Hello, fellow Auraxians! We're thrilled to bring you this development
update, giving you a sneak peek into some of our upcoming plans for
PlanetSide 2 and some clarity on our intentions for future
communication and better transparency. To kick things off, let’s talk
about what’s coming this week: Outfit Wars!
Outfit Wars – Nexus Season 2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSCo48wUgy4
The Enlistment Phase for Nexus Season 2 begins Nov 15th, and the first
round of qualifiers for the new season of Outfit Wars begins December
1st! We are excited to host this event this year and are looking
forward to watching this year’s matches play out. Feedback around the
timing of this year’s event along with the concern over player
participation is something we have noted. Although today’s letter will
not get into many details about future Outfit Wars plans, we want to
share that we will review the event and will consider some future
adjustments. We will have more details on what that entails when the
time is right. Learn more about this year’s Outfit Wars
here.
Game fixes and a new future
Undoubtedly, the departure of one of our key team members has impacted
our communication with you all in recent months. However, we want to
assure you that the current team is more than capable of carrying on
the PlanetSide legacy, and we have some exciting plans ahead. As we
regain our footing, consider this the first of monthly dev updates we
plan to publish moving forward. Our Community Manager Mithril will
continue to gather vital feedback and bug reports via post-patch notes
on Reddit, forums and social threads. We will also do our best to
address your questions and concerns on those channels as timely as
possible.
Moreover, we're delighted to inform you that our dev team has welcomed
some new members in recent months and has been actively tuning in to
your feedback from various channels such as our forums, community
Reddit, Discord, and social media channels.
In the past couple of months, we have released various game fixes and
miscellaneous additions to the game which you can check out
here. For each
subsequent update in the coming months, we will continue to focus on
fixing critical bugs and other malfunctioning mechanics wherever
possible. Several new game fixes have been prepared, and we can’t wait
to have you check them out. As we want you to have a fun gaming
experience on Auraxis, we hope these fixes will remedy some of the
pain points of the game.
As we need a little more time to announce the entire roadmap for 2024,
we're eager to share details on some of our current projects. Here's a
sneak peek at one of the many things we are working on!
Capture the Conduit Update
Current State of Capture the Conduit
In its current state, Capture the Conduit (CTC) suffers from many
issues and is recognized as being a hassle to play with. We hear you.
Here are some of the issues we are reviewing with the current CTC
status.
- Long capture times
- Repository, flag, and hard spawn placement often makes them too
easy to defend
- Even when a base is undefended capturing it can take a while
- While capturing a base it is too easy for defenders to reset the
capture progress
- The base status information on the map is difficult to parse
- It is difficult to get a sense of urgency based on the UI
- It is difficult to ascertain the exact status of the base based by
only the conduit count
- The faction roles are extremely limited, with 1 faction being the
attacker and the other a defender
- This leads to more static concentrated battles without good
in-base flow
With all of this in mind, we created a set of goals we want to achieve
with this update:
- Change the Capture the Conduits mechanics to improve capturability
of bases
- Improve map flow within bases
- Make the status and urgency of bases more apparent in the user
interface
Before we continue describing the changes, we understand the common
question asked by the community is: “Why not get rid of Capture the
Conduit entirely?” The current iteration of Capture the Conduit moves
the game away from what we are trying to accomplish. One of our big
picture goals moving forward is to minimize the repetitive nature of
capturing territory and to increase the diversity of tactics,
loadouts, and play styles the game supports. Having only one way to
capture a base narrows the scope of the game when one of its strengths
should be its openness.
How the new Capture the Conduit will work
To solve many of these problems listed above, we will be "hybridizing"
Capture the Conduit bases with more traditional Capture Points. This
should make many aspects of capturing a base more readable, familiar,
and reliable while still maintaining the more interesting aspects of
needing to capture conduits.
How the new system will work:
- Bases are no longer captured by bringing the number of strikes to
zero by delivering Conduits to Repositories.
- Instead, bases are captured via the traditional method of holding
capture points until the overall base is captured and changes
ownership. The new system will use conduits to activate
repositories, turning them into capture points.
- Once a repository is activated, it behaves like a normal capture
point until the base is captured, or the capture point progress is
reversed and deactivated.
- Activating a repository will grant some amount of immediate
capture progress, giving attackers a buffer from recapture.
- Currently, more flags can be captured to speed up the capture
process. This is one of the mechanics that we are looking for
public testing and feedback on.
- Overall, conduits themselves will behave the same, and be subject
to the same rules and restrictions as they are now.
Soon we will be releasing one or two of the updated bases to the test
server for playtesting and feedback. On top of checking that the
mechanics are functioning properly, we want to pay particular
attention to the timings involved in capturing a base, such as empty
vs. defended and how the balance of population affects the capture
times.
Additional Updates
As part of the new CTC update, we are also reviewing the 22 Capture
the Conduit bases. Here, we will be evaluating and adjusting elements
like the placement of conduits, repositories, spawn locations, and
sunderer locations. The goal here is to adjust them to accommodate the
new mechanics and improve overall flow. As a result of the evaluation,
and on rare occasions, some bases may revert from Capture the Conduit
back to their previous base type.
Here isAndvari Barracks on Esamir an example of the kinds of
changes we are making:
- We’ve added more protected Sunderer positions to help sustain
attacks.
- Line of sight directly to the spawn room now has obstructions to
increase protection from sniping.
- We’ve placed much more cover between the spawn room and critical
areas of the base to reduce the amount of time defenders are
completely exposed.
Looking forward to your feedback on these updates in the replies
below!
We want to thank you all for your continued support and passion for
this game that we all love. We’re looking forward to celebrating our
11th anniversary with everyone this Nov 20th and can’t wait for
another amazing year on Auraxis with you all. We’ll see you
planetside!