Every now and then the Planetside Development Team shares some of the internal ideas problems with Development Uplink articles. These articles are usually a good chance to get some hints on what new toys can be expected in the near future for Planetside.

So, yeah…Thom was out this week…Again with his scheduled vacation during prime spring break times. I wish Thom all the fun while we sit here grinding out all the details – oh the little details – of the Sunderer.

The good news is, it's pretty much done! The art was done a while back and it was all reliant on the Sunderer being coded to not break down in the heat of action, or do anything strange while on its mission to deliver soldiers from point A to point B.

With that said the code on the Sunderer has pretty much wrapped up and we can check it out on the internal test server which we like to call the "Staging" server. I'll be checking it out shortly after I wrap up this Dev Uplink and snagging some screenshot to show off the empire specific weapons for tomorrow's treat!

We spent a good amount of time discussing the anniversary weapons and the ramifications that they will have on gameplay (FPS wise, balance wise, etc.). The team really wants to get these right since we know that performance, balance, and gameplay (like how fun the weapon really is to use) is all part of what makes a good gaming experience.

Unfortunately, I can't go into detail with what the weapons are aside from the pistol that you already know about. Fear not though, I'll help be your reporter and fill you all in on the goodies when I can!

Another interesting thing that we discussed – something that is near and dear to many of the folks out there is Outfit points and base and map structure. We brainstormed some ideas to make Outfit points valuable and usable in Auraxis even to the point where we talked a little about OBO (Outfit Base Ownership). This was all brainstorming at this point, but it did feel good to discuss.

Oh, yeah and map structure. We brainstormed some ideas on how to alleviate some of the endless 3 way battles that take place (stale 3 way battles that rage on for weeks over the same base isn't exactly compelling gameplay). This is all preliminary discussion but some of the ideas would indeed help stop those 3 way battles from raging on…and on…and on…

And on…and on…
- Raijinn.