Hey everyone,
With the 26th quick approaching, I wanted to provide a brief update on the overall status of the PS2: Escalation launch…
This past Friday, we published another full build to PTS for public testing/feedback. Overall, the update is looking pretty damn solid. However, two areas we are continuing to focus on are Sanctuary performance and a very infrequent bug where Bastion(s) locations can become out of sync on different clients for short periods of time, before correcting to the proper location. Even though this is a fairly rare occurrence, it can still happen and we want to continue taking the necessary steps for it to never happen once the update is live.
We currently have changes that are being tested internally to further improve Sanctuary performance, as well as fix the Bastion issue. But as you are probably aware, I’ve lost count of the number of times we *fix* a bug, it checks-out during internal testing, then immediately happens the moment it gets published to PTS or Live with real-world server populations.
So here is the plan…
The team is preparing a new PTS update with the changes outlined above, along with some additional bug fixes, data tuning, launch prep, etc. from the feedback we received over the weekend. Our goal is to get this build published to PTS by late tonight (Monday) or early Tuesday morning for a public playtest – an invite with timing would go out via social channels to get as many players to participate as possible. Again, the primary focus would be the Sanctuary perf improvements and Bastion fix, but we will also be keeping a close eye on server performance and client stability.
Depending on the results of this PTS playtest, we will make a final call on the Escalation update going live on Wednesday the 26th – so your participation is crucial! If we run into any major issues that cannot be addressed quickly, I have no problem holding the Escalation launch another day(s) to make sure we roll it out without any obvious, glaring issues.
Again, more details about the Tuesday PTS playtest will go out as soon as we have the build prepped, which should be later today. So please keep an eye on the usual channels; @planetside2, official forums, reddit, etc.
Thank you all again for your help.
Andy
Source: Test Server: Announcements