Planetside 2 Catch-All

Got to ask, how do you change continents? It be nice to see something new.

OG_slinger wrote:
Swarfigo wrote:

The last patch seems to have taken care of my fps issues. Where I was getting 15-30 fps I am getting a glorious 60-75 frames with everything on high. I still have an extra beta key if anyone wants one or knows someone who wants one.

PM sent.

Key sent.

master0 wrote:

Got to ask, how do you change continents? It be nice to see something new.

At the warp gate spawn area you should find a terminal that looks like this:
IMAGE(http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a288/LupusUmbrus/img_20121017-21-25-40.jpg)

Cool I'll have to try it next time. Had a nice moment in game. I sneak to a remote base and jump jet up to a high level while capping the point. I'm all alone and I have a close fight with two guys. I'm just sitting there and it's at this point I know an enemy is around me but hasn't seen me because I'm elevated. All of a sudden I hear gun fire and explosions and I'm think "Frak, frak, frak, I'm gonna die". I look to the horizon and its a goddamn friendly Armor column. They just roll in and mop up the place. I went from being alone to being an army, felt great.

I'm super-psyched for the underslung grenade launchers!
I'm less thrilled with the Aux changes, both of them. Tied to XP - it's all about kills. Going away completely - what am I fighting for again?

It's been a few days since I played, but NC had Esamir on constant lockdown for a while (and the highest pop, who'd a guessed?).
I know it probably wasn't "fun" for TR and VS, but actually, it was kind of a blast because it was still a big battle because there were basically two battles and everybody was there cause it was pointless to be anywhere else. Also easier to rack up on kills.

Maybe cause of the lockdowns, but Esamir seems good for plain warfare and having actual battle lines, which isn't something you see on Indar and I'd really like them to expand on this.

NEW PATCH, NEW PATCH! Wohoo!

Lot's of good fixes out this week.

First a couple known issues we'll hotfix asap:

Weapons are not purchasable in the marketplace, but are in the Cert trees
The Dalton and Tank Buster, Liberator weapons, are not purchasable from Cert trees

Headlines:

-Infantry and vehicle weapons are unlocked with cert points instead of Auraxium
-Auraxium rewards were removed from the game
-Cert points are earned with every 250 experience points instead of 1000 experience points
-Gameplay implants were removed, will return later as a loadout slot
-Weapon medals grant cert point rewards

Sounds good to me! Too bad weapon medal rewards probably won't be retroactive, I have a lot of them.

Top Player Bugs Resolved:

-Frame rate shouldn't affect fire rate (goddamit this explains SO MUCH)
-Infiltrators should not be able to fire while cloaked
-Ability system improvements to help protect against abilities getting stuck on or off
-Ammo boxes and mines should be more responsive
-Fixed an issue where players would get into a semi-dead state
-Resolved an issue where players would log in or spawn at a location in the middle of the zone
-Platoons should no longer get in a broken leaderless state
-Players should no longer spawn at zero health
-Removed a case where players could get weapons into an unusable state
-The heal and repair tools now have sticky targeting

Apart from the platoon thing I don't think there is a single bug on this list that didn't affect me at one point or another. Glad to see SOE is on the ball.

Weapons:

-All shotgun damage and range has been reduced
-TR shotgun rate of fire is a little slower, but it is still the fastest shotgun
-Projectile drop was slightly increased

No surprises here. Shotguns really are point blank weapons, they should lose at every other range.

Vehicles:

-Damage of Rocket Pods, Lightning 75mm, 40mm Grenade Launchers and Liberator 105mm cannon increased against Main Battle Tanks
-Flak damage reduced by ~5%
-Repair tool is now 25% slower on vehicles
-Liberator health increased by 10%
-A tuning pass has been done on tank turret controls. They should feel more responsive.
-Range of Scout Radar on Flash has been reduced
-Galaxy acquire timer is now 20 minutes instead of 30

Certs:

-Scout Radar certification is now 4 ranks. Maximum range reduced to 200 meters
-Galaxy acquire timer certifications now capable of reducing timer to 5 minutes
-Mineguard certifications are now 4 ranks

Misc:

-Queues for logging in to full servers or zones (no more having to spam the play button or warp button)
-Client performance optimizations

The lower repair rate for vehicles is interesting. Always though it was cheap how the engies would repair the vehicle and basically make it unbreakable. I think repair guns should overheat honestly, probable be a better method. Downloading the patch now, should be fun.

It used to be that repairs to vehicles were disabled for 8 seconds after they took damage, don't know why that changed.

- Ammo drops from engineers are currently bugged. They work for no one!
- Regeneration kits are also bugged. Don't bother with the syringes they do nothing.
- I really like the new cert system, but some of the costs are wildly different now. The AA machine gun turret for magriders is over 400 certs to buy, and used to be only about 10000 auraxium. On the other hand the AA missile pods for the Scythe used to be 12500 aurax but are now just 120 certs. Either they got the numbers wrong or they did some rebalancing.
- I really really don't like the new turret controls. They made them more "responsive" but all that means on the user end is that they jacked up the mouse sensitivity a couple notches. They track so fast now that they can be hard to control. I had to turn down my vehicle sensitivity from 75 back to 50.

I had the afternoon free so I put in about 4 hours between 2 and 6pm. I somehow managed to get a 10.5 K/D and 84 kills. HOW? I barely remember the gameplay but that seems impossible to me. Maybe the score tracking system is buggy. I earned about 110 certs, which is equivalent to about 11000 auraxium in that time. Unlocks are MUCH quicker now, though you need even more certs because upgrades use them too.

Had a funny moment. There was a sunderer and an AA max perched on the hill just on the east side of broken arch, you may be familiar with it. Anyway the MAX shot down my scyth which really annoyed me. So I spawned a magrider out of crossroads and drove up the hill behind him. The MAX was not happy to see me. Though he was a laggy bastard and I couldn't get a bead on him. On my 4th shot I missed again... and hit the sunderer in the back destroying it. The sunderer turned into black wreckage which flipped up in the air and landed on the MAX's head, squishing him instantly. Must have been karma for something.

But wait there's more! After that was over I went over to the cliff edge. There was a sniper and an engineer on a cliff below me looking down. Who I promptly shot in the back with my tank cannon. That sniper never knew what hit him!

So there I was looking for something to do when I noticed that the NC were making an armour push out of Blackshard mine trying to take Tawrich back. I started attacking them from the cliff top and got two vanguard kills! To give you an idea of how far these shots were my tank was sitting on what is one of the tallest cliffs in the game. And I still had to aim with notch 5 on my tank sights in order to arc shots at them. If you like driving a tank at all get those 1.5x magnification sights, worth every cert!

It was at that point that a skyguard rolled up behind me and made the VERY POOR decision to attack me. I promptly turned around and blasted him at point blank range. I hit him twice and that set him on fire. But I only had one round left and he was fleeing backwards so I had a hard time lining up a shot. But as it turns out I didn't have to because he drove off the cliff and died, giving me credit and xp. Hah.

But WAIT, there's more! So being in a tank with 1 round left I figured I should get back to defending tawrich and decided to drive south off of the cliff where I blasted that sniper earlier. My magrider tumbled off the cliff... and landed on one of the air pads of tawrich tower. There were infantry up on the balcony, so I switched my secondary turret and attacked. I must have gotten 5 or 6 guys AND a MAX before someone took me out with a rocket. That default Basilisk MG turret ain't bad as long as you are at close range.

.... maybe that 10.5 k/d ratio isn't so surprising after all. I tried to take a screenshot but PS2 wouldn't let me. It just posted as a blank picture of my desktop. Probably a holdover from the NDA period. Anyhow, GOOD TIMES.

Yeah your score seems perfectly normal after that run. Still waiting on the download to finish, the download rate must be much slower then steam. Oh and as you saw flanking is god in this game. If you can flank the enemy in any way shape or form you will own them. One time a huge battle was raging and I managed to sneak by and hide way on there flank as a sniper. It was heaven. I just stood there getting headshot after headshot. It's the reason light assault is my favorite, they flank the best.

Still worried about the meta game. Territory doesn't matter much with the changes they made. Really no point in fighting, although honestly territory was fairly useless to begin with.

Oh I wouldn't say that. Facility and base captures are worth 500xp or two certs each now. Taking and HOLDING territory is kind of pointless though because the rewards for defence are much lower.

Tamren wrote:

Oh I wouldn't say that. Facility and base captures are worth 500xp or two certs each now. Taking and HOLDING territory is kind of pointless though because the rewards for defence are much lower.

Yes but before just having certain territory gave you auraxium. So taking it gave you more and your enemies less. Now only fighting lets you earn it. I hope they add in say certain territory gives you free cert points per hour just like auraxium did before. Give you something to fight for. Really small issue, as overall the meta game is really weak. They are going to do that, which is nice. I hope they do some crazy like making it possible to win the war on a server or something.

Oh and work is finally over ( working til 9:30 sucks), but still downloading the patch...

Well if you had passive cert gain just from terrain then you will just end up with the situation we had before with people idling in the warpgate for days at a time hoarding auraxium and not actually doing anything. Now we have actual proper tug of wars. I'd call it an improvement.

There are ways of getting XP other than straight up fighting. Playing a medic racks up the XP really fast. 10xp heals and 75xp revives, if you get right up to the front line it adds up very fast. Everyone likes revives because it saves them from walking.

Tamren wrote:

Well if you had passive cert gain just from terrain then you will just end up with the situation we had before with people idling in the warpgate for days at a time hoarding auraxium and not actually doing anything. Now we have actual proper tug of wars. I'd call it an improvement.

There are ways of getting XP other than straight up fighting. Playing a medic racks up the XP really fast. 10xp heals and 75xp revives, if you get right up to the front line it adds up very fast. Everyone likes revives because it saves them from walking.

Didn't they fix that by making it so you didn't get anything from idling? Just like you said though, the only real way to gain is on a battlefront (whether its as a medic or sniper). It doesn't matter whether your faction is doing well or how much territory you hold, as long as you are fighting. Basically owning territory serve little purpose, only fighting over it does. Or rather the only purpose is to fight. Anyway like I said, I'm guessing this is all going to change once they up the meta game a bit. Patch finished gonna go run around for a bit then sleep

The new meta stuff they have planned is neat. No MBTs if you don't have a Tech Lab for instance is a big incentive to defend your own or capture someone else's. That would actually match how the game was originally. I was a part of some "charges of the light brigade" back in PS1. No BFRs, no MBTs. Just lots of buggies, transports, atvs and sunderors rolling across the map in a huge wave.

In case you missed it, the game is officially launching on November 20, 2012. Higby, T-Ray and Smedley were simulcasting from SOE live on Twitch TV. They were dropping some news along with the reveal of Amerish.

Personally, I'm disappointed by what I've seen of Amerish so far

http://www.planetside-universe.com/n...

Nov 20 is much earlier than I thought and I'm not sure if it's quite there yet. Amerish looks pretty cool but I wish it had more foliage.

TempestBlayze wrote:

Nov 20 is much earlier than I thought and I'm not sure if it's quite there yet. Amerish looks pretty cool but I wish it had more foliage.

Yeah, I haven't played the beta in a couple weeks so I'm not sure if it's been polished up but it felt like the game would be released mid 2013 or something.

BNice wrote:
TempestBlayze wrote:

Nov 20 is much earlier than I thought and I'm not sure if it's quite there yet. Amerish looks pretty cool but I wish it had more foliage.

Yeah, I haven't played the beta in a couple weeks so I'm not sure if it's been polished up but it felt like the game would be released mid 2013 or something.

Even at the rate it's going I's say Christmas earliest. My guess is they probable under pressure from up on high. Aw well even as it is right now, its still pretty damn fun. Going to join the rock paper shotgun outfit if anyone is interested.

Edit: Frak that too much work setting up, and I'd have to make a new character.

Double Edit: Just had a nice long run, server is down for now though. Although it should be back up quick. The new patch is much more buggy for me, and the TR are as dumb as doornails. Sadly I'm playing TR this turn, and my so called allies seemed fairly useless. Otherwise had a fun time defending a bio dome, managed to make it to in the top 10 of a decent sized fight. Also had a really fun time defending a bio dome all by myself for a good hour. It was an endless game of cat and mouse that I won for a long time. Well til there were more then three of them. Managed to get my reflex scope and some other stuff. That all being said, I'm fairly certain the next wipe, I'm not going TR. Oh and I finally cranked the settings to max, it's damn pretty.

TempestBlayze wrote:

Nov 20 is much earlier than I thought and I'm not sure if it's quite there yet. Amerish looks pretty cool but I wish it had more foliage.

A dense jungle environment would be Female Doggoin'.

RolandofGilead wrote:
TempestBlayze wrote:

Nov 20 is much earlier than I thought and I'm not sure if it's quite there yet. Amerish looks pretty cool but I wish it had more foliage.

A dense jungle environment would be Female Doggoin'.

Not for my framerate! My FPS is doing much better since the recent patch, I edited the game's ini file to turn off foliage which helped a lot.

I don't remember too much about the original PS continents. I have forgotten all of the names but there was "river grassland", "lakes and valleys", "swampy forest", "icy hellhole", "alpine", "craggy desert" and "volcanic". I think there may have been a tropical beach one in there too. It was a nice variety of terrains but since everything was single biome you rarely covered more than one per play session.

master0 wrote:
BNice wrote:
TempestBlayze wrote:

Nov 20 is much earlier than I thought and I'm not sure if it's quite there yet. Amerish looks pretty cool but I wish it had more foliage.

Yeah, I haven't played the beta in a couple weeks so I'm not sure if it's been polished up but it felt like the game would be released mid 2013 or something.

Even at the rate it's going I's say Christmas earliest. My guess is they probable under pressure from up on high. Aw well even as it is right now, its still pretty damn fun. Going to join the rock paper shotgun outfit if anyone is interested.

Edit: Frak that too much work setting up, and I'd have to make a new character.

Double Edit: Just had a nice long run, server is down for now though. Although it should be back up quick. The new patch is much more buggy for me, and the TR are as dumb as doornails. Sadly I'm playing TR this turn, and my so called allies seemed fairly useless. Otherwise had a fun time defending a bio dome, managed to make it to in the top 10 of a decent sized fight. Also had a really fun time defending a bio dome all by myself for a good hour. It was an endless game of cat and mouse that I won for a long time. Well til there were more then three of them. Managed to get my reflex scope and some other stuff. That all being said, I'm fairly certain the next wipe, I'm not going TR. Oh and I finally cranked the settings to max, it's damn pretty.

Great TR open Platoons to join, Imperial Gods, Hell from Above, and TRG (if the members are on). I've had great runs with all three. TR are dumber than doornails, HOLD THE CROWN AT ALL COSTS.

This patch has made the game so much more buggy for me. Turrets go bonkers, and I crash to desktop fairly reliable and I can't by med packs. It's annoying the hell out of me. Worse bit is the new cert system is really growing on me. I'm this close to getting the grenade launcher for my gun. It's really driving me nuts. Does it get more buggy and crashy if the settings are high? I'd hate to turn it down but still if i have too. Also smoke grenade launcher is fairly cool. Didn't think it would be useful, but just lob a round or two at the enemy and they're basically blind. Now the shotgun attachment is horrid, reload time is way too high, if you miss your toast.

Had a fun moment, I was defending one of the larger bases and the NC were attacking through a pair of doors. Literally it was just a swarm of people rushing through the door. It was insane but fun. I parked a engie turret nearby and just held the damn trigger down by the door. It was fantastic, but stupid mofos kept walking in front of me a getting shot. Wound up with my guns jammed for too much tk damage. Twice.

Oh I also got to destroy a Vanu armor column that was fantastic. I was in one of the heavy anti tank turrets when the armor column came into range. They really didn't notice me so I had free shots for a long time. Then a tank or two further distracted them, it was fantastic.

The TR seemed much better this game, but damn it, are all pilots NC? Just swarms of NC ships flying around and wrecking sh*t.

I finally got my air to air missile pods for the Scythe today. I have never seen anyone else use them. It's not hard to imagine why. These things suck! First off the missiles are really weak, a Reaver can soak up two of them without even bursting into flame. The ammo is limited to 5 shots, which hardly matters because the lockon and reload times are very high. The real nail in the coffin is that the missiles are SUPER short ranged. You really have to get in up close before you can lock on, and at that range you might as well just blast em with the lasers. Against bigger targets like Liberators the DPS compared to lasers or rockets is terrible.

Okay sometimes the bugs and what not annoy me to now end in the game, then something happens that most video games would have as a scripted event to fake epicness. At one point I was crossing the roof of a bridge with friendly and enemy tanks battling and rolling out beneth me. It was glorious.

Get that sunderer cert that makes it a spawn point. It pays for itself. Just a little while ago I was in a major battle and due to the other sunderers being to aggressive mine was the only one left on the field. It was just a giant stream of troops from my vehicle, and all the xp that went with it. I think I earned 20-30 certs in that one battle. We won too, and man did it feel good.

Finally got the grenade launcher for my light assault/engie weapon. It's pretty good. You get two shots per life and they don't have to be bought with resources. They pack a decent punch and are great against groups. I think they are slightly weaker then normal grenades but otherwise they work really well.

Any advice what I should save for next? I was thinking either dumb/homing rockets for my plane or homing rocket for my heavy. Anyone used that gear before?

Also did they change maxs? You used to be able to equip the same weapon on both arms.

master0 wrote:

Also did they change maxs? You used to be able to equip the same weapon on both arms.

They did what? Bleuh, that's a bad change, unless they increased the effectiveness of the individual weapon, in which case its a nice change. Will have to test it out.

You have to buy the weapon for the other arm right? The anti-ground rockets are well worth it. They hit about 90% of the time and they don't drop, so even if you don't have a lock the rocket will go right where you put you're reticle. It's also fun toscare off a tank column with the lock on alone.

I've realized in planetside your either operating the meat grinder or your the meat. It annoys me to no end when my allies charge head first into the waiting enemy, in endless infantry waves. When the enemy does that it's fantastic and I rack up a crazy score. Ah well. I think a few changes still need to be made, defending generators is a bit too easy especially on certain base layouts.

Oh and the grenade launcher is absolutely fantastic, I'm loving it. Give it to the light assault and he rains death. Give it to an engie who carries ammo, and he has infinite grenades. Probable should be nerfed, but I seem to be the only person using it. Totally recommend it, if you have the points.

Seriously though if they are basically planning to release in a month there is no way it's going to be ready. The flow and structure of battles need some serious work (I'd love to see how using battlefields life tick system would change things). It's also gotten crazy glitchy. Amusingly though I haven't seen much in the way of griefing. Perhaps because it's in beta. Lots of fun, but man if they overall a few things it could be legendary.

Man when are they going to make this game use my GPU. Even with the latest patch my FPS sucks while my video card is hardly being used...

TempestBlayze wrote:

Man when are they going to make this game use my GPU. Even with the latest patch my FPS sucks while my video card is hardly being used...

I thought I was the only person with this problem. Every other game I can run at max settings. Planetside? I've actually had 1 FPS.

While it's still pretty CPU heavy, I've found that the patches in the last two weeks have made the game better.

I seem to recall posts as recent as last week saying that they're still planning to do a lot of work in moving stuff from the CPU to the GPU, so that will continue to improve, I'm sure.

Things will likely get better still, when the game launches and the card manufacturers have a chance to update/optimize their drivers for PS2.