Higby Streaming Patch Preview

[Hamma]

Higby is streaming a patch preview live:

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http://www.twitch.tv/las0m

[Hamma]

I believe that he said Amerish is coming Thursday did I hear that right?

[EisenKreutzer]

Yeah, he pretty much confirmed it just now.

[SKYeXile]

Can anybody sumup the major points in dot form? PLEASE

[BorisBlade]

yeah, could definitely use a major point post, the stream keeps losing audio or stopping entirely and when you have to rewatch a stupid 30 sec ad everytime you try to reload the page to fix it, you finally just close the thing out after the billionth commercial.

[Brusi]

Summation:

1. No Beards.

[Envenom]

Amerish is coming WEDNESDAY

[Dagron]

All 3 footholds will remain in every continent for release, they realized it wouldn't work with only 3 continents. :p

[Whiteagle]

All 3 footholds will remain in every continent for release, they realized it wouldn't work with only 3 continents. :p
I knew tweeting them my Diagram would help!

http://i77.photobucket.com/albums/j65/Whiteagle/ContinentDiagram.png

[Dagron]

I've seen this thing in more threads than the letter A. :lol:

[waldizzo]

have not watched the entire thing yet, but some guy on reddit, chill613, posted this. not sure if it's true or not.

Some of the details I pulled are;
Water is on Amerish
Repair tool can now over-heat and cannot be used indefinitely
We'll be able to cert into dedicated driver/gunner for MBT
Home continents are; VS = Amerish, NC = Esamir, TR = Indar
You get bonus exp for performing actions during an attack/defense.
Higby said 'definitely possible' when talking about adding on additional capture mechanics like CTF.

[Wargrim]

I am very glad the TR did not get Esamir as its home continent, i cant stand that white land of boredom. Looks like i will have to invade Vanuland then. :)

[WiteBeam]

have not watched the entire thing yet, but some guy on reddit, chill613, posted this. not sure if it's true or not.

CTF? PS1 called it an LLU.

[Brusi]

Oh Yeah....

Now Repair Guns have an overheat mechanic. Pretty cool i guess, considering that they now have unlimited ammo.

[waldizzo]

100m radius on deployed ams sunderers like ams radius in the original

players get bonus experience/cert points for defending facilities

players get bonus experience cert points for playing the objectives and capturing facilities

[Hamma]

Yep those are all true waldizzo

[waldizzo]

well they better be. I'm a 9 year veteran and I'm entitled to truth.

[Ghost Runner]

looks cool

[VonLipwig]

Repost from the official forums:

Amerish

Amerish will be in the next big patch. (we knew that :) )

Base design will be different there. More defensible, more chokepoints. Also more unique base design. Might carry over to Indar and Esamir later. One example of chokepoint is a bridge over water... which happens to kill you.

And yes, there is water on Amerish.

Respawn timers have been increased (up to 10 seconds I believe). Biolab ownership will reduce these respawn timers.

Number of bases on Amerish is somewhere between the number of bases on Indar and Esamir. More than Esamir, less than Indar.

Some of those bases have a more linear capture order; you have to move from A to B to C. Other bases can only be reached by air due to their position on a high mountain. There will be quite a few mountains on Amerish.

Some bases are quite vertical, which should keep tanks away from the spawnroom and turn it more into an infantry fight.


Changes to metagame:

Tweaking of resources to make them matter more.

Facility ownership will give benefits.

Dominating a continent (holding all capturable regions) will give a worldwide empire buff.


Spawn improvements:

You will be able to spawn on your Squad Leader with instant action (cooldown 30 minutes).

You will be able to spawn on any hard spawnpoint closest to your Squad Leader.

Squad beacon will now only be available to the Squad Leader. It doesn't need to be equipped; it only needs to be certed into. It will also cost no resources. There will be a 5 minute cooldown on using it.

Squad vehicles can be spawned on wherever they are in relation to you.

Sunderers can be spawned from any vehicle terminal but will be less spammable. Their deployment range is now 100 meters, which might increase later.


Experience changes:

Defender gets bonus experience for all actions performed during defence. Bigger facilities bestow greater bonuses.

Attackers do not get such a bonus, but do receive a large experience boost upon base capture. Again, larger facilities will give more points.


Performance and bugfixes:

As always, performance and bugfixes are worked on.

Amerish might run slower since it has not yet gone through some optimisation that Indar and Esamir did go through.

Grenades will no longer stick to your hands.

Painfields will return to spawnrooms: no more enemies camping a spawn that cannot be entered.

Lock-on missiles will hit more often due to fix to splash damage.

Restoration kits will heal even after switching weapons.

It should now always be possible to spawn on a Sunderer.


Misc:

From next patch, it will be possible to stream the game to Twitch.tv through the game client. It has an in-game streaming function to do so.

Battleranks now have icons, and will unlock things like extra loadout tabs and Squad Leader Abilities.

The game uses a new font.

The repair tool now has a heat meter. Heat must be managed now in order to prevent overheating. This is done to prevent continuous repairing.


Future plans:

MBTs will get more powerful secondary weapons. Additionally, extra certs will unlock a dedicated gunner slot, which has access to more powerful main weapons. Prowler and Vanguard will likely have a full crew of 3, while the Magrider setup probably necessitates a limit of 2 crew slots. This will most likely happen after launch.

New kinds of facilities are being discussed (interlinks etc.).

Squad Leader certs will be broken up into different categories over the next few weeks (communications, logistics, command tools etc.) as well as Squad Leader abilities being tied into Battle Rank.

MAXes may get more hitpoints.

New capture mechanics are also being discussed (including CTF mehod).

Heavy weapons (Lasher, MCG, Jackhammer) updated.

Mission system is going to be phased in. Squad Leaders can unlock it. Currently possible to place attack and defend order on the map which are visible to the entire faction.

Number of AA turrets will be reduced. Additionally, it will be easier to spot AA location/direction from the air. AA will also do less splash damage.

[waldizzo]

Nice summary, some really exciting changes and additions!

[Grognard]

NC gets Esamir? Poor bastards. NC fights up close, and there are wide open expanses there. Very happy Vanu is getting Amerish, assuming there is water, finally...

[Helwyr]

have not watched the entire thing yet, but some guy on reddit, chill613, posted this. not sure if it's true or not.

Some of that is true other parts are not. Red for response

Some of the details I pulled are;
Water is on Amerish Yes there's a stream and a deep ravine
Repair tool can now over-heat and cannot be used indefinitely True
We'll be able to cert into dedicated driver/gunner for MBT Yes, but some time after launch. Would be 3 man vehicles, except Magrider which would be 2 man due to issues with fixed gun. Shorter term he said they wanted to make secondary guns good enough that there was an incentive to have a secondary gunner.
Home continents are; VS = Amerish, NC = Esamir, TR = Indar PS1 lore wise that would make sense. However, I don't recall Higby saying that. There will be no home contents until more are added within the next year. They felt that having home continents with only 3 maps would lead to problems like fights happening a lot near wapgates.
You get bonus exp for performing actions during an attack/defense.
Higby said 'definitely possible' when talking about adding on additional capture mechanics like CTF. Defenders get bonus exp for actions done during a defense and attackers get a bigger reward for taking the base to encourage them to go after the objective rather than just farm kills etc. No new capture mechanics for release, but down the line yes.


Anyway, just watch it, lots of information and most of it good, even my restoration kits have been fixed! Loved the look of Amerish. Of course nothing said about Infiltrators as per normal... :mad:

[Wargrim]

After watching it, we do NOT get home continents and cross continent fighting at launch. It will come later with more continents.

Amerish looks extremely promising, seems like they learned a lot about base design and made some massive improvements.

[Tatwi]

Can someone put this onto youtube, please? Twitchtv is throttled to the point of being useless, while youtube works great (for me anyhow). Thank ye.

[DirtyBird]

Didnt see any mention of some sort of confirmation box when spending cert points or a cooldown period after making the purchase in case its a piece of shit or purchased by mistake because the details are non existent.

Nothing on 24/7 testing with just over 2 weeks to go, perhaps they dont plan on having the servers up 24/7 at launch?

No updates on the Oceanic server that is due up tomorrow, Nov 1st.
Nothing about what times it will operate either (Probably the same times as the other servers which kind of defeats the purpose.

Anyone hear of any changes to the UI options for those affected with colour-blindness?
I hear its real hard to tell VS and NC apart on the map screen.

[Ghost Runner]

Well this looks promising :)

Server Availability 11/2 - 11/4

Discussion in 'Official News and Announcements' started by RadarX, Yesterday at 8:21 PM.

RadarX Community Relations

All game servers will remain without downtime over the weekend. Enjoy the extra time!

RadarX, Yesterday at 8:21 PM

http://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/index.php?threads/server-availability-11-2-11-4.39209/

[Timealude]

Sad we wont be getting OS during the beta. Oh well, I like the rest of theses changes as well as the upcoming ones.

[DirtyBird]

So over the weekend we get an extra couple of hours each day?

How about the for the next two weeks leaving them open 24/7, why is the weekend any different.

[Sledgecrushr]

Higby talked about aa some. He said that before the patch Zurvan had 14 aa guns. After the patch zurvan will have 4. I believe they followed this trend through all of the bases and all of the continents.

[Dragonskin]

Some exciting things in this patch. I might be able to quit harping on lack of a reason to control bases... that would be nice.

[LastManStanding]

I think Amerish looks great, definitely the best so far. I like the lush, green look, but more importantly I'm excited by the changes to the base design that they've made.

The layouts should provide a better flow, more interesting battles and I think they have more character than the one's we've seen in the past.

[MrBloodworth]

This is better. However. It's still to early to launch. They have not had one single patch that did not have game breaking implications.

Also, base designs are still designed as arena/death match layouts, perhaps Amerish has done away with this, but they need to propagate that across three conts now.

[J Baley]

Summation:

1. No Beards.



My fault :rofl:

[typhaon]

* Amerish looks good.

* I thought the attacking/defending bonus points sounded good and alleviated some of my concerns about people not really caring about the 'other' base benefits enough to matter.

* It sounds like they are sticking with 3 warpgates per continenet - non-capturable. I think this sounds bad. I think a lot of people are already getting tired of 'fighting near the Crown' or being 'stuck in the NW corner of Esamir.'

[Whiteagle]

* It sounds like they are sticking with 3 warpgates per continenet - non-capturable. I think this sounds bad. I think a lot of people are already getting tired of 'fighting near the Crown' or being 'stuck in the NW corner of Esamir.'
Well they've only got three Continents...

You're not going to have any meaningful intercontinental warfare until you have at least four:
http://i77.photobucket.com/albums/j65/Whiteagle/ContinentDiagram.png

[Dagron]

There he goes with his ugly doodles again... :lol:

[ringring]

* It sounds like they are sticking with 3 warpgates per continenet - non-capturable. I think this sounds bad. I think a lot of people are already getting tired of 'fighting near the Crown' or being 'stuck in the NW corner of Esamir.'
Essentially they have no choice ... other than delaying things until the other continents are ready, which is in itself no choice either.

I think it will take more than four continents, maybe five but probably six.

[Mechzz]

Essentially they have no choice ... other than delaying things until the other continents are ready, which is in itself no choice either.

I think it will take more than four continents, maybe five but probably six.

Big question is, will players roll off through boredom caused by the over-constrained fights faster than they can introduce new continents to spice things up a bit. That is the big gamble of an early launch (to say nothing of performance issues and bugs!)