Happy New Year & Update 02 Info!

One would hope that performance and renderside would come first, especially since a lot of balance issues may arise as a function of rendering. I am hopeful that Update 2 will partially ameliorate the decline in game populations.

When they say transfer token in depot, are they going to make us pay for transfers? :|

This update is looking pretty great.

Most of it is very good information to hear, although there's a few concerns that I have.

• General performance increases, particularly for lower end GPUs

Great! Definitely need performance increases. I hope this means that more optimization was put in for lower graphical settings.
My concern is whether or not the game will still be CPU-locked rather utilizing my perfectly fine GPU. Whenever it's bound to GPU, I run 60fps constant (vsync enabled), but if it randomly locks to CPU I drop to 40fps. I realize that some graphical visuals are CPU only, but this locking happens completely random whether or not I'm in a large battle.

• 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

Sounds great! Definitely needed an XP rebalance.
The only concern I have for this part is if driving/piloting a Galaxy/Liberator/Sunderer will actually be worth it. The problem with piloting these vehicles is you barely get 1/3rd the xp that the gunner gets, and if you're a tertiary gunner or a gunner who isn't getting as many kills as the other gunners, you get absolutely NOTHING. My idea for this is to give all gunners and the pilot the same amount of XP as if they got the kill, the vehicle and all players in it are working as a team- let the XP prove it. (Players whom are being transported in the Galaxy/Sunderer shouldn't get anything since they are literally along for the ride, they aren't apart of the group of players working as a team to keep the vehicle alive, they are merely players going from point A to point B.)

• Server transfer token available in Depot

Yay! Now we can swap servers!
However, what about the players who have multiple cross-faction characters on the same server. It's getting annoying to start losing the battle and see your allies just switch sides since the other side is winning, not to mention the mass amounts of people who have alts that are being used to spy or troll the enemy faction (although with this the other problem relies in secondary accounts).

Also, There is a problem with people leaving dead servers in favor of more active ones, making the near-empty servers completely dead. Will we see merging/closing of servers soon?

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

Fantastic! No problems here! Score is a far favorable measurement of team-orientated play than kills. Will Pilots still be getting score as well though?

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

Finally. Managing and watching outfits has been hard up until this point. Also being able to kick players whom haven't played since release is also nice.

• New weapon type for all empires: SMG

Yay more weapons to fiddle around with!
However, I hope these new weapons aren't the 'Guns of the Week' before getting hard-nerfed to keep with balance. The SMG's better be damn good at super close range and utterly terrible at medium/long range.

• 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.

Nothing but concerns on this one. I can see (with the way it's worded) that this can be very exploitable. Revived players should only get 1s or less of invulnerability, enough to allow the player to get their bearings and for the split-second loading. The reasoning behind this is if the invulnerabilty lasts too long, you could do invul-revive pushes in biolabs or otherwise, by reviving the player, allowing that player to rush up and run past the enemy lines, throw nades, fire SMG to quickly kill 1-2 people, then respawn. Not to mention the ammo that would be wasted for the enemy who attempt to kill invulnerable players. Not to mention MAX rushes + revive grenade. Dear lord.

Freshly spawned players should also have a large limitation. They already spawn either high in the sky via deploy or behind force-fields in spawn houses. The only spawn that would be worrysome is upon sunderers. Even so, they should have limitiations on invulnerability due to rushing while invulnerable to the enemy to quickly drop C4/nades/etc.

The fix for above is limit invulnerability to 3-5s, and if the player does ANY action- move, shoot, throw nade, scope in, etc. then the Invulnerability is turned off. The only reason they should be invulnerable is because they are still loading in and can be killed before the loading even finishes.

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

Player-configurable colors and indicators sounds fantastic. I also hope this means that you can configure colors for people in your Outfit/Friends list whom are not in your platoon. So this way, if your outfit is running multiple platoons then you can still distinguish between friendlies you know.

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

Sounds good. I assume this shows locations that aren't hot-droppable so players can see where other fights are. Talking about Hot-drops, I think a small change should be made to them. I think that you should only be allowed to hot-drop in if your faction already has any sort of Spawn Beacon present OR if your to defend a base. This is to allow players to hot-drop in on locations that are being attacked or defended but not allow mass deployment on a location if there isn't a Spawn Beacon present, so defenders know whether or not there is a beacon in the area.

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

FANTASTIC.

• 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.

FANTASTIC. I just hope that these tunnel systems allow for combat to happen inside, because I really would like to have some infantry combat in narrow corridors away from tank/lib spam. Also with rooms with places to hide behind, and not Only long winding tunnels.

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

Liberators just got another huge buff. Although I agree that ESF's and other vehicles should be able to see the huge hulking masses of infantry-mechs firing at them, this still is a huge buff to Liberators. My only hope is that we actually get more counters to lib-spams, because mass MAXes is now hugely nerfed and mass ESF still takes a long time to kill if the enemy has mass Lib.

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

Great.

Skyguards will still be utter crap until they are given a larger clip size, though. This could be implemented in certs, increasing clip size by 25 rounds each tick (having 100-150 rounds max if fully certed) and having the same amount of cost as ammo size increases. This should be a side-grade to ammo size increase so the player has to choose if they want a bigger clip or carry more ammo. (An alternative would be to give this side-grade alongside reload speed increase, but let's be honest- reload speed is utter crap compared to a larger clip size for the Skyguard.)

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

A reasonable change. Getting rather tired of firing at tanks with missile launchers and them not doing any damage.

• Air vehicle weapon tweaks

No clue what this could mean. I assume it's more Rocket-Pod nerfs even though we don't need it.
People need to stop whining about this.
You are more than likely going to die much faster against a tank, liberator, or even a sunderer with Fury/Bulldog weapons than a rocket-podding ESF. It's YOUR FAULT that you have no AA Burster MAXes.

However, this could also mean a change to nerf Liberator Zephyr, in which case- fantastic.

• Increases to reload speed for certain HE ground vehicle weapons

Interesting change.

• And of course... lots of bug fixes

I sincerely hope this means that Memory Leaks and Screen Flashing and game constantly Crashing has been fixed. I also sincerely hope the possible exploit that players can make that causes massive player crashing has been fixed as well.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

All around, a decent patch that's fixed a lot of issues I've had with the game.

There is still one Major fix that I'm waiting for, however.
FIX INFANTRY RENDERING DISTANCE IN LARGE BATTLES.
This is the biggest issue I have with the game. I get so upset and stop playing whenever I get into these battles.
This game is awesome in that it allows you to fight in massive conflicts, but whats the point if you can only see 2 feet in front of you and die from random nade spam from an enemy who is invisible? Seriously, if this isn't fixed- I doubt I'll continue playing this game. I am so sick of running into invisible walls of enemy players, Period.

All these things sound very interesting to me. I am especially interested to hear more about the Air Vehicle changes and seeing improvements to the HA rockets and flak.

On a separate note, I think it would be a cool addition to add in a "top player" location mechanism. That is, on any given continent, provide the ability for players to see the top 20 players currently on, the hex they are located in and the class/vehicle they are currently using. It would be an ****** moment for those top players to be hunted, and give other players additional things to work towards (i.e. taking them down for an extra XP bonus). Just a thought.

The Vulcan is not short on range, it says short on it but I have seen it hit at almost 400 meters, hell, it is more accurate than the default turret because of the low CoF, you have the fastest moving tank, you can "racer" your tank and run circles around anything that is not a mag to hit it in the back or sides, the Vulcan tears you apart if you hit anyone from the sides.

It's a skyguard turret (even better because you can't see the fire from it) with lower range, what else do you want? or want to trade it for an enforcer?

Lets see when the majority realizes that a render distance adjustment for max units is the biggest balance change between air and anti-air

If I understood this correctly, then the patch will go live in 21 days which equals 3 weeks. I really don't think that the playerbase can wait that long, because game balance issues are so serious that people quit on a daily basis. Now I understand that certain stuff takes as long as it takes, but in this case, I suggest a few hotfixes to adjust the most serious problems. Especially it takes nothing more than changing a few numbers in the database to "tweak" air-weapons. It also doesn't take more than adjusting a few numbers to buff the Skyguard.

I have cut down my playtime massively over the past couple of days, because I was waiting for the patch. Waiting 3 weeks for stuff that can be implemented in roughly 5 minutes is a bit too much for me.

Looks like a great patch! Thank you for listening about the actual problems instead of the whiny complaints.
Keep up the good work.

Nailed it!

I would trade PS2 in an instant for a renewed Infantry game!!
And nailed it again on the CPU line, CPU optimization is much more important.

air weapon tweaks = nerfs
I already think scythe photon pods are decent only against tanks. Not so easy to kill infantry with them.

Baby steps are better than no steps at all i guess.

Having to see the game slowly turn into ps1 in order to be decent, when ps1 already was the way it was years ago, is quite amusing though.. and frustrating.

Please have a look at this, I believe you can improve game experience by fixing current problems in the Squad/Platoon setup. Thank you

http://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/index.php?threads/platoon-squad-revamp.77360/

Any time frame at all on account wide unlocks ? Was one of the main things I was looking forward too, thought it was penciled in for this January update :/

I would like to see all weapons available to all classes, no reason i can't use any weapon i want, its just plain stupid, classes = old school, when loadouts where too difficult to program (code). This is modern day, balancing classes is just plain dumb and waste of resources, give the tools, balance them as needed, example: that does not mean semi auto's do more damage compared to full auto to compensate for fire mode, or LMG's doing less damage because they have large weapon capacities, it means make each weapon unique or situational but viable

Anyway, seeing the class system, i would think SMG's are for infiltrators and engineers and/or medics.

Again, remove 1990-2000 era class system, loadouts - its the only way to be sure.

Dyamic XP...

But is it aimed at in-base infantry-on-infantry spawn-camping, or at armor vs infantry camping... or at liberators/ESFs farming an AMS Sunderer rather than destroying it? SOE needs to state exactly what it is they expect this change to fix.

I couldn't agree more. I very much fear that the upshot of this change will be to reduce overall xp/cert gain, especially for infantry. If they change is intended more to discourage AMS Sunderer camping and the like then reduce the xp per infantry kill when the kill was from any vehicle. At least combine with this dynamic XP by having different multipliers depending on how the kill was achieved.

And as others have pointed out it would be better to base it on XP gained by the killed player during that life to reflect killing support players like Engineers and Medics.

Come to think of it why not just have the base 'freshly spawned' XP stay as it is now and then increase player per killed XP ? That way we at least don't take a step backwards, but killing more 'useful' enemy players will reward, rather than just spawn-camping.

Conspiracy Theorists might wonder if the change is aimed exactly at reducing average earned XP and thus increasing the number of players who buy boosts....

1. I completely agree, this is just dumb, only spawning should have a 2-3 sec invuln, and only until they start moving or shooting, if at sund spawning.

2. Are you on crack, that the dumbest thing i heard all morning, akimbo, wtf, dual weapons...don't get me started...arg

Finally can join squads with ppl i dont know Great, thx.

Regarding the XP adjustments - please consider;

Sharing XP between squadmembers, and maybe even platoon. The "killer" gets full xp, while the rest gets like 1/10th or some other fraction you guys will have to balance. Like in PS1.

This will #1. give great incentive to joining squads, both with friends and public, #2. give incentives to stick around your squad, and most importantly #3. will make it much more tempting for new players to even begin playing the game with friends who can "mentor" them.

Don't hold your breath. There's a lot more to producing each frame than actual graphics rendering, and GPUs are only good at certain things (in essence operations that can be greatly parallelised over a sizeable data set). Sure, they can optimise the bits that have to be done on CPU, so as to give the GPU a bit more work to do per unit time, but it's just not feasible to 'optimise' everything onto the GPU. The game would end up running worse if they tried to shoe-horn some functionality into the GPU when it really does run better on CPUs.

I am glad I killed my sub, total BS.

An SMG is just a fully automatic pistol. If they do it right, I would expect low dmg rounds with a very high rate of fire and probably a short effective range. I would like for them to be a secondary weapon option but that would probably turn out to be a little overpowered.

Well, take a break then and come back? I dont see the big issue here. Its not like "people quit" means they uninstall it from computer and brain completely forever, all it takes is 10 sec to login in again later. I agree theres a few issues thats long overdue, but its not gamebreaking for me. Ill keep playing meanwhile at least, provided theres ENEMY PLATOONS DETECTED to overcome still.