News: PlanetSide 2 Roadmap Announced

Since the Roadmap site is currently being iffy in terms of accessibility, here is the whole roadmap transcribed.

Windows
We are making windows all across Auraxis’ bases and facilities smaller, so it should be tougher for tanks and planes to shoot into buildings.

Creating "No Deploy" zones for AMS equipped Sunderers
We are currently discussing mechanics which would allow designers to designate areas within a base or facility that Sunderers cannot deploy in. The initial use of this ability will be to disallow Sunderer deployment in Tower Vehicle Bays, but that can expand if we discover other problematic areas.

January - Defender Only Jump Pads
In an effort to help support general defense at facilities, we’re exploring the idea of having the jump pads which allow players to quickly traverse the walls only be usable by the Empire in control of the facility.

The current plan is to roll this out to all of the Tech Plant and some specific Biolab walls.

January - SMGs
We want to add a new weapon type, the Submachine Gun (SMG), to the game.

• The current plan is to make them accessible to all classes outside of the MAX
• Stats on the individual weapons will vary slightly to account for Empire and specialization differences, but currently the goal is to have the SMG look something like this:

Pros
Excels in Close Quarters Combat
Top end Rate of Fire
Low Time To Kill

Cons
Significant drop off in effectiveness at medium and long range
Limited magazine size

January - Spawn Room Tunnel System
In our ongoing effort to mitigate spawn camping, we are planning on adding some spawn room tunnel networks to provide additional escape paths. The current plan is to add these to all Tech Plants and Amp Stations.

January - Experience Incentives
The idea behind this Incentive system is that higher “priority” targets are worth more experience than others. So killing someone on a wicked kill streak nets you more XP than killing someone right as they spawn.

For example, perhaps something like this:

Spawn Kill (25xp): This is a newly spawned player alive for less than seconds.

Kill (100xp): This is a player who has lived for more than 30 seconds and has accrued less than 500 unbuffed xp without dying.

Priority Kill (150xp): This is a Player who has lived for more than 30 seconds and has accrued more than 1000 unbuffed xp and less than 2000 unbuffed xp without dying.

High Priority Kill (300xp): This is a Player who has lived for more than 30 seconds and has accrued more than 2000 unbuffed xp without dying

When an enemy is spotted, we may add a visual indicator to show the relative target “priority”. This status would be inherited by any vehicle the player owns.

January - Destroying the SCU only penalizes Spawn Timers

Currently, destroying an Spawn Control Unit (SCU) completely removes that Spawn point from the facility until it is repaired. Unfortunately this can have the effect of ending a fight too quickly and lead to boring moments. Players may not want to stand around waiting for the point to flip because defenders can no longer get to the fight.

One possible solution to this problem would be to have a destroyed SCU penalize the spawn timer for that location rather than simply disabling the spawn point completely. So with an SCU destroyed, defenders could still spawn at the base, but they would do so with a penalty to their Respawn Timer.

This would affect all player spawns for the facility that are not tied to a Forward Spawn Point. Forward Spawns would remain unaffected by this change.

The overall intent would be to shift the climactic moment of the battle to holding/taking the control point instead of defending/destroying the SCU.

January - Player Invincibility on Spawn
Getting killed right as you spawn in is not fun. One of the things we can do to try and reduce frustration on that front is to add a very brief period of invulnerability to a player in that situation.

The goal would be to only allow players to get their bearings and maybe start to make a break for cover – taking any actions like firing a weapon would remove the invulnerability even if the default timer had not yet expired.

January - Tower Redesign
The layout of towers will be altered to include more shields and an additional exit from the spawn room. The hope is to make spawn camping in the towers a more difficult proposition.

January - More secure spawn rooms at small outposts
This entails adding more windows and doors, as well as a canopy to protect against aircraft. This should make spawn camping more difficult and will be present across all small outposts.

January - Rendering Distance Based on Threat
We want to mitigate the impact of render distance on enemies that are a direct threat. For example, anyone that pilots air vehicles can probably attest to how lame it is to get shot down by AA players that didn't render because of the distances involved. We want to make sure that doesn't happen.

January - Experience Source Display Improvements
We want to display the total Experience bonus percentage rewarded whenever you get the applicable experience.

Currently this would show as a small popup next to your Cert point display right above the Minimap.

This would add up elements like:

• Population Bonus
• Membership Bonus
• Defense Bonus

We might actually just display the defense bonus as a static value in the facility panel above the minimap all the time

• Squad Boosts
• Personal Boosts

In addition, we want to show a progress bar over your certification points to give a better visual indicator of how close you are to earning your next cert point.

 

Looks like they've got a hefty task in front of them, but if they pull it off right (RIGHT) then this will be amazing!

Be sure to read the ACTUAL article to see the full plan, there's a lot of stuff the above post doesn't cover.

 

Yeah I just went for the stuff in January; I'll put up more later.

 

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