Producer's Letter

We appreciate the update, man.

My heart goes out to you guys, this whole ordeal cannot be easy.
I wish the best for you and all of Daybreak's employees and ex-employees.

I feel bad for everyone that works there. I imagine they're barely even trying by now.

Lets see....

Surprise...we were sold to an "investment firm". Yay!

It is literally NEVER good to be sold to an investment firm. A company run by bean counters? That's not a place anyone wants to work.

That followed by....surprise...can I see the following people in the conference room? Oh, and here is a box for your stuff.

That's usually step 1 of a company run by bean counters.

This sucks, I liked this game.

The only thing that can save this game is to hold on to the right people and make sure they're happy.

Agree on the sale to asset strippers - but I hope that the team will be allowed to continue to develop the game. As much as I sometimes end up screaming at the screen (usually when left hanging mid-air after ejecting, or flying off the edge of the world (one time in a Sunderer), I adore this game. It was, and could be again, a unique experience. Would be nice to see the behind the lines action restored - but if you can just deal with the bugs and optimising I'll be happy for now!

The real reason behind all the critique, all suggestions and all the clamoring is that there are a lot of players who really care about PS2. You can call them a dedicated fanbase, in modern corp-speech if you like . There are many reasons, but one is that there really is nothing else like PS2 out there (yes, really).

Another is that we all do absolutely everything to beat the other two factions in the game. I am not talking about cheating (at all), but about using and utilizing all the game is to get an advantage. You can't stop the enemies rolling over you when zerging, but whenever and wherever we are more evenly matched even small things comes into play.

Much of crying about nerfing this and op:ing that comes from this will to excel and win. When you have found saomething that gives you an edge, no matter how small, it IS irritating when it is evened out. And, when on the receiving side, you scream about how it needs evening out . Even though this is a game where we all KNOW that the base we are fighting so bloody hard to take or defend probably will be re-taken by a single player when we have gone to work, school or to bed.

My point: being on the balancing side of this = being responsible for both keeping the multiverse of maps, bases and gear simultaneously diverse enough to reward invested, intelligent play (and coordinated teamplay, so often overlooked by us players) while at the same time balanced overall must be a really scary situation. I have around 1500 hrs in PS2, and I'm learning new tricks and stuff regularly. While my sniper rifle now feels like a natural extension (shooting LAs sailing around in the air is very good training, and imagining the "WTF happened" when you tag them with a headshot puts a smile on your face) I still can't fly for **** (dogfights are out of the question, I even have a hard time ramming enemy air ).

I personally think that it is something along these lines that lies behind all those comments that basically say: "fix the game first, new stuff isn't really that important". This might not go down so well with non-PS2-player (thus knowing very little about the game itself) responsible for a "market strategy", focusing on image and branding and marketing new stuff. I remember this boardgame from when I was a kid that had a slogan that said "a moment to learn - a lifetime to master". While not entirely true, it was deceptively simple, and it was a joy figuring out more and more complex strategies, and how it worked. For me, PS2 is like this.

I have played a HUGE amount of games for a LONG time (started on VIC-20), and PS2 is one of shining jewels I've come across. It is the only FPS game I still regularly play, and I cannot imagine stopping. Occasionally a month or two may go by without PS2, but that is due to other reasons. And coming back still feels exciting. Every bloody time .

I sincerely hope PS2 will live forever. I really do ...

... so thanks to everybody that have been or are on the team behind all this.

And all you NC and TR players out there, kindly providing me with something to shoot at. As we all of course know by now , the spandex factor is not only the new black, but the final black.

So what exact steps are you taking to reverse the decline?

That's what I see. A slow decline. I see less and less people logging in, for less time. Why?

• No new gameplay. After a couple years, all the fights look the same, it's just people who get better and better at those fights. People fight along the lattice, back and forth, until they get bored and log off, or ragequit.
• No new toys. https://twitter.com/NaniteSystems/status/422458478439829505/photo/1/ - where is that? The NS twitter stopped updating in 2013.

Despite all the bad feeling i got about this, despite people leaving, wich means a new team needs to be established, new friendships needs to be created, and ofc. existing friendships needs to be strengthen. I still belive this game has a bright future.

I´m a tough fan, dedicated fan you´d call me of this game. I come back everytime i have a minute to spare. I simply love this game, everything about it. There´s no better game out there if you like massive crazyness, teamwork, dozens of fun, dozens of gear, adaptative gameplay, lots of options to engage and defend... everything. This game has everything you can possibly think of. Even spandex!

So well, i´m looking forward to the upcoming months to see how the game develops. I keep my fingers crossed for you Andy, and for the rest of your team you lead as well. I think of you guys as a new blood, new strenght to this dev team, as a refreshment to the game. Wish you a lot´s of luck.

Also i´m impressed about bug fixes. I think you shouldn´t be upgrading the game in crazy cycles, if it just have so many bugs unresolved. What happens is with every other update of new content, old bugs collides with new content and it all goes to hell, we´ve been trough it. I´ve been trough it here, i don´t blame devs for it i played the game all the time, with bad performance, i was there, with good performance, i´m still there, but i feel like we can hold off for a new content for a while to improve the stability of the game can we?

I know that new content keeps the game alive, but hey, what´s the point of having a massive bunch of stuff if you can´t enjoy them in proper way? So yeah, good luck with tweaking the game there. For a new content i´m of course looking forward, but there´s so much things anyway, then putting aurax on everything and making all of the directive progress + derping around just for fun, would take you more then a bloody year of gameplay. I bet ya!

Cheers boys, keep it up!

With regards to the performance focus, can you please put some particular interest with regards to AMD cards? At the start of june my pc was working fine the high settings with my current setup and it is an MSI hd 7970 overclocked with around 50-60fps. However, round about the jJne update, performance went down to pitiful levels, Currently even on very low settings I barely get 30 fps and this pc runs BF4 and Crysis 3 on ULTRA settings. Can you please do something about this issue? Not sure if it is similar for Nvidia cards.

I agree. That´s why i think personally PS2 needs to hold back for new content as i mentioned above, and needs to, basically get what´s in game finally together.

I personally have i7 with Nvidia of 2GB in my notebook. When i bought this machine, the PS2 was running even on high with 50frames, on medium with above 90 frames. Nowdays i play on lowest for those 50 fps in huge fights. And if you tend to tell me i should get better setup i´d recomend you to check your brrains, since there´s no way the game that was a year ago running on medium on i5 1GB graphics 4GB RAM acer notebook can´t run on a gaming based notebook nowdays without having frame issues. Also i happen to play lot´s of yearish games on high specs (eg a zombie game that came out recently but not H1Z1 ), so yeah my bets are definetly not on "i need better computer" but on "planetside needs performance tweaking hell a lot". because if you want to run this game nowdays on high and get decent fps, you apparently need ultra super NASA space computer with 10 bilions of cores deep freeze cooling system and, well graphic card does not matter anymore since the game is pretty much CPU locked.

Wich leads me to question: Can we expect GPU and not only CPU locked performance of game? Now it pretty much throws all stuff on CPU, before, it´s been GPU / CPU changing. Why CPU lock tho... i dont understand.

thank you, as i am a relatively new player here on planetside 2 and i was beggining to wonder what was going on. Like many others before me i'm sure the game has grown on me and keeps my interest which is not easy with me. It's nice to have such transparency from the devs and gm's. I look anxiously forward to the new development and changes you have in store for the game.

I am still waiting for results, promises we had no lack of. A good start would be to finally getting rid of the lag issues that got introduced with the last big update around december.

As far as communication goes, while hearing of your new plans would be a good thing, hearing WHO is actually left, WHO is taking the helm, and WHO we can talk to about issues we have with the game would be of even greater importance. All the public faces we used to know are gone now, except for Radar, who is not a developer.

Well, I'm happy to hear some words from the man himself.

I look forward to hearing more updates moving forward on the Planetside 2 forums, Andy Sites. This is a good move on your part.

It's great to hear the team plans to be more transparent with us about updates to the game. Bring it on, we'd love to hear it!

It's better than Higby's poor excuse for updates on Reddit which don't mean d*ck if it isn't on the record.

I think that's more them pushing stuff to the video card.

And you're playing a game on a notebook, which is never a good idea.

But dammit, the gameplay needs a shake once in a while. Like right now. Something new to complain about, AND PLAY WITH, rather than which factions weapons are a few percent better than another factions weapons.

My fear is that the bean counters can never understand this. They see trends, and assume the trends will continue, and have no idea what game developers even do. They'll want microtransactions, and not care about people actually playing the game. Money, above all else, the favorite opiate of empty-headed suits.

Thank you for reaching out Andy. As the leader of a mid sized outfit it helps alot to hear from the development team. A lot of my guys and the community in general are demoralized and it seems someone from inside DBG needs to step in and take the horns of this community. With Higby and the core of the staff that we have interacted with gone, now more than ever you guys need to show a strong presence within the community if you want to maintain our trust and dedication to the game.

I've seen a lot of my closest friends in this game cancel memberships and take a step back with all of the recent developments in fear that there is nothing to look forward to. A renewed roadmap can show them that the game still has a future that we will want to be a part of. I plan to be here until I am told I can't play anymore, but I have no hope of keeping my friends around if there isn't a renewed focus on communication and discussion of how the game will progress from here.

Good luck with the restructuring and refocusing. I look forward to working with the new/rearranged team and hopefully playing this game for years to come.

New start, new approach,stick to your ideas and make this game flourish.Keep it up.

Andy I for 1 welcome our new Russian overlords. I have a question however, did they play PS1?

Great this is good news. If it means 6 months of no new stuff and just optimisation and bug fixing, I would not care as bug fixing and optimisation is more important right now.

When I heard SOE was bought by someone else, the first thing I thought was "thank god." The state of PS2 has been terrible for a very long time, and everytime they get one major bug fixed, they add another one. The game just never feels like it's in a stable state, and it is several years old now. It sucks that people were laid off, but I hope this is the kick in the pants people needed to get PS2 to an acceptable state.

Cool so you're the new head dev taking higby's place? Can't say I'm sorry to see him go, as development has been incredibly biased by him. I'm hoping you'll take a far less biased approach towards game balance and features than he did, clearly throwing the best stuff to his fav side.

We, the Forumsiders of Forumside, greet your wonderful message. Keep up the great work, man!

Looking through the list of people who have been let go or quit, I can't help but notice that the code pipeline (programmers, QA, build) has been gutted. PS2 in particular appears to have lost half (or more?) of their programmers and the entire QA & build team.

Art however seems largely untouched.

I don't think anybody heading up DBG or CN is completely irrational, so it's hard to believe they fired 20 people with the intention of simply rehiring them. More likely they brought staffing in line to meet future development goals. And staffing is way more art heavy than it was last week.

You have a real job ahead of you trying to convince anybody that "refining the Live game" isn't manager speak for "Hats! You want 'em, we've got 'em!".