8th Anniversary Development Stream - November 20th, 2020
8 years of Planetside!
Extra Life Stream
Anniversary Bundle
CH2 and 3
Planned till the end of the year, onwards to 2020!
Extra Life
Raised 15k of a 20k goal so far!
Thanks for all involved!
You can still sign up to help contribute, and still running till the end of the year!
Special thanks to those who helped contribute time and energy into a cause bigger than Planetside!
8th Anniversary
Exploration, space theme.
Try it out on PTS now!
Three different bundles, Cadet/Explorer/Starseeker's.
8th variant of the NS-15 with laser beam audio and space oriented, along with the NS-357 and other space variants for carbines and assault rifles.
Orange metallic camo, "Helios", to emulate reflective surfaces used in space.
2x XP for everyone today, till next Thursday.
PS4 gets bundles early next week, but still getting double XP.
Helmet done by Faven, Suit and weapons done by Alen with help from Bishop.
Steevo did new lumifiber for all factions!
New droppod customization! See sanctuary shop to customize. May be later expanded.
New 8-year anniversary gift mission to earn the anniversary decal and a Platinum variant NS-45P Pilot pistol!
CH2 and 3
Containment Protocol, available to play NOW.
PS4 CH2 coming on December 15, or early December.
Cert cost discounted as Chapter one ended.
Campaign dates are now spaced out more, and give more time in the future.
Foster's plan to stabilize Esamir, will involve creating new facilities terrestrially.
Will lead to new "terrestrial" facilities in CH3.
Geysers now have crystal Elysium, used to revive armies since discovered.
Gathering material to construct
Faction specific abilities, lasting for campaign.
CH3 will have a new containment site, and 3 of them in the map to be fought over, removing the current Biolab ruin sites. Will be the first major facility design in half a decade.
Infantry centric environment, monolithic design.
End of 2020 roadmap and beyond
A lot of content produced this year, lots to come, and the team just continues to expand. Going dark for a couple of months making additional content.
Goal is to have more consistent and reliable update schedules.
Outfit wars needed a large overhaul with the current system, a portion of the team 3 months ago allocated to overhaul it.
Now Tournament style.
Qualifiers previously got people burnt out, and even though it could've been developed to be bearable, that's not the point. Should be made to be good.
Enlistment will make it to require equal participation between factions.
Will use an automated roster with fights between teams, on Desolation, allowing more people to play on the area with ideal times for fights and more inclusive.
Win/loss ratio will determine who you fight against, matchups every week.
Last few matches will be playoffs, with metal rankings(Bronze, Silver Gold, etc),
Win/loss will mostly determine the playoffs and qualifies, but there are other factors like performance, score, etc that determine finalists in playoffs. Manual adjustment if needed.
Depending on the level you get through Outfit Wars, there will be rewards, and still to be determined.
New Outfit Wars pretty close to roll out, Alpha cycle happening very early next year.
Lots of new players still joining in, and New Player Experience will be a large focus into 2021.
New Player Onboarding: Updated character create screen, new tutorial, and mentor system revamp.
Character create screen will tell more about the factions.
New tutorial is absolutely critical, as it's rotten and aged badly.
Mentor system will be later, than the latter two most likely.
Really high priority, expect to see it soon.
Actually started on it after all these eight years, finally.
NSOverhaul inbound, will be free to all players and able to select a home faction(maybe members only), with an updated arsenal. Members may have certain benefits.
NSO had a lot of bugs, hard to play with other people, and too lone wolf oriented.
Thinking of features like repair to heal their HP, etc.
Spawn system update, still planning.
Focus on clearer spawn rationale, better population distribution, remote vehicle spawn fixes, and refining "Join combat"
Current system is buggy and still has issues, with too heavy a stick. Join combat also inconsistent currently.
Reinvesting into old elements to feel cohesive instead of partially woven threads.
Voice packs for NSO, would likely include that, and audio guy is interested and has been doing in their offtime.
New vehicles hindered by voice lines/callouts and gathering voice actors, in progress. Like "Enemy javelin!" instead of "Enemy vehicle!" Lots of work.
Game engine enhancements, expanding tech team, rendering enhancements, and client/server optimizations.
Finding renderer and game engine tools specialists.
Want the game to have a brighter future and fixing old issues.
Significant performance and graphical enhancements planned, likely towards the latter part of 2021.
New continent inbound, with periodic updates to older continents. New stories and campaigns!
Like finishing Hossin and Indar.
Map changes were often hesitant to do because you had to redownload the whole map, but those fears aren't as bad as initially thought by devs. And can happen more often.
I know we didn't deliver over the years with new continents, but we really have a large enough team to finally do it, and starting soon.
High confidence in the new roadmap, with the current manpower available.