Planetside 2 adds new continent Hossin, continent locking in latest update

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Hossin’s BGM is just an ominously slow rendition of dueling banjos.

2 years in the making, the swamps and marshes of Hossin are now available in Planetside 2, as of the most recent update. Branded an ‘Early Expedition’ update, Hossin is not completely finished – of the 80+ bases on the continent, currently only 50% are ‘done’ to the high standard of quality we’ve all come to expect from Planetside 2. Meanwhile another 25% are midway through the design process and the final 25% are identical placeholders, with the developers copying a base design they already know works and pasting it in place while they work on the others. As Creative Director Matt Higby explains in a recent forum post:

There isn’t any other way to say it except to say that Hossin is not finished. If we wanted to “finish” Hossin without sacrificing the quality level we’ve established, it would probably be 3 months before it was ready to go live – we don’t want to wait that long, and we don’t think you want to either.

And with the addition of the new continent, Sony Online Entertainment have also begun the first phase of continent locking. The only way to gain a continent benefit now, locking a continent can be achieved by owning 94% of the territory or winning an alert, and once a continent is locked it will prompt players to redeploy elsewhere. Only two continents can be locked at a time, and each new lock unlocks the oldest locked continent. Fortunately, continent benefits have been increased significantly – Amerish, Esamir and Indar give -50% Infantry, Mechanized and Aerospace purchases respectively, while the new continent Hossin confers an impressive 25% XP bonus.

Other changes include a new Outfit recruiting system and Outfit management system, new Outfit decals, balancing and bug fixes. To learn more about the changes check out the official update notes, but if this is all a bit TL;DR for you the main point is simple – new continent! Hossin! Swampy, infantry madness!