Wrel

PROVIDES THE ENEMY INFILTRATOR WITH CLOAKING ENERGY.

Haven't followed up on this bug yet, but are you using the default equipment on an Infiltrator? Their default suit slot gives energy back when their shield breaks.

EDIT: As a follow-up. Tested this on Live, and it works fine. However, because we don't pause energy regeneration at all, and since the drain is fairly minimal, it can be easy to miss the effect. There are some improvements to Disruptor ammo we can make to give this more punch.

EDIT2: After further investigation, looks like there are some missing effects on the Tempest, Guardian, Shadow, and A-TROSS. So provided these were the weapons used for testing, it's definitely broken.

Looks like Lumen, one of our network providers, had an outage that impacted Emerald at around 9pm PT last night. Seemed to last for about two hours, by the reports I'm reading.

Keep an eye on February.

First off, I'm pretty apprehensive of constraining building to vehicle capture hexes.

Building isn't being constrained to vehicle capture hexes.

To be clear, you won't be piecing structures together. The system will work much like it does now, except that modules will be slotted directly into structures instead of scattered around a base, and each module will only benefit the structure it's slotted into. Let me know if there's a part in that article that might have caused the miscommunication, and I'll see if I can rephrase it.

While I'm describing a large, multi-month initiative above, you'll still see plenty of bug cleanup, quality of life improvements, balance iteration, as well as monthly Prime Gaming content and seasonal events in between major releases.

With the update, the intention would be to convert non-Skywall shields to two-way shields (and revamp which structures have access to them and how they use them,) remove the Pain Spire, remove (or revamp) Automated Turrets, remove the EMP effect from Skywalls, as well as increase the overall resilience of larger bases by increasing defensability when modules are placed within them.

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Flipped point is likely what we'll go with since that's (unfortunately) what registers a base as no longer secure, but timer ticking is the ideal.

Regarding the design goals: https://www.planetside2.com/news/planting-a-flag-this-anniversary

Unrelated to the priority system above, we've also disabled the remote-deployment of vehicles at the moment, with the goals of slowing down the pace of deployment around the map, bringing us back to earlier times where terminals had more value as sub-objectives, and vehicles could more easily find gunners willing to hop in. This change is non-destructive, however, and we can return it with relative ease if the design goals aren't being met.

After watching the spawn system play out for a bit, I think we're in a decent spot overall. Preventing quick p...

I can give hummingbird another look.

As a quick note, we'll be bringing vehicle quick-pull back early this year, and will be taking a pass on the bugs associated with it before doing so. Some have suggested that the feature only appear at certain bases, and we'll give that feedback some consideration before re-releasing it back into the wild.

Hey there. I don't typically chime in on posts that target the developers, but I think some of those callouts are worth addressing. I've had a contentious relationship with some portions of the community over the years due in part to the reasons you mention, and I've actively been working to better myself in these areas year after year. I hope the effort is visible in some respect, despite the occasional slip-up from time to time.

For everything else: it would be challenging for any developer to address the needs of a such a broad community -- with drastically different perspectives on what the game means to them and how things should change -- and I've tried my best to balance the needs of the game, community, and organization, with whatever resources were available. It hasn't been an easy process, and I don't foresee it getting any easier. But we're in year 11 now, and the only path that there is or ever was, is forward. Hopefully we can course correct a bit in 2...

Thinking back, it's hard to remember the times that I've had a fun fight at a base that was easy to steamroll -- designer-made or otherwise. Defensible bases tend to create a better back and forth and longer fights (Quartz Ridge and Indar Comm. Array are good examples,) if you can have spawns set up close enough to tension points.

To that end, construction in its current state uses a lot of "unfun" mechanics (like Pain Spire, Auto-Turrets, one-way shields,) to make them difficult to take, and the distinction is important. You can have fun at a challenging base if you have access to counterplay moment to moment. It's hard to say the same about a base where a fiery monolith is draining your health from the other side of a wall.

I've seen these. They're all great ideas.

Also please don't cave in like last time and roll it back just because a handful of people make a big stink about it.

There was actually a lot of value in that interaction. It helped solidify who the audience of people actually building was, and releasing the proposed odds and ends without a full battery of changes would have only caused more pain for the players who are actively engaged in building.

At the same time, I doubt the needle would have moved much on the players who actually choose to participate in fights around construction bases, as there are more problems there than a few unfun mechanics.

Hard to say. I think players were generally excited for it, but honestly, I was pretty disappointed when we started losing steam mid year and couldn't follow through. We might end up making a compromise this year, to avoid additional pressure on the team, and disappointment from the community.

Indeed. The main goals will be to make Construction fun to fight at and reduce the barrier to entry, but we'll speak more about that later this month.

We'll do a pass to clean out those old missions. Won't land in this week's update, but likely next week.

That one will definitely get fixed before the next season.

Fix the crippling lag effecting Emerald before you even consider running another round of Outfit Wars to distract the community, otherwise you might not have a community left to play Outfit Wars.

I feel this. We're still working on gathering information for the performance issues, as it doesn't (at the moment,) actually seem like the spawn system is the culprit. It's our highest priority at the moment, but some software licensing turmoil over the holiday is setting us back. That should get cleaned up in short order now that everyone is back in the office though.