Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

1: NC

2: NC and TR

3: NC, TR and Vanu

[Akura]

They've released their Shattered Warpgate expansion. The main draw is the new Campaign and Mission systems. Campaign a mission-based something they're doing to push out the lore, but I don't know too much about it yet since it's buy-in. For subscribed members, they already get it, but for non-members it's a cert cost that scales with level - at my BR I'd pay around 2500 certs(a new gun usually costs around 1000). I'm also seeing complaints about other factions camping the objective sites, preventing others from trying to do them. The current Campaign is consisting of three Chapters, the first Chapter will run until the end of October, then the other two will run through November and December respectively.

Missions are a supplementary to the Campaign; they're a list of various, poorly-written objectives you can pick that give you a reward when you complete them. Missions are time-limited, so far all I've seen give you 12 hours to complete. Non-members can take three missions per day, members can take six, regardless of whether they're completed or not. I did only one mission, with the objectives to spawn a Sunderer and get experience from other players using my Sunderer to respawn in a "contested region", with no explanation of what that exactly means(does it mean an enemy territory? Territory with enemies in it?). It took me about an hour, but mainly because there wasn't any particularly large fights going on(a high-pop fight could get me 50 in minutes). As a reward, I got an experience booster that I'll probably never use and a TRAC-5 Burst(basically the starter carbine but limited to burst fire), which isn't too bad.

Another major change is Esamir being heavily altered; the Campaign lore is that the Eastern Warpgate blew up. So Esamir is now heavily altered, there are lightning storms around that damage vehicles(intended to limit the size of a fight, apparently) and there are supposedly salvageable vehicles around. I don't know what exactly has changed because I didn't play on Esamir yet. A minor change to Indar is that the rock bridge between The Crown and TI Alloys is gone and TI Alloys is supposed to be easier to attack. People were furious about that. Not me, I hated the TI Alloys/Ceres Hydroponics/Crown slog.


Another small change is that both Harassers and Lightnings now cost 300 nanites to pull. Liberators are less tanky except against Tomcats(A2A lockons), where they're given extra resistance from to even out their HP reduction. MAX Burster guns were slightly buffed, as were static Aspis AA turrets. The former got a damage buff while the turret has a higher shell velocity with an according increase in range(from 450m to about 750m).

[Kanil]

So for 2,500 certs I can get some janky ass missions that give me... certs... and bad weapons.

At least my Lightning is cheaper to replace when it gets struck by, well, lightning?

[Akura]

The missions aren't buy-in, just the campaign.

[Duuvian]

Spoiler: Images (click to show/hide)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Also damn I missed double xp for all, I was playing through Fallout 4. I usually do Planetside on weekends.
Here's some random screenshots I took (settings on Medium as there is a particle my GPU or something doesn't like at Ultra and it slows just a bit when I'm looking at said particle effect):

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: I saved a video of this but haven't edited it yet, it was glorious (click to show/hide)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: VANU (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: Flying over Terran Republic playermade airbases as a Galaxy gunner (click to show/hide)

They are also doing 48v48 tournaments I'd love to join but my outfit has long since moved on, for the most part. I see another once in a while and I think someone was doing a really great job keeping the outfit stocked with resources somehow (capturing bases solo is tedious and difficult even late at night though sometimes the game hands me a base seconds after I show up at low population too, dunno why but I feel bad for the people who actually did the work to caputre it) I do get to zap with the orbital strikes and other outfit goodies though, so I am hesitent to drop out of it. Plus it's GOON and I appreciate that they gave me an HONORARY INVITATION (when I asked after joining their platoons even though I never got a Something Awful account)

[Duuvian]

There was an update and the storm on Esamir is gone. The next part of the campaign is beginning soon. A new type of base was added to Esamir,

I've only managed to get there once to see it so far and it was right in the last thirty seconds of an alert so I only looked around for a few minutes. A few GOONs have been on lately and the two today said it was confusing and one said it lagged him out really badly. From what I saw it looks really nice visually. It's also VERY large and I heard people saying it's biolab level crammed fighting. I haven't actually been able to try that yet. There are arrow paths on the ground which I am guessing help some. There are also different ways in and different stages to capture it. The description reminded me of Dark Age of Camelot forts, though I haven't played Daoc in ages and I don't know how they are now. For example there are destroyable doors.

In the few minutes I ran around the empty Containment Zone I realized it would probably be great as a standalone map for the 48v48 tournaments they have been doing. I would have to see how it goes in a big fight to give it a fair opinion I think. It sure looks nice.

Speaking of looking nice, here was something that got me killed watching earlier:

Spoiler: large images: Shadowpuppets (click to show/hide)

The sun was behind the hill to my rear and as infantry and vehicles crossed the hill their silhouette was projected onto that building like a shadow puppet play. The patch notes said they had re-enabled something called a Godray; maybe that's why shadows looked so nice today? I dunno but I stopped to watch and stopped moving long enough for a sniper to headshot me.

[Duuvian]

https://www.planetside2.com/news/dervish-heavy-fighter-teaser

I thought I'd post since they teased a new vehicle. It looks like a two person heavy fighter in concept. No idea but it sounds pretty cool.

If you liked PS2 before you should give it a try, they have been adding a lot of new stuff.

If you haven't tried it before, I highly recommend it. It is free, and amazing.








NO SPOILERS ON FREEDOM DAY WEEKEND!!!1

EDIT: I should note that at the time of this post the population is low on the server I play on (Emerald)  because it's early morning in the server's playerbase area. If you want to see some massive slugfests (in video game terms) between small armies of mixed units you would want to try  afternoons, evenings and early nights servertime as that is when the population is high enough for that. There are other servers for other geographic areas too soo that's why it slows down; Emerald sees a lot of Euro players hop over to the US servers during that primetime I think. The Australians,Chinese, and other Asian or Pacific locales peoples had or have a server in their area too, I see them less then Euro people but once in a while I see both solo and in teams. There are S. Korean and Japanese outfits I see frequently on Emerald for exeample. For Chinese players I think there is more of a language barrier sort of like Euro players sometimes in that communication is using the voice command shortcuts to have your character say "Thanks" or "I need ammunition" or " "I need a gunner" or "Affirmative". Don't need to speak the same language to crew a gun on someone's vehicle; in fact I don't even use a mic though it would make it much easier if I did sometimes.

I just checked about ten minutes ago and there are still fights to go to with a decent number of people to oppose but the population is skewed and it's the small low population map so I'll try it in a few hours once people wake up and some lattices open up. If you have played before, the explanation is that purple is overpop and ghost capping for certs or something during a slow period on the server like one team or another is many mornings for reasons that remain a mystery to me (it's prob at least partially game account farmers or some such no worries unless they CHEETIN' or SLAVIN' at vidya games to do it because it gives me someone to shoot at that time even if it turns Planetside 2 into an asymetrical competition when it's not your team, so it's a win - win situation I guess).

Just thought I should post that after I checked and saw low population in case someone checks it out at a bad time for the server.

[Akura]

The problem with the Dervish is that it's exclusively for NSO characters, which in turn requires paid membership and to faction-hop.

Many of the other additions have been quite terrible in my opinion. The grenade launcher is ridiculous, the underbarrel launcher on the Punisher even more so; nothing beats not being able to destroy a Sunderer because an Engineer with a Punisher is standing on their ammo box slamming repair grenades into it(this happened to me yesterday, I think the guy might have been hacking though). The Containment Sites on Esamir are goddamn slog to fight through, and they're laggy as hell to boot. They're worse than Biolabs.

[Duuvian]

EDIT: MY bad, I should have posted this too, they talk about making NSO open to non members too so that new spacecar is free I think

https://www.planetside2.com/news/nso-development-update

I have heard the laggy containment area complaint before from a person in my outfit, I don't know how to fix it but I can ask if they ever figured it out. Last I heard they just avoided that base when on Esamir.

The punisher rep nades are pretty much standard for vehicle crew loadouts on engineer. Since you pretty much only need the repair tool if you are driving or gunning most people grab the punisher with certs and put a repair grenade on it. You can shoot it at a tank being far too daring that you know is about to blow up and maybe preserve it with a smidgen of HP left for one more infantry rocket as it backs up. Other than that most people shoot one as they run up to start repairing. I actually don't use it because one of my very few complaints about being locked out of stuff is the class loadouts: I need more engineer class loadout slots since that class does so much, and at least one of my engineer loadouts should have a shotgun and an auto turret deployable; thus the driver loadout gets a shotgun to swat floaty light assaults above my ride with in time before they throw down C4 bricks (maybe)

My biggest complaint about the rep nades is that for a while generators could be repaired through walls with them, so it made Amp stations much harder to capture in an unintended way. You can still smash inside with a sundie bus that goes through the base shields and drop a router but that's as risky as it sounds. Doable though. I dunno if the rep nades still work through walls on the gens or not, but it made taking Amp stations way harder even at overwhelming population numbers.

The NSO stuff is actually going free to play is what I've read in the next update. I'ma try the Javelin, the floaty flash thing. I see people doing sweet stuff with that thing, like climbing a galaxy stack floating hundreds of feet in the air. No way I could do that with Flash turbo, I'd misjump and fall off for sure. I think they are adding a gun to it too.

Having the containment zone run at full FPS on my computer probably helps me like it. I actually think it's a quite well made interior base except that it runs poorly on some computers for some reason; and because the whole inside of that base would be my favorite place to drive a flash ever except it has an inviso vehicle barrier like at the warpgates so I can't even finagle a turbo jump inside over the railing. Then again they might be right to keep me out of there on my flash, but I couldn't say for sure. Maybe if the defenders had a flash terminal at the bottom too... I would like to drive my flash there but not be run over by 48 purple flashes every time I attack a contanment zone. I end up thinking this whenever I have to jump off my flash to run inside down the spiral ramp.

EDIT2: They also added a rocket launcher for the heavy that you aim above where the red or purple planetmans are and when you fire the second time, it explodes in a downard shower of explosions. It was like a Death Blossom Bow from that one obscure shooter game I played long ago when I tried it in VR. I think I have about 1000 certs so I guess I will grab it, being content in most other areas of Planetside acquisitions (except for those loadout slots; for that I want to know if the Premium unlock persist if I pony up for one month. The 500 space monies included with it would also unlock one loadout slot, which would let me make an anti-infantry engineer loadout for example at least)

I'm at like BATTLERANK 102 and I've spent like $15 or so on PS2 over the I think 8 years or so while it probably sounds like I'm complaining about the loadout slots it probably should be them complaining about me and hauling me off by the scruff of my neck to the internet wasteland I wandered in from wherein there is no other game of this scale of first person shooting. Would I like that loadout slot for free? Certainly. Do they have much else to offer me to I hand them money; having bought the yellowest camo of the time a long time ago? Not really, I unlocked most of the sweet equipment I use regularly; I'm just unlocking new stuff to mess around with now with the certs I used to crave.

There is something called A.S.P. too that resets your character and allows you to use cross class specialties, such as Engineers with LMG and stuff. I have read nothing at all about it because it's 30,000 certs to unlock for free IIRC while premium gets access to it upon being over BR 100. For me, unlocking that and the extra loadout slot(s) I crave would be enough for a one month subscription finally. For someone new I would say make sure you like a game enough before you fully commit to a membership, don't get it just because the famous and respected Duuvian told you about it.

The ASP thing I have no idea how big a pain in the neck it is but I figure I'll do it like I've been treating the campaigns: if I notice I'm there anyways and remember I can do that now too after so many years of simply firing a variety of weapons at purple spandex

[Akura]

ASP is for when you hit the maximum BR of 120. Then you pay 10,000 certs(the highest you can hold) to change to the ASP ranks, which give access to some various, probably poorly-balanced abilities.

The Scorpion launcher, that overhead bomb-raining thing, isn't very useful. It looks cool, but the damage is garbage, and it's very hard to guess the correct range you need to set(remember that firing angle matters), and even moreso to actually fire at the correct range. And while I definitely score numerous hits with it, I've yet to actually get a kill.

Didn't hear about the F2P NSO change. Looks pretty alright.

As for improving performance at a Containment Site, it might have just been the sheer size of the fight. That said, there are a lot of interior objects, which means there's a lot of objects that need to be loaded in memory, many of which have high polygon counts. I also did notice a lot of poorly-implemented textures in the underground areas.

[Duuvian]

Yeah I glanced over the ASP thing when I came back to PS2 but construction was the cert sink I had for a while; I have most of what I use from that now.

Oh it's only 10k? That's what I spent on the Campaign I think; maybe that was 5k. 10k would be doable; if I have to get to BR 120 though thats what will take forever for me since I always forget I can use the outfit loyalty resource to get free XP boosters for when there is an excellent farm. I have enough of the free ones that I don't have any logical reason to not use them more often except I forget from habit of not using them.

The launchers are usually designed to require multiple users to really shine. If you had a whole squad using them, do you think they could be good in circumstances like Indar infantry? I haven't seen it used as a squad yet. They can be given a trial if you and some people want to see if it works to blow up those hilltops rocket infantry like to hide and pop out to launch at friendly vehicles from. That's the kind of spot I was thinking it could be useful.

I recently unlocked the Phoenix Launcher finally. I should have done that so long ago. I couldn't use it when it first came out because my graphics card was so old that it couldn't handle it and the rocket exploded as soon as I launched it instead of my perspective changing to steer the rocket. I mention that because it is outstanding when a whole squad uses it at once. Maybe the death blossom rocket needs a full squad using it on the same target to do enough damage to be more than an annoyance? I haven't seen any squads try that yet, maybe it hasn't been out long enough to be common enough like where a squad lead can call for Phoenixes and have a few at least start launching.