If you aren’t familiar with the game, I describe it in this thread. The reason I didn’t simply bump that thread is because people who’ve already tried the game and gave up due to poor performance on their machine wouldn’t bother to check the end of the thread again to find out about the big change.
It’s the one year anniversary of the launch of PS2, and we’re currently in a four day double XP period, so now is a great time to come back and try it. They reworked a significant chunk of the engine so that the game is generally faster and not nearly as oddly cpu-bound as it used to be. And it’s pretty wildly successful - pretty much everyone across the board is seeing huge gains in performance.
The SDMB group doesn’t play nearly as much as we used to (we used to play it 3-5 times a week during the first few months), but we’ll be getting together sometimes to play it, and there’ve been a lot of changes and improvements to the game. The optimization patch is a huge deal that’ll open the game to people who couldn’t run it before - so if the poor performance of the game was the thing that was keeping you from playing before, give it another try. And the game is generally more polished with more features now, so it’s worth a try for anyone interested.
Cool
I had pretty much given up as my only real playing time was when traveling and using my work lap top , Will see how it performs (and if I can get away from KSP)
The optimization patch brought in a lot of new people, and brought some back. And now there seems to be a large migration to Connery, being the largest US server. So the battles lately have been huge - a lot like the game was at launch. You can find huge battles on every continent. A lot more polished now. Definitely worth giving a try, we’ve started to pick it up again. I’ll probably try to organize a big group game on Friday, so have it installed and configured by then, and if you hop on mumble with us we’ll walk you through it.
Apparently there’s a double XP weekend this weekend, so it’s a good time to start. SDMBers will be playing a decent bit tonight and over the weekend, so if you want us to help you get into the game, contact me on steam.
I’ve been playing PS2 almost daily since release, most other multiplayer shooter games pale in comparison. Not sure I like everything about the direction the game is going (especially the easy Redeploys) but looking forward to trying Hossin tonight. It is a swampy continent (ok island really) with lots of trees.
I dropped out for a while until the resolved the performance issues and completed the OMFG upgrades and have now been back for a couple of months.
I played Hossain for 1/2 hr this morning. Looked good, dark, lots of trees and cool nooks and crannies. Night vision is going to help ( or maybe it was just night when I played) . New bases are there, not sure how they are though as I didn’t have time to evaluate them, but new is always good. They have quite a few bases there which are just towers and the usual bases transplanted , apparently place holders for future bases.
The Harasser is going to own this continent, with so much cover they zip in and be out before any lock on can get them, and I find it tough to hit a Harraser with a dumbfire unless they are heading straight at me. Maybe the flash will make a comeback as well for the same reasons.
Going to be interesting to see how continent locking is going to drive the game. Indar on Connery is already locked by Vanu. The base cap bragging rights probably wont drive much for now.
The performance improvements and all that have been made, a lot less buggy and decent FPS now
innumerable weapon balance changes . The hot one now is the Liberator. It was the farming machine at the beginning , then it got nerfed, then it got unnerfed and with the armour and repair upgrades it was a farming machine, now it has been rebalanced again
Heavys shields got nerfed and you can OSK as a sniper but you have to be under 250m or something
Implants - you now get implants that give you mine awareness and a variety of things. You basically get awarded various different implants which you can ‘craft’ into other implants with the nano recycler ( amongst the certs, I really haven’t used the implants yet )
Hossain continent
major base redesigns with tunnels and all sorts. Esamir bases are basically all walled in , so tank battles outside infantry battles inside. The problem is you do end up with farming choke points
Lots of base improvements and terrain improvements on Amerish, its a nice continent to play now . Bases have tunnels and multiple ways out of the spawn rooms. Although you can still get locked in if you are few in number and they have a few sycths and libs. At some point people will figure out to fall back to the next base and reassult from there, not get farmed in the spawn room.
You can squad deploy directly into your squads (not platoons) Galaxy or Sunderer , which is nice, so you don’t have to sit at the warp gate waiting for everyone.
Hossin is really good, and it ran very well. On patch day even. Feels like a new game.
Something is wonky with the tank handling and there were a few base glitches on Hossin but other than that there aren’t many noticeable bugs.
Yep the Amerish redesign was really good too, they did a great job. Many walls were added to bases to minimize tank farming.
They have also made the spawn room force fields opaque when viewed from the outside. I think I like that change, makes the attackers a little more wary of spawn rooms and should allow organized defenders to form a counterattack better.
I played on Hossin for several hours last night. Interesting place! Lots of water to give away troop movements. Off-road travel is all but impossible for the larger vehicles, as on Amerish. One Hossin base I liked is basically a destroyed bio dome. Had quite the firefight in there!
Also interesting is that continents are locked after being conquered, until another is conquered.
The implants are an interesting addition. Not sure completely what I think of them, or even that I completely understand them. I’m unclear at the moment precisely how it is you earn a recharge. It seems like earning any other ribbon, but there’s something specific. I’m too lazy to look it up. Maybe later. But anyway they don’t seem Indar-shattering.
TR were doing very well last night. Not sure what that means in terms of balance.
Yep last night on Connery we locked down Amerish.
You supposedly can get a recharge by it randomly being given to you, or you can buy for SC or certs, but the best way is to take several of your other implants that you may not need/want and put them somehow in the nano recycler and it will use them up and spit out a recharge.
Did it once, but mostly by accident.
That Dome is pretty cool I had a “this is sort of familiar , ohhhhhhhh its a broken bio dome” moment.
Yeah you get chargers randomly when killing enemies or gaining XP. All I have done with implants is turn auto-recharge on, equip Enhanced Targeting on all my non-sniper loadouts, and Hold Breath on my sniper loadouts. Then when I have a charger they work, when I don’t they don’t. So I don’t fuss with them.
Enhanced Targeting shows you a health bar above enemies and vehicles that you spot. Hold Breath lets you steady the 6x+ scopes longer, combined with the new straight pull bolts I can get off 2 shots on an enemy with the scope steady.
Well another big patch, they revamped the resource system to replace the air/veh/if resources with one resource type which gives you50 resources per minute or something. Makes pulling a tank or air less painful, which is good for leaning, lots of tanks and maxs around at the moment . No doubt it will all go through further rebalancing and hopefully this leads to some sort of resource system meta game to get a more strategic reasoning for taking and keeping bases. At the moment it is a bit "giant game of COD team deathmatch "like.
Oh they have directives, which are basically achievement badges which you can display and unlock sidegrade weapons.