An Update on the May Update!

Hey everyone! We've got an update brewing for next week that we wanted to tell you guys about. Take a look and let us know what you think.

Intra-Facility Missions
Intra-facility missions are dynamically created missions that point you towards the important objectives inside a facility based on distance. So, if you're near Cap Point A, your mission will say "Capture A". If you're an Engineer and you're near a destroyed generator, your mission will be "Repair Generator". This system is intended to give new players a better sense of a facility's objectives and some direction on how to find them.

Membership Changes
The current membership system with Copper, Silver, Gold, etc, tiers of membership is pretty clunky and unintuitive. With how complicated it was to explain and surface all the information needed for it to make sense, it ended up feeling counterproductive. With that said, we’re taking out all those extra tiers – everyone who is a member is treated like they have max-level-Auraxium membership going forward, with all the benefits that entails.

Pricing Changes
We’re making some pretty significant changes to our cert and DBC pricing across the Depot. The vast majority of DBC prices will be dropping, some only slightly, but in many cases pretty significantly. There is one noteworthy exception, and that’s NS weapons that are available to all factions on purchase – those are going up slightly to account for the extra value they bring to the table.

We also updated many of our cert prices to account for the two years we've let them go unattended – and this meant that in addition to many prices going down, or staying the same, cert prices increased for a number of weapons as well. To give some context and hopefully alleviate some fears, our updated weapon cert prices range from 200-1000 certs, so there’s no drastic departure on that front.

We understand there might be some concern at the notion of any prices going up, but we hope that once everyone gets to see the entirety of the pricing changes first hand, the net reaction will be a positive one.

Battle Rank Certs Until 15
We felt the cert gain rate at low levels was too restrictive for new players trying to grow their characters. With this change, each battle rank achieved through BR 15 now provides 100 free certs to help new players get their characters rolling.

Spawn Rule Changes
You can no longer spawn at a base that is not connected to your warpgate via lattice unless you die in that base’s region; the idea here is to add more strategic importance to territory and logistics.

Icon Readability
We've done a pass on all of the icons and text in the HUD, Map, and Minimap to make them more readable and well, iconic. We've also changed the settings for things like when HUD icons get pinned to the side of your screen and the distance at which the opacity changes.

We are doing this on PC and PS4 for a couple reasons:

• A lot of the overhead text was pretty unreadable in certain lighting
• The brackets around many of the icons on the minimap used up precious pixels
• Most of the outlines and glows on text means you really have to squint to read it

Check out the forum post here if you want to see some screen shots: https://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/index.php?threads/hud-map-minimap-icon-text-readability.225118/

High Profile Bug Fixes

• The Vehicle Ejection Bug: One day we will be able to finally eradicate this bug in a cleansing flame… and hopefully that day is the day of this update. We have a speculative fix for the infamous vehicle ejection bug that sends you flying into the stratosphere. Please cross your fingers and continue to report this if you see it.
• Awareness changes: It is now less likely that you are rendered by/visible to players that aren’t being rendered for you.

Other Changes

Galaxy Repair and Ammo: The Galaxy has new defense slot options, Vehicle Ammo Dispenser and Nanite Proximity Repair System.

• Vehicle Ammo Dispenser: Resupply ammunition of nearby vehicles
• Nanite Proximity Repair System: Repair nearby damaged vehicles

MBT Updates

• New Conglomerate
  • Enforcer ML85/Enforcer ML65-H: The Enforcer now has a continuous reload mechanic, ammo will be reloaded one round at a time and the weapon can be fired at anytime during the reload process.
  • C85 Canister: The C85 Canister now has a continuous reload mechanic, ammo will be reloaded one round at a time and the weapon can be fired at anytime during the reload process.
  • C85 Canister-H: The C85 Canister-H now has a continuous reload mechanic and the clip size on the Harasser variant has been reduced from 10 to 8.
• Vanu Sovereignty
  • Proton II PPA: PPA max COF has been reduced from 0.6 to 0.3 and COF Recoil has been reduced from 0.6 to 0.3
  • Proton II PPA-H: PPA max COF has been reduced from 3 to 2.25 and COF Recoil has been reduced from 0.6 to 0.45
  • Saron HRB down pitch angle limit has been improved by 10 degrees
• Terran Republic
  • Prowler G30 Vulcan: The Prowler version of the Vulcan COF reduced from 1.1 to 0.9

• The visual effect of Vehicle night vision has been improved
• Aegis shield should now block AOE damage more accurately
• Vehicle zoom optics can now be purchased individually, optics have been reset and their certs refunded
• Due to a lack of being awesome, the Decoy grenade is being removed from game and certs spent on it refunded. If we can find a way to make it awesome, we’ll look at adding it back in.

That’s it for now! We understand we may not have hit every issue/bug you've brought up recently, but we’ll continue to hammer away at these while working on new content. We look forward to your thoughts!

With warm regards, but not too warm because this is war,

- The PlanetSide 2 Team

Are older characters being granted certs as if they leveled up under the new system? I'm suspecting no.

Otherwise, good update. I'm very glad a cut off base won't be able to receive easy reinforcements anymore.

Not the decoy. I just thought of a way to make it awesome.

Afraid not. This was a new player initiative so we are just trying to help them get a leg up.

few questions

- with the change in DBC and cert pricing, will bought weapons that for example go down in price be reimbursted? in eighter certs or DBC?

- do players over lvl 15 get the free 1500 certs asswell?

- this fix for the verhicle ejaction is this a proper fix or just another guess in the dark kind of fix like we have seen before?

- has the galaxy new defence slots been tested? does it work the way it should?

overall good news wish most of this was done sooner but better late then never!

Looking forward to the pricing changes, though the fact that there will be no more 100 cert weapons is a bit saddening.

Will there be a PTS build in the near future for all of this? I'd love to see this stuff.

1) those 1500 certs will not go to existing players above BR15.


2) The Galaxy modules have been tested &(IF YOU ACTUALLY WENT ON PTS TO TEST THEM) are really balanced.

The Decoy grenade could be re-worked to spawn a random "friendly soldier" (Read; VR Dummy), that then accesses that weird player-movement database you guys have (I know you have it; I saw the one dev video however long ago where you had a tower fight of bots trying to work out AI), and selects a well traveled route nearby and follows it to the nearest point.

Make its life ~15-30 seconds.

While traveling this route, the bot will mimic the motions and behavior of the database entry it selected - up to and including firing. It will make the noises, lights and sounds - essentially go through all the motions - but will not generate projectiles.

When shot, it will not die (no health) - unless it is easy to make the grenade "shell" follow at its feet as an "emitter" and THAT is destructible. Elsewise, it would run the VR effect when hit instead of the normal impact effect (that weird pixel spark with the yellow grid) which would provide a indication to the player shooting it that this is not a real person.

Its spawn in and spawn out animation FX could be the same used in VR training - which is suitably cool enough with a neat sound effect.

They should be destructible by EMP grenades.

--> I think this would be suitably cool for the decoy grenade, and should require minimal new assets.

• No we are not reimbursing cost changes on weapons.
• We are not granting 1500 free certs to people over BR15. This was for new players, not veterans.
• We are hopeful we fixed the vehicle eject bug. Obviously we aren't going to claim victory until we've had you guys confirm.
• I'm not sure what you mean by the defense slots. These are the changes that were on PTS.

Is there any pre-emptive list of the new cert prices, perhaps? Or is that something we'll just have to wait to see?

@RadarX


This question is not about This update exactly, but more of the next one down the road.

Hows the cloaked AMS module coming along?

I've been on the PTS testing it out as much as I can, and its really good so far.

I'm stupid.

Thanks for reading.

The repair/ammo things, I believe. They take up that slot if I'm not mistaken.

you really need to re-read.

They said nothing about the L-PPA.

Its only the PPA & PPA-H that are getting changes.

you are correct, they do take up the defensive slot, much like the modules of the Sunderer.

Thanks to god, I was just about to uninstall the game and throw my monitor thru my window.

Also you could have read the roadmap post talking about the changes or went on the PTS to see.

great to see the aegis shield bleeding splash through is fixed, but are the Aegis weapon lock bugs fixed?
(sometimes when you lower the shield your weapons are locked, and if you die with shield up/raising/lowering your weapons are locked until you pull max again)