PS2 Auraximas Stream - December 11th, 2019

Wrel, Andy Sites, and Tony "Carto" Morton, Justin manning Twitch.
Touching on things for early next year.
Andy gets punched.
Shifting focus towards PS2, improving issues from DX11, stability and performance, as well as allowing them to do the bigger content updates planned for the near future.
Was able to grow the team quite a bit, and give the game more life, and showcasing the forefront of content and some other future things.
Rolling out over this month and the next few months.

December Event and Update

Normal snowmen, and a new directive line with new rewards.
Biolabs retextured with a wintery theme. Snow absolutely everywhere. No moss.
Will last for the season, maybe longer.
PTS update coming tomorrow, getting more active on PTS moving forward.
Behind the scenes, was busy getting rid of a bad version control causing issues, and things more streamlined now. (See #1 on bottom) Taking a bit to get off the ground.
Focus on NSO this update, alleviated a lot the bugs on line, and doing a sweeping animation pass not this update but actively worked on.
NSO is desired to differentiate them from other factions, not enough there to play them.
Finally made good on NSO sniper rifle, bolt action, SR-200.
NSO motif, sleek looks and design.
Has access to infrared and 4x sights. Suppressor attachment. Counterweight, Ballistics Computer, and Zip light rail attachments. Unknown if there are ammo types, not shown.
Javelin NSO vehicle, similar to Tempest in "that other game".
A very fast maneuverable turbo hoverbike, able to carry two passengers.
Color scheme changes depending on faction.
Very much in a prototype state, possible new art and balance adjustments.
Givens us the opportunity put something out right now to give NSO faction flavor and iterate more in the future.
The Javelin has a few abilities, a rocket barrage with slow-moving dumbfire homing rockets called the NEST launcher in the ability slot, avoid giving it a weapon without a tradeoff, along with Gate Shield Diffuser or Fire Suppression.
Stealth or autorepair, and well as Agility, Combat, or Speed Chassis for the performance slot.
Will be buffed out over time, no directive for it yet.
NSO MAX unit, the "Defector", still a work in progress.
Lore is someone has been deactivating and making sure that the normal NSO units aren't getting de-materialized by swarms of nanites as usual, leaving these husks that have been hot-wired or hijacked, and are full of explosives.
Doesn't have a death animation yet.
Time-bomb ability, knockback and damaging explosion ability, long wind up.
Early intentions of MAXes from conversations from other designers a long time ago, MAX units were not meant to be breaching units, but act as a grenade does now, like push people back and disperse people from chokepoints etc.
Grenade primary, with heat mechanic and infinite ammo, similar to Thumper in operation.
Seraph shield ability, deploys a dome around the unit, currently using its own health pool, but just like prowler shield, will have its own health pool.
All of these NSO things will be this update, and PTS tomorrow. Definitely going to iterate on it after going Live, Javelin and Defector are intended to be prototype, and might not stick around forever.
Defector unit will get animation work to be more twitchy vs alive like.
Part of being able to allocate additional team members to quality life in general, and improving the publishing process. Initiative is getting more quality of life hotfixes out, and publishing process from 4-6+ hours to 2-4 hours because downtime sucks.

Sanctuary

Last showcased 5 months ago in July. Not August. WREL.
Design behind Sanctuary is more than just social space.
Just touching on it, likely to come out Q1 2020 in first iteration, and adding to it as other new systems come online.
Very much a work in progress, some temporary work in progress assets.
Atrium will have vendors and NPCs offering different things. Some of these things still in design. Intentionally vague.
Crossfaction chat and voice chat.
Functionally acts also as a holding pen, better than Koltyr.
Value of Sanctuary stems from what they are going to put in it.
Intentionally vague, planned to show off more during stream, but the reality is that those assets and futures didn't manifest, didn't want to show something broken, and cause disbelief of imagination. Want to show things close to being finished.
Closed doors lead to more core content and functions as bigger patches come through, living and breathing content zone. Social hangout and pick up different things to do.
Foundational to New Player tutorials, big focus this past year on new player experience, didn't make it across the finish line this year, lots of prototyping that happened but a lot of it wasn't very usable and technological hurdles.
Need Sanctuary, ideally with New Player Experience beforehand.
Priority shifted a little bit towards player retention. Always had lots of new players everyday for 7 years, and a hard time sticking.
Lots of silver bullets implemented to fix "incredibly bad new player experience", never done the job.
Example: Like "Oh a no brainer, New Player Tutorials", very difficult to get right, and if players will take away from it, giving it questionable value.
Easiest things we can do is like a new directive telling players to go talk to a vendor, squad leader, etc. Giving the player to explore as well as poke and prod around the UI, instead of the fire hose we've been doing.
Current tutorial tells a lot information for first time FPS players, but not super help, but must focus on the futures that make PS2 PS2. Ease people into it, and give a physical representation of it.
Sanctuary, will tie into the next major update in Q1 2020, likely after January. There will be some interim stuff for the update in January. But not the big one.
Planning on doing a stream in early January to do the full reveal with full details of what the update will be. Effectively will HAVE A BETA process. Will reach out to very select community members as early as next week to start doing very early confidential feedback testing.
Is what has been the team have been working on for the last several weeks with the hotfixes and September updates. And we are excited for it, but you're gonna gave to wait after the New Year. Will be very outfit focused.
Date of next major reveal livestream either late this month or early January, plan is to go over the next major update early to get in done by Q1 2020.
Probably will post more news and teasers.
Starting in January moving forward, lots of things going on roadmap. More developer livestreams.
Next week, Wrel will post a development letter. If anything fun to show off, it'll be in the letter.

Questions

Will NSO have voices?
Anything about increasing ISO gain?
Vehicles for other factions?
Wrel Voicepack?
General questions on performances, bugs, etc.

#1 Planetside 2 Discord, Wrel, Regarding the back-end changes: The long and short of it is that we were using two programs for source control that ran through different pipelines. This resulted in a lot of the problems with certain changes going Live (or not going Live) when they should have, among other nightmare scenarios that happened more often than it should. One of those programs long overstayed its welcome, and prior to the layoffs, we were in the process of getting the work done to consolidate our source control programs (down to Perforce only, instead of Perforce and an old proprietary tool for design data.) Unfortunately, due to the nature of the tool, getting rid of it was not a smooth process, and we continue to work out the issues it's created.

#2 August Development Letter, Mandate System, Wrel,

The last thing I want to talk about is probably the biggest system we’re working on currently, one we’re tentatively calling the Mandate system.

Mandates are time-limited challenges with concrete objectives and rewards given upon completion. For the first implementation, we’re looking to create a system that can generate daily, weekly, and seasonal challenges (like the Directive system, but more robust and forgiving,) as well as create and trigger Mandates via script.

We will be using Mandates not only as a daily motivator, but also to incentivize participation when a context switch happens in-game. For example: An Aerial Anomaly event fires off, and you now have the time-limited goal of destroying enemy aircraft, delivering anomaly data, or supporting allied aircraft. If you don’t do it, you don’t get the reward.

The Mandate system will help make rewards feel more punchy and immediately obvious, it gives players a clear goal to complete, and it allows us to be more generous with rewards, while maintaining tighter control over our currency economies. Like much of what we’re working toward now, this is a system that will support the long-term development of the game.

Beyond the first implementation, we’ll be looking to create communal Mandates where multiple players contribute to the completion of the same goal. For example: An entire faction could be working toward a seasonal Mandate, and be trying to complete it before the other factions do. Or an Outfit could have its own Mandate that elevates the entire outfit as a whole upon completion.