Returning Players Guide

This is a guide for returning players, intended as a quick overview of important changes that have happened.

It's laid out as a timeline so that returning players can quickly gloss over the changes based on how long they've been away from the game.

Because this guide is dealing with large periods of time, and is designed as a quick recap summary, it ignores balance and minor map / lattice changes and may gloss over or ignore new weapons. It will gloss over or ignore most minor changes.

If players want full details of changes, they should visit the Game Update Notes forum and the Game Updates wiki category

Current Major Issues

 * See the Sony forum thread
 * Tracked vehicles have control issues, making them harder to drive
 * Deployables (mines, beacons, medic deployables) placed in water are hard to shoot directly

2014-08

 * New air vehicle: Valkyrie. It can be equipped to enable squad spawn -mechanic.
 * Return of timed alerts, they will now trigger every 2 hours on a random continent.
 * Introduction of Leadership ribbons.
 * Integration of PC and PS4 codebases and some subsequent keybinding anomalies. As a result, notable FPS boost for some.

2014-07

 * Server Merges: Ceres merged to Cobalt and Woodman merged to Miller after ServerSmashes to see which of the merging servers got to keep their name.
 * They are testing Adversary Alerts so that in the future every alert should be triggered by players.
 * Resource revamp. Different types of resources were combined to one: Nanites. You gain 50 per minute with the maximum of 750 and costs were tweaked to reflect this.
 * Consumables no longer have a pool of 40 and instead max out at the maximum amount your character can carry. They replenish from your nanite pool as soon as you respawn if you have auto-resupply on.
 * Directives
 * Vehicle directives involve piloting ribbons, different kinds of kills with the vehicle guns and support ribbons. It rewards a unique lumifiber.
 * Class directives involve class specific goals, ability ribbons and different types kills with own category counting of killing enemy players of the same class. Role directives involve taking and defending facilities or spotting and scouting. It rewards a unique armor or camouflage.
 * Gun directives require you to auraxium 4 or 5 guns of that specific type. It rewards a special gun with its own type of camo and attachments.
 * Sunderer new Deploy Shield ability, that requires first of taking down the shield before the sunderer can be harmed. A single explosion of any kind can no longer kill a deployed sundy with this utility.

2014-06

 * Server Merge: Mattherson and Waterson merge to become Emerald
 * New continent: Hossin
 * Continent Locking released
 * A faction locks a continent when they reach the 94% territory threshold or win a continent capture alert for that continent
 * Depending on your server, either 1 or 2 continents can be locked at any one time
 * When a continent locks, the oldest locked continent is unlocked
 * When a continent unlocks, warpgates rotate and all factions are assigned equal territory
 * Warpgates no longer rotate on a fortnightly schedule
 * Continent lock benefits changed:
 * Hossin: 25% experience
 * Amerish: 50% Infantry resource purchases discount
 * Esamir: 50% Mechanized / Vehicle resource purchases discount
 * Indar: 50% Air resource purchases discount
 * Continent benefits are lost when a continent is unlocked.
 * All alerts except continental capture are removed
 * Continental capture alerts for Hossin temporarily disabled
 * Outfit recruiting
 * Outfit base capture
 * The highest scoring outfit involved in a base capture is awarded the base and has their decal and name displayed on it.
 * Outfit decals
 * Outfits can now choose any store decal to represent themselves
 * Can be purchased by members from the store for certs
 * Will appear on bases that outfit owns (see Outfit base capture above)
 * New ribbons (more experience!)

Infantry

 * Medic:
 * Medical Applicator functionality changed: Left click heal, right click revive
 * Engineer:
 * Ammo pack is no longer on the ACE tool (turret) alternate fire
 * The 'use ability' key will now throw an ammo pack
 * Ammo packs are now thrown (they now act like mines, rather than placeable objects like turrets)
 * Spawn beacons collision box size increased, making them easier to shoot.

2014-05

 * Sunderer deploy exclusion zone reduced to 65 meters
 * HUD: New ping meter and network quality indicator
 * Cert screen replaced by the Implant menu
 * Certs can now be spent throughout the infantry and vehicle loadout screens
 * Passive certs are on the orange button on the above screen
 * Leadership certs are now on the Social menu tab

Infantry
 * Implants
 * Implants come in 3 tiers (1 - 3), denoted by their color
 * Implants are obtained by random drops (Tiers 1 and 2) or from the store (in random packs)
 * Implants use energy from energizers - top it up on the Implants menu
 * An equipped implant is always on - there's currently no way to toggle them
 * Implants and energizers can be crafted
 * Medic:
 * New ability deployable: Shield regeneration field
 * Can now access the Adrenaline Pump suit slot certification
 * Triage now heals allies within a 5 meter radius of the vehicle
 * Can now use battle rifles as a primary weapon

Vehicles

 * Air terminals: Large outpost terminals now have Galaxy access
 * Vehicle terminals: Lightning tanks now available at all vehicle terminals
 * Flash handling improvements

2014-04

 * SOE accounts now get All-Access: For the same price of a single subscription you get (membership) access to all SOE games
 * Instant Action reuse timer reduced from 5 mins to 2 mins
 * 64-bit client
 * You'll automatically use the 64-bit client if your computer is able
 * There's no option to switch to 32-bit - it requires manual file shuffling
 * Many balance and other smaller changes

2014-03

 * Monthly members only double-XP weekends introduced
 * Missions (Phase 1)
 * You'll automatically be assigned missions to attack or defend nearby bases
 * Your current mission is displayed above the minimap
 * Squad members always inherit their squad leaders mission
 * There are currently no rewards for completing missions
 * Respawn time after redeploy lowered from 15 to 5 seconds
 * Instant Action redeploy changed to use fixed points around bases
 * Potential assist XP pool increased to match kill XP values
 * Experience for kills and assists is now shared amongst vehicle crew
 * New Player Quiz introduced
 * New players will be offered a quiz as to their favoured roles, then given a selection of equipment based on their answers
 * All existing characters are offered the quiz

2014-02

 * Automatic voice callouts introduced:
 * Throwing grenade
 * Target-specific kills (infantry, MAX, sunderer, etc)
 * Reloading
 * Healing / Repairing
 * Friendly fire warning

Infantry

 * Infiltrator:
 * New tool: Motion Spotter - placeable movement detection device which can be seen and destroyed by enemies.
 * New ability: Stalker Cloak - does not drain energy while stationary and renders the infiltrator almost completely invisible when not moving. Players are not allowed to use a primary weapon with this ability equipped.
 * New suit slot item: Adrenaline Pump - increases the infiltrators sprint speed
 * EMP grenades now destroy explosives and deployables.
 * New attachment: Darklight Flashlight - Will reveal cloaked infiltrators a short range front of the player when enabled.
 * Cloaked infiltrators will see their first person arms change color when they're illuminated.
 * Revive timer introduced: If players do not accept a revive before the time runs out, their corpse is removed from the world.

2014-01

 * Sunderer AMS is now a passive cert line and does not need to be equipped, freeing up the Utility slot.
 * Squad Spawn mechanic adopted to spawn into a squad owned and manned sunderer or galaxy.