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Greetings Auraxians,

For this March's development letter, we have some news, updates, and a special treat; the reveal of a new facility type!

The Warzone rotation, Oshur Alert, and Friends List updates will be hitting the Public Test Server shortly after the next patch.

The Friends List has been rewritten from scratch to solve a myriad of various bugs and issues. We are confident that this rewrite should solve the existing issues, however since it is a new system there could be other issues we have missed.

The Warzone rotation system has been changed to be non-static. That is, the rotation order can shift slightly so that the oldest Warzone is not necessarily the next to be unlocked, although it usually will be. This also allowed us to set Oshur to an infrequent rotation schedule. There is a new meltdown alert on Oshur that should trigger almost immediately, setting a cap on how long the continent will remain open.

More details, if needed, will be in the PTS Patch Notes nearing release.

The Sunderer is in active development and still going through quite a bit of internal testing. Once we are confident that we have brought them to a state where you can provide us with valuable feedback, we will be releasing a new cert tree to the test server.

This *may* happen in batches so that as much testing as possible can be done before live release.

Finally, on to the special treat. We are currently working on an **Assault Facility**. This is an entirely new type of Facility that is dramatically different from the existing ones, and we wanted to try some new things to see how they affected the way players select equipment and approach combat.

Our goals are to give the Facility a much clearer and directed sense of flow. We also wanted to have more stable and recognizable phases for battles with distinct beginning, middle, and end phases each of which will require slightly different strategy and tactics. Finally, we wanted to have a base design that more elegantly integrates vehicles so that they will have a clear, crucial role without being oppressive to infantry.

Assault Rules
The basic rules for the mode are simple and follow the general pattern of an Assault Game Mode that many games have with some PlanetSide 2 wrinkles.

An Assault Facility comes under attack when an opposing faction captures the first, and only unlocked, Capture Point from the current owner (i.e. Defender). This does a few things:

• The ability to capture the remaining points becomes locked to the initial faction
  
• A hard spawn for that faction is unlocked within the Hex
  
• The facility's Energy Pool becomes active

Now that the Facility is active it consists of a series of capture points that must be captured order, unlocking as the Attackers progress. Once captured, these points cannot be recaptured by the defenders. The Attackers win when the final point is captured.

The facility is successfully defended if the Attackers' energy pool reaches 0 before the final point is captured. The energy pool is depleted in 2 ways:

1. Each capture point owned by the defenders depletes the Energy Pool at a regular interval
   
2. Each instance of spawning or deploying within the Facility Hex consumes energy. This includes:

• Respawning at the Hard Spawn
  
• Spawning at the Sunderer
  
• Spawning via Squad Beacon
  
• Spawning via Steel Rain
  
• Deploying in any of the above manners

Being revived by the medic tool or via Nanite Revive Grenade does not consume energy. This would make Nanite Revive Grenades even more oppressively powerful than they already are, thus they will be heavily adjusted before the release of Assault Mode. This is something that needed to happen anyway, and this is a good time to implement it.

Energy is added to the Attackers' energy pool when they capture a point, or via secondary objectives if they are included.

When the battle ends (Either captured or defended) the facility will enter a cooldown period where the first point is locked, and a new battle cannot be initiated.

Initial Release
To get the most out of this new Facility Type we are creating a single, new, customized base to host it. This facility will take over a construction outpost in as central, but non-critical, a location as possible. We are using this strategy to mitigate risk and have time to work on the game mode and facility layout before propagating it further.

The facility will be implemented as the simplest possible functional version of this type; with only 3 Capture Points and no secondary objectives. It is important that we extensively iterate on this simple version first since good design dictates that we make a compelling experience and accomplish all our goals with as few restrictions or complications as possible. Elegance is what we are aiming for.

Success or failure of this initial Facility will determine where, how large, and how many of these will be created in the future.

Risks & Potential Issues
Finally, we come to the risks, weaknesses, and potential issues of this new Facility type.

The first and most obvious weakness is that this game mode does not elegantly handle a three-faction interaction. It is very much an attacker vs defender scenario with the third faction being relegated to a tertiary role where they can tip the scales of a battle's outcome but not own the facility directly. However, we feel that with careful placement this weakness can be minimized while allowing its strengths to shine.

The other major concern is that the Energy Pool will dramatically affect behavior and decision-making. This can break into either good or bad direction; it is impossible to fully predict the outcome of such a chaotic circumstance. The likelihood of creating a situation that is very static or has an overly one-sided meta is very high. At the same time, having death be a more meaningful mechanic, and not just a loss of time, is likely to unlock some new and interesting strategies. It may even actively discourage deliberately over-popping the facility leading to more even and sustained battles.

The Energy Pool values, the amounts and ways energy is consumed, spawn locations, vehicle pads, and so on will have to be monitored closely and adjusted carefully. In the end we are confident we can make this new facility something that we all look forward to.

We’re looking forward to hearing your feedback when these updates come to the test server. See you all planetside!

- PlanetSide 2 Team

New for sale this year is the Puzzler Bundle. This Bundle includes:

• 4x Puzzler Hairmet, one in each faction color
  
• The Puzzler Decal
  
• The Puzzler Banner & Banner Frame
  
• Liberator Puzzler Cockpit Glass
  
• The Puzzler Hood Ornament
  
• Vehicle Clown Horns! Honk, honk!

• Aprils Fools Cosmetics & Bundles are returning from April 1st until April 10th

• 40% off Infantry Weapons

• Originally part of the 11th Anniversary Bundle (and still is)
  
• This Commissioner sidearm has entered the Depot as an individual cosmetic to purchase!

• The Red Crystal Commissioner is available for purchase in the store
  
• This is a variant of the NS-44 "Primed Amethyst" Commissioner with a red crystal theme

You might have noticed that we are making some nice class cosmetics that can be purchased with Certs in the Depot! Each month we aim to release a Banner, Frame and Decal for a class!

So far we have:

For the sneaky price of 10 Certs each you can get:

• Infiltrator Class Banner
  
• Infiltrator Class Banner Frame
  
• Infiltrator Class Decal

Available for 10 Certs each in the depot are:

• Light Assault Class Banner
  
• Light Assault Class Banner Frame
  
• Light Assault Class Decal

• Enjoy double xp from April 1st - 4th.

• Audio for the NS-11A equipped with a suppressor has been fixed
  
• An incorrect "Restricted Area" location on Amerish has been removed
  
• Several boxes that fell through the floor on Esamir have been re-solidified and relocated
  
• The directives screen will again clearly show when something has not been unlocked
  
• MGR-C1 Charger overcharged muzzle flash VFX should now play properly
  
• The Target Focus implant should now correctly work when the Hud Indicator size is set to large
  
• Fixed terminal interaction in command centers
  
• Characters should once again appear at their proper size during character creation 
  
• Archer reload audio should now player properly in first person
  
• Slight optic adjustments for the NS-44: "Primed Amethyst" Commissioner

This morning we released a client side hotfix update to address the major issues from our St. Patrick's day patch last week. Launching the game today will automatically download and update your client.

• Fixed an unwrapped text issue with the UI that would occur when attempting to capture bases or being in an area that isn't connected to a region your faction controls.
  
• Flashlight not emitting light when the graphics settings are set to Medium is now fixed.
  
• Fixed an issue where the seats of the Bastion would seat players upside down and are unable to properly fly it.
  
• Vehicle turret aiming has been fixed.
  
• Spawning into an ESF that caused fast walk speeds has been fixed.

This morning's patch is live, howerver we discovered a couple issues today, please see the note below. Note we are looking into a fix for these issues accordingly.

• The Bastion can cause players to be seated incorrectly, including pilots, preventing them from firing or piloting properly. This does not always occur but it is frequent enough to warrant strong caution when launching one from a terminal. There are currently no workarounds, a hotfix is in the works.
  
• Players report encountering invisible vehicles
  
• Vehicle turrets are not working correctly
  
• NS-11A's audio with the suppressor is incorrect

This month's patch is loaded with bug fixes, especially to animations and audio. We are also bringing back previous St. Patrick's Day Bundles from March 17th until March 26th

The returning items arrive (March 17th - March 26th):

• 2023 Saint Patrick's Day Bundle
  
• 2022 Saint Patrick's Day Bundle
  
• Gold Lover's Bundle
  
• Green Fortune Bundle
  
• Jackpot Bundle
  
• Leprechaun's Bundle
  
• Wyrdwood Bundle
  
• Classic Clover Decal
  
• Leprechaun Decal
  
• Pot O Auraxium Decal
  
• Shamrock Decal
  
• Clover Camo
  
• Weapon Camo: Green-gold Flecked
  
• Jackpot Hood Ornament
  
• ANT / Sunderer Clover Trails
  
• and more!

• Enjoy a Double Experience For All Weekend from March 15th until March 18th

Normally we would save these types of announcements for the monthly Dev Letter, but since the patch is a little light this week, we've decided to include some more insight into the progress of various updates and fixes in this weeks patch notes.

The Sunderer rework is coming along nicely. We are looking into having it arrive onto the Public Test Server to work out the kinks and adjust some balancing. For the moment we'd like to share some what we have completed.

Here is the look at the reactive armor. The armor is designed to clearly visually indicate, through shape and color, when a piece of reactive armor is active and when it is not.



Some certifications that are not getting a major gameplay overhaul are still receiving visual updates. Below are the new Stealth Module and Enhanced Plating, artwork which replaces Blockade Armor and Mine Guard.




The friend's list issue is one area we are focusing on fixing. The tracking server architecture that handles friends lists was breaking down and had to be be almost completely rewritten. Some of the things the rewrite will achieve are:

• Improved database transaction efficiency; i.e. ensuring that everything is immediately saved to database on changes. Previously this happened only a few minutes after the fact and could be lost in cases of reboot/crash/power outage on the server.
  
• Added automatic consistency fixes; e.g. fixing situations when X is marked as a friend of Y but Y is not marked as friend of X.
  
• More reliable friends invitation processing; e.g. removing cases when someone sends an invite to be friends and invitee doesn't receive it.

These are just a few of the things we are doing with the rewrite, which should eliminate the vast majority of the bugs the system currently suffers. This is a major overhaul, thus it will be released to the Public Test Server first before being deployed on live. We don't have a firm date on when this will happen but the changes are actively being worked on.

There has been much well earned consternation over Oshur. The issues it causes among the game and community are undeniable, but the potential solution for each issue has pros and cons we have to consider carefully.

Generally speaking, our first thoughts are towards building and improving the game. To that end we conducted a systematic review of the continent, which included collating the vast amount of community feedback from many sources. The list of issues was sorted, examined, and we had many discussions around how to solve them. In the end we concluded that although there was promise in the concept, the issues were extremely core to all aspects of Oshur's design from individual bases to the general layout of the continent and lattice. Small changes would do little to solve the issue, and an entire rework was needed.

Unfortunately, we also decided that an entire rework would be a monumental effort the likes of which would detract from other smaller and more pressing issues. Following our philosophy of taking on the most impactful projects first, we saw that Oshur did not make the cut when it came to the effort / impact calculation.

The next logical and simple step would be to simply remove Oshur from the rotation. This presents its own issues though. Oshur has attached to it a large amount of unique content that players have spend their hard earned currency on, as well as unique and interesting directives, missions, and so on. Simply removing it would also create a clump of additional work where we would have to spend a good amount of effort making recompense to players as well as making changes that were deemed "fair" to new and returning players. This is a non-trivial task that would also eat up a surprising amount of resources that are also better spent on more impactful changes.

To that end we decided to take a middle approach. Oshur will be put on an infrequent rotation schedule and a special alert will be created that will more tightly control how long the continent remains active when it does come up. The ability to do this does not currently exist in the rotation scheduling system, and thus we have to design and add it before this change can be made. This is actively being worked on. We will build into the new system the ability to adjust the frequency and up-times of Oshur quickly via data so that adjustments to these parameters can be made relatively quickly and easily. We feel this is a fair compromise to players that never want to deal with Oshur again and those that may want to finish their Dog Tag collection, or take an occasional boat joy ride.

As a bonus side affect we will be adjusting general Warzone rotation such that the same ones don't always follow the same pattern and there will be slight changes in the rotation over time.

• The beacons are not lit; beam visual effect should now de-spawn properly after the beacon's destruction
  
• Outfit Wars decals now have the proper file format and should no longer crash the client
  
• Players can no longer spawn in destroyed aircraft, preventing them from acquiring vertigo and the ability to shoot through walls
  
• Reworked the suppressor attachment audio on the following weapons; NS30 Vandal, Warden, Carnage AR, GR-22, NC9 A-Tross, NS-11, Reaper DMR, EM1, EM6, NC6S Gauss SAW S
  
• The NSX: Yumi's bolt can now be worked. Fixed a visual bug with the reload animation
  
• Fixed weapon reload sounds for many weapons, including; AF57 Piston, NS AM7 Archer, EM1, EM6, NC05 Jackhammer, T16 Rhino, T32 Bull, T7 Minichain, T9 CARV, T9 CARV-S, TMG50, VE-C Horizon, VE LR Obelisk, VE-A Lacerta
  
• Obelisk and other VS weapon's hand IK will properly un-attach during 3rd person reload animation sequences
  
• Ammunition Belt certification selection tooltip now includes information about the reload speed increase
  
• Gate Shield Diffuser certification selection tooltip now contains information about its interaction with water on Oshur
  
• Fixed MAX jumping and landing audio
  
• Fixed localization error in vehicle and aircraft key-bindings
  
• The Natural Camouflage cosmetic for the Chimera should no longer be visible in the first person view

Greetings Auraxians!  

For this month’s dev letter, we wanted to share something a little different – a behind the scenes look at the process our artists go through when creating new items in PlanetSide 2. Our example piece for this behind-the-scenes look is the new Lunar Dragon Helmet available in the Lunar New Year Bundle [2024]. We hope you enjoy a peek behind the curtain!  

The process begins with a planning phase. During this time, ideas are presented to be made into an asset for an in-game event or update. Let's look at the Lunar New Year event as an example.  

This year we decided to create a unique helmet for the event. 

After consulting with our Game Designers about any specific requirements, the process is taken over by the Art Department. 

The Lunar New Year is a celebration that marks the arrival of spring and the beginning of a fresh lunar cycle. Honored by many cultures across Asia, the way it's celebrated is unique to each place. It is the most important holiday for the Chinese (Spring Festival) and is widely celebrated by Vietnamese (Tet Nguyen Dan), Koreans (Seollal), Mongolians (Tsagaan Sar), and many others.  

The intricacies of traditions around the holiday are diverse, so we focused on the largest groups finding the most common element that overlaps. In this case, the Dragon zodiac symbol and the colors used during the festivities such as Gold (Yellow) and Silver (White). This is our foundation behind the helmet, decal, banner, frame, and nudge ideation. The work on the helmet starts with focusing on the keywords: Dragon, Fire, Asia, Red, Yellow, PlanetSide2, Sci-Fi. 

We then visualize a concept of an idea. 


From here the idea is born and we have a helmet influenced by Asian cultures in the PlanetSide 2 style. It incorporates a dragon head, red and yellow as the primary colors, and faction specific tints for additional details.  

Next, we move on with exploring designs and shapes. At this stage, the shape becomes the primary focus. 


We then decide on three distinct ideas and present them for consideration. 

After contemplating the scope of work, we choose a final direction. 


Next, we shift our focus towards functional and technical examination of the asset.  

Taking everything into account, we start the linework, proportions of different elements, and we begin fine tuning the silhouette followed by adding in the details.  

The idea is that the entire helmet is the dragon's head. The emptiness of the dragon's mouth will be represented by a dark visor hiding the player's face. 


Linework is finished up and we move on to grayscale painting to block out the contrast.  

The goal here is to have a clear separation of different elements without the dramatic difference in contrast between two close parts (we might just reserve that for a few focus points).  


At this stage we consider how the asset will exist within the environment, like hinting the faction colors, technical limitations, etc.  

In this case, faction colors will be in the second plan, while the colors associated with the Lunar New Year will be brought to the first plan. The objective is to make the asset stand out without disrupting the sense of belonging.  



We use the colors to further emphasize the face of the dragon, separate different elements, and provide space for hinting the player's faction. 

For high production level work, we usually do not make highly detailed concept renders, a simple reference to work from is all that our 3D artist requires. 


Once the concept is done and approved, we move on to creating the 3D asset. 

In this step, we make sure that the 3D artist understands the idea behind the concept. In this case, it just so happens that the 2D concept did not translate perfectly into 3D. This is why effective communication and direction is needed. It ensures a smooth transition into this step. This minimizes the need for 3D model corrections later on. 




The base model is now textured and complete. We can move on to setting up the faction tints on the pre-agreed elements. In this case, the tints are deliberately subtle to not take away from the spirit of the helmet, which celebrates the Lunar Year.


The model is then sent to an animator for rigging and once rigged it is imported into the Engine. There, the shaders are set up and adjusted for the finishing touches bringing the helmet to life.

- PlanetSide 2 Team

We have patched a small hotfix this morning. Please see the hotfix notes below.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a localization error in vehicle and aircraft key bindings.
  
• Fixed the icon resolution for the Love Bomber Bundle.
  
• Fixed the Positive Defacement Banner preview resolution.
  
• Fixed a tiling and stretching issue with the Positive Defacement Camo.
  
• The NSO Chimera now updates the "Matchmaker: Exploration" mission. This will affect any future missions, directives and objectives that make use of ground vehicles.
  
• Fixed an issue with the Deluxe Implant Pack in the Tier 4 Directive Reward which only gave 3 implants instead of 9. We are looking into compensating players who have been affected by this.

Game servers will go down for our scheduled pc update tomorrow @ 6am pt / 3pm ct. for a 3hr downtime window.

Hello Auraxians! We're kicking off this month's update with some Valentine's Day festivities along with some bug fixes and changes. Check it out below!

• Added a nanite cost (half the static terminal cost) to vehicles spawned from construction terminals. This should throttle the length at which vehicles can be pulled from construction bases at speed by individual players. The Cortium cost remains the same, increasing the overall cost of spawning vehicles from construction terminals.
  
• There have been changes to the key binds for vehicle utility abilities in preparation for the sunderer rework. This should not affect the current function ("F" still triggers single abilities), but additional slots have been added and can be triggered using the number keys 3-5 by default.

Valentine's Day is here! Share the love by completing this year's missions starting Wednesday, February 14th until Wednesday February 28th.
Also available is the new Love Bomber Bundle containing:

• Helmet
  
• Camo
  
• Decal
  
• 1-month Boost

In addition, because we want to share the good times there is also...

• Double XP For All Weekend from Friday, February 16th to Sunday, February 18th.
  
• The return of previous years Valentine's Day Bundles

Always Better Together

• Kill enemies as a passenger or gunner while in a vehicle with at least two occupants.

Cupid's Arrow

• Kill enemies with crossbows.

Friends Forever

• As a MAX suit, guard allies by taking damage with at least one ally within 10 meters.

I'd Walk 500 Meters

• Travel on foot with at least 1 ally within 10 meters. Cannot be completed in Sanctuary or at warp gates.

Matchmaker

• Complete Daily Matchmaker Missions.

Your Max Looks Great

• As an engineer, repair ally MAX suits.

Earn the following Positive Defacement rewards for participating in the event.

Tier 1

• Positive Defacement Decal
  
• Title: Love Bomber
  
• 250 Certs

Tier 2

• Positive Defacement Banner Frame
  
• Positive Defacement Banner
  
• 500 ISO-4

Tier 3

• Basic Implant Pack
  
• Positive Defacement Camo

Tier 4

• Love Bomber Glass
  
• Deluxe Implant Pack
  
• 500 A7

• Enjoy 40% off vehicle camos from February 18th to February 21st!

• Synthium should now properly be collected by outfits that own relevant facilities
  
• The Rocket Rifle now plays the magazine empty sound (click) when fired without any ammunition
  
• The NS11 (all versions) and Cycler TRV will no longer double the audio effect when fired in semi-auto mode from the 1st person view
  
• Added shell audio to the the NS Baron G5, NS 45 Pilot , Deimos VA29, and Phobos VX86 to match corresponding VFX
  
• Low Ammo audio indicator for the following NSO weapons has been fixed: CB-100, SG-100, CB-200, CB-X75, PMG-100, PMG-200, PMG-3XB, SG-A25, AR-100, AR-101, AR-N203, BAR-A50, SR-100, SR-150, SR-L75, XMG-100, XMG-155, XMG-200
  
• 1st person reload animation sounds for many NC and TR heavy weapons have fixed or adjusted
  
• Added instructional text to inactive repositories instructing players to bring flags to them to enable capture
  
• NS Baron G5AE loadout screen icon resolution fixed
  
• 3rd Person generator repair tool VFX have been fixed

Greetings Steam users! We have a one question survey for you to fill out if you're interested.

Note: There is a spot for you to leave additional comments on the survey.

Thank you!

Survey Link: https://forms.gle/eXrcZP4qufKU5Kbw7

Sunderer
Hello Auraxians! Welcome back to our monthly developer letter for PlanetSide 2. This month we have been monitoring the feedback of the last development letter and are happy to see that the proposed sunderer changes were generally well received. Also, unsurprisingly, the most controversial change by far was the way the sunderer repair works. For that reason, we felt it was worth diving a little more into here.

It is easy to understand and sympathize with everyone that does not want the Nanite Proximity Repair System to change. This is how it has always worked and by now one of the only two meaningful roles it has left. When focusing on the latter fact however, it becomes clear why this is a necessary change. The Sunderer has been pigeonholed into only 2 narrow basic roles which could only be capably performed exclusively. That is, to be a competent AMS, the Sunderer requires the deployment shield and that comes at the cost of supporting armor. This means that once someone has elected to take the Nanite Proximity Repair System, they have removed any further meaningful decision making from their play until they fully transition to infantry or reach a vehicle terminal. There is no ability to seamlessly transition into properly supporting the infantry assault that the armor push should have enabled, and all the interesting gameplay decisions that revolve around it.

The important thing to remember is that, even with the cargo module, the Sunderer is still fully capable of supporting mobile armor pushes. The ability to place repair stations quickly on a cooldown is meant to do this, but now a little more consideration is required since there is some level of commitment when the button is pushed. This is a good thing, especially since it allows the Sunderer to have a much wider impact as the Sunderer is not tied to the location where it needs to provide healing, making it much more mobile (and increasing survivability).

It is also important to note that the vehicle is also getting a large set of defensive upgrades that will make it much, much more difficult to destroy. By necessity this requires a separation of the source of healing from the Sunderer. If the healing is strong, then the source of that healing needs to be vulnerable for counterplay. However, if it is very resilient, then the healing cannot be overbearing for the opposing force. Offloading the healing effect to a separate object with its own set of health and defensive stats allows us to tweak these aspects independently. It is like adding an independently targetable "module" to the sunderer so that opponents can degrade its performance without outright killing it, something that is currently lacking in the game.

This hints at a longstanding issue with vehicles in general suffering from "Single Entity Problem" where vehicle capability does not degrade until it is destroyed completely, making them very binary. Presently vehicles are all in, which is where many of the balance issues stem from. But that is a deeper and more complicated issue to be tackled at a point in the future.

Cheating
We are very aware of how much of an issue cheating has become. At the beginning of the year, we specifically dedicated developers to look closely at the issue and work on solutions. There is no one place or technique that hackers use, so we must tackle different problems independently and roll out solutions when we think the time is right.

Unlike other features and changes, we will not be detailing exactly when and how cheating will be addressed. We hope everyone understands why that is not possible. It is unfortunately a Red Queen's race that is never finished and must be constantly worked on quietly so as not to reveal workarounds ahead of time. We can already see that our efforts should bear fruit over time, and we hope that you will notice much less cheating and at greater distant intervals.

On Reverting
Before we end this January development letter, we would like to break down the concept of "reverting changes” and what it means. You may see it mentioned frequently and many times understand why, but it is important to understand exactly what "reverting" something means. Games are large, complex software projects with many elements that are interdependent and are constantly updated. Unless a change is only a patch or two old, it is impossible to "revert" a change in the traditional sense of just finding a single submission and clicking revert.

"Reverting" changes, especially old ones, means reconstructing them from spotty information that is difficult to discover. This is a very time-consuming process that is as, or even more, costly than simply moving forward from where the game is currently. That is not to say the past should be ignored completely. A better way to use past versions of the game is to take more abstract lessons about meaningful gameplay that was lost which positively impacted PlanetSide 2 and reincorporating them in ways that are applicable to its current and future state.

That wraps it up for today’s letter, as always, we thank you for your feedback. You can let us know what your thoughts are about today’s letter here on the steam forums.

-PlanetSide 2 Team