Planetside 2’s getting a new weapon type, rebalancing, bug fixes

Planetside 2’s creator director Matthew Higby has emerged on the forums to wish everyone a belated happy New Year and – more importantly – let the world know about the upcoming changes to their massive multiplayer shooter. Slated to go live on 1/30, this is a pretty big list of changes, with the most noteworthy (to me) feature being the addition of SMGs to the assortment of death-dealing devices. There’s a lot more than that, though, and you can find the full contents inside.

• General performance increases, particularly for lower end GPUs
• Experience (XP) system enhancements:
  • Dynamic XP system for player kills, players who have more kills on their current life are worth more XP. Freshly spawned players will be worth a fraction of the current kill reward.
  • Partial damage XP for dealing damage to vehicles that you don’t end up killing
  • Population XP / Resource bonus moved over to continent population instead of global
  • Better display of XP sources for things like defensive bonuses & population bonuses
  • Rebalancing of XP rewards to help support tasks
• Server transfer token available in Depot
• UI changes to emphasize score per minute as a primary metric of player comparison
• Sortable columns on outfit management & addition of “last online” column
• New weapon type for all empires: SMG
• Short period of invulnerability will be added to freshly spawned / revived players – breaks upon game actions such as entering a vehicle or using a weapon.
• Dynamic / player configurable colors for minimap & overhead indicators for enemies, friendlies, and squads within a platoon
• New Hot Spot system that displays where active fights are occurring on the map
• New spawn buildings with more exits, protected balconies and easy roof access to make them less campable.
• Tunnel systems for amp and tech facilities to give access from spawn rooms to interior of bases and base walls without having to go above ground.
• Making MAXes render more reliably at long distances for players in vehicles
• AA improvements, notably flak changes for turrets and skyguards, giving them some better ability to aim, although not drastically impacting their DPS.
• Fixes to missiles so that they more reliably detonate and actually blow stuff up
• Air vehicle weapon tweaks
• Increases to reload speed for certain HE ground vehicle weapons
• And of course… lots of bug fixes

That’s quite a list. Actually, as much as I look forward to playing around with some SMGs, it’s the fixes related to the air aspect of Planetside 2 that really catches my eye. Really, it’s been around a month now and I’m still going strong in this one – have a look at the review here on GT to see why – but right now, air feels a bit overpowered. Mostly in terms of liberators hanging around high, high in the sky, raining down death, while surface to air infantry weapons have this habit of failing to do any damage even on impact. Luckily that issue is right on the list, and between that, the SMG, and the experience changes, the whole patch looks like it will go a long way towards improving an already stellar free to play game.

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