To say the PlanetSide 2 Development team is ambitious might be an understatement. With just 7 months under its belt, the game has been turned upside down multiple times and tons of new content has been added. Their update plan tries to focus around a 2 week major game update with each week containing normal patch fixes.
Game Update 11 is the first time brand new content isn’t being added to PlanetSide 2 since launch. The development team asked the community a month or so ago for a list of the top player grievances. After careful combing through which ones they thought were most important, they went to work.
Updated UI and Squad Management Window
Game Update 11 streamlines a lot of the User Interface in regards to load outs and certifications. It also increases the vehicle cosmetic slots and remembers your load outs better on each different weapon and class you may have set up.
The new Squad UI and Management window displays new information like the player’s Battle Rank, whether or not they are in a vehicle, their distance from you, and an easy way to drag and drop players to form platoons.
Even on your UI you will now be able to see who is in a vehicle and what type which will hopefully eliminate the angry asking of, “Who has the Sunderer?”
Vehicle Cost Changes
Vehicle Costs are being increased to help alleviate some of current problems with the resource system. As it currently stands, pretty much any player can pull a near endless number of vehicles and are only restricted by vehicle timers.
The vehicle cost changes are as follows:
- Flash: 100
- Sunderer: 400
- Lightning: 300
- Magrider: 450
- Vanguard: 450
- Prowler: 450
- Scythe: 250
- Reaver: 250
- Mosquito: 250
- Liberator: 350
- Galaxy: 350
- Harasser: 300
- MAX: 350
These changes are not meant to totally fix the resource problem but help them test issues before the resource revamp coming in the next few months.
Anti-Air Rebalance
Air and Anti-Air according to Creative Director Matt Higby is one of the greatest challenges of the game. The amount of anti-air in the game is rather insane but the feeling of being wrecked by a great pilot on the ground is demotivating for the average Auraxian.
The team has gone back and changed some values around. Now the Anti-Air Burster Max is less potent over range but can still do damage close. The SkyGuard Lightning (Anti-Air Tank) can now fulfill the long range role and is a lot more viable on the battlefield.
With increased costs to both air and anti-air it will be interesting to see what sort of quantity prevails on the battlefields and see if balance can actually be achieved.
Heavy Weapon Rebalance
Sony Online Entertainment didn’t forget the Heavy’s this patch. The three faction specific heavy weapons are getting a retuned balance and reworking. The Lasher (Vanu AOE weapon) now has increased weapon firing speed and a smaller cone of fire while reducing the amount of damage to friendly players in the area, allowing for more sexy lasher spam.
The Terran Republic’s Mini-ChainGun has gotten a new firing speed ramp up instead of a non-firing interlude before shredding bullets. Now the gun will properly start shooting slowly and ramp up to an incredible speed making sure to make meat bits out of the competition.
For the New Conglomerate, the Jackhammer has been increased for its utility across both range and CQC. The NC should see the Jackhammer now able to compete with all other shotguns in the game instead of lagging a little behind. Of course, due to their rebel nature, I doubt any of them will realize the potential of these weapons and continue to die by the glorious Republic! (Oh.. yeah, Terran Republic baby!)
As always, balance and rebalance will be necessary as new additions to the game come online but so far the team is doing a fantastic job. The UI changes and many bug fixes on the way have been asked for by players for months and it is nice to see SOE give back.
Along with the changes mentioned comes changes to how friendly infiltrators appear on your screen and tons of other changes better covered in patch notes. To check out the full list head to the forums at here and give them a look!
Are you ready to tear it up on Auraxis with this new update? Do you fear the changes might have gone to far? What is your favorite change this update?
See you on the battlefield! /Salute
