Test Server Update - Sept. 25, 2020

Discussion in 'Test Server: Announcements' started by RPG_Wrel, Sep 25, 2020.

Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.
  1. RPG_Wrel Lead Designer

    PTS has been updated with the following changes.
    Test Server installation can be found here: http://launch.daybreakgames.com/installer/PS2_Test_setup.exe


    The Shattered Warpgate (PTS Update 4)
    We mentioned in previous PTS updates that The Shattered Warpgate would be coming to Live once we've gotten it into a good state. Thanks to all of your feedback over the multiple PTS publishes, we feel that we're very near that mark. The last leg of this journey will be to give you unfettered access to our new Campaign's first chapter. More details on that below... but before that, some important PTS information:
    • While on PTS, you'll find an interactable object next to the new campaign vendor on Sanctuary handing out FREE STUFF. Interacting with this holographic Flash will provide you with currency and certain campaign items for testing purposes. Some of the items granted will not be available during the first Chapter of Campaign 01.
    • All Missions, including new "Training" missions geared toward new characters, will be available for testing when the pre-requisites are met.
    • Esamir (and all continents) will be unlocked 100% of the time for this testing.
    • Crafting of Orbital Strikes will be disabled for the PTS publish.
    This weekend the following playtest schedule is in effect:
    • Sept. 26, 2020 - 10am PT / 7pm CEST
    • Sept. 27, 2020 - 2pm PT / 11pm CEST
    The goal for these playtests will be to gather feedback and bug reports on the first Campaign, as well as the Training Missions added to the mission pool. Beyond these playtests, we encourage you to run through the Campaigns and available Missions at your own pace.


    Campaigns
    With The Shattered Warpgate update, we introduce our first-ever "Campaign" to the game.
    The story of The Shattered Warpgate centers around the detonation of a Warpgate in northeastern Esamir. Nanite Systems spearheads the investigation into the mysteries surrounding the event, and enlists the help of soldiers across all empires to help return stability to the land.

    What's a Campaign?
    • A Campaign is a multi-staged progression of the in-game world that takes place over several Chapters.
    • Participating in a Campaign will unlock lore-driven story missions that explore the evolving war on Auraxis, and the minds of those behind it.
    • Campaigns and their Chapters are specifically crafted to be completed without an extensive time commitment; and the events therein are meant to exist alongside the normal day-to-day gameplay of the world.
    What's a Chapter?
    • Chapters are time-locked segments of a Campaign, and cannot be repeated, or participated in if you miss out.
    • Each Chapter tells a separate portion of the overarching story, and the world continues to evolve with each Chapter.
    Unlocking the Campaign
    The certification cost of a Campaigns scales with Battle Rank, and players with an active membership gain access automatically.
    • BR 1-10 = 500 Certs
    • BR 11-20 = 750 Certs
    • BR 21-30 = 1000 Certs
    • BR 31-40 = 1500 Certs
    • BR 41-50 = 2000 Certs
    • BR 51-60 = 2500 Certs
    • BR 61-70 = 3000 Certs
    • BR 71-80 = 3500 Certs
    • BR 81-90 = 4000 Certs
    • BR 91-100 = 4500 Certs
    • BR 101+ = 5000 Certs (Including players who have ASP.)
    We hope you'll find The Shattered Warpgate a welcome change of pace that will cement elements of the existing lore while continuing to create new stories for all to enjoy.
    Known issues on PTS: We're continuing to refine some elements of these missions, so please submit feedback and bug reports. In addition, strings are not currently localized for all languages, and you will see broken strings until the localization pass is complete.


    Mission Changes
    New missions available for characters of BR15 and lower. These missions have low requirements and greater-than-average rewards intended to propel lower level players while educating them more about the game.
    • Training: Base Capture - Earn capture point contribution and participate in a base capture.
    • Training: Generator Sabotage - Overload a generator.
    • Training: Instant Action - Use Join Combat, kill an enemy.
    • Training: Man the Guns - Travel over distance as a vehicle gunner, earn kills or assists against enemies as a vehicle gunner.
    • Training: Message Courier - Pull a Harasser and deliver messages to allied bases.
    • Training: Infiltrator - Earn recon experience, hack enemy terminals/turrets, kill an enemy.
    • Training: Light Assault - Travel over a distance, damage enemies while airborne, kill an enemy.
    • Training: Combat Medic - Heal allies, revive allies, kill an enemy.
    • Training: Engineer - Repair allies, resupply allies, kill an enemy.
    • Training: Heavy Assault - Damage enemy vehicles, absorb damage with your shield, kill an enemy.
    Additional missions have been added for players greater than BR15.
    • Plant False Data - Travel to an enemy base and plant a virus in an exposed terminal.
    • Recover Lost Intel - Recover intel from an enemy base and return it to an allied Warpgate.
    Adjustments have been made to the following missions.
    • Supply Convoy - Has received some cleanup, and convoy vehicles now have a special convoy hologram visual attached to them.
    • Surveying the Land - Updated interactable visuals and other misc. cleanup.
    Environment
    • Esamir's Map - The map of Esamir has been updated to include the new terrain.
    • Esamir Storm - The storm now displays its precise area of effect on the map at any zoom level.
    • Mani Processing Plant - Added Sunderer garage east of the base, converted base to a one-point capture, moved northeastern building closer to the Tower.
    • Excavion DS-01E - You can no longer hide beneath the shield in the center.
    • Snowshear Fort - This base has received additional cover.
    • The Crown - Players will no longer see capture point "D" on the map or HUD.
    • Lettuce of Indar - All of the lettuce racks on Indar have been returned to their rightful place, including Biolabs and Ceres Hydroponics.
    Known environment issues:
    • Kill planes beneath the water in the northeast are currently inoperable in most places and will be fixed in a later update.
    • Tapp Waystation and Untapped Reservoir will receive hardspawns and vehicle pads in a later update.
    • Jord Amp Station has a floating shield on the second floor.
    Vehicles
    Liberator
    • Aircraft nosegun resistance (type 8) from 80 to 83.
    • A2A lockon resistance (type 45) from -100 to -75.
    Dev Note: These changes walk back some of the vulnerability to noseguns given in the last PTS update. A2A lockon missiles, like Tomcats, will now retain the same shots to kill as on Live despite the health pool change in the previous PTS update.

    ESF
    • Wyrm minimum damage from 250 to 275.
    Dev Note: These changes result in a slight boost to the effectiveness of this weapon at extreme distances.

    Galaxy and Bastion
    • A2A lockon resistance (type 45) from -125 to -100.
    Dev Note: For the Galaxy, this is a small change in the realm of being able to survive one extra Tomcat lockon missile, but with a typical repair convoy, this small change should pay dividends for overall survivability. For the Bastion, the goal is to to reduce some of the extreme value lockons currently have against the weakpoints, though these changes don't dethrone the weapon by any means.

    Infantry
    MAX
    • Burster indirect (flak explosion) damage from 25 to 28.
    Dev Note: Burster MAX should feel slightly less impotent now when dealing with aircraft.


    Misc. Changes, Fixes, and Additions
    • Empire Strength now operates solely based on the percentage of territory captured, and whether or not there is a link to an enemy Warpgate. Numbers will likely receive tuning prior to release.
    • Esamir default lattice has more even starter territory distribution.
    • Representative Ayla now has an updated character model.
    • Adjusted Representative Foster's idle animations.
    • Added voice lines to some of the NPCs in Sanctuary.
    • There is a new horn available for the Colossus in the Depot.
    • Observer camera can no longer capture vehicle capture points.
    • Lengthened the quickest respawn time available by 3 seconds.
    • Re-enabled the "Exit Tutorial" button in the tutorial.
    • Cleaned up various mission/update related strings.
    • Lightning Grenade detonations no longer sometimes deal damage indoors.
    • Decals on the Armadillo Sunderer cosmetic are no longer tiny.
    • Esamir's A7 Datanode locations have been redone.
    • Esamir storm will no longer display on incorrect continents when viewing the map screen.
    • Removed various leftover painfields on Esamir.
    • Tutorial zone's map no longer shows as "Locked."
    • Selecting Koltyr on the World Map no longer shows broken image.
    • Up x 2
  2. JustGotSuspended


    That's kinda my main issue


    Why must AA weapons feel so worthless, while air just gets to fly by and score easy kills and turbo away to repair when it feels like it


    How come my kraken doesn't 1hk compo esfs?

    How come it takes so many lock-ons to down an aircraft, when the lock itself takes a good second to achieve, and is extremely easy to outmaneuver?

    Why does a burster MAX lose head to head against an esf, when the esf is 100 nanites cheaper than the MAX!?!?


    Well see what the damage buff to bursters does, but a2g and g2a is one of the most broken things in the game, and definitely needs an in-depth rework
    • Up x 1
  3. Foxassassin

    Campaigns

    Unlocking the Campaign
    The certification cost of a Campaigns scales with Battle Rank, and players with an active membership gain access automatically.
    • BR 1-10 = 500 Certs
    • BR 11-20 = 750 Certs
    • BR 21-30 = 1000 Certs
    • BR 31-40 = 1500 Certs
    • BR 41-50 = 2000 Certs
    • BR 51-60 = 2500 Certs
    • BR 61-70 = 3000 Certs
    • BR 71-80 = 3500 Certs
    • BR 81-90 = 4000 Certs
    • BR 91-100 = 4500 Certs
    • BR 101+ = 5000 Certs (Including players who have ASP.)

    This is... I don't really have words. The prices are absurd, this hurts everyone execpt for veterans that have several thousands because they've bought everything, and newbies who can spare 500 certs, who, not knowing the game will end up wasiting said certs before realizing their importance.

    I understand the goal is to push membership, but this just feels awful.
    • Up x 5
  4. Blam320

    Yeah, I would walk back the cert prices just a bit. I'm trying to save up 10k for when I hit ASP, and just getting halfway is a pain in the neck, especially for someone who splits their attention between multiple games.
    • Up x 2
  5. typnct

    it would be fun if you would let a base creator make up to 4 turrets of his choice(max 4 turrets - any kind) and the rest of the people up to 2 of any kind, making the bases more viable and less vulnerable to solo players.

    also, a valkyrie that can carry up to 2k(500,750,1000,1500,2000) cortium that can only spawn from a cortium base would be quite fun. an ability would be to teleport to the main base air-terminal after in 5(50,45,30,15,5) after an ability use(will consumee all cortium on board on use.

    also, an ability to build from a look from above or at least free-cam(cant see enemies, just friendlies), an additional feature would be building snapping so walls could be connected without holes in a small distance(4 meters apart).

    keep up the good job.
  6. HeptagonRus

    I agree about campaign prices being too high. I am 100+ BR, and I have 5k atm, but the idea of dumping them into campaign and spend these months grinding them for the next one, instead of casual gaming, is terrifying.

    In other words, campaign is intended to be a pleasant experience for casual players. But now casual players have to spend tons of time not-so-casually grinding for the campaign. So all non-member casual players are out.

    I was playing the game less and less, with few bugs which annoy me not addressed even tho known or reported on forum for quite a time, and general burnout. This update makes me feel about uninstalling the game, not returning to it.
    • Up x 5
  7. vonRichtschuetz

    Heat based weapons do still not have their regeneration affected by condensate grenade, like it affects reload speed for any other weapon. This is unfair towards NC and TR.
    • Up x 1
  8. Nighda Venesis

    I think it's fine that campaigns should require some sort of investment to unlock, but like basically everyone else here is saying, I agree that the amount for this is too high. As a member with ASP, I barely ever have my certs over 1k just because of how much there is to unlock in this game. I haven't even really invested into vehicles much yet at all.

    If it were up to me, I would have strongly reduced the cert cost, and added a slight amount of A7, unless many more things to buy with A7 are to be released. I think the price scaling with the level is fine too, personally. The following are just suggestions:
    BR01-15: 60 Certs, 30 A7
    BR16-30: 120 Certs, 60 A7
    BR31-45: 180 Certs, 90 A7
    BR46-60: 240 Certs, 120 A7
    BR61-75: 300 Certs, 150 A7
    BR76-90: 360 Certs, 180 A7
    BR91+: 420 Certs, 210 A7
    This way new players will not have to fork away nearly half of their cert income, and higher rank players will not have their cert unlock progression stunted too much, though this wouldn't reduce cert hoarding. I don't think this is the right place to try and reduce cert hoarding anyway as this system would be better received if more accessible. Having roughly half a weapon cost at BR91+ in both certs and A7 seems quite reasonable to me personally.

    Please do not interpret my suggestions as me trying to take over the game, I'm just skeptical as I'm already not too fond of season pass type content, though I do believe there are ways to do it in ways that are enjoyable for more people than other games have managed. I am seeing many good things coming for this update, but like I made apparent in my previous post, I am mainly concerned about resource values and whether the mission system will be both fun and worth it in terms of resources, or not.
    Thank you for your time, keep up the good work.
    • Up x 4
  9. DataGhost

    Two remarks in a little bit of testing:
    * There is still no indication of missions objective locations without pinning them to the HUD. Pinning still untracks all directives. VERY annoying. I can probably do missions without having the objective on the screen all the time, as long as the waypoint is visible. At least make a waypoint toggle without having to use the mission HUD.
    * Mission objective: stand close to an exposed outside terminal for a good 30 seconds while all factions seem to go for the same objective. Apart from the obvious battles (is this intended?), you might as well place a big blinking neon sign "FARM HERE" for the pilots and fairies who have already completed it.
    • Up x 1
  10. DataGhost

    They should make EMP grenades disable VS weapons to balance things out, I guess.
    • Up x 1
  11. Larington

    Heh.

    Though, that does make me miss the Planetside 1 days of "EMP disables vehicle weapons" to discourage vehicles farming AMS's (Sunderers to PS2 players).
  12. CephalopodNME

    I just want Vulcan Harrassers toned down.
    • Up x 2
  13. Tython

    This is a really bad idea. Nothing else in the game costs more certs for high-level players to unlock.

    5k is patently ridiculous. It takes about a month to gain that many certs for me as a free to play player. That means by the time I can unlock the campaign, it will be 1/3 of the way over already.

    That will NOT be fun.

    Please reconsider the cert cost to unlock the campaign. I don't understand why you think high-BR players have a 10x faster cert gain than a low-BR player. We don't. It's a lot slower to gain certs at high BR since we don't have the new player bonuses in effect.

    5k certs to unlock is absolutely prohibitive to a free to play player, at any BR. This scaling cost will only encourage everyone to roll up a new character to play the campaign with, leaving their main character unable to get the rewards from it.
    • Up x 2
  14. Larington

    Couple of observations:

    The cert cost is probably a bit excessive, but should also be scaled to the XP requirements per battle rank and not the numeric value of the battle rank itself. Basically, instead of the middle/2500 cert cost happening at BR50, it should be happening towards BR 80 or whatever the BR would be at half the potential XP required for the BR. At the moment, you can go from BR 1 to BR 11 quite quickly and I'd hate to see players penalised by thinking "I think I'll start the campaign after that battle rank... Oh." situation.

    Bases:
    Taking a cursory investigation of the bases again, /bug'd a see through asset issue in Eastwake Harborage where a roof asset got knocked out of position. For the most part I don't think there's anything new for me to add.

    Mani Processing Plant - Glad to see two of the doors on Mani Processing A Point have now been sealed, so people holding it should now be able to make more of a fight of it. Also like the alternate garage bay design on the east side of the base, all angular and chunky and stuff.

    Mattherson's Triumph - Just a little extra cover needed from the SW tower onto C and B points due to high elevation terrain looking onto the SW tower because in both cases you're running TOWARD that high terrain (See image for an example)...

    [IMG]

    Meanwhile, those little bits of wall on the edges of the charge across platforms? I'd recommend doubling the height of all those similar to how the Jaegers Fist A point redesign was done, to limit distant arcing fire over those walls and leaving them a little ineffective.

    Grey Heron Shipping - Taking another look at this, I think people might struggle with knowing the entry points into the lower levels. A possible approach would be to make the paths more clear on the map (Dirt in snow), for instance I can see one on the east side but it's a little on the faint side (The dirt should be darkened and the snow brightened) - and put those more visible paths at each of the lower entrances. Obviously the NE under-entrance is part of a dock, so maybe have some floor tile assets and pillar assets to fake a dockway that boats would've theoretically docked at poking out the NE and build a staircase up from that into the NE entrance - That should make that access point much more visible on the map.

    I'm also a little iffy about having the A point almost directly above the B point. Consider moving A into the building just east of that bridge or into the open area just SE of where the A point currently is.



    Well, I think that's everything.

    Best of luck with the launch this week, I'm looking forward to seeing some big battles over this new version of Esamir.
  15. JustGotSuspended


    yeah honestly the membership should just push itself if people are happy with the game. You can't force down such steep prices down a new player's throat in hopes of them getting a membership. No one is going to buy a membership from the start, you have to convince them first. From what I understand this patch was new-player oriented, so who thought charging it was a good idea?

    Should be free for new players, let's say those below br 20-25. After that, I don't really agree with the cert cost considering how boring the missions are, and how likely you are to die to dudes who while be camping the new "missions". I mean, sitting around a terminal somewhere in the open is just begging to get sniped, and I don't think it's a great way to introduce players to the game, especially if you want to charge them for this boredom and waste of KDR.

    We already have one useless currency, why not use a7 to unlock campaigns for the non-new players. Things only useful the first week an item comes out, and then has 0 use. A7 could be used to unlock missions incrementally. The rewards don't seem interesting, and although I might spend 5k (takes me about 1-2 weeks of casual grinding) the first time the thing is released, I know full well I'm going to be disappointed and those certs would have been better spent elsewhere....ASP token maybe - or even to try construction.


    Yeah not really excited for this, and the implementation is very DBG as usual - priorities are misaligned and there's no consistency.



    I would love to see a stream from the devs of them playing when it hits live. Really, if the servers are not exploding from bugs by then, I want to see them actually play the campaign. See if wasting half your certs to get farmed is enjoyable. And maybe they'll realize that CAI sucked and 1hk infils should be deleted.
  16. Whiteagle

    Honestly I'd just go full A7, it's a Gameplay Currency that you'll actively accrue during normal play anyways, and really seems to fit well with the Campaign heavily featuring the Sancuary.
    • Up x 2
  17. Foxassassin

    I really don't think that's a good idea. We have a lot of A7 because we've been building it up now. But after the alert reward changes, and the nerf to pretty much all currencies, the only way to get A7 will be from the A7 nodes, which are rare and give an frustratingly low amount. And missions, which are RNG. You could theoretically have a streak of months of never getting more A7.

    This ontop of the fact that they might add more A7 weapons which depletes nearly your whole reserve in one purchace...

    I feel like the Alert nerf needs to not push live. It's going to be such a disincentive to do anything other than farm for all players. I just don't understand why the Mission rewards and Alert rewards can't be done in tandem?
    • Up x 2
  18. DankBudha

    Yeah, I don't think that all alert rewards should be disappearing the way they are planning to implement. If they need to be reduced, fine, but only giving xp seems really dumb, especially considering those players (my main included) that have absolutely no use for xp at all now....I don't understand the point. It also seems like missions don't give anywhere close to the same compensation for the number you can do in a day compared to alerts.

    Also believe that the G2A vs the A2G is not on an equal playing field. G2A should be an effective way to lock down an area from aircraft, which is used to be....but over time has been reduced to be an annoyance, not an actual counter. Other ground units should be essential to clearing G2A so that air can then advance into an area again. Just like ground that doesn't have any AA should be meat for the grinding for air....the rock/paper/scissors counters for certain types of weapons in the game are not as distinct as (in my opinion) they should be.

    As far as cert points required for unlocking campaigns, they could be toned down by maybe 20%, but I would say not much more than that. My understanding is that the rewards for completing campaigns will be significant (need to test this newest patch still and see if they are in yet), and if so, it should be a steep cert investment. They said the campaigns themselves wouldn't take a significant time investment, not that all free-play characters would be able to easily access them. They have said since they announced this that it would be similar to ASP where there would be a fairly high cert investment required for non-members and members would have access automatically. Financially investing in the game is the only way they can continue to develop new content like this anyway.....not like this game could exist at all if it was all free-play players. I honestly wish it was like PS1 in that aspect as well, where everyone had to pay a sub, but, I know they wanted to try to appeal to a larger fan base, which required them to use the free-to-play model, which makes sense for how they want to do things.
  19. JustGotSuspended



    Oh yeah silly us. I forgot that they are going to charge such steep prices to join campaigns - and remove alert rewards!

    Where was my head at, ofc we don't need alert rewards! Much less the new players, which I'm sure will have infinite amounts of certs and iso to access campaigns and manage their implants.

    Again, props to this wonderful enhancement to the new player experience, my faith in wrel and his dev team is fully restored.




    lol can we plz hire a real game designer I'm crying on the inside :(
    • Up x 1
  20. DataGhost

    Devs, great job on not announcing another PTS patch 15 hours ago while you're about to go live. I only found out about the patch because I went on Reddit to check the opinion about the live push. In the few hours that I've tested over the past couple of weeks I mostly tested the new features (rather than actually looking at the bases themselves and playtesting) and found a couple of bugs, some of which have actually been addressed in some form, so good job there. Others haven't, and some of them are very easy to fix so I'm left to wonder which channel I should use for reporting because I'm starting to feel that you haven't received my reports.

    Anyway, there have been some playtests, mostly on Esamir because that's where the biggest changes were, so I assume it yielded some bug reports. So after reading that this will go live the day after tomorrow, I went on to actually look at how some of the bases were redesigned and how they work now. I logged into PTS, went to Eisa Tech Plant and it took me all but three minutes to spot a glaring and serious bug. How in the hell was the SCU there overlooked? It's a pretty critical part that doesn't show up on the minimap anymore, does not make any sound when overloaded, exploding or being repaired, there's no timer, there's no status, but it does affect the spawn room shields (and I guess the spawns as well). Was it supposed to be removed because the base only takes 4 minutes to turn now? Was it supposed to stay there? How did you come to the conclusion "this is good enough, let's push this to live"? Keep in mind this is the FIRST and so far only base I've looked at so if that's any indication, I fear for the rest of the continent. Here's a vid:

    It must probably be frustrating to read people writing stuff the way I am doing but it's just as frustrating for players (and I'm also a software developer, so double frustration here) to see that their attempts at helping improve this game seem to mostly go unheard. You either want feedback and listen to it, or please don't ask. Players are putting in time to help you, least you could do is fixing the obvious things and even better is a simple wontfix/fixed/invalid etc to the reporter. Currently there is 0 feedback except for patch notes IF you decided to address some bug.
    • Up x 2
Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.