Game Update 10/2

[PSNews]

Downtime Start: 6am PDT

Nanite of the Living Dead!

Nanite Systems needs YOU!

As we all know (due to the stellar teachings of our patent-pending POD educational system, used in schools all across the Auraxis colonies!), the Space Pumpkin is an amazing fruit, genetically modified by talented grad students at the accredited* Nanotech University Online. This wonderfruit has literally dozens of proven medical and scientific uses that are beneficial for most humans. Unfortunately due to a recent class-action lawsuit, we are currently unable to discuss these uses, but boy oh boy are they great!

“That sure sounds super interesting, but what does it have to do with me?” you may find yourself asking.

Good question, talented and intelligent soldier! Due to a recent “mix-up”, some of our latest samples were shipped down to the surface of Auraxis instead of the testing facility that they were intended for, because Helen in Order Processing can’t seem to separate her personal life from her job long enough to get her assignments sorted.

Unfortunately due to the Space Pumpkin’s super-fast growth hormone, the samples have already taken root and are now growing on Auraxis. That’s no good for us or our court-ordered suspension of distribution, so we need you, the soldiers of Auraxis, to help us out!

It’s simple, really. Find a Space Pumpkin, destroy it, and bring the seeds (SPS) to a designated SPS-drop off zone, and you’ll get a reward!

Isn’t science amazing?

• For a limited time only hunt down space pumpkins and use their seeds to purchase new masks.(these masks are seasonal and can only be equipped during the Nanite of the Living Dead events)
  • Azure Inferno Skull (NC Only)
  • Crimson Inferno Skull (TR Only)
  • Violet Inferno Skull (VS Only)
  • Skull Noir (NS)
  • Inferno Skull (NS)
  • Spectrum Skull (NS)
  • Ichabod Crown (VS/NC/TR)
  • Frankenstein Facepaint (NS)
  • Jester Facepaint (NS)
  • Skull Facepaint (NS)
  • Augmented Brain Chassis (NS)
• New Alert type - Pumpkin Hunt
  • Space Pumpkins will only spawn during the alert
  • The empire that has the destroyed the most pumpkins at the end of the alert locks the continent
  • The alert duration is 1 hour and triggers at random intervals throughout the day
  • Territory Control alerts have been temporarily disabled
• Watch out for strange new properties in sticky grenades and mines.
• Some outposts have been frightened into adopting new names.
• The NS CandyCannon 3000, The Slasher, and brand new horns are available for purchase.
• Complete the Halloween 2014 directives to unlock special rewards.

Directives Updates

• You can now track your objective progress on the HUD
  • Click on any objective from the directive screens to add a progress tracker on your HUD
  • The tracker is positioned on the left side on the HUD, directly above the mission UI
  • Clicking a tracked objective either from the directive screen or from the HUD will untrack the objective
  • Up to 6 objectives can be tracked at any one time
  • Completed objectives will automatically be untracked
• A summary screen has been added to the Directives UI that displays the following
  • Overall Character Progress: Shows the directive points earned by your character and his progress towards completing all directives
  • Recently Completed Objectives: Displays the last 6 objectives completed by your character
  • Tracked/Recommended Objectives: This section displays a combination of your tracked and recommended objectives.  If you’re tracking 6 objectives, all 6 tracked objectives will show up in this area.  If you’re not tracking any objectives, all 6 objectives in this area will be recommended objectives.  
• Directive category progress bars have been added to the navigation buttons
• Tooltips have been added to each objective to provide more information
• New Leadership Directive Tree
  • Leadership directives are based on Leadership Ribbons and Squad Beacon spawns.
• New Events category & Halloween Tree
  • The first of seasonal event directives has been added.
  • This tree has lower requirements than other trees due to the limited time to complete the directives.
  • This tree will be available through November 9th.
• Objectives Tree
  • Number of required deployed AMS kills has been reduced for all tiers.
  • Objective Support Ribbons now award after 2 events (down from 5).
  • Objective Support Ribbons no longer count Terminal destruction and now hacking terminals (not turrets) will give credit towards the ribbon.
  • Point Control ribbons have been adjusted upwards but now count the new experience ticks and periodic guard xp awards for capture (see experience changes below).
• Force Recon Tree
  • Spotter ribbon is now awarded every 5 spot assists (down from 10).

Optics Changes

• All 1x, 2x, 3.4x and 4x sight reticles have been updated to be dynamically drawn, rather than static geometry. This will better represent where the weapon is aimed when moving, firing, or flinching.
• Updated existing scopes of all NS weapons with new NS scopes.
• Color and shape variants for 1X and 2X reticles are now available.
  • Reddot icons now show shape and color of the sights reticle

Flash Improvements

• The rumble seat on the flash now faces forward and its passenger can rotate 360 degrees.
• Flash handling has received an overhaul.  It should now be much harder to flip and lose traction less often.
• Fixed model preview for Flash scout radar.

Experience Reward Changes

• Capturing a control point will now grant 4 ticks of 100 xp each during the capture, plus a bonus 25 for controlling the point for a total of 425 xp for a full point capture.
• Guarding a friendly control point at a contested facility will grant 50 xp every 20 seconds.
• Kills while in capture range of the capture point will now award a bonus of 100 xp.
• Multi-kill bonus is now awarded at 2 kills within one second (down from 3).
• Domination bonus is now awarded at 2 consecutive kills against a player without being killed by that player (down from 3).
• Nemesis bonus (killing a player who is dominating you) increased to 100 xp.
• Revenge bonus increased to 50 xp (up from something less significant).
• MAX kill bonus increased to 200 xp (up from 20).
• Deploy bonus renamed to “Transport Assist” in all places where it was referenced (including Directives). These are awarded when a player leaves your vehicle and gets a kill within a couple minutes, provided you are still in the vehicle.
• Transport Assist is now equivalent to a kill, 100 xp (up from 50).
• Driver assist XP for when the gunner gets kills is now equivalent to a kill, 100 xp (up from 75).

Support Grenade Assists

• EMP, Flash, and Concussion grenades now award assist experience if the target is killed by another player while under the effect of your grenade.
• Ribbons and Medals for EMP, Flash, and Concussion grenades have been added or reworked to be based on these assists instead of kills.

Vehicle Destruction Kill Credit

• Destroying a vehicle will now count as a kill for all weapon medals and most directives.
• Only directives that require you to kill a specific target (ex: Enemy Infiltrators or MAX) do not count a vehicle kill for credit.
• Any vehicle counts as 1 kill. This is in addition to the driver and any passengers you may also kill. For example, destroying a fully crewed Prowler will be considered 3 kills.
• The vehicle does not have to be occupied to be credited for a kill, so you’ll still get credit for suiciders/bailures.

Spawn Kill Changes

• Spawn kills are now worth 0 xp across the board.
• Time after spawn before a player is not considered a spawn kill increased to 12 seconds (up from 10).
• XP earned before a player is not considered a spawn kill increased to 100 (up from 5).
• Spawn kill is still considered time since spawn or xp earned, whichever happens first (this is unchanged, only the values listed above were tuned).
• Other changes to spawn kills will be in a later update, including making freshly revived players not count as a spawn kill, and removing spawn kills from awarding credit towards kills, medals, ribbons, or directives.

Cloaking Fixes

• Visual effects such as lumifiber and helmet particles are now disabled while stealthed.
• Improved performance and visual quality of stealth on lowest graphic settings.
• Cloaked objects will now look the same across all graphics settings.
• Fixed a bug where sometimes an Infiltrator's head and gun would be visible while the body is cloaked.
• Flashes no longer cast a shadow while stealthed.
• Fixed a bug where sometimes Flash headlights would be visible while stealthed.

Hossin Updates

• The following bases have been redone.
  • SRP Nanite Relay Station
  • Gourney Dam
  • Kessel’s Crossing
  • Staggered Mesa Outpost redone and renamed to Bunker J993
• Fixed various bugs from grass growing through the floor of buildings, to holes in the terrain, to shield generators being inside of objects.

Balance

• Striker
  • The T2 Striker (and variants) can now be dumbfired and is no longer able to lock-on to targets. While in flight, the rockets will automatically lock-on to hostile aircraft if they pass by within range.
• T9 CARV
  • Annual Terran Republic Military performance review has revealed an unacceptable level of inaccuracy among Republic heavy assault soldiers. Loyal weapons engineers have corrected this with a minor improvement to the horizontal control of the venerable T9 CARV unification platform. The T9's new replication schematics have been updated on all Republic equipment terminals and deployment facilities.
  • Horizontal recoil reduced to .21375 (down from .225).

Depot

• Brand new voice packs have been added! Go, get to da depot!! C’mon, do it now!
• New horns are available for the Scythe, Reaver and Mosquito.
• A new horn is available for the Galaxy. It may or may not sound like a whale.
• Check the Depot for a new set of country flags (Denmark, EU, Ireland, Norway, Scotland, Spain, Sweden, Wales, and Belgium). Reminder that more flags will come in as copyright processing occurs.
  • Known issue: The dimensions of the new flags are off (too square), which will be fixed in a future update.

Membership

• The 50% Membership XP bonus has been moved from the Auraxium tier to the Copper tier.
• The cert cap has been raised for members to 50,000.
• Non-Members will no longer gain certs while offline. We've done this for two reasons:
  • Offline cert earning is not communicated effectively as a general login incentive and does not achieve its goals.
  • Removal from non-members increases the overall benefit of being a Member.

General

• The S-AMS certification for the Sunderer is now auto-granted, making it available to all players by default. Points spent on it before this change have been refunded.
• For vehicles, there is now heavy bullet impact audio.  This is intended to provide better feedback when your vehicle is being struck by light fire against heavy fire.  For example, getting hit with a tank buster will now sound different than getting hit with an assault rifle.
• Yell chat now works from beyond the grave. Spooky.
• Outfit MOTD shows up in chat on login, and as a notification + chat when changed.
• Corrected an issue that was preventing a non squad leader from inviting players to the squad they are in from the friends list.
• Members of a squad that are not the leader will now be able to select a players name in chat and invite them to the squad. When done it will prompt the squad leader with a request to invite that player.
• Updated location of shields on second floor of Towers. RIP Hallway of Death.
• Added a timer to the Death Screen show how long you have to be revived.
• Moved to the "Being Revived" indicator to the lower section of the screen closer to the Spawn buttons.
• Named a base to honor a hero of Auraxis (It’s on Hossin).
• Energy Bridge Terminals (Heyoka Chemical Lab) no longer have a neutral state. They can also now be flipped by any class to your faction, but Infiltrators with hacking certifications do so much faster. This is to make the bridges more intuitive to learn, and to eliminate a player on your own team from doing the ‘wrong’ thing by unknowingly giving the enemy access to cross the bridges.
• Texture updates to the Mosquito and Prowler.
• S12 Renegade now uses circle (shotgun style) reticle
• Squad Logistics System for Valkyrie now has unique icon.
• Increased range when your quick deploy location resets. Previously your quick deploy location would change if you died 300 meters from it. We’ve upped this to 400 meters.
• Updated login queue page for full zones and servers

[cont]

Source: Game Update Notes

[TheWlarc]

I wish I wouldn't be so lazy and acctually read this

[Panzerion]

A new horn is available for the Galaxy. It may or may not sound like a whale.

BEST UPDATE EVER. PERIOD.

[TheBUNKSTER]

Aha.

360° rumble seats, new scopes. But more interesting from strategic view:

"Capturing a control point will now grant 4 ticks of 100 xp each during the capture, plus a bonus 25 for controlling the point for a total of 425 xp for a full point capture. Guarding a friendly control point at a contested facility will grant 50 xp every 20 seconds. Kills while in capture range of the capture point will now award a bonus of 100 xp."

AND: Spawn kills give NO XP anymore.

Thats nice!

[xThEDuDx]

Destroying a vehicle will now count as a kill for all weapon medals and most directives.
Any vehicle counts as 1 kill. This is in addition to the driver and any passengers you may also kill. For example, destroying a fully crewed Prowler will be considered 3 kills.

  also very nice 

[octogen]

Staggered Mesa Outpost redone and renamed to Bunker J993
RadarX said on the forum that they wont do this, but they did!
Its named after a player who died...really interesting

[MummelWurst]

no, not a player, a music artist

however the update in all is pretty great except for some small things (passive certs)

i really hope they also give some performance problems some attention, cause i did not find any notes on that

[Xerxates]

no, not a player, a music artist however the update in all is pretty great except for some small things (passive certs) i really hope they also give some performance problems some attention, cause i did not find any notes on that

He played Planetside 2 and was a music artist too. -> http://www.reddit.com/r/Planetside/comments/2gm4f1/jay993_passed_away_today_at_his_work_many_of_you/

Let's go on pumpkin hunting!

[TheWlarc]

soo they said that they removed passive certs because it was not effective enough to get more people to log in.. I'm not sure it's the passive certs fault.. I mean look at the game.. no meta what so ever, so why would I log in just to get 12 certs, if I'm not gonna play it in the near future.. just saying

[Nayrun]

Good that I logged in 45 minutes ago to get the last 12 passive CERTS
I also 
So, I have never "abused" it like, login in every day just to get them and log out again.

[TheWlarc]

Well some people made a char, and then let it gain passive certs for a few days for let's say a quick medic pack or something

[LotP]

Well some people made a char, and then let it gain passive certs for a few days for let's say a quick medic pack or something

hey, my lvl 10 vanu char thinks it's cool to have a fully equiped scythe ^^

[Xerxates]

Prepare for a hotfix.

Known issues so far:

• Membership XP bonus not working for some folks
• Several voice packs are too quiet and missing some callouts
• Hitching - not sure if new, worse, or the same as before the update? New instances
• Squads not listing correctly in Squad window
• Camo coverage on weapons off

[ICOBORG]

the new scopes are bullshit.

[Caya]

I really like what they did to the red dot sight.