January 31, 2025 - PTS Update

Deployables are blocked from being placed inside no deploy zones. That includes beacons, routers, mana turrets, spitfires , hardlight barriers and anything that has the red/green prompt when placing. I don't have outfit loyalty to test tactical deployables but very likely all of them are affected too.

Second major bug. Swapping from passenger seat to gunner or driver seat crashes the game on: Flash, Harasser, valk and chimera. Not sure about the bastion because we need pop to test it. Colossus is fine. Someone please fill up a bastion during the test hours and swap in gunner seats as passengers to test bastions too. Swapping from gunner seat to another gunner seat or passenger seat is fine. The passenger seat to gunner or driver seat is the problem. Passenger to passenger is fine.

As for collisions, so far I've seen a good job on the ground floor of assault facilities. I went underneath it and my bullets couldn't pierce the ground and hit things above it. Please fix collision exploits I have sent you a few months back. You fixed fishing, please fix the rest. One of them in particular got fixed with oshur but was never fixed on the other maps. Make all maps' ground terrain work like assault facility. That will fix at least out of bounds exploiters getting kills. Ground terrain works like a one way shield that you can shoot through from underneath but not from above. Same with objects.

Hackers are overtaking the servers again. Please add community mods or at least monitor prime times of each server. We can do it for free we don't mind. Hackers have found a god mod abuse but somehow they can be damaged with fire dot from thumper. Not sure if emp works on them. Use that info as a clue to find a way to stop it.

Lastly, people please test the test server. All these bugs would hit live if I didn't bother testing.

Extra note: Throwing the fishing probe and entering a vehicle while it still hasn't hit a water source, triggers an autopilot mode on the vehicle depending on the keybinds pressed at that time when the probe actuallyt hits water and fishing begins. For example if I throw probe, enter a corsair and hold w and d key, when the probe hits the water, my corsair will enter a never ending auto pilot clockwise drift. This puts you an a passenger seat status and swapping to a driver or gunner seat(all of the corsair seats) crashes the game like explained on the second bug above.

I really don't think fishing should go to LIVE. Honestly it is fine on a test server but why turn people's view of the game into a troll game? WHY?

MMOFPS. Massively Multiplay = Not fishing alone. First person shooter = no fishing rods

THINK ABOUT THE PEOPLE THAT QUIT THE GAME LONG TERM TEMPORARILY AND THE FIRST THING THEY HEAR IS "FISHING". THESE GUYS ARE GONNA DIP OUT AND NEVER COME BACK.

Turnout for both of the test events was less than 20 players for the first and less than 10 for the second, so keep in mind that we haven't seen this facility in large battles like it was intended.

The overall experience for low population fights is poor, mainly because of how impossible it is to defend assuming an even skill/coordination level on both sides.

There does not seem to be any map indicator for capture progress, which was/is one of the major annoyances with CTF bases. As a leader, if you can't see progress on the map you don't know how urgent it is to respond.

Since there are unlikely to be defenders when a capture starts, the first (and second?) point are basically freebies. The entire base capture could go through before the defending faction even sees it on the map. There is some room here for a coordinated group with a leader that understands the specifics of this base to quickly redeploy their group and reach A point in time to defend, but if they are that coordinated their better move is to immediately retake the base they just lost.

The point flip timer at C point is also fast enough that there's not even time to run back from outside the building if somebody happens to sneak in and start flipping it, which is a real possibility during small to medium sized fights in such a spread out facility. This means you need to have people preemptively defending the next point in the sequence, which is a lot of standing around and waiting.

Low population fights pretty much guarantee the attacker caps the base. Even if spawn points are lost, attackers have 10 minutes to fly back and cap two points. Each point only needs to be captured *once*, since defenders can't take it back. With the size of the base it's impossible to defend for the entire duration. Even if the base somehow gained momentum and enough population to be considered a large fight, the only tactics required are rushing the next point. These are not complicated or necessarily even interesting tactics; we see this constantly in-game already, but the difference is that there is no possibility for defenders to react because the point is already lost and cannot be retaken.

Even if the base is successfully "defended" (all attackers in the region are dead without spawns), once attackers flip the second point, defenders must wait approximately 8 minutes for tickets to drain before they can flip points at the adjacent base, even if the fight is completely over. This results in awful gameplay of needing to sit at C point the entire time doing essentially nothing, but being alert in case somebody comes back. If you get caught afk during those 8 minutes, they flip the point and the base is immediately gone.

The current ticket system does not scale with fight size. In small fights it's irrelevant because it will likely never run out before the base is captured. In very large fights I imagine it would run out very quickly, if fights ever managed to get that big before the base was captured.

The whole cooldown mechanic where "This point is locked" is both lacking indicators as to why the point can't be flipped as well as being a frustrating mechanic for when a capture fails and needs to be restarted. Nobody wants to sit there after losing the base saying "Why can't I flip the point?". Instead, I suggest you make it a very slowed point capture during cooldown, or at the very least put a timer until recapture on screen somewhere so there's something happening for the player to stare at. The cooldown timer between re-captures after the base is flipped is annoyingly long. I believe it was timed at 5 minutes? That entire time there is no indicator for the person standing on the point of either how long is remaining before it can be captured, or the reason that it can't be captured.


Points B/C should say something like "Points must be captured in order A->B->C for assault facilities" or some similar kind of text as the error message when they can't be captured yet. Another possibility might be to instead put shields over the building entrances when the point can't be captured yet. I can imagine a few other possibilities for the UI in this regard as well, like abandoning the typical A/B/C naming scheme entirely to indicate this is not a typical base capture.

The ticket counter is going to confuse new and returning players. Even if they happen to notice it they won't know what it means. Can it be called "Attacker spawn tickets" or something to indicate it's actually the total remaining spawns?

Performance could use more work. I get noticably lower frame rates in this region than I do for the rest of Esamir.

Nitpick: The snowy Esamir effect is everywhere inside the buildings, which doesn't make sense and is also mildly distracting.



Audio:

Audio occlusion is jarring and feels very janky/low quality, especially when things like voice callouts change between direct/occluded a few times in one callout. This happens if there's a tiny object like a railing between you.

Anvils and ANT turbo are two sounds I noticed sound particularly glitchy, possibly from the sound occlusion change. It's like the sound cuts in and out rapidly, creating a static-like effect.



Bugs:
* My client crashed once when warping to sanctuary from Esamir. I wish I could provide more details.
* My game also froze when I clicked logout while in sanctuary. I waited about a minute before alt+f4.
* Random restricted area in the assault facility: area x=895.273 y=134.092 z=-362.415, Heading: -1.300 /loc 895.273 134.092 -362.415
* When we tested assault failure, the point being contested (B) continued to flash long after the points reset. It could not be captured, but it flashed as though somebody was capturing it.
* Defenders couldn't spawn at the A point building when they controlled it if I remember correctly. I assume this is unintentional.


I hope that was all clear enough, but I've already spent enough time on this writeup.

Barely anyone played. I think everyones tested and had fun before.

Time to release the Assault Base only.

The good: I think the objective of the base lay out succeeds in having three stages of fighting.

1. Combined arms, open field and access to a spawn point for defenders right away.

2. infantry inside to capture B and combined arms outside

3. Final point infantry only.

4. The 3 step catpure mechanic was awesome and should be implemented in other bases, ive been enjoying the diversity in capture points.

Each stage has lots of good cover for defenders and although i think some access ways could be closed i couldnt say which because nothing was over whelming.


Here is others issues with it that couldnt get on and doesnt use the forums:

Newbie chat should be disabled, as it serves no purpose in test.

No Deploy zone/build zone seems like it should just be missing all together.


The Bad

There was almost no one there to actually test it. At this point, it would just be better to release it on the live servers so enough people get to use it if you arent going to go to greater legnths to get the word out or offer an award for participation.

Second, Why is there No GM, No Dev, No elected Outfit to take lead. I Have never seen a team so handsoff about testing and taking part of the day to day of the game.

I know unpaid GMs are not always the easiest to deal with, but the cheating has got to stop.

I cant lead a group of people against a front that a cheater is on, it kills the confidence of lower level players, and if you try to stick through it with Veterans, its mentally exhausting to take an inch and lose a mile.

I love this game and im about to start spending a lot more time again and we all need your help and acknowledgement that you hear us.

I agree, I also can't understand why you need fishing in a first-person shooter where you can get killed at any moment, and it looks pretty boring. If they really wanted to do something in terms of research, then they could come up with something like anomalous zones throughout Auraxis that they needed to fight for and capture before studying. Such zones could be made to appear dynamically near the front line. Or you could make conditional contracts, for example, you take a contract to study an anomalous zone, and then at a random moment people with such a contract receive a message about the occurrence of anomalous zones on an already closed continent. When you go on such a mission, you can meet with other players, it will generate shootouts and the like, after all, we have a shooter here, and the concept I proposed would look very good inside the game, as a kind of action shooter that is now widely heard.

Of course, I quickly wrote my own version, you can think about this topic better. Although, who needs it?

I agree, I would like to see similar step-by-step capture mechanics on other bases, the concept is just great! But the mechanics of collapsible, prefabricated walls or doors would look good here. It would be possible to implement closed passages, walls, or doors with their HP that could be destroyed with explosives, thereby generating a dynamic change of battle directions and sudden moments of attacks. It's strange why it's not in the game yet, because it's easy to implement, construction has been in the game for a long time.

Personally, I recommend that developers fix the bug with the inability to deploy objects such as turrets, lighthouses, etc., etc.

Redesign the area around point "A" so that it would be more suitable for fighting on equipment, since now this point is in a very inconvenient place from the point of view of fighting on tanks.

And release the assault object into the main game in the next update. And further customization should be carried out in the main game with the participation of many players. Considering that this is just one object in one sector, in case of any problems it will have a minimal impact on the entire game.

we all need it

huge issue, like might as well have it on live so people can actually use it

@Mithril
Please all of the devs individually read the room on Fishing across steam/forums/reddit.

This is not needed for the game. I''ve seen people saying they aren't taking the game seriously anymore about it when people have been dieing for QOL updates for years.

Yes, this is complete nonsense, which greatly harms the image of the game.

Honestly I would go further and say the new content update will probably be useless and underwhelming. Sorry guys nothing in the update is as exciting as Mithrils comment on reddit stating the next dev letter will be about balance. Game balance is much more enticing than the new archeotech update.

That's where I can't agree with you. Balance is not particularly important for new players and those who return to the game years later. Many players who returned a few years later did not notice that Sunderer now has a force field around the respawn. Balance is probably important for some of the players right now (although I'm happy with some of it) but new players and returning ones pay attention to the content and content. Especially when the new content has an external difference from the old one. So archeotech is something that can increase interest in the game from the outside, of course, with proper advertising. This is the psychology of people.

Bug report on an assault facility!


In the second building, where point C is located, there is a bug with transparent window textures. This bug was found in the first iteration of the object. If you look through the windows, there are no textures in the world outside the window, you can see the sea under the map. This error is not observed in the second structure with point B.

A mistake on the Hossin continent!

Construction is impossible in swampy areas. When trying to install any structure, it says "The deployment zone intersects with existing facilities", this problem is only in swampy areas, the problem is not observed on ordinary land. Also, any deployable objects: Turrets, tracking T-shirts, amphibious beacons, anti-tank hedgehogs, etc., etc. are placed on top of the water!

Also, in the SWAMPY AREAS OF HOSSIN, damage does not pass through the surface of the water. ANY MINES, anti-tank or anti-personnel mines installed underwater CANNOT BE DESTROYED WITH A SHOT! The damage does not pass through the water.

If that is the case then why was the arsenal update more successful than content updates at bringing back players. Arsenal update looks like a weapons patch to shake up the meta if you haven't touched Planetside in years. Many vets, including myself, came back to Ps2 with the hopes of "maybe they balanced the broken stuff" (I left because of the OP gatekeeper at release). Here is picture of the pop chart around arsenal update