Planetside 2 beta to get at least one new continent before launch

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A new continent, Esamir is on its way to the PlanetSide 2 beta, while the third might be added post launch, according to a post by SOE’s John Smedley on the Planetside 2 forums. Also announced are balance changes, gun recoil adjustments, performance issues and the importance of certifications/resources. More details after the break.

Indar is currently the only continent that is available in the beta, the second Esamir is being added shortly. The developers are keen to receive feedback on how having two vast stages of war will have an effect on the game as a whole. “We also are working hard on Esamir. It’s getting closer and closer to a finished state where we want you guys to play on it. It’s pretty awesome and very different gameplay wise than Indar. After that Amerish will go back to being worked on. These continents are taking longer than we expected and it’s possible we end up launching with two and delivering the 3rd shortly after launch.”
The SOE team are also planning weapon balance changes, after noticing that skirmishes are taking place at longer distances. “Gunplay – expect a lot of changes here in the next patch and beyond. We’ve seen the average engagement distance is longer than originally anticipated and we are going to more of a recoil model with certs to calm down the recoil. Again.. judge it when you play it.”
Game performance is paramount for a game of this scale. The major culprits, CPU and RAM. “The single biggest issue remains CPU performance,” says Smedley. “We have a lot more work to do. We also have work to do on RAM. Right now roughly 75% of our playerbase has 6 Gig of ram or over. The ones that don’t feel pain. We get it. … I believe this game is always going to have higher spec requirements for a machine to really play well than most other PC games. I want to be up-front about that. At some point the size and scale really does cost.”
Finally there were comments on how certifications and resources are going to an integral part of how you play. “Right now resources don’t matter enough,” says Smedley. “Soon they will matter a lot more. Certs will also be getting their closer to final times. We fully intend for the high end of certs to take weeks but the lower parts to be minutes and hours. Certs are going to matter in this game. Time invested IS going to matter in this game.”
If you’ve managed to get into the beta, what are your thoughts so far? Do these changes reflect a step in the right direction? Let us know in the comments.