Holiday sales, events & a Game Update!

Game Update incoming!

Hey all!

I wanted to drop by and let you guys know about the upcoming Game Update, Holiday events and some changes that we're making to the Roadmap.

First up, the next game update will be released early next week, barring anything unforeseen we are targeting Tuesday (December 17th) early AM to release the update.

This update contains a number of performance enhancements, notably in client memory and memory management. While we don't expect you to see the same level of performance gains that the first O:MFG update had, this should add stability and performance for many of you.

We also have some extensive balance and gameplay tuning updates coming as well which I know are being hotly debated here already, changes to MAXes, Harassers, AV weapons, infantry weapons, and more. As usual full patch notes will be available with complete details as we get closer to the update.

This update also comes with a lot of changes to Esamir, mostly performance optimizations, but you'll notice some level tweaks here and there as well. One major difference will be the Freyr Amp Station which has been completely revamped and now plays in a totally new way, we're really interested in hearing what players think of this approach to base building in Planetside 2.


Holiday Event & Sales

Over the next few weeks you may come across some snowmen (conveniently pictured above for easy identification!) scattered across the frozen wasteland of Esamir. These jolly and harmless fellows can be blown up for a nice chunk of XP, and, if you can light up enough of them you may earn a special reward. Also, keep your eye out for a rare blinged out Golden Snowman who gives a very exclusive reward. If you see one, make sure you get it before your squadmates do!

In addition to new holiday camos and decals, from the 18th of December through the 1st of January we will be having some huge sales in game.

Each day during those two weeks a new category in the marketplace (such as "shotguns" or "helmets") will be on sale for 50% off. In addition all Item of the Day items will be 99SC regardless of their original cost, and Members Only Item of the Day items will be 1SC, so make sure you log in every day and don't miss out on anything good!


Roadmap Information

As anyone who's accidentally stumbled into the Roadmap section recently knows, there isn't a lot of content on there right now. That's about to change. While working on O:MFG we retooled our feature schedule, and we've retooled the way we're going to use Roadmap in the future as well.

As a way to learn what our players are looking for, excited about, and worried about in upcoming features, Roadmap has been terrific tool for us. However, so far Roadmap hasn't been particularly accurate about when those features would be available to players - some of that is due to changing systems due to the feedback from the Roadmap, some is due to changing priorities on the dev team, such as pooling all our effort behind the O:MFG update. We're going to be making the following changes to the way we use Roadmap.

1. From now on, most features on Roadmap will be kept under unscheduled until we're more certain of a solid release date for them. What that means is when you see something move to "March" you will be able to reasonably expect that feature is ready to be released in March. That isn't a guarantee of course, things will still shift from time to time, but since things will be in Unscheduled until we are very confident that we can hit the dates, this will be a lot more accurate.
2. Roadmap entries will now have a field for "Status" so you can see what state it's in. We will have statuses for: Designed, In Progress, Internal Testing, On Public Test and Complete.

Starting early in the new year we're planning on cleaning up many of the Roadmap threads and consolidating based on some revised designs for many of the features which had been up there previously. Some entries are already up for the Amerish Revamp, new Missions & Directives systems, as well as the new Death Screen.

Amerish: forums.station.sony.com/ps2/index.php?threads/february-amerish.162119/
Missions: forums.station.sony.com/ps2/index.php?threads/unscheduled-missions-system.162113/
Directives: forums.station.sony.com/ps2/index.php?threads/unscheduled-directives.162115/
Death Screen: forums.station.sony.com/ps2/index.php?threads/unscheduled-death-screen.162116/

Please check those out and let us know what you think - one thing that isn't changing with Roadmap is our commitment to hearing and acting on your feedback.

It's been a great year for us here on Planetside 2, and the best is yet to come. We hope you enjoy the Game Update and have a fantastic end to 2013 both on Auraxis and off!

Until next time!
-
Matthew Higby - @mhigby
Creative Director @planetside2 [/font]