User blog:Luperza/Virtual Reality Training Zone

Salutation Auraxians!

I'm stopping in to show off our new Virtual Reality [VR] Trianing Zone! This is currently not available to players, but will be in an upcoming patch. Making its debut on last week's PlanetSide 2 Friday Night Ops with Game Developer, David "Malorn" Bennett, it's been a hit with the community.

I promised I'd get a few screen shots for the community and I plan to deliver. Do note that things are subject to change. Also, there are a few things that were not working such as the cool sky grid that will help give the area that virtual reality feeling.

Without further ado, here we go! In order to get into the VR zone, you'll have to go to the warp terminals in your Warpgate. In the bottom left hand corner you'll see the VR Training zone as an option. Select it and you are on your way to testing weapons and vehicles to your hearts content!



When you first arrive, you'll be welcomed by this lovely weapon terminal. You can begin your testing right here if you wish.



There are also a few shooting ranges built within the building that will allow you to test out various ranges on many classes. These bots will spawn and despawn periodically. There are friendlies in the rough, so watch out for them! Think about it like the M.I.B. training test if you've ever watched the movie.





We've also talked about adding more feedback for when you kill bots whether it's a player bot or vehicle bot. In addition, we've discussed possible future additions that will allow players to spawn bots with specific loadouts. For instance, some players were asking for bots with and without nanoweave, etc. We'll see what we can do for those interested in testing those types of things.

There's also a ton of good places to test out your sniper rifles and rocket launchers. You can shoot off the balcony or out in the field.

Feel free to grab any vehicle you want and test it out. There's no cooldown timer or resource cost on vehicles, so you can grab as many as you want.

There's also plenty of space to test out your flying skills.



We even added in a bonus Flash race track that will have added jumps! I can already see the YouTube videos piling in! =]

In one part of the VR zone, there's a tower that you can play around with. In the future, we've talked about adding areas to test out base defense and offense as well.

Finally, we are revamping our respawn screen. You'll be able to keybind your deployment button, so you will no longer have to hit "M" and then "DEPLOY", you can just hit your hotkey! By default, this key will be DELETE. Deploying will be instant.

Here's a recap of various things that were answered throughout Episode 22 of PS2FNO:
 * No cooldown timers for vehicles in the VR.
 * No resource costs in the VR.
 * You will attain no grief while in the VR, but you will get the grief indication when firing at friendly targets.
 * Respawn times will be instant in the VR. There's a new keybind for deploying. Reducing the deployment time is something we are looking into.
 * You will have access to EVERY weapon available to your empire in the VR.
 * ALL attachments will be available in the VR.
 * All class and vehicle customization will be available in the VR. Do note that abilities and certification lines will give you the final item in the line, so you won't be able to test the increments.
 * In the future, we are looking into allowing you to test cosmetic items in the VR - camos, armor attachments, vehicle attachments, etc.
 * New players will not spawn in the VR zone. In the future, when we have a tutorial set up, this might be the case.

I hope you enjoyed the post. Be sure to share it with your friends! Hopefully, this will help players test out their skills and aid in certification point allocation. In the future, you'll be seeing some cool tutorials for new players using this area. Still have questions? Ask below and I'll do my best to get you answers!

<3 x 9001!

/Luperza