Dev Letter - Onward to 2020

Can't wait to hear more!!

MPGA - Make Planetside Great Again

Your the bomb Wrel, thanks for trying your best to keep Planetside alive.

Thank you Planetside Team, very cool!

i hope you guys also put some work into
infantry vs vehicle ballance, g2a and a2a

Hopefully you will make base building more relevant, my friends and I miss the Victory Points generated by building.

Logged in for the first time in years just to comment on this.

THANK YOU FOR THE OUTFIT UPDATES. I deeply hope you all will be incorporating/considering Vindicore of the Vindicators outfit's ideas, seen here.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1APVtvVKjfPVnrDiLcjJGYWNq3GH0ZvgG9Ir7lq5mO2Q/edit?usp=sharing
https://imgur.com/a/Hwp3n#0
https://imgur.com/a/wFcGm#0

I also hope additional ranks will be included, so we may more easily differentiate roles within outfits.

Cheers,

cfschris
Founding Father
Voodoo Company

Personally, for base building I think just some fixes and QOL changes to the turret's AI would be appreciated. Often times an AV tower's shots will fly overhead and completely miss a stationary tank repeatedly, with lightnings being more commonly subject to this issue than the other tanks. Other times, the AV and AA towers simply won't register a vehicle's presence despite clearly being in range for a good 10 seconds or at all, especially with the AV turret (not the tower).

I can agree with the some of the G2A weapons need a buff against aircraft at ranges close enough to dumbfire rockets, specifically with the Skyguard. Improving it's direct/impact damage (not the flak, but the bullet) against libs a bit would help prevent libs from being able to walk away with only moderate damage after flying right in your face and scraping you in a few seconds despite having fired the right from the get go (ie, you saw them coming and were firing at them the whole time keeping the front of your tank to them).

I don't miss those. VP took away from the actual game. You could slap a base down anywhere and win without any real map control. Base building should be relevant only through supporting the core gameplay, rather than becoming core gameplay. It could be better, but right now it's in a pretty good place. It certainly doesn't make things worse, and I'd rather keep it that way.

What I would love is better map integration for player made bases, so that if someone on my faction builds silos, vehicle pads or air pads, or ammo towers, etc, I'll be able to see them on the map and actually use them. As it stands right now, Planetman9000 can build his base and make it super epic and if I never see it, it's completely irrelevant to me. The only things we can see now are the Orbital strikes. It's good info but it's not really enough.

Them beans are cool really cool almost like proper toast with hot beans.
Will there be an unique robotic robo real robo time voicepack for the NSO too in future?

Alright alright alright. Sounds good.

I think a "stellar" idea would be a new continent promised ages ago, fixes to bugs that've been around for years, and a dev team that doesn't get sidetracked by obviously terrible ideas like Arena. Unfortunately I know this is the real world and I won't get any of those things, so I'm bracing myself for a less than "stellar" update. Sounds like platoon leaders will be happy, though! *facepalm*

Something that challenges platoon leaders, the very foundation of why so many of the player base has remained, is the right way to go. To create anything related to outfits, be it organization, merit, missions, progression, competition, tools, even a new tertiary currency earned by members that the outfit leadership can use on outfit-related cosmetics / colors / features / rankings / cross-faction insults, whatever you have planned, this is a very good route to tackle.

Hey, let me know if you are ever planning on, say, having a "flying base" alert or a sudden attack by the things that killed off the Vanu. Don't be afraid to start dumping new lore on us Let me know if you want a novelist writer to scratch up a rough draft for five different story lines, for free. A thousand words is nothing to me if I have all of the knowledge at hand. I am a GOD at writing sci-fi and fantasy combat, and I am a BEAST at writing grim context at great detail.

- SteaknCheese

Putting a whole new vehicle behind a paywall was a pretty solid d**k move bud.
first certifiably "cool" actual thing that isnt a gun or a cosmetic in game in years.
i dont care how "good" it is either. its a ***** speeder bike and its awesome and it sucks to see it behind a $15 monthly fee.

It balances out the number of ground vehicles that NSO have,
view it as their faction specific vehicle (like prowler, vanguard and maggy) each faction now has 4 ground vehicles.
Same with "Devastator" class which balances out NSO number of classes to match the other faction.
Don't see these as something extra that NSO get, because they don't have anything extra,
They just finally have equal (in classes and ground vehicles atleast)
Also it seems pretty damn useless, even if it was 50 nanites, flash is better, but it's 200.

To Wrel and the devs:

As someone who loves the game, but also left it, I hope that the developers and the designers can look at the situation from a more holistic perspective.

I want to give give a few examples and a conclusion to illustrate what I mean. I also wanna remind everyone that this stuff is very general and many of these points have variation and exceptions, but I still think it drives the point home:


Observations:
1) Some of the leaders left because the game started to repeat itself, and it took years to get more objectives and continents -- while new stuff to buy came in all the time.

2) This is not a problem if there is an active outfit, so basically a group of friends to play with.

3) Part of that community left the game, the outfit or the faction because they liked vehicles or aircraft, which had major balance issues and no attempt to fix them -- while new stuff to buy came in all the time.

4) Another part of this group left when infantry was supported by nerfing air and vehicles, instead of giving them tools to deal with them (which did happen, but after the major nerfs) or by supporting people to expand to learn armor/air and making sure that your faction doesn't have the short end of the stick if they choose to do so -- while new stuff to buy came in all the time.

5) Another part of the community left because they like infantry and there were similar faction imbalances, cheaters and performance issues that never got fixed or they took a long time to fix -- while new stuff to buy came in all the time.

6) Some left because they looked at all of this and realized that many games did the same basics way better and they were willing to sacrifice the large-scale battles to something else that worked well overall.


Conclusions:
1) Many outfits have lost the bulk of their leaders, members and veterans because of these and many other reasons.

2) Those who stay burn out more easily, because they don't have that many others to share the work with.

3) If you put in a few more objectives, it will not bring back those who left because of the multitude of other reasons.

So if you put in new objectives, the outfit leaders can reach out to people and get them in for a moment. However, without a wider commitment to fix the issues that made people leave, the numbers they pull in won't stay for long.


Personally:
I for one, look at the patch notes, the dev streams and the dev letters and decide not to come back every time because there is no mention of faction balances and infantry, vehicle or air game. Many streamers bring up the issues time and time again and if you talk to those who dedicate to either armor or air, the same issues come up time and time again. Haven't heard you guys bring these points up once.

I'm ready to go when you restore the dead class - the Infiltrator with SMG, which you cuts off the eggs, and destroy the motion sensor, and issuing an implant anti-radar for all, and also give out something worthwhile in ASP skills, like everyone else, and not a useless smoke grenade!
Stop thinking that Infiltrator is a sniper class and do everything for it!
Previously, Infiltrator could work in close combat with SMG, work in a team and at the same time not hide behind the backs of comrades, helping them. But now you cut off the balls to him, making him dead due to a dead motion sensor, and the big difference between the SMG and the rest of the gun! So now there is not a single fool who will play in such a class that everyone kills him in a row. It’s easier to take another class to be effective in K / D ratio = 3+ or just sit on the mountain with a sniper rifle!

Make great Infiltrator with smg (spce ops) again and i will back the game, and team play game!!!

gOOgle translate

Thanks for supporting thid game after 7 years!

Also, some suggestion:
PLEASE remove the insta-kill for knife. Too many noob infiltrators sneaking easy kills near spawn points. At least remove insta-kill for some classes, as Heavy Assault and Max for example.
INTRODUCE vehicle hijacking for infiltrators, it have to work only on abandoned or being repaired vehicles (except Sunderers and Ants, that are too easy targets) with no players on board, this will "replace" the laming knife kills ability with a real hardcore skill.