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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

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

Bug Fixes

• Repositories and Conduits should now correctly show faction colors
  
• Arbalest sound fix where the gun sounds empty towards the end of firing the remainder of a magazine
  
• Repair tool no longer gets stuck in repair mode without spending charge
  
• AMR-66, HSR-1, Pulsar C, Serpent VE92 suppressor delay audio fix
  
• Fixed an area that prevents Sunderer deployment on Shrouded Skyway

Other Notes
The following bugs require further time to fix, please check future patch notes for further updates.

• Spawn beacon fx bug
  
• Outfit chat bug
  
• Single shot camera shake / recoil bug introduced in previous patch

Game servers will go down for our scheduled pc update tomorrow @ 6am pt / 3pm ct. for a 3hr downtime window.
================================
Capture the Conduit has been reworked. Conduit facilities are now "hybrid" style facilities where repositories are activated by Conduits, at which point they become capture points. Attackers must hold these capture points in order to capture the facility in a similar manner to other facilities. Bringing additional flags to a captured repository provides large amounts of capture progress and will greatly speed up capture times. This should make many aspects of capturing a base more readable, familiar, and reliable while still maintaining the more interesting aspects of needing to capture conduits.

How the new system will work:

• Capture the Conduit facilities are captured via the traditional method of holding activated repositories (capture points) until the attacker captures the facility.
  
• Repositories are activated by bringing conduits to them.
  
• An activated repository behaves like a normal capture point until the base is captured, or the point is recaptured and deactivated.
  
• Bringing additional flags to an owned active repository will grant a large amount of facility capture progress, roughly equivalent to owning that point for a minute.
  
• Conduits themselves will behave the same, and be subject to the same rules and restrictions as they were previously.

Based on feedback from the Public Test Server the capture time was dramatically lowered, especially with the capture of additional flags, which now have a significant impact of capture progress. This should make attacking and capturing a facility easier than it was and also draw some attention towards the flag while a capture is still in progress. That being said, the public test was somewhat limited so we will be making further adjustments as the new system is put through its paces by more players at a higher concurrency.

For a full account of why these changes were made and our though process behind them please see the November 2023 Development Update.

As part of the playtest, we are reviewed all 22 of the Conduit facilities. Facilities that remained Conduit bases had updates made to their repository, conduit, and spawn point locations. Other minor adjustments were also made where needed.

Several facility types were also reverted to previous facility types, listed below.

Esamir
The Traverse Reverted to 1 Capture Point
Mattherson's Triumph Reverted to 3 Capture Points
Baldur Amp Station Reverted to 3 Capture Points
Spiral Oasis Reverted to Construction Outpost

Indar
J908 Impact Site Reverted to 3 Capture Points
Indar Excavation Site Reverted to 3 Capture Points

Amerish
The Bastion Reverted to 3 Capture Points
Splitpeak Pass Reverted to 3 Capture Points
West Pass Watchtower Reverted to 3 Capture Points

Hossin
Fort Drexler Reverted to 3 Capture Points
Hunter's Blind Reverted to 1 Capture Point

The UI still isn't complete and is being actively worked on. The UI should still be functional, but not provide all of the desired information to players for different configurations of the state of the facility. We felt that given the need for the update that releasing with the current UI issues would still be a net positive as opposed to waiting until all of the UI work was fully complete.

It is the year of the Dragon, for this Lunar New Year the following bundle will be on sale starting

• February 10th.
  
• Dragon Helmet
  
• Year of the Dragon Outfit Decal
  
• Dragon Profile Banner
  
• Golden Lunar Banner Frame
  
• 1 Day XP Boost

Previous Lunar New Year bundles are also returning to the store for a limited time.

• The the NS-357 "Endeavor" Underboss has had its sights zeroed, removing a vertical misalignment
  
• A hole in the terrain near Snowshear Watchtower has been filled by the Auraxus parks department
  
• A gap in the water surface at Ixtab Water Purification is no longer dividing by zero
  
• Underwater firing sounds for the VE-LR "Obelisk", NS-61 Ravenous, NS-44L Ravenous have been fixed
  
• NSO weapons VFX/ SFX shells should now properly appear when using the silencer
  
• NSO weapons have had their "no ammo" audio indications sounds fixed
  
• The AMR-66, HSR-1, NS-11 series have had their silencer delays fixed
  
• Fixed the issue when the trigger is spammed with the C-4 detonator, every other press plays no audio
  
• Fixed Infinite flight exploit via light assault Icarus Jump fix

Hello Auraxians! 

As 2023 comes to an end, we want to give you a preview of what’s coming in 2024. In today’s letter we will go over some of our observations of the game and our ideas on what we will be working on. 

In 2024, we are planning to focus on updates that value more long-term positive progress as opposed to short term changes that are likely to have minimal long-term impact. Many core design elements have long suffered neglect, leaving little room for tweaks that would have an appreciable net positive result on the current state of the game. We intend to approach fixing the many problems PlanetSide 2 currently faces at a deeper, more meaningful, level. This means that there will be fewer small balance tweaks in favor of larger more impactful changes that take longer to implement but also have lasting effects. 

We are determining priority primarily by the amount of value we get relative to the amount of work truly fixing the problem would take. If what you feel is most important is not at the top of the list, please have hope that multiple things are being worked on at once.  

As an example of what this entails, we are currently developing a Sunderer rework. 


One of the most pressing complaints is that the Sunderer is too easy to destroy, preventing the development of attacks that would have led to satisfying battles. This stems from a few issues: 

• The general increase in infantry anti-vehicle capability 
  
• Its alpha strike vulnerability to infantry (especially LA) 
  
• It is vulnerable to a single lightning tank, e.g., from a Viper near max range 

On the surface these issues may be mitigated by simply tweaking the Sunderer’s stats, but upon further examination the problems run much deeper; 

• The defense slot is overloaded 
  
• Players are unable to create a versatile sunderer that can perform multiple roles within battle and dynamically shift between them 
  
• Players cannot reliably configure the sunderer to meet the threats they expect to face 
  
• The opportunity cost of this slot is extremely uneven, making for few real choices. E.g. Deployment Shield is near mandatory in most situations 
  
• Players must sacrifice defense for utility 
  
• The updates in how deploying works has obviated its secondary utility role as a troop transport 
  
• The Proximity Repair System, Vehicle Ammo Dispenser, and Proximity Radar certification have extremely basic gameplay. 
  
• Just follow other vehicles and try not to die. While it can be fun for a time, there is little inherent decision making 
  
• Using these certs effectively inhibits the Sunderer's ability to perform its primary function as a spawn point 
  
• The cloaking module is only available at the final tier of vehicle stealth 

After evaluating the state of the sunderer as a whole, we decided that a more significant rework would dramatically improve the experience of configuring and using the Sunderer, making it overall a more interesting vehicle to pilot. With this in mind, we outlined a series of goals that we want to achieve with the rework.

• Balance the opportunity cost of certifications to give players meaningful loadout choices, with clear pluses and minuses, and no obvious winners 
  
• Increase the overall, and especially deployed, survivability of Sunderers 
  
• Increase the direct tactical versatility of the Sunderer by improving its utility for any given loadout 
  
• Give the Sunderer tactical presence in its support role 

While doing this we wanted to also preserve the existing meaningful gameplay concepts as much as possible, especially the Sunderer’s primary role as a spawn point. 


In brief, this is what we are doing: 

• We are renaming the slots and refocusing each slot on a distinct aspect of the Sunderer 
  
• Defense and Utility with be redistributed more evenly between the new slots 
  
• We are changing the certs themselves, combining some so they provide more value, restructuring others, and adding some new ones. 

We are focusing on the certs themselves and not adjusting weapons (at this time).  This is a natural way to break up the adjustments since weapons need their own long-term examination and many are shared across vehicles. 

The new certification loadout is structured as follows: 


Deployment 
The first new certification slot is the deployment slot. This now only contains certs that are active while the Sunderer is deployed, giving more freedom for configuring the other certifications. 

We still expect the Deploy Shield to be the primary certification for this slot, but we wanted to include the Stealth Module and new Point Defense certs for secondary and support Sunderers that wish to act in unison. 

The Deploy Shield is being reworked to behave more like a mini-citadel shield with a health that will protect players spawning and provide more resistance against alpha strikes. The Stealth Module remains mostly the same, the cloaking effect that used to be only available in the last slot is being moved to part of the baseline certs. We are looking into what other benefits can be provided by improving it. 

Finally, we are adding “Point Defense” to the Sunderer. This will provide improvements to the Sunderers weapons (e.g. Projectile Speed and Fire Rate) at the cost of range. Our hope is to balance this properly so that both the slot cost and the need for the turrets to be manned are worth taking this cert without making the Sunderer oppressive offensively. If that balance cannot be found here, we will likely remove it before release. 

Armor 
Sunderer defensive choices have been moved to their own dedicated cert slot. This will be a combination of old and new certs that will hopefully give players meaningful choices about what to take for different situations. 

Nanite Armor combines the functionality of the Fire Suppression System and Nanite Auto Repair System into a single cert, providing passive healing along with a “Panic Button” burst of healing on cooldown. Enhanced plating will provide a general increase in passive resistances (values still being worked on) that replaces both Blockade Armor and Mine Guard. 

Finally, the new Reactive Armor will completely negate a burst of damage from anti-vehicle damage types such as from an AP shell or multiple C4 being detonated at once. Each vehicle damage zone (front, back, etc) has its own independent set of reactive plates that can detonate independently, making it possible to re-position the Sunderer so that a new side faces the threat once an attack is absorbed. The reactive plates contain nanites that will auto-repair on a very long cooldown. The cooldown can be lowered by actively “over-healing” the Sunderer. 

In practice, the 3 armor types aim to each be a better choice in different situations.  The Nanite Armor should provide the most long-term protection from small amounts of sustained damage where the Engineer cannot repair, such as when transporting players or driving for extended periods. Enhanced Plating is best used in situations where alpha strikes are less likely, and the Engineer is in a position to actively heal the Sunderer by increasing its effective health and effective repair rate. Reactive Armor is designed to resist alpha strikes at the cost of being more vulnerable to sustained damage, which can be extremely useful in many situations. 

Cargo
The largest change, by far, to Sunderers is the new Cargo cert slot. This slot offloads support abilities that were previously directly attached to the Sunderer, bow soon to be attached to a secondary game object placed in the world by the Sunderer. Being the largest change, we expect this to be controversial with both advantages and disadvantages. 

The Proximity Repair System, Vehicle Ammo Dispenser, and Proximity RADAR are being converted to use this new system. The Gate Shield Diffuser functionality is also being moved here but with a buff, as it can now be deployed to temporarily disrupt a Gate Shield completely allowing any vehicle to pass through it. 

By offloading repairing and ammo dispensing to a tertiary object, the Sunderer can have more physical presence. It can drop a repair station or ammo tower in one position to support a vehicle assault, and then drive to another and deploy in a defensive position to support the infantry push.  This versatility at points of contact does come at the cost of more easily supporting mobile vehicle engagements (since the locations can only be updated on cooldown) but given the current flow of the game this seems like a more common situation Sunderers find themselves in. 

This also gives us another lever to balance these certs with. Since the deployed objects can be destroyed by opponents without destroying the Sunderer, the defensive and “offensive” values can be balanced independently, meaning that the Sunderer can be made more hardy without needing to offset it by nerfing the repair values to compensate for the inability to kill the sunderer. 

We are aware of possible exploits and griefing, using droppable geometry, thus we will do our best to design these objects to have minimal collision footprints and appropriately sized hit boxes without looking out of place.


These are the kinds of changes we are aiming to bring to the game. Long-lasting meaningful updates that give more tools for players to consider while maintaining the core of what makes PlanetSide 2 unique. As an additional tease there are some things that are also in the pipeline (more on those in future development updates). Please keep in mind that we are not necessarily working on them in the order they are listed, and multiple things are being worked on at once. 

• Class reworks 
  
• New orthogonal non-combat system 
  
• Outfit Wars improvements (particularly to internal scheduling tools) 
  
• New facility type / game mode 
  
• Improvements to alerts and missions, including new ones 
  
• A new vehicle 

We are also having internal discussions on various issues voiced by the community including server merges and changes to Oshur. Some of the challenges we face when reviewing server merges is the possibility of additional high latency for some users, however we are continuing to review options.  

There are also other discussions relating to improving our anti-cheat measures in the game, which is a little more complicated than it may seem. As we move forward with these key projects, we will keep you informed on our website and socials. 

As we continue to fix bugs and make smaller localized improvements for each update, we will continue to gather your feedback on reddit and the forums. This leads us to our next topic!


The community has been extremely helpful with initial playtests of our Capture the Conduit changes. If you have not done so yet, drop your feedback on our forum post here. 

We will be monitoring play sessions on the PTS server: 
Thursday and Friday 12/21 - 12/22 from 8pm PST – 10pm PST. Both days. 

Join this public playtest event and help us finetune the new Capture the Conduit experience.

Thank you and Happy Auraximas to you all, 

PlanetSide 2 Team 

🎁8th - 10th Year Anniversary Bundle Sale
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📅Sale ends Dec. 24 @ 11:59PM PST.
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✨Triple XP For Members!✨
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✨Double XP For All!✨
Collect those certs and unlock more weapons with our Double XP For All event running from 12/22 - 12/26! Happy Holidays!

5th, 6th, and 6th year anniversary bundles are 40% off! Grab them today through December 17.
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