PlanetSide 2's New Player Experience Is Getting An Overhaul This Year

When it first came out, PlanetSide 2's new player experience was dropping you into the middle of major battle and letting you figure it out from there. I can distinctly recall SOE brass thinking this was really cool, but what happened most of the time was the the new player would die in the first 10 seconds and then respawn somewhere more hospitable to get their bearings – or, in some extreme cases, just log out and uninstall.

That was modified some time ago, and now Daybreak Game Company and Rogue Planet Games are changing things up again, with a new New Player Experience, which will go live sometime before the end of the year. It will start with a more in-depth character creator and progress, which leads into the tutorial proper, meant to teach you the ropes of shooting, deploying, capturing bases, and mock combat scenes – almost what you'd expect from real military training.

Once that's done, it's on to Sanctuary, where new players will receive a mission that directs them into a warzone “in a way that feels natural yet directed.” Starting equipment will be revised and balanced, with lock-on rocket launchers and bolt-action sniper rifles among the changes. Better colorblind accessibility and role-based “cover sheets” are also in the offing.

In other PS2 news, the Integration update that came to PCs last month has arrived on the PlayStation 4. The big new feature is that NSOs will be available to all players, free and paid, as well as a bunch of new vehicles, weapons, directive trees, and more. Rogue Planet will also be implementing many of the advances from the past year of the game on PC for PS4, but not Escalation Chapter 3, which still has some “technical obstacles” to overcome.