PlanetSide 2 News

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All global PC servers are coming down at 9:00 AM PDT / 4:00 PM GMT to bring you the new Escalation Game Update. Downtime is estimated at 4 hours.

A new day beckons across the battlefields of Auraxis, soldiers: the Escalation game update has arrived on PC!

PlanetSide 2 owes its revolutionary massive scale FPS gameplay to the dedicated player communities who populate every corner of Auraxis with living, breathing soldiers committed to the fight, and this massive update – our biggest since launch – doubles down on the core PS2 experience by providing more strategic tools and community content than ever before. The introduction of the mighty Bastion Fleet Carrier, deployable War Assets, Outfit Resources and Loyalty system, Sanctuary Social Hub, and all-new Outfit Wars endgame tournament (on an all-new continent!) combine to amplify the deepest, most varied, most epic gameplay any FPS has to offer.

Our team is incredibly proud of the work that went into this update, and we would have never got here without your support – community leaders who gave us extensive feedback in Beta, and players from all around the world who showed up every day for playtests. Your loyalty, feedback, and positivity has been overwhelming, and we can’t wait to join all of you planetside for a proper celebration! 

Read on for all the Intel on the new Escalation game update!

[h3]MOBILIZE YOUR OUTFIT, SOLDIER![/h3]
Escalation begins with a significant revamp of our Outfit system, organized groups of players that can range from small groups friends to massive communities with specialized roles for infantry, ground vehicle, air combat and support staff. With PS2’s emphasis on strategic teamplay in battles that can range up to hundreds of players, there’s never been a better time to join an Outfit that can show you the ropes while watching your six.

[h3]NEW WAR ASSETS[/h3]
Incoming Alert, soldier...an omega level threat looms over the horizon...



Dedicated Outfits can now accrue new resources by collectively capturing or defending bases across Auraxis, which can be crafted into powerful new War Assets and deployed across the battlefield!

Examples of new craftable Assets include:

The Bastion Fleet Carrier
This mighty leviathan of the skies has no rival on the battlefield! The Bastion is the ultimate force multiplier, capable of providing long-range air and ground support with mannable turrets, ship-mounted artillery cannons, an interceptor launch platform, and mobile respawn point for your entire Outfit. Bastions require significant resources to deploy, and even greater coordination and collective will power to bring down! 

Citadel Shield
This massive, projective-blocking bubble shield can now protect entire bases from airborne and long-range threats! Roughly the size of a small outpost, the Citadel Shield provides a sturdy line of defense for protecting any strategic objective.  



Steel Rain
Squad and Platoon Leaders can now deploy an organized platoon drop pod assault to take your foes by surprise! After a short countdown, squadmates will be redeployed into drop pods above your target area, allowing you to crack a rival Empire’s stubborn base defense, or move quickly across the map and respond to an incoming threat.

A.N.V.I.L.
Use the Advanced Nanite Vehicle Insertion Logistics system to airdrop a ground vehicle of your choice on demand! Like Steel Rain, the A.N.V.I.L. drop location can be set via waypoint, perfect for reinforcing a defensive push, or mobilizing an offensive force.  

Orbital Satellite Uplink
Outfits now have the ability to call in an Orbital Strike on any target location! Use it to deter an enemy's advancing armor column, or clear that dug-in mountaintop.



All War Assets take time and resources to craft, and Outfit leaders will have the ability to grant privileges to other Outfit members to craft and/or deploy these Assets to help turn the tides of battle. Head over to our War Assets Guide for more intel.

[h3]OUTFIT WARS: A NEW COMPETITIVE ENDGAME[/h3]
A wormhole has opened in the skies above Auraxis, and only the best and bravest Outfits are taking the opportunity to fight for (and claim!) the lands and glory that surely lie beyond...



Welcome to Outfit Wars, soldier!

Outfit Wars is a new tournament structure for competitive Outfits in PlanetSide 2. Outfits from every Empire and server region now have the opportunity to opt-in to a monthly Qualification cycle, before squaring off in epic GvGvG battles on Desolation, an all-new Asteroid continent built for competitive play. Outfits qualify for Outfit Wars by accruing resources in the main game, with the top Outfits from each region earning the right to represent their Empire on the field of glory.

The first Outfit Wars "Alpha" preseason cycle kicks off this Friday, March 13, and we intend to continue balancing and refining the competitive structure as we head into future Outfit Wars seasons. Check out our Outfit Wars Guide for full schedule and details.

[h3]OUTFIT LOYALTY AND MERIT[/h3]
Escalation introduces a new personal progression system for Outfit members that advances when you participate in successful capture or defense of bases with your Outfit mates. “Loyalty Rank” increases over time in a battle rank-style vertical progression, while "Merit" can be earned from completing meritorious actions with your Outfit. Merit acts as a currency which can be spent at Outfit Vendors in Sanctuary, while Loyalty Level will determine what kinds of items are available for purchase from those Vendors.

[h3]SANCTUARY[/h3]
This update also brings the debut of Sanctuary, a new social hub for players of all Empires. Initially, Sanctuary will serve as a recruitment area for Outfit leaders, a trading space for new vendor NPCs, and a low-key relaxation zone for the war-weary. Sanctuary launches with the spacious Atrium area, as well as the Central Operations area. This environment will continue to expand as an in-game community space, and act as a foundation for future functionality.



[h3]RESURGENCE BUNDLES[/h3]
In celebration of this massive update, we've restocked the Depot with valuable new Bundles to upgrade your arsenal!

Resurgence Bundles are now available in three epic tiers: Soldier (999 DBC), Captain (2499 DBC), and Warlord (4999 DBC). They'll remain in the Depot through Sunday, April 12, so be sure to stock up before these great deals disappear!

Visit the in-game Depot or check out the Resurgence Bundles Guide for more details. 

[h3]PLATINUM GIVEAWAY & DOUBLE XP EVENT![/h3]
New Bundles aren't all we have in store for you - we're ALSO celebrating your dedication to PlanetSide 2 by giving away two FREE Platinum Items!

Redeem the code PS2Escalation in-game or online and you'll be auto-granted both the NS-11P (a platinum NS-11A variant assault rifle for all factions) and the Salvaged Platinum Compound Helmet (VS/NC/TR only). Make sure you to redeem your items before the giveaway ends on Sunday, April 12!

In addition, we're running a Double XP FOR ALL event starting immediately when servers come back up on Wednesday, March 11, and lasting through Sunday, March 15 at 11:59 PM PST. Thank you for your loyalty, soldiers!

In addition to all the new content, features, bundles, and giveaway, you can also check out the full patch notes over on the official PS2 forums.

We'll see you back planetside soon, soldiers!

We’re gearing up for Escalation launch week with 5 straight days of Twitter giveaways!

To enter, simply follow @planetside2 on Twitter and keep your eyes peeled for each daily contest. 5 winners PLUS 1 grand prize winner will be selected each day simply for RT'ing our giveaway post!

Winners will receive a code good for 1000 DBC ($10 value). Grand prize winners will receive 1000 DBC and a special bonus code for (unannounced) content going live in-game when Escalation launches on Wednesday.

Check out @planetside2 every day to follow and enter!

Escalation launches on PC on Wednesday, March 11.

Hello everyone,

Let me start by saying THANK YOU for your patience and support over the past 4 weeks as we’ve been preparing the Escalation update for launch!

As you know, this will be one of the biggest PlanetSide 2 updates we’ve done since launch back in 2012. Not only do we feel an obligation to live up to the immense level of hype surrounding Escalation, but as the newly formed Rogue Planet Games studio, we want to set the tone in terms of quality for all future updates. Which is why we have been MUCH more aggressive playtesting this update on the Public Test Server (PTS) than you may have been accustomed to in the past. 

That being said, with any update for a game of this scale, it’s practically impossible to catch every bug, or perfectly tune gameplay on a Test environment. There are just too many variables that cannot be accounted for until the update hits Live. But we believe the extra time we’ve taken, along with the amazing level of community support and feedback in our playtests, has created a much stronger foundation for this update that will allow us to immediately shift our focus to finetuning/balancing, rather than scrambling to hotfix critical issues. The past couple of playtests have given us the confidence to announce a new launch date of Wednesday, March 11 (less than a week from today!).

With the Escalation now officially set to launch, a portion of the team has already started work on our next update. Escalation is just the beginning of what we have planned for PlanetSide 2 in 2020 - after launch, we’ll schedule our next dev livestream for late March/early April to unveil the details of our next update.   

A few other topics to cover…

[h2]EMERALD SERVER UPGRADES[/h2]
The Daybreak TechOps team has confirmed that they will perform the final round of PlanetSide 2 server hardware/software upgrades for our NA East Coast data center (Emerald) on Wednesday, March 18. For those keeping track, all of the other regions received their upgrades several weeks ago. The exact downtimes will be announced once we’re a bit closer. But it should be under 6 hours, and we will make every effort to perform the maintenance during off-peak hours for NA East players.

[h2]LEADERLESS OUTFITS[/h2]
With Escalation so heavily focused on Outfits, the topic of “leaderless Outfits” has surfaced among the community. First, to clarify our use of this term; we have thousands of Outfits in PlanetSide 2. Over the years, some of those Outfit leaders stopped playing the game, leaving their otherwise active Outfits effectively “leaderless.” To address this potential issue, we are planning to implement a simple, efficient process to promote new Outfit leadership in-game.

Beginning on Wednesday, March 11 (Escalation launch day), players can submit a Customer Service ticket requesting that Outfit leadership be reassigned due to current leader inactivity. If the Outfit leader has been inactive (not logged into PS2) in the past 180 days (6 months), CS will assign Outfit leadership to the next highest ranking recently active Outfit member with the longest service in the Outfit.

To ensure past Outfit leaders have an opportunity to return post-update within a reasonable amount of time, all Outfit leaders that have their leadership reassigned due to inactivity will have 30 days from March 11 to return and submit a Customer Service ticket to regain their “Leader” ranking. 

This process should address a majority of these issues, but we’ll continue to monitor going forward.

[h2]EU DATA CENTER MIGRATION[/h2]
Finally, Daybreak is in the process of moving all EU regional servers to a new data center. This will require a physical hardware relocation, and they’ve dispatched their entire TechOps team to perform the move first-hand, to ensure that it’s done as quickly and efficiently as possible. The PlanetSide 2 EU server moves (Miller and Cobalt) are scheduled to overlap with our Escalation update, and will require bringing EU servers down for 12 hours prior to our game update on the morning of March 11.  More details will be posted closer to the date, but we want to give our EU players a heads-up this is coming. The new server location is in close proximity and there will be no change in connection quality.

Thank you all for being part of the Rogue Planet Games family!   


Andy “IronSites” Sites

Head of Rogue Planet Games
Executive Producer, PlanetSide 2

[MARCH 4 EDIT: The schedule below has been updated to include today's playtests at 11AM PST and 4PM PST]

The Escalation Game Update is nearly upon us! Join us on the Public Test Server (PTS) this week for one *final* series of playtests during the times below and help us ready this massive update to roll out on Live servers:  

• Tuesday, March 4: 11:00 AM PST - 1:00 PM PST (7:00 PM - 9:00 PM GMT)
  
• Wednesday, March 4: 4:00 PM PST - 6:00 PM PST (12:00 AM - 2:00 AM GMT)
  

As a thank you for your participation, we're bringing back the Analyst Helmet (good for all VS/NC/TR characters) for everyone who logins during either playtest*! We need concentrated bodies to truly Test at scale - that means you! - and will grant the reward to participating accounts shortly after both playtests conclude.

If you're downloading the Public Test Server (PTS) for the first time, check out our Test server policies and how to patch here. We'll see you planetside soon, soldier!

*Note: Be sure to login to Test using the same account as you login to Live (aka the main game) as that account will be granted the item. You'll get access to the helmet for all characters (VS/NC/TR) on Live regardless of what faction you play on Test.

[h3]DEVELOPER UPDATE: Tuesday, March 3 (Patch Notes)[/h3]

Just a reminder that we are running a playtest today at 4PM PST the Public Test Server (PTS). The build is scheduled to publish to PTS at 12PM PST and will unlock once completed. Below are the changes going into today's new build:

Bastion

• Bastion attack waypoints no longer persist after the Bastion is destroyed.
  
• Fixed an issue where multiple Bastions from the same faction could be present at the same time.
  
• Added a transitional screen effect when launching from the Bastion into an Interceptor.
  
• Added more descriptive names to Interceptor ESF variants.
  
• Weakpoint explosions should now be easier to see on low graphical settings.
  
• Bastion vehicle stats now have the expected information on the My Profile screen.
  

War Assets

• Orbital Strikes now have updated visuals.
  
• Adjusted sorting of Waypoint right-click menu.
  
• ANVILs now use faction-specific colors.
  
• New Outfit members now properly see the status of War Asset crafting that was in progress when they joined the Outfit.
  

Misc.

• Fixed a UI issue that could cause periodic framerate hitches for some players.
  
• Test-server-only bundle for free outfit resources has been added back to the Sanctuary resource vendor.
  
• Audio stingers no longer mute Sanctuary’s environment music when they’re done playing.
  
• Fixed Sanctuary description on the World Map screen.
  
• The Flail now uses the correct icon.
  
• Fixed blue squares incorrectly appearing on the map and minimap for multiple Amp Stations across all continents.
  
• Drop Pods now properly display visuals and audio for remote clients.
  

Depending on today's results, we may prepare another build for tomorrow's playtest at 11 AM PST / 7 PM GMT for our EU region players to participate. Also, all participants will receive the Analyst Helmet for joining at the specified times. They will be granted within a few days after the playtests.

I know I've said this many times, but THANK YOU SO MUCH for your patience and help continuing to refine the Escalation update.

-Andy

Hey everyone,

I want to provide a quick update on the current state of the Escalation launch.

Based on community feedback from our playtests this week on the Public Test Server (PTS), we've identified a small handful of issues we feel are critical to address before launch. While we've been making good progress fixing critical bugs and improving performance and client/server stability, the Escalation launch date is still a day-to-day decision. Once we are able to conduct multiple playtests on PTS at scale, and confirm the issues above have been resolved, we will greenlight the update to Live servers. 

Your participation in these playtests is and has been critical - I can't tell you how much we appreciate your willingness to jump in on short notice and help us. In the interest of full transparency, we'll continue to regularly update this page until we go Live so that everyone in the community is fully aware of the launch status and timing.

Thanks,

Andy Sites
Executive Producer, PlanetSide 2

[h3]UPDATE - February 28, 2020[/h3]
The team just completed the publish of a new build to the Public Test Server (PTS) and servers have been unlocked. Please patch up and report any critical issues that you may encounter.

We will be monitoring feedback over the weekend and publishing any necessary fixes to PTS on Monday or early Tuesday. If the build is looking solid by early next week, we plan to conduct two larger-scale public playtests by mid-week to confirm whether or not its ready to go Live.

Today's changes below:

[h3]Bastion[/h3]

• Deployables (such as Turrets) can no longer be placed on Bastion weakpoints
  
• Flak Cannon rounds now damage Bastions
  
• Increased amount of damage Orbital Strike does to Bastions
  
• Fixed a rare client crash that could occur when a Bastion that a player is controlling is turning
  

[h3]Sanctuary[/h3]

• Optimized spotlights in Sanctuary for performance
  
• Adjusted how sections of Sanctuary for performance
  
• Sanctuary resource vendors no longer incorrectly preview a gun model if the user has nothing to trade
  

[h3]Misc[/h3]

• Fixed an issue that caused the last Orbital Strike in your Armory to occasionally be a dud
  
• Increased the maximum flight height on Indar by 10%
  
• Fixed Desolation world map using the wrong icon and description
  
• Outfit War time and date is now displayed correctly
  
• Added feedback to Black Market vendor purchases, which should prevent accidental repeat purchases
  
• Empire Strength scoring is no longer shown when a Meltdown Alert is active
  
• Fixed numerous minor UI issues
  
• Fixed a physics crash that was occurring for some players