PlanetSide 2 News

The extended PC maintenance postponed earlier this month has been rescheduled for next Tuesday, January 28, 2020 at 4:30 AM PST / 12:30 PM GMT. NA and EU servers are expected to be down for up to 12 hours on that date.

While we're continuing to make strides reducing downtimes for game updates and standard maintenance, next week's extended downtime is necessary to complete a one-time data migration and provide needed upgrades to our server hardware in NA and EU. We're getting the news out to you now so you have as much heads-up as we can provide, and will do everything we can next Tuesday to wrap maintenance as quickly as possible. Once maintenance concludes and we confirm everything running smoothly, we'll schedule the corresponding PS4 maintenance in the same server regions.

Welcome to the genesis of Rogue Planet Games!

By definition, a “rogue planet” is a celestial object that’s not gravitationally bound to any star or its origin. This perfectly illustrates our philosophy as a team and defines the games we create – we are unbound by convention, exploring new frontiers of creativity and always pushing the limits of our imagination to deliver unparalleled experiences for our players!

While the studio may be new, the PlanetSide franchise has been going strong for 17 years. As we begin this new chapter, we’ve taken several steps to prepare for an exciting future! 

Rogue Planet Games will focus solely on the PlanetSide franchise and our dedicated community. While Daybreak will continue to act as publisher and provide live operations and infrastructure support, Rogue Planet Games owns the vision of PlanetSide – present and future.

As many of you may have noticed over the past few months with PlanetSide 2, we've increased the frequency of our game updates, made an effort to reduce publish times by streamlining deployment processes, addressed lingering live service issues, and stepped up communication with our community. 

One aspect of the new studio we’re most excited about is bringing our players into the fold like never before. As Rogue Planet Games, we view ourselves as an indie studio that values our community in the highest regard. We want to bring you into our day-to-day development processes more across all disciplines – programming, character and environment art creation, systems and content design, and any general nonsense that happens on a given day. We can’t wait to start sharing more with you across our various social channels! 

Rest assured, the future of PlanetSide is very much at the top of mind here, and the expectations for a true sequel are, as expected, astronomical. The establishment of Rogue Planet Games provides a runway and opportunity for us to deliver our vision for PlanetSide 3, but that discussion will happen in due time. Until then, we have a lot of great stuff in store for PlanetSide 2!

On behalf of the entire Rogue Planet team, THANK YOU! We look forward to having you join us on our journey! 

We define our future. We are Rogue Planet Games!

Andy “IronSites” Sites

Head of Rogue Planet Games
Executive Producer, PlanetSide Franchise

2020 is shaping up to be a massive year for PlanetSide 2, and we're kicking the year off right with the return of our Nanite Appreciation Week Sale!

Starting TODAY and running through Sunday, February 2, all Auraximas deals are back in the Depot at their original sale price. If you missed out on your Pink Camos or forgot to tuck the Fatestealer into your stocking, grab them now before they disappear in a few weeks! 

We're also looking ahead to the Lunar New Year on January 25! The Year of the Rat comes around only once every dozen years, and we're ready to celebrate with the Lunar New Year Bundle, which will be available in the Depot for a limited time between Friday, January 24 and Sunday, February 2. 

Lunar New Year Bundle (499 DBC)

• 1-Day Experience Boost
  
• Gold NS-7 PDW
  
• "Year of the Rat" Decal
  

Remember, the Nanite Appreciation Sale only runs through February 2 – stock up or miss out!

PC servers will be taken offline Wednesday, January 15, 2020 at 5:30 AM PST (1:30 PM GMT) for extended downtime to bring the January update and make hardware upgrades. Downtime is expected to last up to 4 hours.



Territory now matters at all times, as each empire gains strength when key facilities are captured, and when continent events are won.

When a faction reaches 100 Empire Strength or more, a Meltdown alert fires off (provided no other events are currently active,) and the victorious faction will lock the continent.

Gaining/losing Empire Strength is as follows:

• Maintaining a link to an enemy Warpgate is worth 50 strength, (both is 100 strength.)
  
• Maintaining ownership of the center base is worth 15 strength (or 30 on Esamir).
  
• Maintaining ownership of a major facility is worth 15 strength (or 20 on Esamir).
  
• Each continent-event win is worth 10 strength, and is the only permanent form of Empire Strength.
  
• Cutoff territories do not contribute to Empire Strength.
  

Prior to this change, continents were standardized at 3 continent events (like Aerial Anomalies, Maximum Pressure, Gaining Ground,) before requiring 41% territory control from a single faction in order to trigger an end-of-continent Meltdown alert. With this update, factions can force continents to turn over more quickly by completing strategic map goals, and continent event wins will progress players toward the final battle over a continent.

Koltyr

• Koltyr has been disabled for the time being, and will be re-introduced as a standard combat zone at a later date.
  

Dev Note: Koltyr has been in kind of a weird spot, in addition to being plagued with technical issues. As a VR zone, it often stood as more confusing for new players than helpful as its intended testing ground. In a future update we'll be converting Koltyr to a standard combat continent that opens and closes during off-peak hours. This should help reduce the frustration of finding and sustaining combat in times of low population, and add some gameplay variety for our nocturnal players.


Infantry
T7 Mini-Chaingun (Terran Republic Heavy Weapon)

• Minimum refire rate from 100ms to 80ms.
  
• Maximum refire rate from 75ms to 71ms.
  
• Ballistic Rapid Refire Toggle no longer reduces maximum refire rate (as that's now built in by default.)
  
• Ballistic Rapid Refire Toggle no longer has a hidden projectile speed benefit.
  

Dev Note: Always treated like a support weapon, but without the traits that make it successful as one (most support weapons sacrifice damage for accuracy or splash damage,) the Mini-chaingun is hard to justify bringing onto the battlefield over other LMG options. This update offers a significant boost to its 1v1 potential, and increases its overall ferocity.

Revive Grenade (Combat Medic)

• Reduce detonation time by 1 second to increase responsiveness.
  
• The thrower no longer receives a UI notification in an attempt to revive yourself.
  
• NSO Defector units are no longer revivable with Revive Grenades.
  

Proximity Mine(NSO Engineer/Infiltrator utility)

• Renamed "F.U.S.E."
  
• Fixed medal tracking issues.
  
• Refunded skill lines associated with these mines.
  
• Now works with Mine Carrier suit slot.
  

Tank Mine (NSO Engineer)

• Fixed medal tracking issues.
  
• Refunded skill line associated with these mines.
  
• Now works with Mine Carrier suit slot
  

MAX and Defector

• Nanite Auto-Repair (Defensive Slot)
  
• 
  

Repair from 0.5/0.75/1/1.25/1.5% health restored per second to 1/2/2.5/2.75/3% health restored per second.
Dev Note: Rarely in competition Kinetic Armor and Ordnance Armor, Nanite Auto-Repair has received a buff.

Defector (NSO Infantry Unit)

• NSO Defector units are no longer revivable with Revive Grenades. (As mentioned above.)
  
• We've decided to let Defectors continue to contest capture points for the time being.
  
• Defectors now receive the Maximum Pressure event discount.
  
• You can now hear this unit's footsteps in first person.
  
• Adjusted Defector's loadout screen camera.
  
• Fixed various animation-related issues.
  
• 
  

Weapons
Grenade Printer (Primary Weapon)

• Grenade Printer's cooldown speed increased by 20%.
  
• Weapons medals are now properly tracked.
  
• Mini-map firing signature from 1 to 60.
  

Defector Claws(Melee Weapon)

• Now earns weapon medals.
  

Abilities
Time Bomb

• Time Bomb's movement speed penalty from 25% to 10%.
  

Seraph Shield

• Now has new audio.
  
• Seraph Shield can now be toggled off manually.
  
• Seraph Shield movement speed penalty from 50% to 40%.
  
• Seraph Shield duration from 8 seconds at all ranks to 8/10/11/12 seconds at ranks 1 through 4.
  

Defensive Slot
Ablation Mesh

• New Defensive Slot Certification
  
• When Time Bomb or Seraph Shield are first activated, the damage mitigation received from those abilities is increased by 50% for 2 seconds.
  

Hypermatic Servos

• New Defensive Slot Certification
  
• Removes the movement speed penalty of Time Bomb, and reduces the movement speed penalty of Seraph Shield to 25%. In addition, you accelerate into a sprint more quickly at all times.
  

Javelin (NSO Ground Vehicle)
General

• Vehicle terminal cost from 200 Nanites to 100 Nanites.
  
• Javelin now uses its own experience type, instead of the Flash's to award experience.
  
• Using a repair tool on the Javelin will now show particle effects in the correct location.
  
• Spitfire Turrets will now fire at riders.
  
• Vehicle now bounces less while moving along rough terrain, is slightly less prone to nose-up while airborne, and is all around a bit more stable.
  

Performance Slot

• Speed Chassis now increases afterburner fuel recharge by 30%.
  
• Combat Chassis now allows greater control of side to side movement while afterburner is engaged.
  
• Agility Chassis now provides lift from the ground when the afterburner is engaged.
  

Dev Note: We've made some adjustments to the chassis options to more dramatically alter how each of them makes the Javelin performs.

Misc. Fixes, Changes, and Additions

• NSO's Tankbuster Nosegun (Liberator) now correctly tracks directives.
  
• NSO's Zephyr Bellygun (Liberator) now correctly tracks directives.
  
• NSO's Shredder Bellygun (Liberator) now correctly tracks directives.
  
• NSO's Dalton Bellygun (Liberator) now correctly tracks directives.
  
• NSO's LB00 Python (Lightning Main Cannon) now correctly tracks directives.
  
• NS-W Survivor weapon medals can now be earned.
  
• SR-200's Tier 3 Long Rifle directive no longer requires an Auraxium Medal, instead of a Gold Medal.
  
• Fixed an issue where removing camo in the UI selector would not remove it from your character in-game.
  
• Locked continents should no longer show unstable icons from the map dropdown.
  
• Nano-Armor Kits and Medical Applicators granted from the Third-Year Anniversary bundle now work correctly on NSO characters.
  
• NS-03 Thumper and MGR-A1 Vanquisher's Disruptor Ammunition no longer saps energy from vehicles.
  
• Fixed additional edge cases related to falling through the floor.
  

Looking Forward
Hey there. In this month's update (on top of the bug fixes and NSO tuning,) we've reintroduced and rebranded the Victory Point system as Empire Strength. Doing this now sets us up for our big update later in Q1, gets players used to taking territories for strategic value (hint hint,) and alleviates the arbitrary "3 continent events then Meltdown" alert cycle we were in before. This cycle led to continents staying open for 5 hours or more if players were unable to achieve 41% territory control after the 3 continent events were complete. We'll be having a Livestream later this month (the 31st or sooner) to reveal all the hush-hush-super-secret stuff we've been working on, and will be announcing the Livestream date once we've got the full loop feeling cohesive. It's. Going. To. Be. Awesome. We'll continue teasing out some bits and pieces as we move closer to the announcement/release, so be sure to check www.twitter.com/planetside2 every now and again.

We're ushering in another year of all-out planetary warfare by offering 60% OFF all camos, infantry, and vehicle cosmetics through New Years Day!

The New Years Celebration Bundle will also be available from the Depot on New Years Eve and New Years Day - don't forget to equip your Kazoo for the ball drop!

New Years Celebration Bundle - 3999 DBC

• Kazoo horns for all factions and all vehicles.
  
• NS Patriot Flare Gun
  
• Party Time Camo
  

*Available from 12:00 AM PST on Tuesday, December 31 through 11:59 PM PST on Wednesday, January 1 only.

New Years Sale

• 60% off all camos, infantry and vehicle cosmetics
  

*Sale runs from 12:00 AM PST on Tuesday, December 31 through 11:59 PM PST on Wednesday, January 1 only.