Planetside 2 is a game about big numbers. There's the size of its continents, or the number of players warring on them, or even the statistical likelihood that I will crash a Mosquito seconds after getting into its pilot seat. Clearly, though, SOE are beginning to take this numerical dedication too far. They've just released the game's second Performance Update patch and, rather than stick purely to optimisation changes, they've also made a balance pass so extensive that its section of the official patch notes is over 10,000 words long.
In addition to those major changes, the game is also getting a round of fixes and tweaks to combat, UI, spawning and vehicles. Finally, a holiday specific feature brings snowmen to the icy continent of Esamir. Shoot them and you'll be given an XP boost, and - if you find a rare golden snowman - a "very exclusive reward".
Here's an amuse-bouche of patch notes, taken from the absurdly long full list:
Esamir Object Optimization. We optimized the number of unique objects, overall object count, and polygons per object on Esamir. This will give players the same environment based performance increases they see on Indar.
Physics Optimization We have changed the way we simulate various aspects of the server and client to more efficiently process players and vehicles in the game.
Client Memory Optimization Animations have gotten some serious work to reduce their overall cost without reducing quality. Many per-player animation costs are reduced for players at a distance.
Additional client crashes fixed.
UI Optimized dynamic image loading and processing to reduce GUI advance spikes ( eliminates over 50% of the intermittent 4+ms spikes we were seeing )
UI - Optimized data processing on the loadout pages
The update will be live in the next few hours, after the current scheduled server downtime.
Planetside 2′s PU02 patch brings more optimisation, holiday distractions, and an absurd number of balance changes
Source: PC Gamer (opens in a new tab)