruitment Applications.
    If an outfit rejects a player's petition to join them while that player is offline, a notification will be played the next time that player logs on.
    Outfit leaders will now receive a notification when someone applies to your outfit.
    As an applicant you will now receive a notification that your application was sent successfully.
    If you drop your outfit for a different one your decal will now update correctly.
    You can now type way more information when listing your outfit for recruitment.
    Added a filter to the outfit recruitment browser for outfit size.
    Outfit base capture now calculates play contribution before xp buffs are applied.
    All faction banners have been redesigned for better visibility and for outfit decals.
    Pending requests that were in a bugged state should now be removed. We think we got them all, it's hard to test this internally. If any are still left after this update we'll circle back and do another round of clean up.

    Continent Locking
    We did some polish and bug fixing. We also added new adversarial alerts.
    Adversarial Alerts
    All existing alerts have been retired and replaced with Adversarial Alerts
    An Adversarial Alert triggers whenever an empire controls at least 75% of a continent
    The "attacking" empire who triggered the alert wins by either conquering the continent (by having 85% territory control) or by maintaining their 75% control by the end of the time limit.
    The "defending" empire wins the alert by gaining 35% territory control
    The continent locks in the case of an attacker win
    It is considered a draw if neither the attacker nor defenders meet their win condition
    All adversarial alerts have a 1 hour time limit
    The 2 minute countdown to the start of an alert was removed
    Alerts now have a participation bonus of +30% XP (up from +20%)
    Adversarial Alert Rewards
    There are 4 possible end conditions and the reward scheme is as follows:
    Attacker Dominating Victory (attacker territory is equal to or greater than 85%)
    Attacker reward = 5000 XP
    Defender reward = 500 XP
    Defender Victory (defender territory is equal to or greater than 35%)
    Winning Defender reward = 5000 XP
    Losing Defender reward = Portion of 5000 XP (based on their territory control)
    Attacker reward = Portion of 5000 XP (based on their territory control)
    Attacker Victory (attacker territory is greater than or equal to 75% but less than 85%)
    Attacker reward = Portion of 5000 XP (based on their territory control)
    Defender reward = Portion of 5000 XP (based on their territory control)
    Draw (attacker territory is less than 75% and defender territory is less than 35%)
    Attacker reward = Portion of 5000 XP (based on their territory control)
    Defender reward = Portion of 5000 XP (based on their territory control)
    Multiple alerts can now be active at the same time
    You must be on the continent of the alert to see alert status information on the Tab screen
    The continent selector on the map screen now displays active alerts and their timers
    The warpgate terminal also shows active alerts and their timers
    Outfit capture data will clear if continent locking or unlocking changes base to faction other than what captured it.
    If the last continent you were on is now locked, it will try to find another continent for you before resorting to VR.
    Capture Progress is now reset when a continent becomes locked.
    Added lock icon on continent selection drop down to show if a continent is locked.

    Balance: Tanks, Rocket Launchers, Bulldog
    Similar to the adjustments made with the Liberator belly guns in a previous patch, we are making adjustments to tank primary weapons, rocket launchers and the bulldog to make them less effective against infantry.

    For most Heavy Assault rocket launchers, the inner blast damage and radius is being reduced. This will make them incapable of a 1 hit kill against full health infantry with splash damage alone. In addition, this will cause max rank flak armor to prevent a 1 hit kill with direct hits:
    Blast damage reduced from 1000 to 750
    Blast radius reduced from 0.5 meters to 0.35 meters
    Affected launchers
    S1
    Nemesis
    Hades
    Hawk
    Shrike
    Crow
    Grounder
    Skep Launcher
    ML-7
    Annihilator
    Decimator
    Blast damage reduced from 1000 to 650
    Blast radius reduced from 0.5 meters to 0.35 meters

    For tank primary weapons, we want to reduce the blast effectiveness of HEAT and HE. HEAT will be adjusted to no longer be able to 1 shot infantry with splash damage alone. For HE, the blast radius will be reduced in size (matching HEAT) but will still retain the ability to 1 shot infantry. The time to reload will also be reduced on the HE to match HEAT/AP. These changes combined should make the difference between HE and HEAT more clean:
    HEAT does more damage to tanks on a single hit, can’t 1 hit kill infantry with blast.
    HE does less damage to tanks on a single hit but can 1 hit kill infantry with the blast.
    All other stats except muzzle velocity should be identical between them.

    Change Details:

    Lightning HEAT
    Blast damage reduced from 1000 to 750
    Lightning HE
    Time to reload reduced from 3750 to 3000
    Outer blast radius reduced from 8 meters to 5 meters
    Inner blast radius reduced from 1.5 meters to 1 meter
    Lightning Viper
    Blast damage reduced to 450
    Magrider HEAT
    Blast damage reduced from 1000 to 750
    Inner blast radius reduced from 1.5 meters to 1 meter
    Magrider HE
    Time to reload reduced from 4750ms to 3750ms
    Outer blast radius reduced from 8 meters to 5 meters
    Inner blast radius reduced from 2 meters to 1 meter
    Vanguard HEAT
    Blast damage reduced from 1000 to 750
    Inner blast radius reduced from 1.5 meters to 1 meter
    Vanguard HE
    Time to reload reduced from 4750ms to 4000ms
    Outer blast radius reduced from 8 meters to 5 meters
    Inner blast radius reduced from 2 meters to 1 meter
    Prowler AP
    Blast damage reduced from 500 to 375
    Prowler Heat
    Blast damage reduced from 650 to 450
    Prowler HE
    Time to reload reduced from 3500ms to 2500ms
    Outer blast radius reduced from 8 meters to 5 meters
    Inner blast radius reduced from 1.5 meters to 1 meter

    Bulldog: blast damage is being adjusted so that the weapon requires more accurate shots. The air version will see a reduction in velocity, making it identical to the Zepher in that regard.
    Blast damage reduced from 600 to 500
    Inner blast radius reduced from 2 meters to 1 meter
    Outer blast radius reduced from 6 meters to 5 meters
    Air version only: Projectile speed reduced from 250 to 200 mps

    Balance: Canister, PPA, Marauder
    Tank anti-personnel secondary weapons are all receiving some adjustments to bring them closer together. These changes are intended to be a first step; we may have additional changes for these weapons based on how well these changes work.

    C85 Canister
    The area the canister is lacking in the most is range. To increase the effective range we are making two changes. We are increasing the minimum damage and tightening the pellet spread a little. We are also changing it to use a shotgun crosshair.
    Pellet spread decreased from 1 degree to 0.9 degrees (1.33 degrees to 1.1 degrees on Harasser)
    Minimum damage increased from 80 to 100
    Crosshair changed from standard crosshair to a shotgun crosshair.
    The minimum damage change should noticeably reduce the amount of hits required against targets outside the max range (42 meters for Van, 31 meters for Harasser). For example, if you were far enough away and only landing an average of two pellets a shot, the min damage change will change that from a 7 shot kill to a 5 shot kill.

    Proton II PPA
    We want to address how much the weapon can be spammed and how effective it is at suppressing an area, so we will be reducing its magazine size and ammo capacity. In addition, we are reducing the visual size of the projectile. The projectile was as big as the resulting explosion visual, and that felt weird.
    Magazine size reduced from 50 to 20
    Certifications reduced from 5/10/15/20 per rank to 3/6/11/15 per rank
    Stock Ammo capacity reduced from 350 to 200
    Certifications reduced from 50 per rank to 20 per rank
    Projectile visual scaled down 50%
    This has no bearing on its collision detection

    P525 Marauder
    For the marauder we are starting with its ability to hit. We are increasing the projectile speed.
    Projectile speed increased from 150 to 175 (125 to 150 for Harasser)

    G30 Walker, A30 Walker and M20 Drake
    These weapons are intended to be effective against fast moving aircraft but they are simply missing too many shots. So we’re increasing their projectile velocity and normalizing their cone of fires to be similar.
    M20 Drake
    Projectile speed increased from 550 to 750 meters per second
    CoF increased from 0.5 degrees to 0.65 degrees
    A30 / G30 Walker
    Projectile speed increased from 750 to 1000 meters per second
    CoF decreased from 0.75 degrees to 0.65 degrees

    Repair Tool: Functionality Improvement
    Repair tool targeting has been adjusted to be based off the vehicles bounding box instead of the origin. This should make the range of the repair tool more consistent regardless of where you are in relation to the vehicle and fix locations where you seem like you should be able to repair the vehicle but can’t.

    Cruise Control
    The vehicle version of auto-run, cruise control, should now continue to function when controller focus is no longer on the vehicle; For example when opening the map or alt tabbing.

    Misc
    New Player Studio items have been added! Rejoice in your new potential for beauty.
    Some back-end support for the new Player Studio Tool. Nothing player facing yet, but wanted to let you know we're working on it.
    New loading screen! Out with the old and busted, in with the new hotness.
    Changed standard C4 description text and added colored text with instructions how to use.
    Updated the default dumbfire VS rocket launcher S1's description.
    Updated the NS Decimator description.
    Updated the NS Annihilator description.
    Changed all NS-7 PDW ribbon/medal strings to no longer contain the word "commissioner" in any of them.
    Reworded many consumable descriptions: Nanite Healing Grenade, Nanite Revive Grenade, Medical Kit, Restoration Kit, Concussion Grenade, Anti-Vehicle Grenade, Flash Grenade.
    Facility Turrets now use the same vehicle shader as common pool vehicles. They have been optimized and should be easier to discern from a distance.
    Base Turrets have had their textures optimized.
    Polish to small placeable objects:
    Ammo pack - increased deploy size
    Ammo pack, C4, Tank Mine, Proxy Mine, Bouncing Mine - improved physics
    Removed the option to toggle motion blur from settings.
    New Facility flags to better show Outfit Decals

    [CONTINUED]
    • Up x 14
  2. d_carey Developer

    Bugs Fixed
    Everything listed below has been fixed.
    Fixed various zone crashes and memory leaks.
    Addressed multiple client crashes, including several scaleform issues that we only caught because of the awesom player turnout on Test.
    Input lag issue has been addressed.
    Fixed issue where Dalton and Zepher rounds impacting a vehicle would not play the correct impact audio for the vehicle occupants.
    Fixed an issue with the /bug UI that allowed the text being typed to be a larger area than the background.
    Solstice VE3: Unable to unlock VMS optic attachment with SC
    Fixed various animation issues.
    Made various fixes to claymore collision.
    Fixed various terrain issues on all continents, including indoor plants, broken gravity lifts, weird invisible barriers, and terrain gaps.
    ADS is broken with iron sight rocket launchers if dying with full scope weapon previously
    Ammo kit icon will now appear in the world correctly.
    Barons attachments purchased with certs don't stay unlocked after relogging
    Capture points flip factions regardless of players being in the area
    Compare Stats: Pellet Count doesn't appear to highlight green on the weapon with more spread
    Continent Locking: Lock and Unlock notifications do not appear in chat
    Decals: Galaxies only display decals on one side of the vehicle
    Deployed vehicles no longer get weapon recoil applied to the vehicle chassis. Recoil is still apply to the weapon.
    Drop Pods will sometimes cause death or launch into space after hitting the ground
    Engineer: Ammo pack icon appears in the ground
    Explosives/Spawn Beacon cannot be destroyed if deployed over water areas
    Fixed the shields at Chac Tech Plant.
    Implant icon and ammo counter icon overlap while in secondary vehicle positions
    Fixed broken LOD skinning on the Xiphos Anti Personnel Turret
    Fixed the reversed SCU shields at The Crown and Crossroads Watchtower
    Lightnings and Vanguards turrets are showing stretched textures when the turret is turned
    Loadout: Functionality of icon button is larger than icon
    Medical Applicator firing instructions run off the textbox
    NC Infiltrator Lumifiber armor has stretched textures while on the flash
    NC05 jackhammer description display auto for fire mode
    Added text to better explain the limitations of the NS-10 Burster
    NS-30 Vandal: Scope disappears if the darklight flashlight is equipped
    The claymore damage now applies 100% if at least one of part of a player intersects the cone of the weapon
    Players are no longer able to manipulate the position of claymores by walking through them. Claymores are no longer a physics object after they land on a solid surface they become a sticky object.
    Players gravity becomes reversed if they exit a vehicle onto a grav pad
    Squad beacon cooldown timer is incorrect if squad member respawns with squad deploy. [Special thanks to Itzhaki (Woodman) for the repro steps]
    Fixed an issue where No Deploy zones would sometimes prevent base owners from deploying.
    The color of the NS-15M should be the same tan color as the NS-11
    TR MAX Lockdown/release missing the usual 'stomping' audio asset
    Tutorial directions are missing speaker image
    Players should no longer occasionally get stuck at a black screen while logging in with a new character.
    Corrected a bug that could cause your implant icon to show over top of your ability or ammo display on the centralized hud.
    Unable to unlock the HS/NV Scope for the AS16 NightHawk with SC
    Unable to unlock the HS/NV scope for the EM1 with SC
    Unable to unlock the HS/NV Scope for the LC2 Lynx with SC
    Unable to unlock the S3 (6X) scope for the T1S Cycler with SC
    Instant join HUD notification for leaders will no longer appear at all and therefore will no longer get stuck on the user's screen.
    Error feedback now given for unsuccessful squad deploy attempts. Should be a visual and aural cue.

    Known Issues
    The tutorial has been disabled temporarily. We had a problem with the scripting when you exit that got into a bad state with the new spawning changes. We have a fix ready to go up with the first hotfix after the update.
    Motion Blur has been disabled. It was a factor in the input lag issue, and needs to be retooled to work correctly. We're going to gauge the demand but currently didn't have the bandwidth to add it back in for this update.
    Directives help page missing. We wanted to launch with it, but it came in a bit late. This is also ready for the first hotfix.
    Directive Tooltips Missing. We are planning on adding these in a future update.
    Commissioner Reload is missing an asset. Will be fixed in the first full downtime after the patch.
    • Up x 17
  3. Scr1nRusher

    wow..... that is alot of notes
    • Up x 1
  4. DevDevBooday

    Why no hacking ribbon?
    :(
    • Up x 7
  5. AdmiralArcher



    that...was a big snip


    so umm.....Mr. Carey.......why does the new loading screen favor NC so much?

    shouldnt it logically favor, either nobody, or the Terran Republic?


    will there be multiple different loading screens that rotate?

    it sounds silly, but it really bugs me (because i despise the NC)
    • Up x 6
  6. Commander Tychus

    [IMG]
    • Up x 37
  7. ThePropain

    You must really like typing patch notes, don't you? Especially the bug ones.
  8. Commander Tychus

    Join the NC. We got Bonus Paychecks.
  9. DevDevBooday

    OMG PPA NERFZ! :D

    Wait, no Pounder nerf?
  10. St0mpy

    im guessing this is going to be a huge maintenance downtime?
  11. user101

    I can see a lot of hot fixes after this update... this will be going on for weeks. Looks like half the engine got rewritten.
  12. Soturin

    Looks like a good patch. However, I think the weakest part is still the faction pistols. None of the pistols have enough good qualities to make using them advantageous in any situation compared to other faction or NS options.
  13. uhlan

    My test character, AnalystTR isn't updating as of 9pm PST 8/2.

    In addition, I'm having siginificant issues with stuttering even though my ping and FPS appear good using your in-game meters.

    Making it really difficult to play... and test directives. :(
  14. Lych

    And that's with only the bare bones of the Directive changes (">>We'll post a very detailed explanation with the Live patch notes") and a pending writeup on the faction pistols (">>Pending write up"). So, yeah, apparently this is just the first part of these changes.
  15. user101

    8/5/2014 maintenance yes and its big... real big. Both to the server and the client side.
    • Up x 1
  16. AdmiralArcher


    dam, i saw decimator on there but i didnt read the numbers....why is the deci getting nerfed that hard?
    • Up x 8
  17. Scr1nRusher



    I wish there was one :(
    • Up x 2
  18. MaxDamage

    This + no timer on MAX spawns = party TIME FOR MAXES
    • Up x 1
  19. Scr1nRusher



    Because forumside & Mustarde's crusade against the false threat of "rocket primaries",



    Honestly the rocket changes are unneeded and will cause more harm then good to the infantry gameplay.



    Also... they are nerfing the NS annihilator's damage aswell........ IT CAN'T BE DUMBFIRED YET THEY ARE STILL NERFING IT!!!


    that should be a red flashing warning light.


    Those rocket changes (and to some extent the Tank cannon changes) are unneeded.


    Even after all the communities feedback(Both the forums & reddit collectively freaked out about them and were against them).... they are still being pushed forward to live.



    I even made a big thread about it in the TEST server discussion forum.


    https://forums.station.sony.com/ps2...-going-to-go-full-speed-ahead-to-live.194875/
    • Up x 20
  20. Scr1nRusher



    Also the engineers repairing the maxes will not die from the splash anymore!



    And the medic balls will still be alive.....




    man these rocket changes will screw up the infantry game and in some cases promote more rocket usage.
    • Up x 3