Planetside 2

[Dog Pants]

I saw quite a few max out last night and they did seem to be causing trouble for aircraft. They also have a nice shimmery effect. The lane system is a web of connections which dictate which areas can be captured next, rather than any that's adjacent. It focuses things and stops back capping.

[Anery]

I'm not sure I like it, sure I can deal with the MAX situation, the ZOE appears to be quite effective - though there are calls for a nerf already. It is the lanes that are shit, it just encourages death ball vs death ball. It's like arranging a fight after school behind the bike shed. Your options for distraction and disruption tactics are limited and due to the proximity of the death ball they are ill advised also. It's fundamentally broken the game.

[Dog Pants]

That wasn't my experience of it, but that might because you played on a busy night and it was fairly quiet when I did. There was always a little resistance when I attacked a lane, so no solo ninja-capping, which is a shit tactic anyway. I think the point of the lanes was to encourage larger scale action rather than lots of little skirmishes and territory chasing, but there should be enough that you can't fill every lane with a zerg. Maybe they'll add some more to thin it out a little, or maybe if they extend it to the other continents it won't be as pronounced as Indar, which has always been claustrophobic anyway. Fundamentally broken the game is harsh, you can always play on Esamir or Amerish.

[Anery]

That wasn't my experience of it, but that might because you played on a busy night

Quite possibly, Indar was at full capacity.

Fundamentally broken the game is harsh, you can always play on Esamir or Amerish.

The way I understand it, Indar is a trial to see how it works/whether folks like it. For what I saw last night, I may as well have been playing Battlefield.
To add insult to injury, the draw distance seems to have been reduced. Aircraft were appearing out of thin air, well within lock on range - this may have been a byproduct of so many people concentrated on one map, but if the tech can't cope why let so many people on at the same time?

[Dog Pants]

I did notice something funny with the draw distance. It wasn't as bad as you're saying - I could see aircraft well before I could lock onto them - but they did just seem to pop in. Don't really understand why that was happening, unless it's something about reducing the amount of objects tracked by the client.

[Dr. kitteny berk]

I'm not sure I like the removal of the ninja capping, once you're pushed fairly far back, going a bit sneaky is often the only way to regain some ground.

[Dog Pants]

Little SF raids behind enemy lines is good fun, and a good way to contribute with a small team. There needs to be a balance though so that it's not done all over the place and everyone ends up chasing their tails.

[Sheriff Fatman]

I've quite enjoyed the last couple of days on Indar, I'm not saying the Lattice has saved PS2 for me, but it seems that battles are now focused along a smaller number of fronts. Where previously you'd have an uncoordinated mass of smaller groups just running about hacking whatever they chose, now the commanders can get people to where they need to be for maximum effect.

It's perhaps unfortunate that this has been needed to get people to work together but PS2 is supposed to be combat on a massive scale. The Lattice worked well in PS1 and I'm rather happy to see its return. It's still possible to do smaller unit stuff, those points are just closer to the front line than they were previously.

It does seem to be a real Marmite job, though.

[Dog Pants]

I bought the Pandora shotgun on sale today so I could try one out, and I can see why so many bad guys use it. With slug rounds it's got an acceptable range, and up close it only takes three hits to kill, which it can probably unload in about half a second. Worked a treat on the TR engineer I found stood on his tank repairing it, and I got to stand in his spot and teabag it.

[Dog Pants]

Zebra vehicle camo on sale today, if anyone fancies being as funky as me.

[Anery]

So the IRNV has been nerfed massively, I do have a tendency for the melodramatic but it really is completely pointless now. Beforehand players, vehicles and mines would show up white - which makes sense for the IR bit - against the darker grainer green of the scenery - at the expense of reduced visibility range. It would also do NV. However, it appears that the sway of the weapon scopes was better than the sway of other weapon scopes and so it got a nerf.
Now it no longer highlights players, vehicles and mines (so not IR) the visibility has been reduced even further and the sway has been normalised. Now I never bought it for my rifles/smgs, but I did use it on my maggie for pinning down infiltrators and folks hiding amongst the scenery, but this nerf makes those points the worst investment for a Magrider right now. The maps are never dark enough that we actually need the NV anyway - and whats the point, you could set up an ambush in the dark possibly but folks will just up their gamma on their monitor profiles and switch to it at night.
So I am saving up for the thermal optics now.

Last night I did a bit of solo defending of the crown and found a rather nice way to fuck off the enemy hanging about the top of the tower to kill anyone leaving the forcefield at the top - AP mines. Keep lobbing them out the doorways and folks looking for that easy kill out the top forcefields will run into them, and depending on the enemy horse size you are relatively unimpeded. Farm, on.

[Dog Pants]

On the flip side of that, they've announced future plans for squad leader dropped missions. Other people can lend assistance for XP bonuses. Missions such as 'air assistance here plx' (increased XP for air kills) or 'omg moar mans' (spawn bonuses for beacons/sundies). I'm not convinced they can make it so it won't be exploited, just dropping them on zergs for a super-farm, but at least they're thinking.

[buzzmong]

I really should update this in time for some Frigames.

[Anery]

I really should update this in time for some Frigames.

Yes, do. I am around for Frigames this week, we can get a squad going.

[Dog Pants]

Me too! I still fucking love this game.

[Dog Pants]

Last night I remembered this thing that happened at the same time Pnut took that video of me.. erm, helping Sheriff with a trapped zip.

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h13Avbt8zi0[/media]

[buzzmong]

Following some handy hints on the PS2 forums, I seem to have managed to squeeze another 15-20 fps from my machine. Which is nice.

The fix is to do with "parking", where Windows basically semi-shuts down a core to conserve power. Win7 is apparently far too aggressive when it comes to keeping cores in "parked" mode, and doesn't always unpark them when it should.

I did three things:

Two steps which are only valid for AMD Bulldozer chipsets. Basically anything in the last 18 months. My FX-8120 is one of them.

1) Install Windows hotfix KB 2645594 (Scheduling fix for AMD Bulldozer chips/variants)
2) Install Windows hotfix KB 2646060 (Selectively disabling parking for said chips, requires above patch).

For everyone:

3) Downloaded and ran an unpark tool: http://www.coderbag.com/Programming-C/D ... ng-Utility

There are others, but that's the one I used.

I only quickly got on to test, but there did seem to be an improvement, and because I did all three simultaneously, can't tell you which of the options (probably 3) offered the actual performance increase.

[Dog Pants]

40% off Station Cashmoney today. Remember kids, discount cashmoney and daily sales make stuff actually reasonably priced.

[buzzmong]

Nnnngh, difficult decisions.

I really want some more guns and stuff in PS2.
I've not yet ever done an MT for *any* game as I loathe the concept.
But I generally quite enjoy PS and want to see it be successful.
My bank balance is fairly flush at the moment.

Difficult. Very difficult.

[Dog Pants]

Way I see it is I've got easily a full price game's value out of it, so I don't mind spending some money on it. It still feels a bit sleazy but that's how I justify it to myself.