Game Update 2

If only we could see this………

All servers will come down for Game Update 2. Downtime is anticipated to be less than two hours. Players may notice the following changes.

General:

· A number of changes have been made to Vehicle and Aircraft weaponry. Please see the Vehicle notes below.
· A Recall ability has been added to allow players to recall to the Warpgate. Players no longer need to use the logout to get a free ride to their factions starting Warpgate.
· Blockade armor color will now default as black on all vehicles.
· Defending a faction held facility or base will provide periodic experience. Holding off large forces will scale and increase the experience obtained.
· Fixed a few crash bugs and provided some optimizations to improve gameplay.
· New MAX weaponry is currently being issued to all three empires.
· Phalanx anti air turret range, damage, and bullet speed has been significantly increased.
· Separate option for toggle zoom has been added for vehicles and this also applies to base turrets.
· The in game /report system has been updated to allow a short text following the report to give details.
· The loss of all AMP stations for your faction shall restrict players from spawning Liberators. The loss of all Tech stations for your faction will still restrict players from spawning Main Battle Tanks.
· The adjustment for scoped mouse sensitivity is now available for each of the three resource types (Aerospace, Mechanized, and Infantry).
· The chat interface has been update to allow customization of channel to monitor per tab. Hitting enter shall allow you to access chat boxes and return shall return to the game, no longer requiring Alt to reconnect your mouse to the PS2 interface.
· When opening the map it will automatically center on the player.
· When you are waiting to respawn you will be able to review the map status in detail prior to deploying.

Notable Bugfixes:

· Base tower landing pads have been modified to prevent players from being inadvertently launched off towers when using tower launchers.
· Death outside of a base shall no longer create 3 loading screen prior to obtaining the deployment screen.
· Respawn issue with health / Armor will no longer incorrectly display until a skill or equipment change is has been completed.
· Respawn empty flashing health bars will no longer incorrectly display until a skill or equipment change is has been completed.
· Steam users: Closing the game will no longer crash to the desktop and require that you to manually shutdown the game.
· The persistent random white smoke screen combined with extremely low frames per second error has been located and fixed.

Aerospace:

· Aircraft controls now have the option to allow you to use the mouse left and right instead of the A and D keys.
· Aircraft missile warning shall now give a different tone for Air to Air missiles Vs. Ground to Air missiles.
· All Aerospace Pilot absent timers have been increased to 20 minutes.
· A30 Walker / M20 Drake range, damage, and bullet speed have been significantly increased.
· ESF Rocket close range damage has been reduced.
· ESF Rocket pods have been adjusted to provide the same number of rockets for each side.
· ESF Afterburners delay reuse timers have been significantly increased.
· Liberator Dalton gun shall no longer fire when above the horizon.
· Liberator flak and missile damage resistance has been lowered.
· Liberator and Galaxy now have a new keybind to allow the pilot a down view.
· Liberator Zepher gun has a longer reload timer by default.
· New ESF aircraft handling improvements have been added to allow the ESF to hover like other larger aircraft. The spacebar will now be used as an increase in altitude and not to maintain a level height.
· The AMS cert is now available on the Galaxy, once certed the AMS terminal will appear at the rear of the unit.

Mechanized:

· All absent driver timers have been increased to 20 minutes.
· All reinforced main battle tank armor upgrades are now permanent and will stack. The damage reduction for these upgrades has been increased significantly.
· All mechanized vehicles will start out with their lights in the off position when spawned.
· G30 Walker / M20 Basilisk range, damage, and bullet speed have been significantly increased.
· Lightning tanks will now turn left or right when you hit the associated button and shall no longer take 4 hits of the left or right button to turn that direction.
· M40 Fury armor damage has been significantly increased.
· Main battle tank and AP or HE Lightning direct hits to any ESF will now be an instant kill.
· Main battle tanks damage when running over players has been increase significantly.
· Skyguard range, damage, and bullet speed have been significantly increased.
· Vehicles once stopped or deployed on hills shall no longer continue to slide.

Infantry:

· All Ground to Air missile projectiles range and speed has been increase significantly.
· Bolt Action Sniper rifles will automatically reload after each shot. The player will no longer have to release the zoom feature to reload and take another shot.
· Heavy assault faction special weapons (Jackhammer, Lasher, and Minigun) damage, range and functionality have been significantly modified and updated.
· Infantry resources have been increased from a max of 750 to 1200 to assist in players refilling mines, medical kits, and grenades.
· Scoped mouse sensitivity adjusted to allow players to use 1X and 12X scopes with the same swing distance.
· The NC N14 Boltdriver scope drift has been increased to fall in line with the other factions.
· Vanu and TR Maxes have new optional shotgun type weapons which is equal to NC for close quarter’s Max combat. NC MAX has been given equal ranges weapons which are comparable to Vanu and TR.


Your comments or concerns? Let SoE hear your concerns.

I think that, like most of the people posting wishlists and buff/nerf requests, a lot of this would simply create more balance issues.

Beyond that, all of this is premature. We have two problems in game right now that preclude meaningful balance changes. Base design, and rendering distance issues.

Is this true?
Or just a suggestion?
In my opinion this great

Meh, just a bunch of small tweaks. Nothing that will get me to play again. As Ive said, I wont be playing until they implement some kind of real metagame.

Strategic progress of territory capture culminating with some kind of enemy faction main base assault.

Is this made by you or do you have a source to cite?

Also... "· Liberator Dalton gun shall no longer fire when above the horizon."

What the f***?

This x100.

They've already said they are working on a way to increase the rendering distance, it's part of the performance patch.

The base design has also already been mentioned by Higby on twitter, we'll be getting underground sections to most bases with redesigns to spawn areas to buff the defenders.

The shotguns for all faction Maxes doesn't help at all. In fact if anything, just reduce the shooting time for the NC maxes and it'd have been fixed. Now they're all too similar which doesn't help at all. The biggest problem with the NC maxes were simply that their shotties fired too fast. They were walking lead hoses which made Biolabs insanely difficult to take from NC maxes. If their ROF was reduced by 50% (maybe 70%), they shouldn't be death machines. TTK's should be similar between the Maxes which with those shotties, they weren't.

Case and point was I wanted to try the NC for a few minutes so I made a new character on Miller and hot dropped to a biolab under siege from VS and TR. I grabbed a Max and laid waste to 3 TR when I ran into a crowd of 10 with a BR1 character. It shouldn't be THAT easy to take 3 people down in under 2 seconds. Other than that their Max should be pretty good.

As to the first, I'll believe it when I see it.

As to the second, that isn't meaningful base redesign, and that's not actually what he said. He mentioned they'd be adding tunnels from the spawn room to the interior. That could mean a lot of things, and *probably* means that they're simply adding a nice point for infantry to go camp in addition to the vehicles camping the above ground exits to the spawn room. Bases need to be massively redesigned, adding a couple of tunnels doesn't even dent the problem.

Looks good, Next some meaningful objectives to keep the battles big and interesting needs to be focused on.

Also We'll see how these changes affect aircraft. as a lib pilot I'm overjoyed to hear the aa walker will be useful, but the lowered resistance might make it a little too easy for fighters now. Also as An ESF pilot I would like to see more balance brought against one man fighters. I feel we're too overpowered as it is right now.

Well....
Matthew Higby ‏@mhigby
MAXs will render at a longer distance (more like a vehicle) for players in air vehicles. This will give a better threat indicator to pilots.
There's that at least...

That really depends on what you mean by meaningful, I think allowing people to not get spawn camped by vehicles by having a tunnel into the main base is a VERY meaningful change albeit small by comparison to what we're after.

This would be pretty good. Do not forget to make nights darker so that headlights are actually necessary!

Sigh. Alot of people in this thread that don't seem to understand the first line that OP wrote. It's basicaly a wish list.

LOL OP wish list.

Kill vehicles gameplay, make infantry gameplay MUCH easier
fix bugs.

Spawn camped is spawn camped. I really don't care if it's vehicles doing it at the spawn room doors, or infantry doing it via constant rocket/full auto spam down a tunnel.

And yeah, I know about Higby's tweet. Unfortunately, the problem is far more severe than just MAXs, and I have a lot of reservations about the MAX fix. SOE tends to take the quick fix route, and the quick fix to MAXs not rendering at normal vehicle distance is to simply flag them as vehicles. Several of us Tweet'd him to ask precisely how the MAX change is being done, or try to get him to respond to the thread in this forum asking that question (flagging as vehicle vs. writing specific code to only make MAXs render farther for players in aircraft) and he hasn't responded.

Well..... to be honest, your very limited view on it doesn't really matter because that's not the situation it's intended to combat....
For the rest of us that regularly spawn camp other players and know how easy it is to just park a Lib above a spawn and keep them locked down until a facility is captured this would be a MASSIVE change in game flow. It would then require infantry to secure the base rather than tanks and aircraft rolling all over defenders. [/quote]

It really won't be though. What you'll see is a relocation of part of your force that was already camping the spawn room to the tunnel entrance. If you really think tunnels to the interior will make a MASSIVE change in game flow you're kidding yourself.

I don't, really. I have enough development experience to know that the necessary changes are extremely time consuming from project inception through to production publish. What I DO want is for them to stop allocating resources to dicking around making balance changes based on the existing model, when those changes are extremely likely to simply become IMbalance problems if they ever fix said inherent issues. I particularly want this because so far they're showing a pretty bad track record at making good balance changes.

No bonus to flash speed? I was almost outrun by a sunderer : (

It really won't be though. What you'll see is a relocation of part of your force that was already camping the spawn room to the tunnel entrance. If you really think tunnels to the interior will make a MASSIVE change in game flow you're kidding yourself.

Sigh, I'm not kidding myself in the slightest, I have hundreds of hours of game experience that prove my point, you just happen to have a differing opinion to me and luckily for me the devs share my view on the matter. Oh, and the several threads during the beta about how stupid it is that a military base has totally no cover for infantry and there needs to be more, oh and the numerous requests for large underground sections for facilities. I honestly don't actually see why you would have a problem with it anyway.

I don't, really. I have enough development experience to know that the necessary changes are extremely time consuming from project inception through to production publish. What I DO want is for them to stop allocating resources to dicking around making balance changes based on the existing model, when those changes are extremely likely to simply become IMbalance problems if they ever fix said inherent issues. I particularly want this because so far they're showing a pretty bad track record at making good balance changes.

Well obviously, I'm pretty sure everyone is yelling at SOE to pull their finger out because of the fact that their track record is horrific, not to mention the fact that the continue to nerf things and make changes that have never, ever even been hinted at by the community and has wound up causing more problems.

But at the end of the day, I'm taking whatever I can get from them and I still maintain this game should NOT be out of beta, because it is nowhere near ready for release......too bad. :/
[/quote]

I wouldn't, if that's what we were getting. *shrug* That's not been the indication so far. If you have something otherwise, I would genuinely love to see it, and I'm not being sarcastic at all. I would be overjoyed to see some indication that the PS2 devs realize current base design is a major problem, because so far their track record in that area has been pretty bad. The tunnels are the first even vaguely positive change we've seen to base design since early beta, IMO.

Oh, and I'm doing the same. I'm not actually in disagreement with you on the whole, I just think that unless they're adding an extensive tunnel network with multiple exits that can reach all key structures in the base, it's far too little to matter.