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The Re4pers => Planetside 2 News => Planetside 2 - Update Notes => Topic started by: PSNews on 15/09/2021, 03:19

Title: Sept. 15, 2021 - A New Player Experience
Post by: PSNews on 15/09/2021, 03:19
All PC servers will come down for the following update on Wednesday, September 15, at 6:00am PT (3:00pm CEST). Downtime for this update is expected to last up to 3 hours.

--

Back to Basics

This update contains a massive push toward a better starting experience for new players. Everything from character creation, to the tutorial, to default loadouts, to the player's first "real" combat, to quality of life has been revisited.

Character Create

We've completely overhauled the character create and character selection screens. New UI, audio, faction introductions, FX and lighting all combine to enrich a player's introduction to our world.

[img alt=[IMG]]https://i.imgur.com/PIt4p3m.png

[img alt=[IMG]]https://i.imgur.com/6CQqmch.png

New Tutorial

When looking at learning curve (or cliff?) of PlanetSide 2, we tried to isolate the lessons that could not only introduce players to the gameplay basics, but also help them understand and reinforce behaviors they'd be engaging in often. Capturing and defending bases, switching classes to adapt to situations, checking the map, and learning how to identify fights were among them. The new tutorial attempts to take all of these lessons and create a walkthrough that feels cohesive, and helps connect the player to the feeling of our game using mock battles with squads of NPCs fighting each other.

[img alt=[IMG]]https://i.imgur.com/iEyR7nr.png

Post-Tutorial

We've added new "faction embassies" to the Sanctuary neutral zone. After completing the tutorial, the player lands here first to unlock some equipment, and head down to the planet's surface where they'll be able to speak to new "Field Commander" NPCs located in the upstairs room of each faction's Warpgate. We use this as a bridge to the game world, and help the player transition to their first major battle. The mission system guides much of this experience, creating short, achievable goals within the sandbox.

[img alt=[IMG]]https://i.imgur.com/ozoJy3s.png

Default Equipment

We've made some tweaks to which equipment new players get at the start of the game. A couple of the areas we wanted to address were the lack of infantry anti-air in the earlier stages of the game, the unwieldy nature of certain starter weapons, and the lack of default vehicle equipment. Those changes will be listed further down in the Infantry and Vehicles sections of these notes.

Various QoL and NPE Improvements



Colorblind Accessibility

In an effort to improve our accessibility to colorblind gamers, we've added some new options under the graphics setting. Enabling colorblind filters will modify the colors of the 3d world to help account for Protanopia, Deuteranopia, Tritanopia, and Achromatopsia. You can adjust the "amount" and "strength" of the color adjustments to find what works best for you.

[img alt=[IMG]]https://i.imgur.com/M09kFSD.png

There are also some existing features worth bringing up while we're here. Faction-specific map and HUD indicators can be defined in the interface settings for better readability. Squad indicator colors can also be customized from the squad tab, and orbital strike and Sunderer no-deploy volumes can also be recolored.

[img alt=[IMG]]https://i.imgur.com/omRE31p.png

Zones and Alerts

High-Pop (Conquest) Alerts

When a continent has more than 800 players on it, a "Conquest" Alert will immediately fire off that uses the same rules of a typical Meltdown.

For the third-party scripters out there, these are the alert IDs used for those events.

TI Alloys

Indar's best/worst base is now available for play again.

Missions

System Changes

Contractor Rewards

Missions now have consistent rewards based on contractors.

Dev Note: We've restructured missions to allow for more control over your rewards, and provide more options to free players. All currencies can be found in the non-member missions, so regardless of what you're looking for, be it more A7, Certs, or ISO, you'll be able to earn it daily. Members-only missions tend to have higher currency payouts overall. The "extra" rewards from missions, the weapons and boosts, were removed from the dailies, though it's possible these sorts of things return as rewards for holidays or in another fashion.

Graphics Improvements

Lighting Falloff

We've updated our lighting volumes to use a different kind of falloff. Moving from our previous quadratic light falloff to a (mostly) linear falloff model softens how "hot" the center of the lighting volume is, and reduces how sharply the light diminishes over range. The quadratic falloff we were using prior to this update made it more difficult (and expensive) to light interior spaces, as we needed to use more, smaller lights with higher intensities to fill the volume of space. The new falloff technique provides us with more control over lighting environments in the future, and softens the current lighting in-game to balance out the harsh extremes.

New Lighting in Menus

We've started using new lighting in the character select, character create, infantry, and vehicle loadout screens that provides more depth to our character models (and looks better all around.)

Shadow Quality

This is more of a fix than an update. We identified a change from a few years ago that essentially knocked every shadow quality level down by one. "Ultra" shadows, as an example, weren't really the intended Ultra shadows, and it was never reachable in the in-game settings menu, but was still possible to set in the UserOptions.ini. With this update, players' shadows will be bumped up a level, so you may need to adjust your shadow quality settings again once you are in-game.

Additionally, we've made some improvements to shadows to reduce the amount of artifacting that takes place on sheer edges during certain times of day. Current on Live (https://i.imgur.com/ed85eFy.png), versus the  Updated  (https://i.imgur.com/pe2K2mp.png)version (don't mind the bullet holes.) Both are at the same spot on Esamir, at the same time of day.

Vehicles

Default Utility and Defense

Bastion Fleet Carrier

Lightning

Heavy Machine Gun Resistance

Dev Note: These resistance adjustments are a significant improvement to overall damage output of HMG weapons, and will likely need fine tuning following this update.

Infantry

Default Sniper Rifles

Default Rocket Launchers

GD-22S (NC LMG)

T9A "Butcher" (TR Directive LMG)

Defector (NSO MAX)

Cortium Bomb (Tactical Slot)

Nanoweave Armor (Suit Slot)

Dev Note: We're aware that this change has been discussed a fair deal in the community recently, and are open to making modifications in the future as needed.

Ammunition Belt (Suit Slot)

Flash Grenade

Quick-Det Flash



Implants

Cold Heart

Experimental Stims

Symbiote

Ocular Shield

Avoidance

Heavyweight

Assassin

Nanomesh Specialist

Paratrooper

Sidewinder

New in the Depot

Sky-cutter Drop Pod - 499 DBC

Slice through the skies in this hi-tech drop pod, complete with new engine FX.

[img alt=[IMG]]https://i.imgur.com/DYlfLbV.png

Security Assault & Security Inspector Helmets (NSO only) - 699 DBC

These new NSO-bot helmets are ready to keep you safe.

[img alt=[IMG]]https://i.imgur.com/DSMIUE5.png

Player Studio

Fortress (TR MAX) armor by Fuzzbuket is now available in the Depot.

[img alt=[IMG]]https://i.imgur.com/bp5w7da.png

Spartan (NC MAX) armor by Fuzzbuket is now available in the Depot.

[img alt=[IMG]]https://i.imgur.com/JwD87GX.png

Misc. Changes, Fixes, and Additions


Source: Game Update Notes (http://forums.daybreakgames.com/ps2/index.php?forums/game-update-notes.73/)

Title: Re: Sept. 15, 2021 - A New Player Experience
Post by: MrFFF on 15/09/2021, 11:11
Scary stuff...

the forum post does not include Wrels afterthough

"
Looking Forward
There's a lot going behind the scenes in this update, especially in terms of tech. Things that you'd expect we'd be able to do, like get multiple GUI models to display on the character create screen at the same time, or have actual particle effects in the background were entirely new functionality and exploration for us. (And no, the old-old character create screen did not have particle effects, that was a flash-based animation that faked it pretty well.)

Doing the new tutorial required loads of scripting on top of new code hooks (you'll still find some quirkiness we need to clean up,) and even things like the "glass" that overlooks the void of space in the starting room is a new kind of shader that culls objects behind it so that all you see is the sky file.

The work for this update had both fun and frustration as we explored uncharted territory. All of which will be beneficial in the future.

So what are we looking at next? There's definitely some more cleanup and stretch goals we'd like to work through for the NPE portion of this update, and some of the features that were in development (Munitions Pouch background reload, Koltyr as a low-pop continent, and large continents spinning down when populations can't support them,) were cut from this initial launch so that we can finalize them. The ones mentioned above will likely be in the next hotfix.

After that, we'll be moving right along into October. Halloween should be pretty fun, if relatively low-key. This will give us time to work on our 9th anniversary release. Feels like it's just around the corner.

Anywho. Exciting times.
-Wrel, Lead Designer
"
Title: Re: Sept. 15, 2021 - A New Player Experience
Post by: ViljoLehtinen on 15/09/2021, 12:25
"GD-22S (NC LMG)

    The GD-22S has replaced the NC6 Gauss SAW as the default LMG for the New Conglomerate Heavy Assault.
    GD-22S' default color is now blue, instead of black."


(https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fi1.kym-cdn.com%2Fentries%2Ficons%2Fsquare%2F000%2F006%2F077%2Fso_good.png&f=1&nofb=1)

"Equipping Nanoweave now reduces base movement speed by 10%, and Heavy Assault Shields are no longer affected by Nanoweave's resistance reductions."


Will it still be meta? I'm confused if this is enough to get me to play anything else. What are you opinions?
Title: Re: Sept. 15, 2021 - A New Player Experience
Post by: Coliax on 15/09/2021, 14:08
The first change with gd22s wont affect meta at all. The game just no longer put a gun that needs master aim into the hands of fresh players that have no aim at all.

For the secound chance with nanoweave lets do some math:
Resist Shield effective health = 1000/0,65 = 1538,46
Adrena/Mesh effective health: 1000 + 450 = 1450
    -With nanoweave: 1000/0,8 + 450 = 1250 + 450 = 1700

Befor nerf: 1450/0,8 = 1812,5
That mean that we only loose 112,5 effective health over this.
The 10% movement nerf is a different story, if you one of thos players who exploid the ad-walk or the ad-dance (when running away) then nanoweave might not be as appealing to you as it is now
Title: Re: Sept. 15, 2021 - A New Player Experience
Post by: daddy1986 on 15/09/2021, 14:15
10% movement speed nerf can be a big thing. As light assault you can compensate it with the 10% cert line you can unlock.

For me, im switching to ocular shield. The buff seems really good now and powerfull and i run flak armour 95% of the time anyways.
Title: Re: Sept. 15, 2021 - A New Player Experience
Post by: Coliax on 15/09/2021, 14:16
Also it looks like CC grenades will go out of fashion with this, Flash gets a nerf and ocular shield a buff from 30% on 75%. I think i ditch my grenade bando on my HA defense loadout for eather ammo belt or rocket pounch.
Having a deci every 8 secounds sounds tempting

Edit: NVM just saw, that the rocket punch buff didnt made it
Title: Re: Sept. 15, 2021 - A New Player Experience
Post by: Coliax on 15/09/2021, 14:28
Quote
Heavy Machine Gun Resistance

•Resist type 4 reduced from 87 to 80 for the ANT, Chimera, Lightning, Vanguard, Prowler, Magrider, and Sunderer.
•Resist type 4 reduced from 87 to 80 for the Colossus.
•Resist type 4 reduced from 75 to 70 for Scythe, Reaver, and Mosquito.
Dev Note: These resistance adjustments are a significant improvement to overall damage output of HMG weapons, and will likely need fine tuning following this update.

Btw you know what this means right? It's Godsaw time!
Title: Re: Sept. 15, 2021 - A New Player Experience
Post by: StrikingSpliff on 15/09/2021, 14:37
Godsaw squad tonight  8)  8)
Title: Re: Sept. 15, 2021 - A New Player Experience
Post by: MrFFF on 15/09/2021, 14:57
Oooh i like the sound of that!
Title: Re: Sept. 15, 2021 - A New Player Experience
Post by: Stummeursel on 15/09/2021, 16:39
Let's get the Saw and make them see god
Title: Re: Sept. 15, 2021 - A New Player Experience
Post by: Fallengud on 23/09/2021, 09:40
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-KO3Qi2L1Y

He missed the thumper and jackhammer secondary option for the HA
Title: Re: Sept. 15, 2021 - A New Player Experience
Post by: Stummeursel on 23/09/2021, 16:17
But they are not "Sidearms" it's Primary Weapons in the Sidearmslot
Title: Re: Sept. 15, 2021 - A New Player Experience
Post by: Fallengud on 23/09/2021, 16:32
The faster reload still works as I remember