PlanetSide 2 News

Throughout the halls filled wails and screaming, while in shadows hunters' blades are gleaming. Crossbows, hatchets, and tricks abound, to sting and slice and silence sound.

[h2]Nanite of the Living Dead (Oct. 01 - Oct. 31)[/h2]
This year's Nanite of the Living Dead event runs through all of October! Spooky sights, sounds, and SpacePumpkins will make their way to Auraxis. Details below!

[h2]A Shadowy Sanctuary[/h2]
The Sanctuary social hub has received a seasonal makeover. Sights, sounds, and mask-wearing denizens abound.




[h2]Trick or Treat![/h2]
Upon entering Sanctuary, you'll receive a mission to learn more about the Halloween event! Along the way, unlock holiday masks that provide bonus experience when worn!
SPRK-33 is unimpressed.

[h2]Squash the SpacePumpkins!
[/h2]
The SpacePumpkins have returned to Auraxis! Throughout the battlefields, seek and destroy these gigantic gourds to earn experience and progress toward a new Halloween directive!


The massive (and powerful!) Galact-O-Lantern may occasionally be found lying in wait... what are these foul creatures plotting?


[h2]Halloween Directive[/h2]
Gain buckets of currency by stabbing, chopping, and resurrecting your way through this year's new Halloween directive!


Those who conquer these challenges before the event ends will receive a Terrifying new title, and a deadly new camouflage pattern.


[h2]Monster Slayer's Best Friend[/h2]
Meet the Heavy Crossbow, a new primary weapon archetype available to the Infiltrator and Light Assault classes.
The Seeker HLX is the first of its kind, firing hardlight bolts that turn distant enemies into pincushions.


With Nanite of the Living Dead, we'll also be releasing the Demon Seeker variant, an infernal take on this newest addition.



[h2]Seasonal Cosmetics[/h2]
In addition to the heavy crossbows, the Halloween season brings cosmetics old and new right to your Depot.


Find holiday vehicle horns, engine FX, and contrails; masks, helmets, and camouflage; and a variety of weaponry befitting the witching hours.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Inferno Tire Trails, for the Flash, Harasser, ANT, and Sunderer.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Spectral Contrails and Engine FX for the Dervish, Mosquito, Reaver, and Scythe.

Grim, holiday pickaxes for each empire.


[h2]And Much More![/h2]

Included in the coming update are loads of UI and quality of life improvements, as well as bug fixes and smaller additions. While the event runs from October 1st and on, the update (and much of the content) will land on September 29. Patch notes and full event details are just around the corner. Stay tuned!

We want to hear what you think! What is your favorite part of this update? Let us know!

All Access Members can enjoy a double EXP weekend starting today through September 26!

Interested in being a member? Learn more about Daybreak All Access Membership here.

See you in game, soldier!

The New Player Experience update is now available on PC! This update contains a massive push toward a better starting experience for new players. Everything from character creation, to the tutorial, to default loadouts, to the player's first "real" combat, to quality of life has been revisited.

[h3]Character Create[/h3]

The character create and character selection screens have been completely overhauled. New UI, audio, faction introductions, FX and lighting all combine to enrich a player's introduction to the battlefields of Auraxis.





[h3]New Tutorial[/h3]

When looking at learning curve (or cliff?) of PlanetSide 2, we tried to isolate the lessons that could not only introduce players to the gameplay basics, but also help them understand and reinforce behaviors they'd be engaging in often. Capturing and defending bases, switching classes to adapt to situations, checking the map, and learning how to identify fights were among them. The new tutorial attempts to take all of these lessons and create a walkthrough that feels cohesive, and helps connect the player to the feeling of our game using mock battles and live-fire exercises.



[h3]Post-Tutorial[/h3]

New "faction embassies" can now be found on board the Sanctuary space station. After completing the tutorial, the player lands here first to unlock some equipment, and heads down to the planet's surface where they'll be able to speak to new "Field Commander" NPCs located in the upstairs room of each faction's Warpgate. We use this as a bridge to the game world, and help the player transition to their first major battle. The mission system guides much of this experience, creating short, achievable goals within the sandbox.



[h3]New Drop Pod Cosmetics[/h3]

In the Depot you'll find the new Sky-cutter Drop Pod, complete with new engine FX. Steel Rain has never looked so good.


[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h3]Read the patch notes for more![/h3]

With this update also comes graphical improvements, new accessibility options, metagame changes, quality of life updates, bug fixes, implant revisions, infantry and vehicle balance adjustments, and much more.

The details of this latest update can be found in the full PC patch notes here: https://forums.daybreakgames.com/ps2/index.php?threads/sept-15-2021-a-new-player-experience.257362/#post-3572464

We want to hear what you think! What is your favorite part of this update? Drop us a reply here on Steam!

Oh, hello. Didn't see you there.




Toward the end of next week we'll be updating the Public Test Server with the new release for all to play with. We're still in the polish phase for some elements, but the majority of the update is about wrapped up. Below are some additional changes (mostly unrelated to the New Player Experience portion of the update,) that will be coming along as well. I want to emphasize that these are just some of the bigger beats; there are plenty of quality of life improvements and bug fixes going into this update as well.




When populations are low enough (about 350 people or less,) Koltyr will now unlock as a part of the normal continent rotation. If populations are quite low, it'll be the only continent that is open. This should be a rare case for most servers.

Koltyr also appears in the continent dropdown menu, and is recognized as a normal combat space. Koltyr has its own alert, and if it's the only continent set to open, Koltyr will simply open again after the 30-minute alert is finished.

Additionally, when a new, large-scale continent unlocks, we'll check server populations during the Unstable Warpgates process. If the population is too low when Warpgates are stabilized, we'll spin down that continent and unlock Koltyr instead.

This change is mainly to support off-peak hours, and being able to fight on Koltyr properly should be a nice change of pace as well.






When populations are high enough on a particular continent (around the 800-player mark,) we'll immediately fire off an alert, instead of leaving it up to the Empire Strength process. This will give communities of players a more tangible goal to work toward during ops night, instead of having to potentially wait multiple hours for an alert to fire off.

There's a risk that continents may start rotating too quickly once this change goes Live, as we've seen with some previous alert setups, but we'll see how it plays out and make adjustments as necessary.




Wouldn't it be nice if Cold Heart was useful? Well, now it's a distinct possibility! There will be a battery of new changes and revisions to implants coming with this update that increases the general usefulness of some, and reels it in for others. Symbiote will be getting a rework that moves away from the small arms resistance; Cold Heart and Experimental Stims are both getting reworks; and a variety of adjustments to lesser used implants are planned as well, Ocular Shield, Assassin, Nanomesh Specialist, Paratrooper, and Avoidance, to name a few. Everything here is still being finalized, but more information will be available once we're ready for PTS.




Similar to the Implant adjustments, lesser-used suit slots like Ammunition Belt and Munitions Pouch are receiving some buffs on top of their current benefits. Ammo Belt will now increase reload speeds for primary and secondary weapons, while Munitions Pouch will slowly auto-reload your Rocket Launchers and Rocklet Rifles in the background. Additionally, Nanoweave will receive a movement speed penalty, and no longer stack the small arms resistance on top of Heavy Assault shields. The intention here is to make the suit slot a bit less desirable on the upper end of the skill curve where movement speed (and all the tricks that come along with it) drastically extends time to kill, while leaving the value intact for the average player who doesn't participate in that meta. These Nanoweave changes already exist on PS4 after the recent _Integration update.




We've continued work on the colorblind filters that'll be landing with (or potentially to follow,) this update. Some of you pointed out that we were simulating colorblindness opposed to correcting for it, and we've done a lot of learning in a short amount of time to make sure we're on the right path. We now adjust for the main three forms of color blindness, and offer sliders to increase or decrease the intensity of the filter, though this is still a work in progress.




In the next update we'll be swapping over from a quadratic light falloff to a linear one. Quadratic light falloff has caused us a number of issues with lighting throughout the game's development. In order to full light a space, it typically required us to make many small lights with higher intensities in order to fill the volume of the space. This process created harsh light spots at the center of the volume, and we'd typically try to keep them out of reach of players so you don't notice it quite as much. This is a sweeping change across all our lights, and ultimately it gives us better control for the future, allowing the intensity to work on our terms, instead of us having to work around it. Below you'll see a couple of gifs of how the changes will impact the game when this update goes out. The hot spots will mostly go away, and lighting will be a bit more level across the board.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Despite being mainly focused around revisiting the New Player Experience (check out the last article if you want to learn more: here), this update has a little of something for everyone. Just in time for the holiday season.

-Wrel, Lead Designer

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Leave a reply below and let us know what you think!

Today through September 6th get the Patriot Camo and Flare guns in the Depot!

A flare gun in hand with the patriot camo and you're all set for a weekend of fun!

Check the Depot today!