There Is Hope!

[Droxor]

Sooo, one of the Devs who was around to make the V changes and new weapons (You know, the last time Pside got good and then flat lined again) left and is now back. Notice in the following he not only promisses changes (Which btw 2 of them are already done being the Gunship nurf and the Buggie buff, so they're obviously moving quickly which is good) but also admits some of the mistakes made by SOE and specificly the Pside team.

Admiting they screwed up is something I don't think I've ever had the pleasure of seeing an SOE rep say. It was nice to read.
----
Enrico_Pallazzo wrote:

Hello Everyone!

I went away for a few months in May of 2007 to help out the Vanguard Team and in that short period of time, Glenn Snyder AKA "Xahn" (the Producer that replaced me) moved up north to work on another project for Sony. So what's a guy to do when he sees one of the games he loves the most, looking for a new leader? I couldn't help myself - I threw my hat back in the game. So, I'm back on PlanetSide and I'm looking at the path we were headed in and reading up on the current feedback from the forums and from the community leaders to see if that path needs to be remarked.

So some of the things that are in the works at the moment (and Raijinn may have already given you a bit of information on them already) are some of the following:

Galaxy Gunship

Wow - We need the instagib weapon to knock these down! We're going to tune the armor down to about 66% of its current state. Also, we're going to look into removing the afterburner.

Buggies

We're going to give the buggies a bit more survivability versus Mines. Let's face it, no one is using them unless you're doing a module run - so we're going to see about making them more viable in the game. Enhanced Mine Detection - We're going to add a new implant that helps you detect mines and if you are in a buggy, the buggy will additionally add to that enhancement to detect mines sooner rather than....well, you know....before you blow up.

Balance Populations

For some reason, someone decided that the NC was fun again. Someone should find that person! Looking at the imbalance lately, we need to figure out what is the best way to stop the one way teeter-totter we have currently. We're going to look at some of the following to see if we can curtail this activity: Adjusting Respawn Rates; Adjusting Reuse Rates; Giving the other empires access to the higher populations weapons and vehicles; Base resources draining faster; Health Benefits; Spawning with limitations or with limited health, armor, stamina; "Surge" automatically on for lower populations; Propaganda; Making it impossible to drop a generator and make you have to fight for a base; etc...

Nevertheless, we're going to have to make it scale so that if populations continue to get out of flux, you will gradually feel the pinch.

TR Max

I believe Raijinn mentioned we're looking at giving the TR Max a capacitor that allows you to shoot faster without having to lock down while at the same time giving you a mobility burst. For me, I would hate to lose the lock down functionality so we may be leaning towards adding the capacitor while not removing the lock down functionality.



New Levels into PlanetSide

Xahn and other PlanetSide members revealed at the Fan Faire that we're going to put in new levels into PlanetSide. We're getting close to this now. We have a couple of levels that we are playing with to test out the different editors with the game (ie, testing out the development pipeline). We have a small level that we will need to test out with more population so you may be invited to patch up to the test server in the near future to tell us what you think about the game play and send us feedback for improvement. Even though we have a lot of indoor fighting, we think that the smaller game play maps will add another level to the "fun-factor". Outfit Wars - We failed in delivering the Outfit Wars properly and we're trying to keep that in mind with our new levels. Outfit Wars should have been hands off to us and we failed you with this deliverable. Therefore we're going to keep that in mind while creating new zones and arenas to settle the "best of the best" arguments in PlanetSide. We may not have it all completed by the time we start testing new levels but we will build up to give you the opportunity to challenge another squad or outfit in one of the new zones. Stay tuned...More to come soon.

Other items we are currently looking at starting:

*
Advancement on Hacking Skill
* Advancement on Medical Skill
* Damage pass on weapons - More details to follow but yes, we're going to look at doing a damage balance pass on all weapons. J



Thanks for your patronage and I look forward to your comments!

[USDnobody]

a day late and a dollar short?

[BigBossMonkey]

a day late and a dollar short?

QFT.

[luvpeebo]

a day late and a dollar short?

Not for me!

[Henray]

I love the concept of planetside and still enjoy the game play. Yea, the graphics are somewhat dated and I am not sure the merit system helped the game. If at any time a large number of you re-subs, please let me know, I would gladly don the black & red and fight alongside my fellow enforcers, after all, isnt that were it all started???

Henray

[rhonnin]

Peebo and I play pretty often Henray, some nights there is a squad worth of people on.
The game is still fun though I do miss the days of multiple pop locked continents.
Many nights the odds are pretty grim with one side having like a 12% global pop, usually TR or VS, which actually isn't that bad, it makes the battle more focused on a per base victory rather than worrying about global advancement, a lot less frustrating most of the time IMO.