News: Test Server Update October 23, 2013 4 PM PST: OMFG Patch

[Jaybonaut]

Trying to get the word out in my own little way:

[Rolfski]

First impressions: Definitely more GPU bound and solid fps increase across the board, especially at quiet area's. But in a massive 3-way grinder at the Crown, it gets ugly fast though: Lots of stuttering, massive fps spikes (15fps - 85fps), rendering issues (you can hardly see where your shells are flying), etc. Still far away from a smooth experience. Btw I'm on a i7 950 3.6GHz/ 6Gb RAM/ATI HD 5970 dual gpu.

As for the new HUD UI, I'm not a fan of it. Besides from its style (not mine), it fails to do where it's designed for: Give you clear info. It blends too much with the back ground (shields in centralized hud, you can hardly see when it's full/empty), the ammo reload circle is too thin and hardly visible and the same goes for the red hit detector: You can hardly see if you're hitting someone.


BTW. Be sure to check out the new lay-out of Biolabs. Looks promising (have to test it though), except for the closed-off spawn: You have to take a ridiculous walk to actually get in the biolab .

[DirtyBird]

Finally got around to matching my settings on live to the PTS.
About a 10% increase in an empty warpgate so it'll be good to test it on Sun/Mon.
More bottleneck at GPU level for me now with a 6970.
I'd like to finally run crossfire but I hear its still not stable atm.


As per what Rolfski said, I am also not a fan of the central hud update.
An option to have the old one would be good.
The ammo and HP indicator does disappear into the game too much and I liked the fact the current version on live gives clear information.
Even the death screen shield and health bars are over the top now.

The repair hud is still the old bar system down the bottom of the hud for when you overheat.
The repair circle on items is till the old circled bar system as well which seems strange that you would change the bottom hud with a thin line around the circle but leave other things as they are.
Maybe they are in the list of things to finish.

The change to the smaller hud down near your nade count looks ok, for your jump jets, aura heal etc.

Might just be me but I think my tracers are easier to see in thermal.

Bio Labs changes look interesting.
That large walled platform above the teleporting tube room could be a good addition.

Pulse from Recon Dart is so faint its nearly non existent.

[Hamma]

The actual notes are up:
https://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/...-10-23.155314/

http://wiki.planetside-universe.com/...e_(2013/10/23)

How has the performance pass been for everyone?

Originally Posted by Raxxyl

Hi All,

The first patch for our Performance Update is now on Test Server and we're ready for players.

Summary of Changes:

We’ll get a longer list of patch notes out when we’re closer to live, but here’s the short of it for now:

General:

• Performance changes of all kinds. Too many to list and more on the way.

UI:

• The Centralized HUD has been redesigned with a new look to increase performance. You can try it out by checking the "Centralized HUD Mode" checkbox in the General Settings.
• We've renamed all the Warpgates to geographical names. So you will now see the "Indar Northern Warpgate" instead of the "Indar TR Warpgate"

Misc Bug Fixes:

• Fixed shotgun pellet count tooltip. Instead of saying, "The amount or pellets each time the shotgun fires" the tooltip now says, "Single-shot Pellet Count / Pellet Spread"
• Added 1x sight for VS Eridani SX5G
• Fixed an issue where Resupply and Repair Sunderer icons would not display when within 100 meters of the vehicle
• Fixed an issue where The Smoke Screen Utility tooltip on the loadout menu has a different duration value than the cert rank for Sunderers
• The AV turrets at West Highlands Checkpoint should no longer be floating
• Fixed floating turrets at West Highlands Checkpoint and The Stronghold
• Removed erroneous painfields around Indar
• Fixed an issue where the two projectiles would sometimes be visible when firing the Recon Detect Device when only one was fired
• Fixed issue where lower ranks of Sunderer Proximity Repair could not repair Sunderers that had a higher rank equipped
• Depot Bundles and store items have had a pass to ensure correct faction usage is written in their descriptions
• AV turret projectiles should no longer disappear in large battles

Major Known Issues:

This is not an exhaustive list of what we know about, but we’re turning around a lot of bugs each day and these are the major outstanding issues:

• SLI and Crossfire Hitches – You may want to turn off SLI and Crossfire for the moment as there are some performance hitches we’re working on
• Minimum Spec PCs – If you have the bare minimum or very close to, you may still be experiencing some significant performance issues.
• GPU Particles –These could cause cosmetic anomalies, performance issues and crashing, so please turn them off for now
• Freyr - We’ve decided to hold back the base flows changes in Freyr a little while longer. Likely won’t be until after this first performance update is live
• Video Capture - May cause performance issues, but feel free to test and send us information on what you’re seeing

Help Us Test:

• Performance in large battles - We only have so many people at SOE to test large battles, so this is an area where we really need your help. We’ll be collecting data on the backend, so no real need to send us reports.
• Animation - We’ve made a ton of changes here to improve performance and are still working through some issues. Please report any oddities or bugs in first or third person animation.
• Indar - Indar has received a full optimization overhaul. Look for cosmetic and functional issues in regards to bases and terrain. (Esamir, Amerish and Hossin haven’t had their optimization passes yet.)
• Overhead Indicator Revamp and General UI - We’ve made a lot of optimizations just about everywhere in the UI, so please be on the lookout for anything not functioning properly
• Art Assets - We went back and touched most of our existing art assets (weapons, decals, environment objects, FX, etc.), so please let us know if something doesn’t look right or is just plain missing.
• Stability - If you crash, please let us know in a bug report what you were doing before you crashed
• Double/Triple Loading Screens - We may still have a few lingering cases of this but need to get more testing on this
• Everything Else - We’ve made core changes to the game that could have caused just about anything. We’ve already found and fixed a ton of these, but we’re surely missing some and won’t see them until we get a critical mass of players.
• Framerate Smoothing Option - In graphics settings, you’ll see this an option for Smoothing. If you’re looking for a smoother frame rate, you want this on. If you’re willing to deal with performance spikes -- good spikes and bad spikes – leave this off. We expect most players are going to want this on for a smoother experience, but you’re welcome to test for yourselves and give us feedback. If you’re just looking to see how high your frame rate spikes on Test compared to current live, you will want this off.

Test Server Incentive:

• If you log on to Test Server any time from today until the day before the patch goes live, we’ll give your Live account a 3 day XP boost to use on any character
• You must use your Live account on Test Server to get this reward, otherwise we have no way to determine who to give the reward to

Reporting:

• In-game Reporting - This is the best way to give us feedback as Test Server bugs are emailed directly to us. Push Esc, then support, then Report a Bug
• Forums - Please use the Test Server sections and work with other players to help give us information. The more condensed and easy to read the reports are, the easier it is to get them addressed

As an additional note, we will be updating the Test Server frequently with updates and bug fixes. It could be down more often than usual or have game breaking issues for periods of time. We'll keep you all posted on major changes and down times.
-Raxxyl

[ChipMHazard]

More stable frames and more GPU bound, but I haven't been in a big enough fight to really see if the optimization has changed much.

[bpostal]

Originally Posted by ChipMHazard

More stable frames and more GPU bound, but I haven't been in a big enough fight to really see if the optimization has changed much.

Well Chip, I'm glad you said that. Did you know that we're hoping for a huge mega stress test on the PTS this Sunday (the 27th of October) at or around 1300 PST? Gonna be a good time!

[Babyfark McGeez]

Originally Posted by CrimsonTemplar

Something snuck onto the PTS, hidden in the files:



Looks like it's the Planetside 2 re-imagining of the REK.

Credits to Sir RoyAwesome for discovering this tidbit.

Is this the surprise that they're putting in on 20th November? Who knows...

Maybe they plan to replace "staring really hard at a console" with actual hacking.

Edit: Also saw in the notes they fixed (some) floating turrets, woot.

[VaderShake]

Originally Posted by CrimsonTemplar

Something snuck onto the PTS, hidden in the files:



Looks like it's the Planetside 2 re-imagining of the REK.

Credits to Sir RoyAwesome for discovering this tidbit.

Is this the surprise that they're putting in on 20th November? Who knows...

This was in the guy who did the concept stuff for PS2 from his Deviant Art page.



Link to his page: http://ukitakumuki.deviantart.com/ar...uard-317280226

[Jaybonaut]

The only issue I have is with shield/class skill/health bars, the rest of the ui changes are ok, unless you count the infiltrator darts on the minimap because those seem to be broken.

In regular non-centralized HUD mode, it is too hard to use your peripheral vision to keep track now because the line thickness isn't consistent for those bars.

In centralized HUD mode, I would like the bars to not fade at the ends because it is too difficult to see.

[ChipMHazard]

Originally Posted by VaderShake

This was in the guy who did the concept stuff for PS2 from his Deviant Art page.



Link to his page: http://ukitakumuki.deviantart.com/ar...uard-317280226

So it is for the drone then.

Originally Posted by Jaybonaut

The only issue I have is with shield/class skill/health bars, the rest of the ui changes are ok, unless you count the infiltrator darts on the minimap because those seem to be broken.

In regular non-centralized HUD mode, it is too hard to use your peripheral vision to keep track now because the line thickness isn't consistent for those bars.

In centralized HUD mode, I would like the bars to not fade at the ends because it is too difficult to see.

Agreed. I don't know why they wanted to go with a more stylized approach to the bars. Might be that they had to go away from the previous style completely because of UI optimization or that they just wanted the new design to have a more futuristic style to it.
I've always preferred simple bars that are easy to see at all times.

I kinda like the new enemy kill notification, although I do not like the glare behind it. I find it to be too distracting.
Not sure about the kill feed yet.

[Carbon Copied]

The HUD screams "stylized console" to me. I don't think this is coincidence.

[Wahooo]

Minimum Spec PCs – If you have the bare minimum or very close to, you may still be experiencing some significant performance issues.

I wasn't expecting much for myself, but I think I may have lost out some. Maybe its just that I had adapted to the stuttering of other players and since I haven't really logged in other than to clear my certs for over a month, but FPS isn't even hitting 30 at WG as it used to and a lot more rubberbanding of other players.

The move to more GPU bound is probably better overall for more people but it might end it for me for now.

[camycamera]

Originally Posted by Carbon Copied

The HUD screams "stylized console" to me. I don't think this is coincidence.

I think that they did it so it uses less resources, as the HUD has been known to take allot of resources on live.

[typhaon]

The shield/health bars on the standard HUD aren't good.

They are much harder to keep track of than on LIVE.

As mentioned in the notes, I can confirm that using SLI causes major spikes drops in FPS... constantly, really.

I wouldn't really play without SLI, so I can't comment on much else until ^that is corrected.

[synkrotron]

Test Server Incentive:
If you log on to Test Server any time from today until the day before the patch goes live, we’ll give your Live account a 3 day XP boost to use on any character
You must use your Live account on Test Server to get this reward, otherwise we have no way to determine who to give the reward to

Anyone any idea how this works? Is it delivered like a boost you purchase from the store or does your XP automatically get boosted after playing on the test server?

I'm asking because I've spent some time on the test server but I'm not seeing a boost as such to my XP on my Live account.

cheers

andy