Happy New Year & Update 02 Info!

As written this is not a statement that's brimming with confidence. I can't tell if you were being unnecessarily vague, if you're hedging against uncertain code, or if you decided to roll the dice and give MAXes a draw priority somewhere between infantry and vehicle.

Dear Higby,
Nerf Zepher.
like magazine count down from 6 to 3 but you can still cert the mag size
and halve the aoe HE explosion too.

Thanks, a concerned player
and dalton user, because swag

how is that "rolling the dice"? and that's exactly what I imagine they'd do. It's the only solution that technically makes sense.

/facepalm

you got that backwards.

If a player has been alive for 10 minutes on a 50 kill spree, then killing THAT player will net the you with more XP

However if you kill someone who just spawned, ie; Sundy farming, then you'll get a fraction of the current kill reward.

Me Gusta

Strongly disagree.

Farming for grind is one of the biggest problems in this game.

Migrating the farm cert gain to far more appropriate actions is exactly the solution we've been calling for.

People will still farm sundies... but taking it out is the goal, farming the inf coming out of it is just to control their spawn until the sundy takes enough fire to blow up.

Fresh spawned troops should be worth only like 20-25 ea.

FWIW: I've gained countless certs farming sundies (to be fair, at least I was firing HEAT or RPs or Zephyr rounds AT the sundy and killing inf with the splash spam). Tactically you'd be a fool NOT to, but the point reward for it was crazy insane and over encouraged something that's just naturally fun anyways

Just so you know... Some people do not get a 'situational awareness' of a location where they spawn. Even in Planetside 1, there is no warning of the situation of where they spawn at. So the comment about doing something about the grinder is a bit unnecessary because of the simple fact is, most people won't know until they are there.

While also some of you are complaining about the fact cert farming is getting lower because of this... Note this... When people decon a vehicle being blasted or dying before you kill them... There is a reason for that... To make it harder FOR YOU, to gain from their misfortune. You can call it bad sportsmanship, but at the same time, denying you is a the same as you denying them the chance to push out or anything else. The invulnerability part as a new spawn should go away once the player does something to engage combat, I agree on this, but the reward for killing a person who just got into the area without knowing the situation should not be a reward to a person who is blasting a sunderer.

To be honest, while I know I need certs to modify or get equipment or equipment mods, at the same time, when I have been fighting, while I would love the kill or the XP, I play to fight and get the objective. Back in Planetside, I will admit, as an AA when I do get to down a large Gun Gal full of people and survive to take it down, I go 'Lunchbox'... But most of the time, the focus is more on doing the job that wanting to farm stuff.

It's rolling the dice in the sense that it's a bandaid fix that may or may not quell the ire of the masses until a proper fix is available. I can already tell you that it would not, for the same reason that your "technically sensible solution" is technically no such thing. You have two units designed to fight each other. If one unit can see and shoot at the other while being invisible to it and impervious to attack, obviously that's broken. At least, I hope that's obvious to you.

In any case that's just one possible interpretation of Higby's statement.

Dear Torok,

Lol no

- Higby

None of these things look like improvements. All they are doing is making the game easier for bad players. I guess this is what happens when you "listen to the community." All the good players are playing the game and enjoying it and all the bad ones are whining on the forums.

Being revived by a medic, I have learned that in some cases, some combat medics are idiots when they do the revive part.

This being the, "I'm dead in front of a heavy fire area... And you are f-in reviving me there?!?" If a medic did that to me, I don't accept, I respawn cause I know it is a stupid place to revive. The invulnerability should not be for reviving simply because THERE, you have situational awareness that you are pretty much F-ed if you say yes versus you spawning in an area you only know there is a spawn there, but not the battle situation there.

No doubt a lot of what I'll say has been covered already, but I want to get my thoughts out there. Nothing is particularly bowling me over. A lot of stuff is neither hear nor there in terms of drastically improving things. It's a bit of an anti-climax of an update for me to be honest.

• General performance increases, particularly for lower end GPUs

Always good. Hopefully this'll include something to help rendering infantry at a distance, but I won't hold my breath.

• Experience (XP) system enhancements:
  • Dynamic XP system for player kills, players who have more kills on their current life are worth more XP. Freshly spawned players will be worth a fraction of the current kill reward.
  • Partial damage XP for dealing damage to vehicles that you don't end up killing
  • Population XP / Resource bonus moved over to continent population instead of global
  • Better display of XP sources for things like defensive bonuses & population bonuses
  • Rebalancing of XP rewards to help support tasks

Not bad but not overjoyed. Quite indifferent to it to be honest.

• Server transfer token available in Depot

Don't like the idea of having to pay for this to be honest. Surely this is going to be a simple matter of some database entry adjustments which could be scripted. If someone's sever loses it's population, isn't that bad enough without them having to face charges to move onto another more populated one? Paying in that sort of circumstance isn't a great incentive to keep custom. This could be enough for people to decide to not continue playing at all.

• UI changes to emphasize score per minute as a primary metric of player comparison

Again, pretty indifferent. I'd rather we did away with the whole willy-waving "I have more points than you" ego stroking to be honest.

• Sortable columns on outfit management & addition of "last online" column

Can't complain.

• New weapon type for all empires: SMG

Do we really need more infantry weaponry at this stage, when the infantry gameplay is already pretty dire due to other gameplay issues? Seems like a bit of a waste of time when there's bigger fish to fry.

• Short period of invulnerability will be added to freshly spawned / revived players - breaks upon game actions such as entering a vehicle or using a weapon.

REALLY don't like this idea, because I have this horrible gut feeling that this'll be implemented badly and exploited. I keep thinking of a mass of troops clustering onto a grenade, only to get revive-grenaded back to live and storming a point, not able to be killed whilst capturing. Has team killing been taken into account? Imagine this at a bio-lab air pad entrance or one of those smaller rooms you teleport into. Invulnerable charge. As someone said previously (my apologies for not fishing out your name) this is a player issue of accepting revives in dangerous areas. If you don't like getting shot on the spot after getting back up, hold a movement key as you accept or just hit decline! Not rocket science!

• Dynamic / player configurable colors for minimap & overhead indicators for enemies, friendlies, and squads within a platoon

Good stuff, and personally something I think should have been in from the start for colour blind players. That and the default colours are just fugly anyway.

• New Hot Spot system that displays where active fights are occurring on the map

Was the current one really broken? I can't say I ever had a problem with it. Big fights light up, smaller ones you have to look for. Seems straight forward.

• New spawn buildings with more exits, protected balconies and easy roof access to make them less campable.

Not looking forward to this one personally. I get the feeling this is either going to allow more vehicles to camp at once if the entrances are placed badly, or have more of those one way shields which I don't particularly like either. Given how things we're designed up to this point, I'm somewhat jaded!

• Tunnel systems for amp and tech facilities to give access from spawn rooms to interior of bases and base walls without having to go above ground.

Sort of a yay, but with suspicion. Weren't we told that the engine wasn't capable of doing tunnels and underground stuff a while back which is why bases were designed as they were? Guess we'll have to wait and see.

• Making MAXes render more reliably at long distances for players in vehicles

Any rendering adjustments are good, but I can see this hampering AA MAXs a little as this was one of the few advantages (albeit a bit of a crafty system flaw one) it had. Hopefully this'll pave the way for improving infantry rendering. Sick of being sniped by people I'm not drawing and therefore can't hit.

• AA improvements, notably flak changes for turrets and skyguards, giving them some better ability to aim, although not drastically impacting their DPS.

Hopefully this'll include a better cross hair system for Skyguards and turrets. The current one is pretty hopeless.

• Fixes to missiles so that they more reliably detonate and actually blow stuff up

Not sure specifically which missles this refers to but bug fixing is good stuff nonetheless.

• Air vehicle weapon tweaks

Too vague for my liking so a little unsettled. More specifics would have been appreciated, but guess this'll come at a later date.

• Increases to reload speed for certain HE ground vehicle weapons

Seems like a quick and dirty way to try and address the infantry farming problem. Surely this could have been done in a more fleshed out way?

• And of course... lots of bug fixes

Good good. Hopefully more information will follow, and they won't introduce more problems.

Who said anything about a transfer? I want the ability to pick the server to play on when I start the game.

Punkbuster does not solve the cheating problem, it mitigates it to a degree, but it also does false positives too. Play Medal of Honor 2010 sometime. After a few hours, you get kicked off because errors. Plus, games that do have it, still don't prevent new hacks and cheats from happening, they will always happen because of polymorphic programming.

Colorblind folks rejoice! All in all sounds like a great update.

the post said increased reload speed. i take that as a faster reload. If it said increased reload time, then i think you would be correct, but off of the OP is sounds like HE rounds will reload faser for certain vehicles.

The aircraft rule the battle field from the sky, I actually thought making it tougher for them to see a max on the ground was the way it should work. The anti-air max was the only equalizer that we had against the aircraft zerg. A couple Burster max units could scare off the aircraft, causing them to run off and repair. Guess that would change quite a bit if this patch goes thru.

I wonder if these changes to rocket launchers and AAA flak will balance out. Will aircraft render more precisely for ground units too, or will max units now be visible from an altitude where our burster weapons cannot reach them??

My complaint about aircraft is that one lone aircraft can one-shot kill infantry, kill tanks in three seconds with rocket pods, and yet our anti-aircraft weapons for both infantry and tanks only scare them off, unless they are willing to hover for us and lets us unload an entire clip off ammo, or expend all of our guided rockets on them.

It always seemed odd to me, that a tank designed to kill other tanks takes a long time to kill another tank, while a scythe can kill any tank in three seconds, or a liberator can one shot a tank with the 150mm gun.

If I'm reading the patch notes correctly, the one equalizer we had, the double-Burster max, can now be seen from hundreds of yards away. I hope the changes to the anti-air missiles and Skyguard will offset the new rendering of max units. The one other reason the anti-air max was a factor was that engineers could reload them, this increased rendering distance will make it tough for a max to talk a fool-hardy engineer into staying with him.

The one unintended problem, is the useless anti-armor max has just been rendered into the ash bin. It was bad enough that anti-armor max weapons were next to useless, but now every tank can spot them from 500 yards away.

I've seen a lot of people saying they are excited about dynamic XP.

I think it's pretty insignificant. If it results in less XP from fighting... and ghostcapping becomes the the undisputed most efficient way of gaining XP (the only thing anyone cares about/matters) then the tumbleweeds will blow through even moreso.

I guess what I'm getting at is that if you were to make a list of the 100 most important issues that need to be addressed in Planetside 2 - I don't think rebalancing XP even makes the list.

I was joking. Those are things I would hate.

The invincibility seems like a bad idea. You do have invincibility, if you spawn in a friendly building. Spawning or reviving in the open world, that should come with a risk.

If a medic is trying to revive you in the middle of a war or even a firefight, there is and should be inherent risk involved in that action. Just last night I was in a situation that was already frustrating- I was in a defensive position trying to cap a base on Amerish (I wish I knew the name its a pretty decent base lay out).

A heavy came into the room to try and recap, and I got into a firefight with them, and got the kill using cover. A medic was not too far behind them, and was able to manuever so it was difficult to get any shots off at them. They got the rez, and then I had 2 enemies to face in close combat which is pretty much instant death unless they are horrible players. I got a few shots in, but with 2 enemies firing on me I was doomed.

Giving the medic revive a invulnerablity period seems like its going to lead to abuse.

See i take increased speed as going faster, or shortening the reload time. I may be wrong in what they want to do, but increasing the reload speed means you reload faster, not longer.

Thanks, i read it wrong and changed my post.