In 2015 we crushed the Guinness World Record for most players in an online FPS battle with a whopping 1,158 players. This year we want to see our fellow Auraxians surpass that in a new unofficial world record breaking PTS event on November 5th @ 2pm PDT / 11pm CEST!


With PlanetSide 2's 10th anniversary just around the corner you’ll also be able to playtest the upcoming changes and additions coming in November while being a part of gaming history. Plus, all participants of this record breaking playtest will be rewarded with a special title.


Check out our Dev Letter next week for the full details on this event and a first look at some of the upcoming gameplay changes coming in the anniversary update.


See you soon, auraxians!


-Mithril, PlanetSide 2 CM

Well hello there. We are rapidly approaching our ten-year anniversary, and as mentioned in the last dev letter, we've taken some time to review the roadmap and realign our goals for the end of the year. We'll get into where we landed on that, talk about the last Outfit Wars, and give you some insight into what you'll see for the 10-year anniversary update.


Despite keeping pretty good pace with our initial ambitions toward the start of the year, the development of the 1v1 version of Outfit Wars took longer than anticipated, putting us on the back foot for subsequent releases. After taking most of September to get realigned and generally slow down, a lot of what was originally intentioned for the last leg of the year has at this point been put on the backburner. Don't despair though, because we've still got a lot of important updates and fun stuff in the works for November. Before we get into that though, Outfit Wars.

The number of upcoming redacted is, unfortunately, also redacted.


With the first Nexus season of Outfit Wars now officially behind us, it's safe to say that this event was a mixed success. A solid format that creates a clearer competitive venue, those who have played on Nexus seem to really enjoy it, and the casting of each event by community members was top notch. On the flip side of that, the first three weeks were marred by issues with hitching, team sorting, and UI readability problems; the map has at least a couple areas that can use some cleanup; and there are some functionality improvements we can make for squads and platoons getting organized in the zone, among other issues. That said, based on the number of participants and the quality of teams making their way to the top, it seems like we have a solid foundation to build upon for future wars.

Congratulations to the winners of this first 1v1 season!

Connery:

• Gold: Recursion
  
• Silver: IRON FORGED ALLIANCE
  
• Bronze: Un1ty

Emerald:

• Gold: GOBLIN JUMPERS
  
• Silver: Recursion
  
• Bronze: Vanu Sovereign Katz

Miller:

• Gold: 1e Regiment des Para Commandos
  
• Silver: Los Piratos
  
• Bronze: Dignity of War Tactical

Cobalt:

• Gold: Big Men
  
• Silver: Hydra
  
• Bronze: CHRISTIAN DIOR

SolTech:

• Gold: Onslaught Union
  
• Silver: The Last Ravens
  
• Bronze: WECN

A big part of what's coming in November pertains to improving the visual feel of the game. We're not trying to reinvent the look, and even to call it an overhaul would be reaching a bit beyond our targets, but we are pushing the art style forward. The intention here is to drop a fresh coat of paint on the existing game, which is possible thanks to some new tech, revisions to existing art, and a lot of work behind the scenes. Standard disclaimer: What you'll see below is in almost all cases, a work in progress, as tuning, polish, and testing remains to be done. 


When it comes to anti-aliasing (the smoothing of jagged edge visuals,) PlanetSide 2 has used "Edge AA," which is realistically about one step above not having any anti-aliasing at all. With the November update, we'll be adding options for TAA (temporal anti-aliasing) FXAA (fast approximate anti-aliasing) and a combination for TAA+FXAA.

An example of TAA+FXAA turned on, eliminating a lot of the jagged edges you'd typically see in Sanctuary.
Click here for a before and after comparison.


Revisiting the Art
We first looked into reverting back to older, larger texture sheets to see if there would be any significant gains in restoring them. That investigation yielded few positive results, so we ultimately made the choice to push the art forward than to fall backward. A couple of the changes we've targeted are to make our metals feel more like metal, and to bring back some of the specularity (shininess,) and dial back some of the places where we use grunge overlays excessively.

With the updated Lightning you'll see more metallics, more vibrant paint, with more clearly defined edges.

Click here for a before and after comparison.


Interior Sky
One of the background technologies we've developed is the ability to detect and change a sky file while in an interior space. Esamir's Containment Sites, don't really do this, despite faking it pretty well with designer-placed server volumes. With the new tech, we are able to integrate volumes into the props themselves that can align to the actual shape of the building. We currently use this tech to neutralize the impact of the outdoor lighting on the indoor spaces.

Using the new indoor sky, we can create interior spaces that feel more true to how they would be lit. You can also see less grungy interior walls of the updated art here as well.

Click here for a before and after comparison.


Screen Space Reflections

With the changes to specularity, we've also added an option to take it a step further. "Screen Space Reflections" (or SSR) is a technique of adding reflections to surfaces, based on what the camera can currently see. There are definitely limitations to this technique, but it creates a cool effect that can add more life to a space. Here's an example.

With SSR enabled, you can see reflections on the floor from the surrounding lights and equipment. As a note the interior sky file in the Tech Plant here is still a work in progress, and way darker than we'll send Live.

Click here for a before and after comparison.


Water Reflections

Similar to the SSR above, we've also added reflections to water surfaces. This quality is handled in a setting separate from SSR, so you can tailor the visuals. With water reflections, we can more clearly differentiate the water's surface from what's below, instead of the juice-drink sort of look we have currently. You'll also see terrain and objects reflected on the water's surface.

Both the sky, terrain, and structures can be seen reflected in this shot.

Click here for a before and after comparison.

Explosions!

One of the steps we're taking to improve on the visuals is to revamp ground explosions from projectile impacts (like tank cannon shells hitting the ground.) The end result will feel more modern, be better optimized, and help resolve a long-standing problem where explosions that land close to you can be very difficult to see. Here are some examples of old versus new, noting that these, like many of what's been showed already are work in progress.

Old impact.


New impact.

But wait, there is, indeed, more.
What's shown above is some, but certainly not all, of the visual updates we'll be making in November. On the gameplay front standby for a better performing spawn priority system, a smattering of balance adjustments, new tricks up the Bastion Fleet Carrier's sleeve, and a new style of facility capture gameplay that will change the battlefields of Auraxis forever. Soooooo, we'll talk about it all as we move into November!

Thanks all.

-Wrel, Lead Designer

The first Outfit Wars on Nexus have concluded and the champions of each server have been crowned!

Thank you to all participants of the event including the excellent community of broadcasters, api masters, and you, the fans!

Congratulations! 👏👏👏

Tune in to your local match schedule in game via the outfit wars tab. Root for your favorite outfit in the comments below!

You can watch the matches unfold on https://www.twitch.tv/arsheetv

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All PC servers will come down for the following update on Wednesday, October 13, at 6:00am PT (3:00pm CEST). The downtime for this update is expected to last up to 2 hours.
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• Lost Fleet Carrier's health pool has been increased significantly, and its missile batteries now track targets.
  
• Elysium Spawn Tube is now immune to Sniper Rifle damage.
  
• Extended magazine on the TX1 Repeater now adds 6 rounds, appropriate to the 3-round burst size, instead of 5.
  
• Extended Magazine on the Solstice Burst now adds 6 rounds, appropriate to the 3-round burst size, instead of 5.
  
• Fixed an issue with Kingsnake audio not sounding off correctly.
  
• Health and Shield bars now display when appropriate while Large HUD icons are set.
  
• SABR-13's Forward Grip now uses the correct icons.
  
• Decals appear on Sunderers once again.

A bitter moon hangs high overhead, casting an ominous light over the battlefields of Auraxis. The bitter battle between soldier and SpacePumpkin has begun once again!

This year's Nanite of the Living Dead carries with it a new directive, a new mission, a new alert event, and striking new cosmetics.

Click here for the full patch notes!

This morning's hotfix has provided the following fixes:

• We've identified and resolved areas that cause hitching to take place during and after new dynamic instances (like the tutorial and Nexus) spin up.
  
• These changes should also help the long-term health of the server when it has gone for long periods without being restarted.
  
• We'll continue additional investigation as needed, should problems arise over the weekend.

• Player counts of each team are now surfaced during the warmup phase while on Nexus.
  
• The "Join Match" button now becomes disabled and displays information when your outfit has reached the maximum number of members in a match.

All PC servers will come down for the following update on Thursday, September 8, at 6:00am PT (3:00pm CEST). The downtime for this update is expected to last up to 2 hours.
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• Fixed many issues related to the tinting options in Outfit Wars.
  
• When the warmup ends, it no longer prevents the start of the next alert's fanfare from playing.
  
• Fixed an issue with Cobalt's Outfit Wars displaying incorrect leaderboard information.
  
• Global ranking should now display the correct numbers next to each Outfit's name.
  
• Owning more territory than the opposing faction when they have taken your Warpgate base no longer displays the incorrect victors when the alert ends.
  
• Temporarily disabled Overseer speech from Outfit Wars facility capture/defend notifications.
  
• You now receive an error message when clicking the Join Match button on an account that is ineligible to participate in the war, eg. when you attempt to participate in multiple wars on the same server...

Dev Note: We're aware of some hitching taking place during match times last weekend and will be gathering more information on Friday in the case that it occurs again.

• Observer cameras now have better spawn locations on Nexus.
  
• You can no longer redeploy from the observer camera while on Nexus.
  
• The new command "/ow observeend" will cease observing an Outfit Wars match.
  
• You can no longer "/ow observematch" a match your Outfit is participating in.

Dev Note: We didn't see any malicious use of observer camera in the last round, but these changes were on our to-do list to prevent it as a future possibility.

• Added a new "Sudden Death" alert type that now triggers when a Meltdown alert becomes a Draw.
  
• The first faction to kill 10,000 enemies, or whichever team has the most kills at the end of this 15 minute alert, will lock the continent in their favor.
  
• If this alert somehow ends in a tie... another Sudden Death alert will trigger.
  
• Victorious factions will win rewards equivalent to the current Meltdown alert losses, and losing factions receive no rewards.
  
• Metagame event ids for Census API are as follows: 236, 237, 238, 239, 240 (Indar, Hossin, Amerish, Esamir, and Oshur respectively)

Dev Note: The intention of these alerts are to improve upon the "coinflip" Draw mechanics that previously existed, and simultaneously fix a bug that was introduced in the last update that prevented said coinflips from occurring.

• NS-11C and variants now have 3 underbarrel grenades, instead of 2.
  
• NSO Auraxium weapons now use the correct weapon ribbon icons.
  
• Refunded and have hidden the Chimera's incomplete "Power Spike" skill line.

Hey there. With week one of Outfit Wars behind us now, I’d like to do a bit of post mortem, and then talk a bit more about some goals for the rest of the year.



Firstly, a big thank you and congratulations goes out to the participants, the excellent caster coverage, and the community API wizards who enhanced the event showcasing during the first round of Outfit Wars. On Twitch alone, we reached the highest peak viewership since The Late Shift rolled through in July (https://sullygnome.com/game/PlanetSide_2/30/summary), with more streaming taking place on YouTube separately. It’s great to see the general excitement surrounding events like this, and all the players rooting for one another in chat is a good reminder of how tight knit our community is.



Secondly, the delivery of this event and the communication surrounding it could stand to be better. We pushed to get this update across the finish line so that this year's Roadmap was kept up with. In hindsight, that wasn't the right play. As bugs began to pile up, we should have made the call early on to postpone the event until we had room for a thorough test cycle. Most folks have real lives outside of this game, and organizing 48 players shouldn’t be something you need to do a few days (or a single day, in some extreme cases,) before the match. We apologize for the additional burden this placed on you all.


Fortunately (hopefully?) most of the rough patch is behind us. We have a handful of fixes on the way this Thursday that’ll clean up some scoreboard and match time issues, and you should expect no further changes to the gameplay space this season. There's still some work we can do to help facilitate casting of the event (mostly in the realm of confusing team colors,) but we'll need to identify when that can be improved.


With that being said, in order to maintain the health of the game moving forward, we're going to have to reel in our update cadence a bit. Currently, we're trying to do too much with the resources we have. Big, fancy features like Outfit Wars take the majority of the team to accomplish, and when setbacks occur it's incredibly difficult to play catch-up.

Through September, we’re going to take some time and reexamine what remains of the roadmap, see what needs to be cut, moved, or pivoted away from, and take our update cadence a bit slower through the end of the year. The goal is to focus on solid releases that we won’t need to scramble to fix, while tying up as many loose ends as we can from earlier this year. While this seems like an obvious decision, the truth is that slowing down content cadence at all is risky, and most of the times this was tried in the past have been met with lower player counts and (ironically) more discontent from active players because of how important player count is to this style of game.

However, given the increasing need for some cleanup, and that we're moving into a traditionally high-populated time of the year, we should have a safer space to experiment with slowing down. With any luck, we'll all come out the other side in a better place than we were because of it.


Thanks everyone.

-Wrel, Lead Designer

Last weekend's Outfit Wars test identified a handful of issues that we've fixed in this release. On top of that, there has been some confusion on Live caused about match times due to the UI pointing to a couple of different data-sources when trying to display them to the player. This should be resolved, and when the Wednesday match time hits, all of the match times will be in sync with when your matches are actually taking place, and relogging will no longer cause match times to appear blank in the standings screen.

HUD team color indicators are also in a much better place, now allowing for the same level of control you had in the sandbox, while being specific to Outfit Wars.

Players will no longer be able to join a match after the Warmup (as originally intended,) or rejoin a match that they have left or been disconnected from. Lastly, players who leave an outfit mid-match will also be kicked from the matchup. These changes address a variety of exploits surfaced by players during the test.


The following changes impact accounts with observer camera access.

• Using "/ow observematch matchrank" will take you to an active Outfit Wars match. The matchrank is the rank listed on the Outfit War standings screen.
  
• When in an Outfit Wars match, you will be unable to leave the camera without redeploying to a new zone.
  
• Players in an observer camera when they log out will be placed in Sanctuary upon relogging.

• NS Scorpion now drops bomblets again.
  
• Lights no longer flicker on medium graphics quality settings.
  
• Decoy Grenade now has a unique model.
  
• UI.Ok is now okay.
  
• "team_id" has now been exposed in the Census API.
  
• Javelin once again shows thrust FX in all correct movement states.
  
• Chimera no longer loses idle FX the moment it starts moving.