Planetside 2’s creative director revealed that update GU09 will be rolling out later this week, bringing with it rush lanes. Reports from the test server also suggest that we could be about to see a drop in weapon and boost prices.
Planetside 2’s next set of changes to Game Update 08 is promised to be the biggest the game has seen since launch. That means an armoury full of new boomsticks and a sweet new ride, alongside a bunch of balancing tweaks, bug fixes and UI updates.
If you log in to the Planetside 2 test server today, like the teddy bears at their picnic, you’re in for a surprise. Ish. Two major additions to the game are now live: the Harasser buggy, a three-person jeep thing that has space for a MAX suit.
And there’s a revamp of the MAX suits themselves. And those MAX suits might be a problem.
Silence fell across Auraxis in the early hours of this morning, if only for a couple of hours while SOE nailed all of the new bits developed for Game Update 07 onto the servers. Since then, it’s actually been slightly noisier than usual, thanks to a tweak that for whatever reason has seen Planetside’s jetpacks increase in volume. For that and handy new features like visible weapon stats and equipment previews, see the changelog below.
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In a recent interview with The Mittani, SOE’s Matt Higby revealed that the developer is planning on expanding its new alerts system to generate objectives across all of a server’s continents. Currently, when an alert event kicks in, say capture as much of Amerish as you can, the server will begin to struggle as all its players try to get to Amerish and pitch in for the cause. This soon leads to server queues. The new alerts will be planetwide so you can help your faction from any of the continents.
Higby also went into weapon balances and how pro-gaming will feed back into the standard game.
Play in Planetside 2 has got a tad more focused with a recent run of updates SOE have released. Special planetwide objectives draw in players from all over the server to meet in merry combat at specific locations and service ribbons are rewarded for particular achievements. There are also a couple of added extras for subscribers.
Mobile apps that tie into games have a tendency to be pants. Or, at least, very much an afterthought, only providing you with stats or server updates, things which don’t allow you to affect the game while away from your computer. Much of the Planetside 2 app is all of that guff but one very good feature is the ability to voice chat with your outfit.
Yup, SOE have essentially given you the batphone.
We took a little break from the playlist last week. I say that, we couldn't get near our computers because Nick let the basilisk out again. It's back in its pit now, though, and we can get back to the grindstone.
This week Rob's been playing Bioshock: Infinite and wondering why Columbia is the setting. Rapture made sense thematically but not Columbia. Nick's calling out all those babies who thought Dark Souls was a hard game. Tim's become a bit of a flyboy in Planetside and wants to tell as all about it. And Jules? Well, he's gone well nerdy and been fussing about Torchlight 2's UI.
The Planetside 2 community has been flailing around in panic these past couple of days as a huge injection of certs to compensate duplicate purchases flooded the game. With the introduction of account wide unlocks, many players who had played by the rules of character bound unlocks were given extra cert points. However it was made apparent that some characters were receiving astronomical amounts of certs without any explanation. This led leaderboards being torn apart, and minute old characters being able to unlock more weapons/upgrades than someone with months of playtime.
Chaos reigns in Planetside 2 as a “cert point grant" system that was designed to compensate players who bought weapons prior to the new account-wide unlocks has gone haywire, resulting in some players totalling over 160,000 cert points. This has played havoc with everything from new characters being able to buy every upgrade possible, to leaderboards collapsing under the weight of the sudden cert injection.
SOE are in the process of completely reworking the push and pull of battle in Planetside 2. How? Er, we’re not sure yet. Ask us tomorrow. For tonight, at 5pm PDT / midnight GMT, and for the rest of the week, they’ll be trialing the results so far on the Public Test Server.
ForgeLight, the engine powering SOE’s MMOFPS Planetside 2 will, according to senior art director Tramell Isaac, be at the core of every “internal product that we make from here on out".
Talking to Shack News at GDC, Isaac went on to talk of the engine’s strengths, "We can put 2000 people on a server, and we can have all those guys running at 60fps. We can have upwards of 200 on screen at one time. You can't do that with any other MMO, period. You just can't do that. Then on top of that, you can do it with visual fidelity that's comparable with any other first person shooter out there."
Planetside 2 is about as spectacular as war gets; a massively multiplayer first-person shooter in which you are just a small cog in a grand war effort. You should try it. It’s great.
If you’re already playing, though, you’ll face some tough decisions. Planetside 2 is a free-to-play game, and new guns and toys are are expensive, either in time, or Station Cash.
PCGamesN mostly plays as the Terran Republic; so they are the focus in this loadout guide, we’ve spent a vast amount of Station Cash to try as many of the Terran weapons as we possible can.
We’ll add to this guide as we try more weapons and as SOE alter the balance of the game.
To celebrate and honour religion's most popular zombie (or, more secularly speaking, the arrival of the new season), SOE are doubling Station Cash and XP in PlanetSide 2 all weekend. That is to say, for every enemy you kill and every ship you explode you'll earn twice as much experience, and for every pound you spend on Station Cash SOE will add another. Double Station Cash and double experience kicked off at 7am this morning, so if you were planning on either grinding your character or grinding your wallet, you'd best get a move on.
Easter traditions were founded millennia ago by the rabbit god Frith, a creature that laid large hollow chocolate eggs wrapped in glittery foil as a symbol of just how satisfying a superficial hollow life can be. That’s not stopped SOE trying to go their own way, repurposing Frith’s birthday weekend as some kind of bedevilled Planetside 2 promotional event. The MMOFPS developer has announced this weekend will see double XP and double Station Cash.
They’ve also announced the new Planetside 2 mobile app and released a video on the development of the Forgelight game engine.
Tentatively due out next week, Planetside 2's forth major features update is bringing a couple much-requested features. For a start, items bought on one server for one character will now be unlocked for any of your characters that can use them. There'll also finally be a VR training area where you can practice with the different vehicles and weapons without worrying about respawn cooldown timers.
This week has seen half of Planetside 2’s servers upended and their residents tipped unceremoniously into other, half-full versions of Auraxis. But among the excitement, lots of small, notable additions and fixes have wormed their way into the game. Would you like to hear about them?
Sony Online Entertainment prez John Smedley has taken to /r/planetside to give a clear explanation of the current state of PlanetSide 2's policies regarding the banning and suspension of hackers and cheaters and other assorted ne'er-do-wells. No surprise: it's a depressing cat and mouse roundabout, with SOE developing anti-hacking algorithms as quickly as hackers can develop smarter aimbots. Some surprise: SOE are planning on fighting back against the cheat enablers using lawyers and gavels.
The story never changes, though the game names vary. Another hive of juicy account data has been cracked open by another set of tedious individuals, and email addresses and passwords may have been glimpsed. Thankfully, Planetside 2 EU server custodians ProSiebenSat.1 have taken “all necessary actions" to put things straight.
If Valve have taught the games industry anything it's that hats sell like hot cakes, hot cakes dressed in spiffing attire, including, at a bare minimum, a fedora and cape. So it is that we see SOE reveal that the Terran Republic forces are soon to receive a Comissar's hat with which to deck out their players.
