8 of the best PC offline games for 2020 - Windows Report
8 of the best PC offline games for 2020 - Windows Report
Top 16 Best Offline Pc Games To Play In Leisure Time 2020
10 Best Offline Games In Microsoft Store PC Players Should Try
The 25 best offline PC games in 2021! - Gaming Bell
The 15 Best Offline PC Games To Play Right Now Game Rant
The 20 best offline RPGs for PC! 2021 - Gaming Bell
Top 10 Best Offline Games For PC On Windows 10 You Can ...
23 Best free full offline games for PC that have good ...
Top 26 Best Free Strategy Games for PC You Must Try in 2021
20 Best Offline Games for PC: Play without Internet ...
what are the best offline games for pc
what are the best offline games for pc - win
Curious... what are the best single player / offline racing games and sims for PC?
I'm new to sim racing. I've got Project Cars 1 and 2, and Dirt Rally. And not a sim but I also have Grid 2. Just wondering what games I should consider for offline and single player. I just like driving and racing the AI but am not really interested in online competition. Also, I'm a fan of games having some kind of career mode, some sense of progression regardless of how minimal. I grew up on Gran Turismo 1-4 and I dig how they did it. :P
300-400 Viewer Average and Partner in 5 Months Here is my Advice
Just yesterday I hit free twitch turbo partner on twitch after roughly 5 months of streaming (somewhat) consistently. Today I'm hoping to share some decent advice and give my own (learned) opinion on some of the frequent yet not always useful tips shared around here. Before writing this I did a cursory search through the subreddit for frequently asked questions so hopefully this answers most of the ones that I myself have any experience to answer. My simple request: I'm not going to be posting any links to my stream or anything but if you go out of your way to find it please don't follow/subscribe to the channel unless you are genuinely interested. Thanks big boss.
Should you stream?
If I have to read another thread or comment of a person asking if they should stream I am going to scream. What do you people expect to hear? Yes, please stream the world needs you, you will be rich beyond your wildest dreams and have all the clout to have ever been cloutted. I know people who usually type out questions like that probably don't read posts but here is a hack I've used to answer my own dumb questions through out the years. Say that shit out loud and respond to it like someone asked you the question. Nine times out of ten, you end up answering it yourself and on the off-chance you actually don't you should have a more actionable question. Example: Instead of asking "should I stream?" you end up realizing the only thing holding you back is having no mic or something. The question then becomes "I want to stream what's a good cheap mic?". Which is a lot better and doesn't make people want to pelt you with rocks. For those of you who ask "should I stream or is it a waste of time?" please, I BEG YOU, stop. Most of the shit you do is a waste of time, you either want to stream or don't. Make a decision based on that.
Webcam, do you need one?
This question is asked so often that I see it every time I come on the subreddit. Unsurprisingly, the answer is always the same as well, yes you do. However I disagree. I have never streamed with a webcam, not a single time, yet I'm still here and somehow managed to get partnered. Now, I know why every one parrots the same advice, it is because the people making tip threads, youtube videos, etc., all say to use a webcam. Harris Heller said it once and I'm pretty sure that was enough for the people who copy and paste what he says in text threads here to become their mantra. The truth is, all that matters is the content. Ask yourself do you do/want to do a lot of react/just chatting content? If so, you probably want a webcam since your content will focus around reacting to content. Lirik doesn't use face-cam because his content is his gameplay and commentary, not his face. Corpse literally blew up and is famous for not showing his face (even though he is still a personality). I know the whole "Lirik doesn't use a face cam" argument is going to be met with people saying "exception not the rule!!!" but seriously, just use your head. Half the people you watch probably don't need face cams. MoonMoon probably doesn't need a face cam, Critikal didn't have a face cam until he already had over a million subs on youtube, schlatt didn't either, Dream doesn't, AdmiralBahroo doesn't, almost every DBD streamer I watch doesn't, just think for yourself. The point I'm trying to drive home here is not just that a webcam isn't required, but also you need to look at what you want to create and decide for yourself. Edit: I saw someone say somewhere that you need a webcam for sponsors. That's cap. I've had a sponsor and nobody has seen this ugly mug.
Equipment in general
People like saying that they need this this and that before they start streaming. This is just stalling. Until last month I hadn't owned a desktop PC my whole life. Before that it was just laptops and using my phone to read chat or look up things. You obviously need SOME equipment to start, i.e. a computer and some form of internet connection, but that doesn't mean you need to pick up a shure, a streamdeck, 4 monitors, 6 consoles, and whatnot. Here is my setup. Keep in mind I literally just upgraded this last month after saving up for several months:
Blue Yeti: Hell ya baby got a free game with it too so I'm for sure pleased with this purchase. Edit: I recommend shopping around for mics since the yeti isn't as much of a "get this for streaming" mic as it once was. Plenty of good options out there for cheaper
Two BenQ monitors: Like I said, I was using my phone for chat but that got old fast. These monitors are cheap and 144hz. There are some color issues but eff it I barely notice anymore
Streamer PC from NZXT: My old laptop was from 2016 and made editing literal hell. Averaged 3 crashes every time I would try and render (and the renders took about an hour). Upgrading to this was the most worth purchase I've ever made. Also, the streamer PC got upgraded since I purchased, so you can grab a 2070 instead of the 2060 ti like I have :)
Red Dragon Keyboard and Mouse: I'm a cheap ass so when I see light up peripherals for like 40 bucks total I am sold.
Earbuds: Legit don't know the brand. I stole them from my sister like a year ago. I prefer these over a headset anyway since I don't want that gamer dent lmao
For those of you who are probably saying "GROSS A PRE-BUILT" remember that part prices are actual aids right now, not to mention the availability of even finding good parts. If you have the cash go pre-built that shit is amazing. My recommendation: Stay with your shitty set-up as long as possible but make sure to pick up a good mic first. Big streamers (looking at you Ludwig) shit on the Yeti, but straight facts all you need is to EQ that shit a lil bit and nobody will bat an eye. You don't have to pick up the Yeti (there are lots of cheaper options) but that's just the one I and many others have gotten since it is reliably a good ass mic. Audio <- chat engagement <- pc upgrade
YouTube
How many people have to tell you bums to focus on YouTube before you do it? Twitch sucks ass. I'll say it, i'm brave. No discoverability, especially to those of you at the very bottom. Make a goddamn YouTube and start pumping out videos, it is not hard. Ludwig made a power point on how to be a streamer that talks about a few things but the most important point of all was what he said on creating content for stream/YouTube. This isn't the exact timestamp but it do be close: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/896089267?t=01h24m14s That advice is coming from a top streamer who also has over a million subs on YouTube by almost exclusively taking twitch vods and editing them for YouTube. As for getting views on your videos here is my advice from my personal experiences:
Thumbnail and title are important but there are outliers that can thrive without doing shit. One guy I saw has their most watched video (over 250k views) with a title like "[game] [character] gameplay" and the literal default thumbnail that youtube makes. AND to top that off it was just a VOD from their twitch channel.
Audience retention matters. There is a reason massive YouTubers have these weird zoom in pans and flamboyant gestures all the time. Lots of movement and noises keep our tiny attention spans happy and frequently cutting is usually the key to success, although don't overuse it. I do very light edits and have been growing but that's more of my personal preference rather than a growth strategy.
Respond and engage. If you have one comment on your video and they are complimenting you, why aren't you responding? This is by far the easiest way to get someone to continue to engage with you and trust me, that is the most important thing in the algorithms eyes.
My understanding of YouTube
So obviously, clickthrough rate and audience retention are the things that are constantly brought up when talking about gaining more views and what not, but I am fairly comfortable in saying that there are other metrics that you should be paying attention to. Let me hit you with a something that would make Dream shake in his boots. I don't subscribe to anyone on YouTube. *gasp* The reason for that being, I almost always have the videos I want to see on my home page. I never have to go, "wonder if x YouTuber made a video" since YouTube knows I watch and enjoy their stuff. The question for most people being, how does YouTube know what people like and how does it suggest it to them? Basically, by seeing how often people engage with your content AND also what type of content you create. (although keep in mind, youtube tries to throw new videos at you a lot as well, these are usually in-line with content you engage with though) For engagement, think of it as like affinity points in a video game but in reverse. Before you get to bang that smoking hot sim, you got to woo them. Every time someone likes your video they get a point, every time they comment they get two, every subscription counts as like 10, watching an entire video might be 20, etc. Obviously, these are made up values but I hope you follow what I'm putting down here. Once they get enough points you start showing up more in their home page. I know this because I have a different account on my phone that doesn't have the same suggestions as my main account because I watch different things on my PC than my phone. However, I do like to look at the comments while I'm taking a dump or something. Problem was, my videos were rarely every recommended. I solved this easily by liking a couple videos. I didn't even watch them, just liked and read comments. LITERALLY NOT EVEN SUBSCRIBED AND I GET NOTIFICATIONS ON MY PHONE SOMETIMES WHEN A VIDEO DOES WELL! In other words, by getting people to like and comment on your videos you are almost guaranteeing they see future videos from you. Now, keep in mind, engagement is only a small portion of the whole pie. And even though you might engage with a content creator often, there is still a chance you miss some of their videos because of one other reason, the content's genre.
Content Genre
You might have noticed this phenomenon on various different creators YouTubes, but sometimes they create a video that bombs. Usually, this happens when they create something outside of their niche. This could be as simple as changing games, or as radical as changing the entire direction of the channel. Even if you engage like crazy with a creator, if they change the content enough, you won't get that shit recommended to you. This is the main reason some creators have several channels and why some even get pigeonholed to one type of content. The reality of it is, if you build your audience on one piece of content and then want to change it, you will be fighting an uphill battle. One of the best ways to fight that is to diversify early OR better yet, emphasize your personality over the content. Jschlatt shits views and he does whatever the hell he wants really. Same goes for jacksepticeye, markiplier, Ludwig, Critikal, XQC, and numerous other creators. That being said, doing one game/genre isn't a bad strategy either. A metric fuck ton of OfflineTv's videos are the same game. DisguisedToast played Hearthstone on repeat, then switched to TFT, THEN switched to among us, and his videos absolutely kill. Valkyrae is one of the biggest streamers period and all she does is play/upload among us and rust. Then of course we have all the minecraft streamers too. It's really up to you to decide, but I'd recommend going towards personality content since that allows the most flexibility.
Other Social Media (Twitter, IG, etc)
Lots of people here seem to think that they don't have time to do YouTube or some other BS they think up as an excuse, so they think that twitter, instagram, tiktok, etc are all ways to grow. Trust me, they are not good ways to grow. These are all stupid treadmills that trick you into thinking you're doing something when in reality you aren't moving the needle by much if by any at all. Posting ten dumb tweets and reposting memes on IG seem "productive" if you frame it in the light of "content creation" but the two people that see all of these things don't really give a shit. Spend that time working on a video for YouTube. Don't give me this "I don't have time" bullshit. Do small videos and work yourself up, become better and faster. Perfectionism is a cute word for procrastination. Ok, now that I took a shit on them so hopefully, you won't grind on them all day, these are still ways to grow and are important. Having multiple platforms for fans to communicate and engage with you is always a good idea, but don't spread yourself so thin early on when nobody knows who you are. Prioritize the thing that will get eighty percent of your results. I personally have a discord for people to come and chat in. Thing is, I had no intention of doing so because I don't really use discord that much. The only reason it exists is that people kept asking for it in the comments on my YouTube videos so I made one. TL;DR: Don't put the cart before the horse :) Edit: Oh ya I forgot to mention. TikTok is trash for growth. I won't mention names cuz that's probably toxic(?) but there is someone signed on luminosity who has 690k TikTok followers and 95k YouTube subscribers who barely cracks 100 views on Twitch and has a hard time getting over 1k on YouTube. So don't go thinking TikTok leads to immense fame ya darn kids
Hosting/Raiding
Getting hosted/raided means actual jack. I remember pretty clearly when I had like ten viewers, I got hosted by someone with twenty-five or something. I think only one person ended up saying anything in the chat to me about it and although some stayed for the entire stream, by the time I went live again I lost all of the people who were in the host. This seems to be something others have mentioned as well, you won't retain almost any views from hosts/raids. Edit: Please do try raiding/hosting or otherwise networking with other streamers at least once. Your mileage may vary and it could end up blowing up your channel. Who knows? Edit edit: Having something that you can do during the stream is huge when getting hosted/raided. Most of the time, if not all of the time, a streamer is ENDING their stream and sending viewers to you rather than timing it for your own content. So if you are doing something uninteresting or are in the middle of something you are going to get less retention than if you did something crazy to impress the newcomers. In other words, having a strategy for hosting/raiding growth is key.
Speaking on stream
This seems to be something a lot of people struggle with on Twitch since so many people ask how to do it when nobody is watching/chatting. Coming from someone who had this problem, the answer is pretty simple, talk for the content not the chat. What I mean by this is you should be focusing on your content more than the chat. Since I play games, what I do is just say some shit about whats happening on screen and sometimes say something that is hopefully funny. Pick up a garbage item? Say something about how garbage the item is, ez. If you're streaming to NO VIEWERS you shouldn't be streaming to stream anyway. What you should be doing is making a YouTube video in the hopes of getting viewers to watch your stream. The only way to do that is to have good content planned out that should effectively act as your script. Again, Ludwigs stream on this is good (it'll probably be a video soon) so make sure to check it out. A more recent problem I've had was just how much I engaged with chat (suffering from success I know). When I went to edit the videos I had to cut large swathes of the video because I was just chatting to people. Make sure to avoid this when you are actually trying to get content out for YouTube as it can mess up the flow of a video and make it harder to edit. You still can chat with people just make sure not to go overboard. Again, Ludwig is a perfect example of this, just look at his videos and streams and notice the difference between the two.
Streaming as a job/hobby
I hate this dumb argument of streaming isn't your hobby or twitch isn't your job. You have 24 hours in the day, subtract 8 for sleeping and depending on your job, 9 for work. All that extra time can be spent doing whatever the fuck you want. Want to get big and make money streaming? Do work. Want to just stream while you're playing games anyway? Do that. IF YOU WANT TO BECOME A PROFESSIONAL AT SOMETHING YOU PUT IN THE AMOUNT OF EFFORT REQUIRED TO DO SO! So stop telling people it has to be a hobby or it has to be a job. It can be either for christ's sake.
Partner difference
I have a checkmark which makes me a better person. No, but seriously, partner doesn't really do much other than add more emote slots and some quality options. Also, you don't gain extra cash as a partner either. I don't have the mystical bounty board or god-tier split, just the checkmark to flex baby.
Opinion on affiliate
Devin Nash made a video about how affiliate is a scam, which is kinda true but only for people with no viewers. Having the sub button is huge and even when I was small small, affiliate gave me a couple hundred bucks a month for no effort on my part. Patreon is probably better though, no lie.
Twitch "grind"
If you stream 5+ hours a day without making content that lives somewhere else please form a neat line so I can smack you all. People saying they have no time drives me nuts, but when they also "grind" all day AND say that, it makes me want to punch air.
Stream YouTube friendly content
Stop stream and edit content
Upload and plug twitch in the video
repeat
That is the only "grind" you should be on. Affiliate is stupid if the 3 viewers you have are all just you on a different ipad.
Luck
You know what? Maybe PewDiePie got lucky and that's how he is such a big YouTuber. Maybe early twitch streamers got all their views because they were early adopters. Or maybe these people only got lucky because they showed up and actually put the effort in. There are plenty of videos on my channel that looked like flops at first. They got like a couple of hundred views and didn't do well. However, after continuously publishing, a whole bunch of them ended up blowing up and becoming some of the most-watched. Without publishing more videos they would have ended up dead in the water. Consistency > luck. I don't believe too much in luck when it comes to doing very simple things (LIKE MAKING A YOUTUBE VIDEO) but you literally cannot win the lottery if you do not purchase a ticket, it's that simple.
Editing Software
A couple of people asked this so I thought I should add it here. I use davinci resolve for my videos. Previously, I used hitfilm or something like that I can't quite remember the name, but I had to switch because they don't allow you to have split audio channels (i.e. one for desktop audio and one for mic audio). I've literally never touched any paid software like premier or anything because, again, I'm a cheap ass.
What should you upload to YouTube?
Seriously just look at Ludwig, smallant, DisguisedToast, literally every top Twitch streamer with a YouTube. All three of the people I just mentioned are over one million subs on YT and are top streamers, so they are definitely doing something right. In terms of off-stream content, guides are king. If you're a small YT channel with ZERO subs you can still get thousands of views by hitting the search algorithm of YT. My first 3 videos were uncut gameplay, guide video, guide video, in that order. Guess which ones have tens of thousands of views and which has less than a thousand? Guide videos are insane for small channels. Edit: Actually, let's just call it searchable content. Searchable content is king
Ending notes
I think that's about it for this post. Hopefully, I covered everything although I doubt I did. If you have any questions I'll try my best to answer them and will probably edit the good ones into the post.
3 Quick Tl;Dr Android Game Reviews / Recommendations (Episode 161)
Welcome welcome, my fellow Android gamers, to this weekly tradition where I summarize the most interesting mobile games I have played this week :) This episode includes an awesome samurai-inspired action fighting game, a fantastic RPG with Heroes of Might and Magic-inspired combat, and an old-school turn-based tactical indie RPG with more features and systems than most RPGs I’ve played on mobile. Disagree with my opinion? Let’s have a friendly discussion below. New to these posts? Check out the first one from 161 weeks ago here. The games are "ranked" somewhat subjectively from best to worst, so take the ranking for what it is.
Let's get to the games:
Ronin: The Last Samurai [Game Size: 310 MB] (free)
Genre: Fighting / Action / Rogulite progression - Requires Online Access Orientation: Landscape Required Attention: Full tl;dr review: Ronin: The Last Samurai is a unique action fighting game with a beautiful "ink wash" art-style and Archero-inspired roguelike progression systems. With only an attack and a defend button, combat seems deceptively simple at first but quickly turns into a game of masterfully blocking incoming attacks and identifying each enemy’s attack patterns. Most importantly, combat just feels great, and any attack or animation can be interrupted to block an incoming attack, which plays a big part in making it feel responsive. In fact, blocking at just the right time allows us to parry incoming attacks, which reduces the enemy’s “Posture”. Once posture has been fully reduced, the enemy gets stunned for a few seconds. The core gameplay consists of a series of one-screen stages that each contain a few enemies, with bosses at every fifth and tenth stage. Every time we level up by defeating enemies, we get to pick one of three available abilities that last until we die, allowing us to gradually grow stronger. We fight until we die, and between deaths, we can then equip or upgrade loot found during combat, or spend gold to unlock random new permanent stat boosts to hopefully progress further the next time – much like in Archero. Ronin: The Last Samurai monetizes through incentivized ads to revive once, an energy system that limits our play-session length, and iAPs for a premium currency used to instantly acquire new loot, buy forging scrolls used to upgrade equipment, and get more energy. If you can live with the monetization and just play the game for 30-40 minutes at a time, it provides a challenging combat experience that is definitely worth checking out. Google Play: Here MiniReview link: Here
Rivengard [Total Game Size: 414 MB] (free)
Genre: RPG / Turn-based - Online & Offline Playable Orientation: Portrait Required Attention: Some tl;dr review: Rivengard is a fantasy-themed tactical RPG with an interesting turn-based combat system that has us build out a large team of heroes to fight through PvE campaign missions, AI PvP matches, guild raids, and much more, while collecting loot and gold to upgrade our heroes and forge better gear. Every hero has unique stats and abilities, and at the start of each match, we select which to use and where to position them on the hex-grid playing field to best counter the opponents. We get to move every hero on each turn, and attack opponents with normal attacks or abilities if we’re within range, much like in the Heroes of Might and Magic PC games. The terrain even increases the strategic gameplay depth by including bushes to hide in, HP-recovering tiles, and elevated platforms that provide a damage boost, and since there is no auto-combat system, each fight is both engaging and fun. Progression happens primarily through completing campaign levels and quests that provide shards, laurels, and gacha tokens used to unlock new and level up existing heroes. While it didn’t hinder my enjoyment of the game, there is an energy system that caps the speed of this progression by limiting our play-session length to roughly 20-30 minutes at a time. Monetization happens through iAPs for a premium currency used to buy chests with resources and items, summon heroes, and recover energy when it has depleted. With lots of game modes and a guild system that the developer is actively expanding, Rivengard is a promising and fun RPG primarily held back by a monetization system that may frustrate some players. Google Play: Here MiniReview link: Here
Grim Wanderings 2 [Game Size: 114 MB] (free)
Genre: Strategy / Turn-Based / RPG / Indie / Complex - Offline Playable Orientation: Landscape Required Attention: Some tl;dr review: Grim Wanderings 2 is a deep old-school indie RPG with turn-based tactical combat, large hex-grid maps, lots of quests and random events, and 25 unique character classes. In either the Adventure or Strategy mode, we travel a hex-grid world to fight enemies, hire new troops in towns, build new buildings, and complete quests or random events – a bit like in Heroes of Might and Magic. Once we’re ready, we can start exploring the many events and locations each hexagon world tile contains. For example, we may travel to a lake and meet a fisherman who we can forcefully ask to share his fish, or even rob. After selecting an action, we're shown eight cards of which we pick one to determine if our action fails or succeeds. While there is already lots to dive into, the developer have an incredible amount of plans for the future, including an arena PvP mode, an endless mode, many more events, and even a game editor that will allow the community to create its own quests and events. The game’s biggest flaw is its complex UI, which, in combination with the overwhelming amount of systems and features that are all available from the beginning, makes the game difficult to get into. There is also no auto-save, which can be a blessing or a curse depending on how you view it. Grim Wanderings 2 monetizes through occasional ads and a 60-minute daily play-time limit, all of which can be removed through a single $2.99 iAP. If you’re ready to dedicate the time it takes to fully understand the game, it may provide one of the deepest and most unique turn-based RPG experiences on mobile. Google Play: Here MiniReview link: Here NEW REVIEW APP: You can search and filter reviews and games I've played (and more) in my app MiniReview:https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=minireview.best.android.games.reviews Outdated (replaced by MiniReview): Sheet of all games I've played so far: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1bf0OxtVxrboZqyEh01AxJYUUqHm8tEfh-Lx-SugcrzY/edit?usp=sharing TL;DR Video Summary (with gameplay) of last week's 3 games:https://youtu.be/188UCN2mcAo
Assassin's Creed Valhalla - Title Update 1.1.0 Hey everyone, We will be deploying Title Update 1.1.0 on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One consoles, PlayStation®5 and PlayStation®4, Ubisoft Connect, Epic Games Store, Stadia, and Amazon Luna tomorrow: December 15, 2020. Patch Sizes and Deployment Timing:
Xbox Series X|S: ~6.3 GB
Xbox One: ~5.7 GB
PlayStation®5: ~2.46 GB
PlayStation®4: ~2.4 GB
PC: ~5.6 GB
Deployment timing for all platforms: 1 pm CET | 7 am ET | 4 am PT | 11 pm AEDT Please note that these timings are estimates and subject to change. Check out the most notable changes with 1.1.0 below.
CONTENT
Added in-game support for the Settlement expansion and Yule Festival
The Yule Festival is a time-limited event with several festivities to enjoy and rewards to obtain. To bring this and future festivals to life, you'll see the arrival of the revellers just east of the current settlement.
We’ll provide more details about the Settlement expansion and the Yule Festival in our upcoming Yule Season Preview article. Stay tuned. 😊
Miscellaneous
Legendary animal trophies will now correctly appear in the Longhouse.
Balancing
Tweaked the NPC power level behaviour.
NPCs power will now be at a maximum difference of 51 below the player.
NPCs that are 51 power below the player will be highlighted in green.
World bosses will match the player's power level when the power exceeds the world bosses’ base level. (also applies to: Alpha animals, Zealots)
This change applies to all difficulties.
Added loot-able chests to the Grand Magaester's hideout.
Note: This hideout is only available from a very specific moment in the game. Spoilers. :)
Addressed an issue where the Crit. Spark rune would not work when slotted into bows.
Addressed an issue where wrong weapon stats were displayed for specific items.
Royal Guard
Viper Bow
Death-Speaker
The Mark of Sol
Doppelhander
Hundtoth
Game improvements
Performance and Stability
Improved stability and performance.
(PC) Addressed some freezes when performing specific actions for the first time.
(PC) Addressed an issue that could cause freezes during Splash Screen.
Graphics, Audio, Animation
Addressed various graphics issues.
Addressed various character or NPC animation issues.
Addressed various clipping issues.
Addressed an issue where fish may lay on its side during the fishing animation.
Addressed an issue where some NPCs would cut the air instead of wheat. \practice doesn’t always make perfect.**
Addressed an issue where NPCs that are being assassinated while being unconscious would sometimes get up during the animation.
Addressed an issue where Mimir's head tattoo would not be displayed correctly.
Addressed an issue with jagged sea foam.
Quests, World Events, Side Activities
Addressed an issue in A Sword-Shower in Anecastre where Aelfgar didn't move to the assault location.
Addressed an issue where players cannot complete Honor's Hubris.
Note: This fix will spawn Ljufvina again, reset her position, and restart the quest.
Addressed an issue that caused Tarben to follow Eivor everywhere when The Baker's Plaint wasn't completed. \Your watch has ended, Tarben.**
Addressed an issue where Fast Travel wouldn't be available under certain conditions when returning to England after completing the Hordafylke arc.
Addressed an issue where Allies would not help Eivor opening doors at the Isle of Ely Monastery. \Team work makes the dream work!**
Addressed an issue with the Settlement Anomaly's light beams that prevented players from completing the anomaly.
Addressed an issue in Well-Traveled where the objective would not update under certain circumstances.
Addressed an issue where Fenrir could get stuck underground
Addressed an issue where Eivor would sometimes be levitating during Assault outros. \No more Wingardium Leviosa for this one.**
Addressed an issue in Defensive Measures where Jotuns would be able to pass through the shield after the Bring the Invaders into the Shield objective was completed. \You shall not pass!**
Addressed an issue in Brewing Rebellion where the cutscene wouldn't trigger when the door was opened by an NPC by accident.
Addressed an issue in The False Ealdormancy that prevented players from completing it under certain conditions. \This Hunwald ain’t loyal...**
Addressed an issue in Kingdom’s End where Guthrum doesn't leave the Hamptun Blockade area after releasing the prisoners or could randomly become inactive.
Addressed an issue in A Sword-Shower in Anecastre that prevented players from completing the quest.
Addressed an issue in The Goddess of Birth that prevented players from completing the event.
Addressed an issue in Glory Regained where players could become stuck on the platform with the horn.
Addressed an issue in View Above All where the quest objective would sometimes not update after closing the gates.
Addressed an issue in A Rivalry for the Ages where players couldn't complete the quest under certain circumstances.
Addressed an issue in The Boar with the Golden Nose where players couldn't complete a world event due to Lady Trotters not spawning.
Addressed an issue in Defensive Measures where players would die when returning to Asgard.
Addressed an issue in Cruel Destiny that prevented players from proceeding to the second phase of the boss fight. \Quest name checks out.**
Addressed an issue in Madness of the Stones that prevented players from proceeding with the quest.
Addressed an issue in Bleeding the Leech that prevented players from completing the quest.
Addressed an issue where Petra would run into the opposite direction of the Elk. \See this, Petra?**
Addressed an issue where players could sometimes not get back into the room with the Norns.
Addressed an issue in Giants of Fimbulwinter where Eivor could get stuck inside the quest area.
Addressed an issue in Smashing the Compass that prevented players from completing the quest.
Addressed an issue in War Weary where players couldn't re-enter the church under certain circumstances.
Addressed an issue in War of the Collectors where the world event wouldn't be completed under certain circumstances.
Addressed an issue in The Big Finish where the quest objective wouldn't update further.
Addressed an issue that prevented players from entering Skyrmir's Mitten in The Lost Cauldron.
Addressed an issue in Firing the Arrow where the quest objective would sometimes not update.
Addressed an issue where some players couldn't progress the game anymore upon reaching England after Title Update 1.0.4.
Addressed an issue with the SteinnBjorn encounter.
World
· Addressed various object or texture placement issues.
· Addressed various instances where the player could become stuck on objects.
Gameplay, Combat, AI
Addressed various NPC behavioanimation issues.
Addressed an issue that allowed players to shoot targets through walls (without using Piercing Shot).
Addressed an issue with spears not being effective to destroy windows.
Addressed an issue where the fishing hut kid was roaming Ravensthorpe instead of being at their house. \You’re officially grounded.**
Horses will now run away when being hurt with a torch.
Addressed an issue where Jotuns could sometimes warp into walls when shape shifting. \Gidgud**
Addressed an issue where monks would sometimes stand still and not perform their tasks.
Addressed an issue where hitting a horse with a Saxon boat will cause it to disappear when mounting it. \Insert what.gif here**
Sprint will now be interrupted by actions other than dodging.
Addressed an issue where Eivor would become invisible to AI detection when fast travelling during a dice game.
Addressed an issue where NPCs may randomly start pirouetting on a Saxon boat. \Whatever floats your boat I guess.**
Abilities, Perks, Skills
Addressed an issue where players couldn't perform heavy attacks with Frostruin or Sinner Skull.
Addressed an issue where Frostruin's perk wouldn't activate even when conditions are met.
Addressed instances where players were able to open barred doors with the Dive of the Valkyries ability.
Addressed an issue where the Level 2 Incendiary Power Trap couldn't be detonated a second time when the first trap was set off by an NPC.
Addressed an issue where Man's Best Friend wouldn't deal any damage to Zealots in some instances. \Good boi.**
Largely increased Mastery Points cap.
User Interface / HUD
Addressed various UI/HUD issues.
Addressed various localization issues.
Items that are part of a bundle in the Animus Store will now show the corresponding items in the Details Page.
Addressed an issue where players could sometimes lose weapons when performing a dual weapon swap.
Tweaked Reda's Informer icon to make it appear smaller.
Changed Adrenaline Fiend icon to make it more distinguishable from Adrenaline upgrades.
Torches/oil jars can now be dropped/put on the ground with Y/Triangle.
Addressed an issue that allowed players to get the beggar reward several times.
Addressed an issue where stats wouldn't update after leaving offline mode.
Addressed an issue where players couldn't interact with Reda anymore.
Added "OFF" to Quick-Time-Event Input type in the menu. (Turning this option off will allow the game to bypass mashing actions during some boss encounters)
Addressed an issue with Alpha Animals where players wouldn't be awarded the skill point when animals were not killed by the player.
Addressed an issue where Opals would not disappear from the map under certain conditions after collection.
Addressed an issue where Experienced Travelers would unlock locations for the wrong territory.
Addressed an issue where players wouldn't be able to create or load a manual save anymore.
Addressed an issue where Layla's laptop couldn't be navigated with Focused navigation.
Named Cloud saves appropriately.
Cloud saves will now be named Autosave/Manual/Episode Save CLOUD
Addressed an issue where Saves could be displayed as corrupt when saving when the internet connection is lost.
Addressed an issue on where the pathfinder setting resets to Custom after rebooting the game.
Addressed an issue on where cloud saves could disappear under certain conditions.
Photo Mode
Addressed an issue where filters reset to no filter when adjusting other values in Photo Mode.
Addressed an issue where the Photo Mode camera could get stuck in objects.
Photo Mode Frames will now function correctly.
System
(PC) Addressed an issue with the benchmark tool that caused the tool not to collect data for a moment after unpausing the session.
(PC) Addressed an issue where VRAM indicators did not correspond with actual VRAM consumption.
Reduced intensity and duration of the parry rumble. \Controllers go brrrr.**
(PS5) Addressed an issue on PlayStation®5 where the Season Pass wouldn’t be displayed as OWNED after purchase.
3 Quick tl;dr iOS Game Reviews / Recommendations (Episode 74)
Welcome welcome, my fellow mobile gamers, to this weekly tradition where I summarize the most interesting mobile games I have played this week :) This episode includes an awesome samurai-inspired action fighting game, a fantastic RPG with Heroes of Might and Magic-inspired combat, and an old-school turn-based tactical indie RPG with more features and systems than most RPGs I’ve played on mobile. Disagree with my opinion? Let’s have a friendly discussion below. New to these posts? Check out the first one from 74 weeks ago here. The games are "ranked" somewhat subjectively from best to worst, so take the ranking for what it is.
Let's get to the games:
Ronin: The Last Samurai [Game Size: 310 MB] (free)
Genre: Fighting / Action / Rogulite progression - Requires Online Access Orientation: Landscape Required Attention: Full tl;dr review: Ronin: The Last Samurai is a unique action fighting game with a beautiful "ink wash" art-style and Archero-inspired roguelike progression systems. With only an attack and a defend button, combat seems deceptively simple at first but quickly turns into a game of masterfully blocking incoming attacks and identifying each enemy’s attack patterns. Most importantly, combat just feels great, and any attack or animation can be interrupted to block an incoming attack, which plays a big part in making it feel responsive. In fact, blocking at just the right time allows us to parry incoming attacks, which reduces the enemy’s “Posture”. Once posture has been fully reduced, the enemy gets stunned for a few seconds. The core gameplay consists of a series of one-screen stages that each contain a few enemies, with bosses at every fifth and tenth stage. Every time we level up by defeating enemies, we get to pick one of three available abilities that last until we die, allowing us to gradually grow stronger. We fight until we die, and between deaths, we can then equip or upgrade loot found during combat, or spend gold to unlock random new permanent stat boosts to hopefully progress further the next time – much like in Archero. Ronin: The Last Samurai monetizes through incentivized ads to revive once, an energy system that limits our play-session length, and iAPs for a premium currency used to instantly acquire new loot, buy forging scrolls used to upgrade equipment, and get more energy. If you can live with the monetization and just play the game for 30-40 minutes at a time, it provides a challenging combat experience that is definitely worth checking out. App Store: Here
Rivengard [Total Game Size: 414 MB] (free)
Genre: RPG / Turn-based - Online & Offline Playable Orientation: Portrait Required Attention: Some tl;dr review: Rivengard is a fantasy-themed tactical RPG with an interesting turn-based combat system that has us build out a large team of heroes to fight through PvE campaign missions, AI PvP matches, guild raids, and much more, while collecting loot and gold to upgrade our heroes and forge better gear. Every hero has unique stats and abilities, and at the start of each match, we select which to use and where to position them on the hex-grid playing field to best counter the opponents. We get to move every hero on each turn, and attack opponents with normal attacks or abilities if we’re within range, much like in the Heroes of Might and Magic PC games. The terrain even increases the strategic gameplay depth by including bushes to hide in, HP-recovering tiles, and elevated platforms that provide a damage boost, and since there is no auto-combat system, each fight is both engaging and fun. Progression happens primarily through completing campaign levels and quests that provide shards, laurels, and gacha tokens used to unlock new and level up existing heroes. While it didn’t hinder my enjoyment of the game, there is an energy system that caps the speed of this progression by limiting our play-session length to roughly 20-30 minutes at a time. Monetization happens through iAPs for a premium currency used to buy chests with resources and items, summon heroes, and recover energy when it has depleted. With lots of game modes and a guild system that the developer is actively expanding, Rivengard is a promising and fun RPG primarily held back by a monetization system that may frustrate some players. App Store: Here
5 Quick tl;dr iOS Game Reviews / Recommendations (Episode 69) + Majotori Giveaway (25 keys - check the comments)
Welcome to the first of these mobile game recommendations posts of 2021! :) I've got no less than 5 great games lined up today, so let's waste no time and just dive in. For info on the Majotori giveaway, please check my first comment below This episode includes the League of Legends mobile MOBA, a fun cyberpunk-themed arcade racer, one of the best platform action games I’ve played recently, a casual simulation game about destroying planets with freaking lasers, and a fun action game that mixes puzzle and dungeon-crawling elements. Disagree with my opinion? Let’s have a friendly discussion below. New to these posts? Check out the first one from 66 weeks ago here. The games are "ranked" somewhat subjectively from best to worst, so take the ranking for what it is.
Let's get to the games:
League of Legends: Wild Rift [Game Size: 2.7 GB] (free)
Genre: MOBA / Action / PvP - Requires Online Access Orientation: Landscape Required Attention: Full tl;dr review: [For some reason NOT out in the US yet] League of Legends: Wild Rift is Riot Games’ mobile version of the massively popular PC MOBA, League of Legends. Most notably, its 5v5 matchmaking is incredibly fast, there are already 40+ unique heroes, and the graphics look great without overheating my phone. While there are plenty of MOBAs on mobile, Wild Rift had the best on-boarding experience I’ve tried to date, jumping straight into the action instead of forcing us through lengthy tutorials. And this while still being mindful of explaining the core mechanics as you play your first matches versus AI. Unlike some MOBAs, the combat is nicely paced in Wild Rift, with each match taking roughly 15 minutes, which is perfect for mobile. The lack of annoying pop-ups with quests and login rewards is also a welcomed change. Just like its PC counterpart, the monetization is very fair. The heroes are well-balanced, which means we can easily compete with the heroes we get for free, while purely cosmetic skins and additional heroes can be bought through iAPs. Wild Rift is by far the most polished, fair, and overall most promising MOBA I’ve played in years. App Store: Here
Nameless Cat [Game Size: 92 MB] (free)
Genre: Platformer / Action / Indie / 2D - Offline Playable Orientation: Landscape Required Attention: Full tl;dr review: Nameless Cat is a beautiful 2D action platformer with a mysterious story, lots of interesting obstacles and enemies, and even boss battles that we must overcome without being able to attack. One of the game’s most unique features is the ability to teleport to what looks like tombstones that are found throughout each level. This mechanic is used to avoid enemy attacks, travel distances that are too far to jump, and teleport away from traps, creating a fun experience that feels different from most other action platformers. The peaceful soundtrack perfectly fits the distinctive pixel art-style and creates a truly calming and peculiar atmosphere that makes the game a joy to explore. As we complete the 40+ hand-crafted levels, we also collect cans of cat food used to unlock new cosmetic cat skins. The game monetizes through occasional ads between deaths and incentivized ads to activate some of the checkpoints, both of which can be removed through a $2.99 iAP. $0.99 iAPs allow us to unlock additional premium skins. Nameless Cat is a must-play for any fan of cute, challenging, action platformers. App Store: Here
Neon Flytron [Total Game Size: 118 MB] (free)
Genre: Arcade / Racer / Endless / Indie - Offline Orientation: Portrait Required Attention: Full tl;dr review: Neon Flytron is a forward-movement arcade racer where we control a flying car blasting through a cyberpunk-themed city full of neon lights, skyscrapers, and obstacles in both level-based and endless game-modes. Unlike lane-runners like Subway Surfers, Neon Flytron’s smooth controls let us freely move up, down, left, and right to avoid obstacles, defeat bosses, and pickup powers-ups or gold. Combined with the futuristic soundtracks and shiny art-style, this makes for a truly unique experience. Arguably the game’s most unique feature is just how customizable everything is. Vehicles can be painted with different materials and colors, a custom game-mode lets us heavily alter and control the gameplay experience, and the map editor even allows us to fully customize the colors used for buildings, windows, and more. All customizations cost gold, which we earn through gameplay. Monetization happens through occasional forced ads that can be removed through a $1.99 iAP, incentivized ads to revive or increase our gold rewards, and iAPs for more gold used for customization and to unlock all cars immediately. The monetization isn't heavily pushed, and the game can easily be enjoyed as a free player. Neon Flytron is a runner that doesn’t feel like any other endless runner, and that’s why it’s worth checking out for arcade cyberpunk fans. App Store: Here
Yokai Dungeon [Total Game Size: 58 MB] (free)
Genre: Puzzle / Dungeon Crawler / Acrade / Action - Offline Orientation: Portrait Required Attention: Some tl;dr review: Yokai Dungeon is a cute and simple arcade action game where we fight our way through endless randomly generated dungeons by pushing blocks and bushes into enemies to defeat them. Each dungeon floor consists of multiple rooms full of monsters and a boss at the end, and while we’re free to explore the dungeon in whichever order we prefer, we must defeat all monsters in each room before we can proceed to the next. Monsters drop gold that we can spend to unlock cute heroes with unique health, speed, and luck stats. The controls are a bit wonky and combat gets slightly repetitive after a while as our only offensive ability is to push blocks. But apart from that, it’s a fun mix of puzzle and dungeon crawling that works well as a casual game. Yokai Dungeon monetizes through frequent ads between dungeon rooms, which can be removed with a $2.99 iAP, and additional iAPs to unlock heroes faster. App Store: Here
Source: https://www.bungie.net/en/News/Article/49722 This week at Bungie, there is just a lot going on right now. What a week. It started out with a brand new ViDoc showcasing Bungie developers giving you a behind-the-scenes look at what we’ve been cooking up from home. Now we’ll pause the TWAB for 15 minutes so you can go watch it in all its glory. Even if you already watched it, go watch it again. Don’t worry, we’ll wait on you. Video Link That was your first look into Season of the Hunt, as well as a deeper dive into Beyond Light, Stasis, New Light, and our plans for Year 4. We also mentioned that most Seasonal content is going to be sticking around throughout the year and showed off a new calendar for Beyond Light and Season of the Hunt. Start writing these dates in your calendars, or I guess like - programming them into your virtual calendars. You do you. Image Linkimgur We followed that up by pushing out the Beyond Light launch trailer this morning featuring some good vibes and a familiar soundtrack. It’s one of the last action-packed previews of Beyond Light you’ll get before it launches in less than a fortnight. We'll pause the TWAB one more time so you can watch it, but this is it. No more pauses after this! Video Link That’s all we got for you this week... Nah, just kidding. We got a lot more to cover. Let’s get to it.
Progression Changes
The start of any new Destiny expansion begins with a Power climb as you experience the campaign and play through the story missions. After finishing that up and completing some additional quests and activities, you’re usually around what we call the “Soft Cap” and will need to start earning Powerful rewards to continue to increase Power so you can tackle some of the more aspirational activities in the endgame. After you reach the “Hard Cap” then there is an additional 10 Power you can earn through earning pinnacle rewards if you choose to hit the “Pinnacle Cap.” Here are the new Power Caps you are aiming for when the next Season begins on November 10:
Soft Cap: 1200
Hard Cap: 1250
Pinnacle Cap: 1260
When you first log in next Season, all of your weapons and armor will be at 1050 Power or higher. If you have anything already over 1050 it will be unchanged, and anything under will be brought up to 1050. All new players will start at 1050 as well.
Powerful Reward Changes
We’ve heard a lot of feedback from players for more opportunities to earn Powerful rewards from the activities you enjoy most. We have a change coming that will allow you to have a chance to earn Powerful rewards from strikes, Gambit, Crucible, and from Seasonal drops all the way up until the Hard Cap. It will still be much quicker to continue to complete all the Powerful reward sources each week, but if you just want to play strikes or Crucible matches all day every day, you can continue to earn Powerful rewards. We hope this helps you to continue increasing your Power during the period when you are still close to the Soft Cap and may find completing some of the Powerful sources like The Ordeal very difficult.
Tokens and Collections
Destiny is at its best when you are shooting aliens, getting loot, and becoming more powerful. That gameplay loop breaks down when the best way to increase your Power can be standing in the Tower, handing tokens to Lord Shaxx. Starting next Season, gear received from Collections and turning in tokens and will have a lower Power than in previous Seasons. Gear earned through token purchases will be 20 Power below your Power Level and Collection buybacks will be capped at 1050 Power.
Economy Changes
Some currencies and items have changes coming either at the end of this Seasons or in the near future. Here is what to expect when you login next Season.
Materials with No Home
With several destinations going into the Destiny Content Vault, many of you have been wondering what is going to happen to the currencies found in the areas currently underneath the Pyramids. The simple answer is that there are no changes to these currencies in Season of the Hunt, and you will be able to continue to spend them at vendors normally. Starting in Season 13, Phaseglass Needles, Alkane Dust, Simulation Seeds, and Seraphite will be no longer accepted by vendors. For those of you that still have unspent stockpiles at the end of Season of the Hunt, Spider will be kind enough to offer a small Glimmer exchange to take them off your hands. But you’ll realize the best value by spending them before that point, so make sure you turn in your stockpiles before the end of next Season. There are other items that will be removed from your inventory at the end of Season of Arrivals. Some, like Faction Tokens, have not had a purpose in quite a while, and others, like Expired Ramen Coupons, never really had a purpose but held some sentimental value. We know that it might hard to part with those, but it’s time to let them go. Check out this Help article for the full list of items that will no longer be in your inventory at the start of Season of the Hunt.
Bounties
Back in late April, we shared some plans on how to tackle the problem of “bounty fatigue.” We have made some shifts to seasonal bounties and reduced their importance on earning seasonal currency and seasonal progress. We’re happy with these changes, but still want to continue to improve the bounty system overall. One of the plans we previewed was to eventually replace weekly bounties with a new mechanism to provide players with a set of non-expiring and account-scoped objectives each week that will grant lots of Season rank progress. We’re still working on that system and will share more on it before its targeted release of Season 13.
Season Pass
The Season Pass you've come to know since Shadowkeep is largely staying the same. There will be new weapons and armor to earn off both the free track and the owned path. One big change we are making is adding Bright Dust to the Season Pass. As mentioned before, we wanted to change the way you earn Bright Dust and move more towards account-specific paths to give players with only one character significantly more Bright Dust than they've been earning over the last year. Here is the high-level look at the changes coming next Season.
Season Pass free path will now offer 7,500 Bright Dust
Season Pass owned path will now offer 3,000 Bright Dust
Weekly Bounties will now award 100 Bright Dust
With these changes, the vast majority of players will be earning more Bright Dust than before. One of our goals here is to not have a system that pushes you to try to grind out every weekly bounty on all three characters every single week. Whether you are a three-character player or only play a Hunter, Bright Dust will be more available when earning ranks on the Season Pass. We will also be making a change to the timing of Season Pass rank purchases which will be available starting in week five instead of week nine. We have more plans for improving how you earn Bright Dust coming in Season 13 and will continue to monitor your feedback. I’ve been talking a lot. Let’s change it up. Here is Design Lead Justin Dazet to tell you about some changes Spider is making to his wares and to answer a question we have been seeing about the customization updates we are making to your Ghosts.
Spider’s Dealings
Justin Dazet: Spider is going through some changes in Beyond Light. Though a notoriously savvy black-market dealer, our favorite four-armed friend has been largely the same for quite some time now. But the impending journey to Europa has finally given him a reason to tune up the materials exchange and make two key changes. First, Spider will no longer be selling Legendary Shards. This exchange was removed mainly because it was not seeing enough use, particularly when compared with the other exchange offers. After reviewing player balances and the frequency with which this exchange was accessed, it was an easy decision to free up the space for something much more interesting. In place of the Legendary Shard exchange, Spider is now selling Enhancement Prisms. These highly valued items come at a cost – 400 Legendary Shards per Prism – and he’s stingy with them so you can only purchase three a week. But we wanted to give those of you with higher balances a way to transmute your Legendary Shards into something a little more valuable than planetary materials and Upgrade Modules. Second, we’ve taken another look at how the Enhancement Core exchange works and made some changes. The ascending cost mechanism has been removed, and in its place, Spider will now sell you five Enhancement Cores a day for fixed price of 30 Legendary Shards each. While this does limit the number of Cores you can acquire from him each day, we feel a consistent price is a clearer experience with less chance to accidentally spend large quantities of Legendary Shards. More importantly it’s also cheaper. In the old purchase model, you’d pay 310 Legendary Shards for five Enhancement Cores (10, 20, 40, 80, and then 160). In the new model you’ll only pay 30 Shards each, which equals out to 150 Legendary Shards for five Enhancement Cores. So, while it does limit your acquisition rate, it actually will save you 160 Legendary Shards every five Cores!
Got to Go Fast
Finally, we’ve seen a few people wondering if you’ll be able to equip the Ghost mod Speed Demon with other mods like Guiding Light in the new system, and we have some good news for you: You won’t need to. Starting in Beyond Light all Sparrows, both Legendary and Exotic, will innately summon instantly, even without the Transmat Preloader perk. As a result, there is no need for a Ghost mod to impact this functionality, so Speed Demon was not carried forward into the new system. If you’re already driving around a Sparrow with Transmat Preloader, you can keep using it and it will work just fine. Or you can pull it from Collections again and get two new perks. Newly created Sparrows will no longer roll on Transmat Preloader, so you have a chance to get yourself an extra perk and still retain that instant summon speed. Hop on that newly instant-summoning Sparrow and zip on over to check out Spider’s new offers. He’s ready and waiting to wrap those four greedy arms around some of your wealth and make you a deal you can’t refuse.
Eververse
Starting in Season of the Hunt, Bright Engrams will now contain all Eververse content from Season 1 to three Seasons prior to the current Season (excluding content from special events like Festival of the Lost, the Dawning, etc.). Here are some practical examples:
Season 12: Bright Engrams contain all content from Seasons 1 through 9.
Season 13: Bright Engrams contain all content from Seasons 1 through 10.
As always, as you open more Bright Engrams, your chances for earning things you don't own increases. There will be instances of duplicate drops, but the Engram will be weighted to grant you things you might be hunting.
Down to the Wire
Image Linkimgur It’s time now to check in with our Player Support team for the latest on known issues and important information on the state of the game. This is their report.
WORLD ACTIVITIES
When Beyond Light and Update 3.0.0 release on November 10, 2020, some world activities will be removed. These removals are not related to the Destiny Content Vault but are general game updates. Players should complete any activities and quests they have left if they want to claim rewards from them.
Flashpoints (Weekly Engrams should be claimed before November 10 or they will be removed).
All Destination Adventures.
World Quests from Year-1 locations, such as Enemy of my Enemy, Exodus Black, and Data Recovery.
INVENTORY ITEM REMOVAL
With the start of Year 4 and the introduction of the Destiny Content Vault on November 10, certain items will be deprecated from player inventories that correspond with Vaulted destinations, activities, and campaigns. Click here to review a list of items, quests, and currencies that will be removed from player inventories at the start of Year 4. Some items listed can be used or turned in for rewards, such as Glimmer, weapons, and armor, so be sure to do that before November 10.
14-HOUR DOWNTIME
On November 9, Destiny 2 will be taken offline for maintenance. Maintenance will begin at 7 PM PST (0300 UTC), ending on November 10 at 9 AM (1700 UTC) with the launch of Destiny 2: Beyond Light and Update 3.0.0. Stay tuned to Help.Bungie.net and @BungieHelp on Twitter for updates.
PlayStation 4 COLLECTOR’S EDITION CODES
Earlier this week, we informed PlayStation 4 players who purchased the Destiny 2: Beyond Light Collector’s Edition that they may have received an email about a possible account lockout if they used their Collector’s Edition codes. The issue resulting in account lockouts for early code redemption has now been resolved, and players can now safely redeem their codes prior to November 10.
TITLES AND SEALS
With Moments of Triumph and Season of Arrivals coming to a close, players are strongly encouraged to claim and equip the titles located in their Seals so that they will correctly count as claimed.
KNOWN ISSUES
While we continue investigating various known issues, here is a list of the latest issues that were reported to us in our #Help Forum:
The Warlock’s top tree on the Dawnblade subclass can trigger the Icarus Dash cooldown when playing on PC.
Players can’t dismount from their Sparrow using the dismount button on a controller if their Ghost is out.
Some players report that they’re receiving the Baboon error more frequently.
For a full list of emergent issues in Destiny 2, players can review our Known Issues article. Players who observe other issues should report them to our #Help forum.
Nominees
Image Linkimgur It’s now time for our Movies of the Week. For those unfamiliar with our weekly tradition, this is where we find a few of our favorite fan films to feature. To enter, just make a Destiny 2 related video and upload it somewhere we can see. Our Creations page is always a good place we like to pull from. If you win, we will send you a special emblem as a reward for your effort. Without further interruption, here are this week’s winners! Destiny 2: The Series Destiny Lo-Fi/HipHop Beats to Wait for Beyond Light to Video Link Memories Video Link It’s been a fun week filled with several early mornings for us on Pacific time. It’s always nice to start off your day delivering a new ViDoc or exciting new launch trailer. The train carrying the hype is nearing its destination though, and Beyond Light will be arriving in less than two weeks! It’s almost time to start counting the sleeps until the big launch. Next week we will have a preview of some of the patch notes coming with the big update on November 10. We want to leave plenty for you to discover on your own in Beyond Light and Season of the Hunt and are excited to let the game do the talking, but we will still check in next week for one last TWAB before launch. See you then! <3 Cozmo
5 Quick Tl;Dr Android Game Reviews / Recommendations (Episode 156)
Welcome to the first of these mobile game recommendations posts of 2021! :) I've got no less than 5 great games lined up today, so let's waste no time and just dive in. This episode includes the League of Legends mobile MOBA, a fun cyberpunk-themed arcade racer, one of the best platform action games I’ve played recently, a casual simulation game about destroying planets with freaking lasers, and a fun action game that mixes puzzle and dungeon-crawling elements. Disagree with my opinion? Let’s have a friendly discussion below. New to these posts? Check out the first one from 156 weeks ago here. The games are "ranked" somewhat subjectively from best to worst, so take the ranking for what it is.
Let's get to the games:
League of Legends: Wild Rift [Game Size: 2.7 GB] (free)
Genre: MOBA / Action / PvP - Requires Online Access Orientation: Landscape Required Attention: Full tl;dr review: [For some reason NOT out in the US yet] League of Legends: Wild Rift is Riot Games’ mobile version of the massively popular PC MOBA, League of Legends. Most notably, its 5v5 matchmaking is incredibly fast, there are already 40+ unique heroes, and the graphics look great without overheating my phone. While there are plenty of MOBAs on mobile, Wild Rift had the best on-boarding experience I’ve tried to date, jumping straight into the action instead of forcing us through lengthy tutorials. And this while still being mindful of explaining the core mechanics as you play your first matches versus AI. Unlike some MOBAs, the combat is nicely paced in Wild Rift, with each match taking roughly 15 minutes, which is perfect for mobile. The lack of annoying pop-ups with quests and login rewards is also a welcomed change. Just like its PC counterpart, the monetization is very fair. The heroes are well-balanced, which means we can easily compete with the heroes we get for free, while purely cosmetic skins and additional heroes can be bought through iAPs. Wild Rift is by far the most polished, fair, and overall most promising MOBA I’ve played in years. Google Play: Here MiniReview link: Here
Nameless Cat [Game Size: 92 MB] (free)
Genre: Platformer / Action / Indie / 2D - Offline Playable Orientation: Landscape Required Attention: Full tl;dr review: Nameless Cat is a beautiful 2D action platformer with a mysterious story, lots of interesting obstacles and enemies, and even boss battles that we must overcome without being able to attack. One of the game’s most unique features is the ability to teleport to what looks like tombstones that are found throughout each level. This mechanic is used to avoid enemy attacks, travel distances that are too far to jump, and teleport away from traps, creating a fun experience that feels different from most other action platformers. The peaceful soundtrack perfectly fits the distinctive pixel art-style and creates a truly calming and peculiar atmosphere that makes the game a joy to explore. As we complete the 40+ hand-crafted levels, we also collect cans of cat food used to unlock new cosmetic cat skins. The game monetizes through occasional ads between deaths and incentivized ads to activate some of the checkpoints, both of which can be removed through a $2.99 iAP. $0.99 iAPs allow us to unlock additional premium skins. Nameless Cat is a must-play for any fan of cute, challenging, action platformers. Google Play: Here MiniReview link: Here
Neon Flytron [Total Game Size: 118 MB] (free)
Genre: Arcade / Racer / Endless / Indie - Offline Orientation: Portrait Required Attention: Full tl;dr review: Neon Flytron is a forward-movement arcade racer where we control a flying car blasting through a cyberpunk-themed city full of neon lights, skyscrapers, and obstacles in both level-based and endless game-modes. Unlike lane-runners like Subway Surfers, Neon Flytron’s smooth controls let us freely move up, down, left, and right to avoid obstacles, defeat bosses, and pickup powers-ups or gold. Combined with the futuristic soundtracks and shiny art-style, this makes for a truly unique experience. Arguably the game’s most unique feature is just how customizable everything is. Vehicles can be painted with different materials and colors, a custom game-mode lets us heavily alter and control the gameplay experience, and the map editor even allows us to fully customize the colors used for buildings, windows, and more. All customizations cost gold, which we earn through gameplay. Monetization happens through occasional forced ads that can be removed through a $1.99 iAP, incentivized ads to revive or increase our gold rewards, and iAPs for more gold used for customization and to unlock all cars immediately. The monetization isn't heavily pushed, and the game can easily be enjoyed as a free player. Neon Flytron is a runner that doesn’t feel like any other endless runner, and that’s why it’s worth checking out for arcade cyberpunk fans. Google Play: Here MiniReview link: Here
Yokai Dungeon [Total Game Size: 58 MB] (free)
Genre: Puzzle / Dungeon Crawler / Acrade / Action - Offline Orientation: Portrait Required Attention: Some tl;dr review: Yokai Dungeon is a cute and simple arcade action game where we fight our way through endless randomly generated dungeons by pushing blocks and bushes into enemies to defeat them. Each dungeon floor consists of multiple rooms full of monsters and a boss at the end, and while we’re free to explore the dungeon in whichever order we prefer, we must defeat all monsters in each room before we can proceed to the next. Monsters drop gold that we can spend to unlock cute heroes with unique health, speed, and luck stats. The controls are a bit wonky and combat gets slightly repetitive after a while as our only offensive ability is to push blocks. But apart from that, it’s a fun mix of puzzle and dungeon crawling that works well as a casual game. Yokai Dungeon monetizes through frequent ads between dungeon rooms, which can be removed with a $2.99 iAP, and additional iAPs to unlock heroes faster. Google Play: Here MiniReview link: Here
Thanks for all the positive feedback and corrections - I made some edits. Hi everyone! I thought I'd write down some things about BB (Boom Beach) that I wish I had known or realized early on. I don't think I am a BB expert or even a very good player, and in fact I have only been playing for a bit over a year. But I have been following the BB subreddit for a while now, and there seem to be a lot of people that don't know the most basic principles of the game, so maybe this post can be helpful. Some of these things I realized myself over time, but mostly I learned about them from other players in guides, posts or videos. The following is just my selection of beginner's tips. I am not going to say everything that there is to say about each point; look it up, if you want more details. I just think the following is essential BB information you should know about, whether or not you follow the advice. First of all, I am going to assume, that everyone wants to play the game in such a way as to progress fast and potentially go far (on the leaderboard, on the Crab, or with a TF). That assumption might not be correct, and BB lets you play any way you like. If maxing everything before upgrading your HQ works for you, or if you enjoy having 5 green MPs, then that's ok; but don't complain that the game is broken or that you don't progress as fast as you'd like. FOCUS ON OFFENSE This is the best advice anyone can give you, and the most frequent advice appearing in the comments here. Offense is overpowered in BB. You can completely ignore upgrading or even just building your own defenses for a long time, and at any time, you should focus on your offense. When you prioritize offense, beating bases many levels above you is no problem and getting resources is easy. This concept can be hard to embrace when you are new to BB and it might seem wrong to totally neglect your defense, but that's the way it works. Your defenses will never, ever be strong enough to keep you from getting raided. DON'T TRY TO SAVE RESOURCES It doesn't work. This is a big beginner's mistake. You will just get raided and lose a large part, especially with a low level Vault. Instead, it works much better to get all the resources you need for your next upgrade all at once. DON'T RELY ON RESOURCE PRODUCTION - GO RAIDING Your production buildings and resource bases are a small factor when it comes to getting resources. It's best to get what you need by attacking. GET WHAT YOU NEED, START AN UPGRADE, STOP Again, you cannot save resources effectively. Go raiding, start your next upgrade, then don't attack anymore. This way you don't have to mind getting raided yourself, since you won't have much to lose. And you will always get raided. GAINING AND LOSING RESOURCES The amount that an attacker gains is not the same as the one that the defender loses. How much you can gain from a player base is determined the moment you first scout it, with various subtractions and additions being performed by the game. From that moment on the amount will never change. When you get attacked you always lose a certain percentage of your resources (depending on your Vault level), but your attacker might gain more or less than that. The game creates or destroys resources as needed. THE TRIBE RESOURCE BOAT This is actually a way to save resources, although you can't see how much exactly there is on it. The recources on this boat just accummulate indefinately, without a limit. You gain Gold from freed villages and Wood, Stone and Iron from resource bases. You can actually lose some of the resources on the boat when one of your resource bases gets taken, but the boat is still a great way to save resources, so try to not use it every day, but rather save up for later. When you get it is up to you, find out what works for you. CURATE YOUR MAP You can "save" resources for your next upgrade on the map, in the form of player bases that you keep around for attacking. I suggest you just scout bases as soon as they appear, rather than waiting for Fridays or the next Crab, when they might have the highest amounts - they might, but it varies anyway. When you scout a base, have a look at the possible rewards, and put a note/symbol/emoji in the comment field. Find a system that works for you. My suggestion: use a red emoji for a base that you don't want to attack - either because it would yield a small reward or because you think it might be too tough for you at this point. That's the most important part, because you can then exchange the base for another one after 24 h. Use other symbols, if you want, like a symbol for bases with an especially big reward, or a symbol for a base that you can beat very easily without boosting statues. Just get rid of the bases that don't work for you - until you reach a point where you might want to push you VPs (Victory Points) by attacking everyone you can. HOW YOU GAIN AND LOSE VPs You gain VPs from successfully attacking bases. The Cycle of Evil will never give you any VPs, player bases always give you 2, NPC bases give you 1 (and sometimes two, see below). You lose one VP when a new NPC or player base appears on your map, and when your home base gets raided. Don't feel bad about either of these events. It's an unavoidable part of the game. You will always get raided and you will never be able to clear your map and just have it keep that way - the game will always give you new targets to attack (and make your base appear on other players' map, unless you stop logging in for a few days). Invasions are just BB's way of matching you with opponents. Over time you can accumulate more VPs, because of the player bases you destroy. You get 2 VPs for that but only lose one when a new base appears, and in the end you can also gain more VPs that way than what you lose by being raided yourself. You also gain VPs from the Diamond Chests that are already there immediately after exploring a new map region, but not from the Diamond Chests that randomly appear throughout the day. MANAGE YOU VPs On lower levels HQ level factors into the matchmaking, but mainly it is based solely on VPs, regardless of other factors, like EXP level, or a players "strength". You will get matched against bases many levels above you. If you focus on offense, that is not really a problem. Just be careful not to rise too high too soon, or you will mostly face very tough or even unbeatable opponents - you will "hit the wall". If you follow the previous advice about stopping to attack when you have the resources you need, then this won't happen to you. Getting rid of VPs is difficult; you can put your HQ on the beach to make yourself an easy target, but without a lot of resources you will be an unattractive target and it will be a slow process. Better to avoid reaching that point. Here's what you do, while you are still at a lower level: You attack the Cycle of Evil events (especially Dr. T and Immitation Game) and NPC bases, and then just as many player bases as you need. You do get more rewards when you move up in the VP range and rank, though: You will get slightly more from the rewards boats and the Supply Chest, and more importantly, the player bases will yield higher rewards. Just move up when you choose, and don't rush it early on. Early on you can use this rule of thumb: multiply your EXP level by 10 - this would be a fine VP range for you. But when you focus on offense, you can also go higher than that. NPC BASES ARE VP NEUTRAL - KIND OF These bases will mostly give you one VP when you destroy them, and since you also lose one when they appear, there is no change in the end. I said mostly, because sometimes they will give you 2 VPs. However, this second VP comes out of a pool of only 200 extra VPs, and once you have received the extra VP 200 times, NPC bases will always award you only one VP. You actually have a higher chance of getting a second VP when there are more still left in the pool. I still think you are better off attacking them before attacking player bases at a low level, even though initially you might gain more VPs in relation to the resources you gain. PLAN YOUR UPGRADES You don't have to plan too far ahead, but think past your next upgrade. Consider the event cycles, and leave expensive upgrades for these times. IT (Imitation Game) yields a lot of resources every Friday. Depending on your time zone and waking/working hours you might be able to do two events right after the other. The Mega Crab on the last weekend of each month can give you a lot of resources, make sure you max your storages for your level by then and if you are at a point where you can only upgrade turrets, then keep expensive upgrades to start during the event. Wait until you collect your resource boats. I already talked about the tribe boat. You can also wait to collect the other two: You have until the next day to collect the daily reward and until the end of the next OP to collect the Operation reward. Spend Diamonds if that fits your real life schedule better, otherwise just be patient. UPGRADE ORDER I already said you should focus on offense - let's be a bit more specific. Upgrade the following, in this order, as soon as you can: HQ (Headquaters - unlock new troops, abilities, LCs, upgrade levels - no downside to upgrading) ARMORY (start this with normal resources, then finish it instantly with Diamonds - that's the best use for Diamonds and allows you to have an Armory upgrade going at all times) SCULPTOR (extra statue slot) VAULT (pulls the teeth out of getting raided with each upgrade) LCs (Landing Crafts - bring more troops; less important at certain HQ levels, depending on your troop combo, but don't fall behind too much. While a LC is upgrading you can still use the troops on it, but if they die you can't retrain them until the upgrade finishes. You might want to save that attack with all troops for your OP attack.) GB (Gun Boat - gain extra GBE; this can make a big difference) Other people might suggest slightly different orders, and those are fine, too. Just try to max all of these as soon as you can. If at any time you have enough EXP for the next HQ, interrupt the cycle and start again at the top. Next, you upgrade what you need/want most. Storages are important, and I recommend upgrading the Radar in such a way that you always have some regions to explore. Turrets are definetely last. ARMORY UPGRADES Try to always have an upgrade going in the Armory. When you get a new level, first upgrade Barrage and Artillery. Then upgrade your main troop combo, then other GBAs (Gun Boat Abilities). Then upgrade troops you might want to use or switch to in the future. I suggest Zookas (especially for OPs (Operations)), Scorchers and Bombardiers as troops that are also good to have, regardless of what you mainly use. Just don't try to evenly upgrade everything, that will take too long and leave you too weak. TROOP COMBOS I won't give you specific advice on what to use. Have a look at what works, see what you like and pick something. Consider that the main game, OPs and the Crab all work a bit differently - e.g. Warriors are a fine choice for the main game, but they won't get you far with the other two, so you might want to also upgrade something else. Personally, I used Warriors early on, then switched to TMed (Tanks and Medics), then added Grenardiers in the mix, then switched to Torcher (Tanks and Scorchers), now adding Bombardiers or useing All Scorchers. That has worked well for me, but it's not a recommendation - e.g. HZ/Hooka (Heavies and Zookas) is one of the strongest combinations in the game, as is RZCM (Riflemen, Zookas, Cryoneers, Medics). Take your pick. Eventually you will have every troop upgraded anyway, but until then, make some choices. HEROES Heroes, their various abilities and how you use them make a big difference in your attacks. I won't go into detail here, I suggest you look up how and when to get the other 3 heroes, and what their abilities are. Focus on maxing the more important of these abilities, rather than spending your Tokens on abilities you don't need and having too few Tokens for the good ones. STATUES This is one of the most important aspects of BB. Let me start with the second most frequent advice one can find in the comments: Don't use green or blue statues. Just don't. Blue statues (Ice) do have a purpose and you will see everyone at the top of the leaderboard using them (and boosting all of them). I won't go into it, but believe me, Ice does a lot less for a lower level base - not enough to justify occupying a statue slot. And green statues (Life) are definately not worth it at all. I already said that saving resources doesn't work and that production buildings are not much of a factor. Since green statues help with these things that don't work, don't use them. They do much less than the percentage might suggest, anyway. Upgrades always keep getting more expensive, but the amount you get from green statues doesn't increase much (just a little bit when you upgrade a production building or gain a new resource base, and there's a limit to both). You are much better off with even a single RR (resource reward) statue. While you would need to waste multiple spots and maybe PP (Power Powder) on several green statues, RR statues boost all your rewards and in just a few attacks you get more extra loot than the greens would have produced for you in a day - that is, if you don't get raided that day and lose the resources again. Don't use green statues. Another statue type that is probably not worth using is PSC (Power Stone Chance). Again, the percentage value of the statue might make it sound much better than it is. Getting Power Stones is important, but you can get enough by playing the game without a PSC statue and have the slot free to put to better use. What you should use are red statues (Magma) which give you either extra TD (Troop Damage) or TH (Troop Health) and purple (Dark) GBE (Gun Boat Energy) statues. While you are still at a low level, purple RR statues are also extremely useful. One RR statue might be enough, and lets you put down more offensive ones, but I suggest you use two, or even three, if you buy Extra Builders. There is no one-size-fits-all recommendation for how many of each of these you should have. You can only have one MP (Masterpiece) of each kind, so definately put out one of each type. If you use SZ (Smokey Zooka) on OPs (or aim to do so in the future) or All Scorcher, you will need a quite a few GBE statues (3 or 4, or even 5). Otherwise you might want to focus on the red statues, especially TD, which will also be essential for getting far in the Crab. It depends on your goals and the troop combos you use - you can easily find more specific advice elsewhere. GETTING MORE RED AND PURPLE POWER STONES You mostly get purple stones from Dr. T events, red ones from IT (Immitation Game) and normal bases, and all kinds as rewards from boats, the Supply Chest, the Crab, Warships and the Submarine. If you follow the advice here, red and purple Power Stones will be more valuable to you than green and blue ones. There is a little trick that lets you get more of them: Instead of turning blues and greens into PP right away, upgrade them to the highest level (Crystal) but then hang on to them. Every now and then the Trader will have a deal where you can convert a certain number of one kind to another. This way you might be able to turn up to 25 blue/green Crystals into 25 red/purple ones right away. Keep in mind that there is an achievement for destroying 3000 statues, if you want that, then build statues rather than converting the stones directly. STATUE STORAGE This is definately not a high priority building, but it can be rather useful. You can store newly made statues here to deploy them later. Just know that you cannot swap out active statues. Once a statue is placed you can only destroy it, you can't put it into storage. That makes statue choices a lot more important - you can't simply swap out TD/TH/GBE as you need it or use those for attacking and Ice when you're offline. Still, the Statue Storage is useful: You can save a statue for your next Sculptor upgrade (when you unlock a new slot), you can save statues to replace others later on (like RR statues you don't want anymore), you can save Ice MPs (if you really must), or you can save TD/TH guardians to swap out when you're trying to go far on the Mega Crab. BOOSTING STATUES Over time you will collect PP (Power Powder), either as rewards, for example from the Mega Crab, or from destroying MPs/converting Power Cyrstals (gaining you 7 PPs). These PPs can be used to boost statues, doubling the percentage of their bonus. This lasts for 3 days on green statues, 8 hours on blue statues and 3 hours on red and purple statues. You can add more time with more PP any time. Use this option wisely. When you can do your attacks without boosting, do so, but use it when you need it. Your TF might require boosts, and it's generally worth boosting when you attack the Mega Crab. I suggest boosting your RR statues, since that way you can easily get a lot from just a few attacks. In any case, find a balance where over time you are still gaining more PP than you use - you might want it later on in the game. TRADER The Trader arrives for every weekend. The deals she offers are mostly nonsense and not worth it, but sometimes you can exchange Power Stones or resources to your advantage. Appart from the deals you can also get Trader Crates, by paying 3 Tickets that you earn by playing the game (the first Crate is free each week). There are differrent kind of Crates, giving you very small or rather large rewards. There is a fixed cycle, and you won't get two huge rewards right after the other. Get these crates when you need them, but if you count on getting a specific extra resource, you had better have a couple of tickets. One nice effect is that the resources you get from crates can overflow your storages. These crates are also your main source of Hero Tokens, used to upgrade Hero abilities. WHAT TO DO WITH GOLD Wood, Stone and Iron are used to uprade structures (buildings, boats). As you level up and upgrade your structures you will see that you need mostly Wood at first, then more and more Stone, then more and more Iron. Gold is used for a number of things: You use it to pay for Armory upgrades - that is one of the most important aspects and you should try to always have enough Gold for your next upgrade (by planning to attack, not by saving up). You also use it to upgrade your Heroes, which is important but should not be done at the expense of an Armory upgrade. Next up is exploring new regions. It's good to always have something to explore so you don't waste Gold, when you have a lot of it, so upgrade your Radar accordingly. No need to go crazy maxing your Radar and exploring everything you can, though. That will just put you on more people's map, which doesn't help you. You can look up specific guides for when you should upgrade your Radar, where to get which Hero, &c. There's even a guide on how to avoid playing against other people for a while, if you want, although that won't speed up your progress. Next, Gold is also needed to attack and to retrain lost troops. The prices for both go up as you reach new EXP levels and upgrade your troops. For me this has never been a problem, just be careful when you are low on Gold - e.g. avoid this scenario: starting an Armory upgrade you can barely afford, then attacking to gain other resources for another upgrade, only to not have enough Gold to attack/retrain. There's two more things you can do with Gold: You can pay for Submarine Dives and convert it to Raw Crystals. Treat both of these as a way to get rid of extra Gold. The Submarine lets you convert Gold into other resources, Diamonds, Power Stones and Prototype Modules with a small chance to get a Classified Item. Upgrade your Submarine and go for deep dives with question marks, put don't prioritize it over more important things. TRIBES You discover these fairly early, but you can't use them for anything until much later. You can unlock two tribes at HQ 18 and the other four at HQ 20 (with max Radar). As soon as you unlock the first Tribe you also gain the ability to convert any of your 4 resources into Raw Cyrstals, which are used for Tribe Boosts. Use this to get rid of extra resources, but it's not worth spending resources you need for an upgrade. The exchange rate for each rescource gets worse every time you convert that resource, but it resets every two weeks. Raw Crystals can be used to upgrade Tribes and to buy Tribe boosts. Each Tribe can be upgraded to level 5, at which point you can buy its boost 5 times and won't lose out on resources when using its militia. The boosts also reset every two weeks. TRIBE BOOSTS These will be more or less relevant for you each time, but can make a huge difference. You might get more resources, or more Power Stones from attacking, more GBE or a cost reduction for a GBA, various boosts to a single troop (more damage, more health, higher speed, life leech,...), and damage or health boosts for certain defenses. I suggest you focus on maxing the Spiritdancer and Lifewell Tribes, then the two offensive ones, then the defensive ones. Get the boosts you want and can afford. TRIBE MILITIA - DESTROY BUTTON Once you unlock a Tribe you get the option to immediately destroy any NPC bases in the Tribe's area, and once a Tribe is fully upgraded, that option starts making sense. You get all the resources (including extra from RR statues or Tribe boosts), but don't have to waste time attacking it. If you choose to use PSC statues, you might want to attack them manually, anyway, because you can get slightly more Power Stones. And you might want to attack them if your pool of 200 extra VPs from NPC bases is not yet depleted - you don't get any of those from using the Destroy button. UPGRADING TURRETS Even when you play offensivly and neglect your defenses, there will be times when you have no other buildings to uprade, so you will have to build or upgrade turrets to gain EXP for your next HQ level. It's hard to say what the optimal strategy is at this point. You have two main choices. A) You upgrade whatever gives you the most EXP per time to progress as fast as possible- typically that will be lower level turrets. B) You upgrade (and max) the most useful turrets first. I'm not giving any recommendations here. I went with option B and maxed the following for my level, in that order: SLs (Shock Launchers), RLs (Rocket Launchers), BCs (Boom Cannons), CNs (Cannons). The priority order here depends on which troops you want to counter most. High level BCs seem to be a decent deterrent against some players, but that's just my impression. Remember, you will never be able to stop determined attackers, at any level. BASE LAYOUT Since I suggest you focus on offense, this won't matter for a long time. At any rate, the goal should not be to defend against attacks (that doesn't work) but rather to gain Diamonds and Intel when you get raided. Set up your defenses with that in mind. You will get raided, but you can try to cause enough casualties to get the rewards. Its hard to defend against every single troop combo with one layout - try to set up a base that can deal some damage to the most common ones, rather than being good against just one. Hide your mines! This will be next to useless against players that scout properly, but I find that most don't. You can hide mines behind a lot of things - some work better than others. Try Statues, the Iron Mine, high level turrets like STs (Sniper Towers), BCs, CNs, Stone Storages. Group normal mines together in groups of 3, so that Medics can't out-heal the damage dealt to low health troops. Place Shock Mines in the most likely path of Warrior rushes. Put some Boom Mines around the HQ. Think about - and observe - where your attackers will most likely use Barrage and avoid putting any mines in that area. Don't have trees in places where they turn transparent because there is a mine behind them. WEAPONS LAB - PROTOTYPE DEFENSES I won't say much about those, except that you should save your prototype modules rather than place proto defenses as soon as you can. They won't do much for you early on, and it will be nice to have enough modules stockpiled later on, allowing you to place more and better ones. By then you won't need my advice on how to use them. SPENDING MONEY This is a personal choice, it certainly isn't necessary. I don't think that it's ever worth buying Diamonds or the "special offers" you sometimes get, but I have been buying Instant Training for a while now, and that is worth it for me. It definately helps with the Crab. Extra builders let you progress faster; if you consistently get them, you might want to deploy an additional RR guardian. TF TFs (Taskforces) are one the best aspects of BB. Join one as soon as you can. TFs do OPs (Operations) together, attacking the same bases (not at the same time), with the damage done by one registered and saved for subsequent attacks. Just join one, you'll find out how it works. Each OP lasts 24 hours and you only have one attack per OP - try not to miss it! You should find a TF that fits your activity level, experience level and (to a lesser extend) HQ level. When you first join a TF as a low level player you might feel useless, but that doesn't have to be the case. You might be able to finish off a defenseless PC (Powercore), allowing other members to attack a hard target, or you might be able to take out some key defenses or mines. The troops you use in the main game might not be useful for OP attacks - don't bring Warriors. HZ/Hooka might be a good all-around choice, Tanks work in the lower and medium range of OPs and AZ (All Zookas) can be phenomenal, but without Smoke and lots of GBE that won't work too well for a lower level player. Learn from the others in your TF, and follow base notes and instructions in the chat. One thing that can make your attacks very effective, even at a low level, is Cpt. Everspark's Universal Remote, so try to get Sparky as soon as you can. You don't even have to upgrade Universal Remote, it works just fine on the first level, and lets you take out key defenses. MEGA CRAB This event happens every month, on the last weekend of the month. You get 40 attacks, and when you don't destroy a stage in one attack, the damage you caused is saved, just like in OPs, IT, or the War Factory. When you destroy a stage you gain one more attack. You can get a lot of resources from this event. If you want to go far, you will need high level troops and a good statue setup. You can only get a Legendary Trophy if you got a Diamond Trophy the year before. WARSHIPS This is a whole different game mode. I like it a lot by itself, others hate it. Getting to the Diamond tier isn't too hard, though and gives you 500 Diamonds, plus lots of other loot (in the season reward and over the course of it) for the main game. Here are some very basic tips: It takes some getting used to. Just remember that it's about being faster than your opponents - so focus on everything that makes your attacks not only successful but also fast. All Heavies, All Heavy Choppas, Flares, TD, TH, Bombardiers are things to look out for in every season, but there are nuances and every season is different. Set up your Warship not to defend against an attack, but to make it last as long as possible. Look at the tech tree, look ahead and ask yourself what you will absolutely need and what you will not need - choose wisely. Watch your opponent's attacks, and learn from their tactics and base layouts. Generally, try to get to the next ER (Engine Room) level quickly, rather than hanging out at one level for a long time. Many people seem to struggle with the Sky Shield proto defense - you can actually often flare something that seems protected; focus on the lower one of the two circles. There is much more to say, but this will have to do as beginner's tips. CLIMBING ON THE LEADERBOARD Once you are in a position to do this you are far beyond the need of these tips. You will need to reconsider your statue choices at a certain point (saving Ice statues in storage might come in handy). Also, I can't confirm this, but I heard that it's a good idea not to destroy the last stage of Dr. T events, as that is supposed to give you a slightly higher chance of getting a player base in an invasion. USEFUL ONLINE RESOURCES You already know this on (https://www.reddit.com/BoomBeach/), check these out, if you don't know them: https://www.reddit.com/boombeachrecruit/ https://boombeach.fandom.com/wiki/Boom_Beach_Wiki https://hoppernet.net/ There's also many YouTube videos and Channels worth looking at. Have fun playing Boom Beach!
A list of all the mods I love playing with in Battlefront 2 on PC!
PREFACE
To all gamers who joined us via the Epic Games free week, welcome to the Battlefront! If this is your first foray into the game you will find the in-game content fresh and entertaining for many weeks and possibly even months to come. However you can spice things up a lot by trying out some mods from the excellent modding scene this game has developed over 3 years! If you've been playing the game on PC for a while now but without any mods, hopefully my post gives you an idea of what you've been missing out on. Mods for Battlefront 2 include:
UI mods that improve quality of life
Gameplay mods that add or enhance the offline Instant Action modes
Cosmetic mods that add your most desired character skins for existing heroes, troopers and reinforcements
Cosmetic mods that add brand new heroes on top of existing heroes complete with voicelines
If you're new to modding BF2, in a nutshell the steps for installing and using mods are as follows:
Download and install Frosty Mod Manager (FMM) and give it permissions to Run as Administrator every time.
Start FMM and give the path to the BF2 exe file.
Download the mods you want from NexusMods and import them into FMM.
Apply the mods you want in the right panel.
The mods will be applied in the order specified in the right panel. If multiple mods modify the same file, the mod lower in the order will be the one whose changes will be in effect.
There is a non-zero risk associated with using mods in mutliplayer matches. The chances of anticheat picking up cosmetic, UI, sound and FX mods while playing online are extremely low but nevertheless they are there. Gameplay mods or stat/ability changing mods that the mod creators explicitly state never to use online have the highest risk of getting you banned and should only be used in offline game modes. I am not responsible for any mistakes you may make while using mods that could lead to you getting suspended or banned. That said, I have been using mods in BF2 for online play since mid 2019 and I have never been banned or suspended. If you're sensible about which mods you use and when, you will most likely never have a problem. This is a luxury very few games offer.
MY LIST OF MODS
I've listed my mods by the categories they belong to. Each mod's name is the NexusMods link is to the images of the mod to let you directly view the images of the mod as I figured it would be what people would be most interested to see at first. My favourite mods which I consider to be must-haves are marked with ⭐. For some of the mods I've written a few short words. Here we go!
User Interface Mods:
This is my personal favourite category as I cannot imagine playing BF2 without these mods. Most of them are developed by u/Szaby59 and are mainstays in my mod load order.
SmallerHUD ⭐- BF2 has many options to tweak the HUD but this mod takes it a step further. It has too many features to list here and it is the only mod on this list whose options can be configured via an in-game settings menu. It also fixes the game's text scaling to enable crisp text on the HUD on 1440p and above screens.
GameModeInfo and Improved Starcard Loadouts ⭐- Displays the map name and game mode name on the spawn screen and also enables DICE's unfinished star card loadout UI with some fixes.
Accurate Level Names ⭐- Displays the exact name of the map you are about to join in a multiplayer match instead of just the planet name that the base game displays.
Falcon Icon Restoration ⭐- Restores unique portrait icons for each Millennium Falcon. This is not on NexusMods but was shared on Discord by user CosmicDreams.
Tutorial Popup ⭐- Adds a confirmation popup dialog for starting the tutorial. Prevents you from accidentally starting the tutorial while quickly going through the menus. Share by user Cade on Discord.
XP Bars Removed - Removes the white XP bars from the Collection and Spawn menus.
Dusk Naboo - No Purple Tint⭐- Disables the color correction settings that are causing the "purple screen" effect while doing a combat roll on the Naboo CS map.
Clean HvV and Showdown Cinematics⭐- Disables the ugly and fake looking depth of field effect on the cinematic hero entry screens in Heroes vs Villains and Hero Showdown.
Zatmospheric Lighting⭐- Makes several post-processing changes on all maps in the game to make them look more pleasing or more accurate to the movies.
Instant Action Improvements ⭐- Easily the biggest, most ambitious and most impactful mod of BF2. This mod makes several enhancements to the Instant Action modes and this will single-handedly help this game stay relevant for offline play several years into the future. This mod is a massive collaboration effort among all the best modders in the community originally started by Mophead but now under the able hands of u/CadevsGaming. You must have seen the big things he has been teasing over the past few months on this subreddit such as Ahsoka as a new hero, offline HvV, new reinforcements and so on. Obviously this mod isn't multiplayer safe.
Jetpack Cargo ⭐- Jetpack Cargo was a game mode that DICE had active for a limited time in the past. This multiplayer safe mod adds a button on the home screen to allow you to join lobbies for this game mode! This is possible because DICE's servers still allow lobbies of this mode to be created.
New Heroes - Adds Rebel Iden and 3 heroes from BF2015 namely Dengar, Nien Nunb and Greedo. Not MP safe.
Cosmetic Mods:
Rogue One Stormtroopers⭐- Replaces the awkward looking stormtrooper models in the base game with amazing looking models from Rogue One. A must have for OT fans.
Improved Battle Droids⭐- Adds movie accurate droid models for the PT and several new droids such as the Magnaguard and Aqua Droid. Also has some cool looking droid appearances not necessarily from the movies. A must have for PT fans.
Soundtrack Replacement Suite ⭐- Extensive list of songs and music to replace frontend menu music, hero themes as well as match music. I find it really refreshing to change the front-end music every other week.
And that is my list of mods! It may not have some of the very popular mods out there but this is my personal list. Hopefully this helps those who are new to modding to discover some amazing mods. If you know a mod not on my list that you feel is worth sharing, please do so in the comments.
Am I the only one who doesn't care about graphics?
Hello everyone, I hope you are all doing well during this Covid-19 crisis and take care of all of your family and friends! I have been a gamer since my young childhood, and I love them since it is a good way to relax when I am stressed. I will always defend video games for the positive effects they can have on our minds.
Why I am writing this?
I have noticed something really severe: most people now care only about graphics. They want to know which is the most powerful between PS5 and XBOX Series X. And they will buy only games with beautiful graphics. I am playing newer and older games, and I feel like why people care about graphics. I have been playing Super Mario World and Super Metroid on the Switch's SNES Online, and it was more rewarding and satisfying than most nowadays games I have been playing. By seeing how the gaming community behaves, I believe it tends to focus only on graphics and nothing else. When I want to buy a game, I don't even care about the graphics, and I have the feeling I am the only one who focuses on gameplay, music, art style, etc. Am I the only one?
The Delusion about FPS/Graphics
At least 20 or 30 FPS is good. I understand if someone wants to play at 60 FPS, but this should not be mandatory in my opinion. And then who cares about 120 fps or 240 fps? Your eyes don't even see the difference. I know sometimes games need some precise input so my best compromise would be 30 FPS for offline and relax games, and 60 FPS for online games with tournaments for example. I don't understand when people tend to buy the best resources for their PC. Games don't need 8K and 240 fps to be enjoyable. But yeah, this is your money and you do whatever you want with it, I am not your mother ;).
The most powerful is NOT the winner
If you look at each "war" generation console, the most powerful console always failed. But remember that there were never console war. Only one during Nintendo and SEGA during the beginning of the 1990s. Sony VS Microsoft is nothing compared to what happened then.
NES and Master System were a bit equal and during this period we didn't care about the power of a console.
SNES won against Megadrive (Genesis). Sonic The Hedgehog for example was more beautiful and smooth than Super Mario World. You can even add the Neo-Geo which was really really expensive but wasn't successful. And even the PC-Engine (TurboGrafx-16) if you want to be exhaustive.
Playstation won against N64 and Atari Jaguar. Playstation is 32-bit and less powerful than N64 and Atari Jaguar that were 64-bit. It won most notably because of the usage of the CD that could store 1 GB instead of a cartridge that can't store more than 100 MB. N64 games are more beautiful than Playstation games but it lost. I don't even count Saturn, because it was a mess during the commercialization of this console. I think it was as powerful as the Playstation but correct me if I'm wrong.
PS2 won against XBOX, Gamecube, and Dreamcast. Dreamcast won at the beginning because it was the only 128-bit console, but when PS2 came, it led this whole generation, at the expense of the Dreamcast. Gamecube and XBOX were more powerful than the PS2, they "survived" because of their exclusivities.
Wii won against PS3 and XBOX 360. I think this one is the most relevant. If you were living during this period, you can totally relate to what I am saying. This was Gameplay (Wiimote) versus Graphics (transition to HD), and Gameplay largely won. The Wii was largely criticized for being just a copy of a Gamecube.
PS4 won against Wii U and XBOX One. PS4 was less powerful than XBOX One, and yeah I know the Wii U was less powerful than PS4. The failure of the Wii U was because of its marketing and how Nintendo sold it. They didn't make the same mistakes for the Switch. For the Switch, I don't know where I can put it since it was released in the middle of a generation. But anyway, XBOX One was the most powerful and didn't win.
For the handheld consoles, this will be really quick... Game&Watch won but no rivals. Then someone who will tell me the GameBoy didn't win against Game Gear and Atari Lynx... GameBoy was monochrome and ugly compared to them, but it won easily. GameBoy Advance didn't have any concurrent (there was Wonderswan or the N-Gage but do you know them?). DS easily won against the PSP, and again the DS was less powerful than the PSP. Same for the 3DS and PS Vita, don't tell me PS Vita won against 3DS.
Graphics is different than Art Style
Don't confuse graphics and art style. the Pokémon series, or Zelda: Breath of the Wild, has awful graphics but an awesome art style. The games have bad graphics, but the character design, the level design, the way everything is drawn is beautiful. However, we are not talking about art style here.
People who tell me Graphics are important
If you are going to tell me graphics are essential because when you play, you need to look at a fantastic landscape. A video game is something you play through. If you just sit and look at the landscape, I'm sorry but this is not a video game since you are not playing, this is just panorama. This is not playing, you just watch beautiful pictures. Photography is different than video games, even both are considered art. I would ask you what is a video game for you? For me, a video game is the gaming interaction between the human and the video of a machine. No questions about graphics. This is called a video game, and not video watching or anything like that. If you need to look at beautiful backgrounds, you can go on Google Images, and look for high-resolution pictures (Settings > Advanced Research).
Games with bad Graphics are Bad?
My favorite question to beat the people who only care about graphics is: Why retrogaming exists if graphics are so important? This is not nostalgia or anything like that, I am born during the Gamecube/PS2 era and I didn't even know how the 1980s or the 1990s were in terms of video games. (I wish I could have been here when Final Fantasy VII and Pokémon Red/Blue were released). And can you tell why Minecraft is the best selling game of all time?
Conclusion
To conclude, of course, I agree this is cool if you have good graphics, but people need to stop worship graphics and giving all of their attention to this instead of focusing on gameplay, music, etc. This should not be a criterion to define the quality of a game in my opinion. Can someone tell me this is just me who is a toxic hater, or if someone feels like me? Maybe I am just stupid so I would like that someone can correct the wrong things that I believe in. Thanks a lot for reading my very long message and have fun playing the wonderful video games we can have in 2021! Remember video games are the most prolific media, far ahead of the cinema or the books. TL;DR: Am I the only one who is noticing people only care about graphics? I want to know if I am just a toxic hater who doesn't understand what the gaming industry needs right now, or if I am on the contrary smart enough to understand video games are not based only on graphics.
We live in an era of simplifying games (and therefore often stripping them of their interesting features), greedy developers feeding on unfinished products, shady business practices (sometimes revolving around world politics) and general surfeit of available products. In order to find a significant and memorable gaming experience one must - more than once - turn his eyes toward things created not by the professionals, but Players themselves. Due to a non-commercial and purely hobbyist nature of such ventures, they often come around unnoticed and underappreciated. Among them is Ultima Online: Requiem. In order to fix the unforgivably small range that the project is known in (and to know it better myself), I’ve decided to interview the Requiem’s Team Leader, Sicarius. The idea behind it is very similar to my previous interview with Vanilla+’s Vladmir. Please note, that aside from the chat with Sicarius, I’m in no other way involved in the project’s development, neither have I received any form of payment or compensation, be it in game or in real life. - - - Voidwards: Hello again, Sic. Thanks for agreeing to do this interview. How about you introduce yourself and the rest of the Team?
Thanks for taking the time to do this for us, Void. As you’ve already said, I’m the lead developer and team lead for Requiem. I’ve been involved in the UO community since the original boxed release of Ultima Online: Renaissance way back in April of 2000. I’ve had the pleasure of being a part of the UO role-playing community since the early days, having cut my teeth originally on the OSI shards Lake Superior (shout out toCWSandUDL) and Siege Perilous, and eventually moving to the player-ran community circuit once the OSI roleplaying communities began to migrate away from official shards after OSI phased out theSeer program. After spending a good amount of time running around the community RP shards for a while with my group of friends and guildmates, a group of us took a crack at trying to develop our own shard and community that sought to cater to a different niche of roleplaying and atmosphere than what was commonly available out there at the time. Those early efforts snowballed and persisted through over fifteen years, and have ultimately led us to where we are today; the pending release of Requiem: Act VI. As for our development staff, our current team for this iteration of our project consists of six core members of whom each have a unique skill set that play to the collaborative nature of our project well. Starting with the members that have been with us the longest, my co-adminRexis a phenomenal self-taught programmer who works with me to conjure up our custom take on traditional UO elements, and is also our lead liaison for other development communities and projects. Our senior GamemasterAlthas been with us for longer than I can remember and is also our lead map developer and decorator, and is one of the most talented mappers I’ve had the pleasure of working with. Co-adminMaldonadohas been with us for years and leads our in-game development and balancing, and does a phenomenal job to help translate our programming efforts in developing spawns and NPCs into enjoyable and balanced in-game content. He also serves as a check-and-balance over the final revisions of developed content that Rex and I work on to ensure that it’s actually fun, intuitive and can be considered balanced enough to implement to the project.
Our newest members to our team includeArchin, who is our lead art asset developer and is a phenom when it comes to creating, developing and implementing custom assets and art to the project. Her addition to the staff has helped us take our project to an entirely new level for this latest iteration of the shard, and I’m truly excited to see the community be able to appreciate her work here soon. In addition to her direct development contributions, she has also elected to work on promotional video marketing, and also personally curates and performs quality assurance over in-game aesthetic content (for example, clothing, equipment and hair hues) to ensure things adhere to our level of aesthetic quality. She has essentially become our lead asset manager and we couldn’t be happier with her contributions during development. Along with Archin,Coty(https://www.cotypolk.com/) is also a new addition to our development team and is a very talented traditional and digital artist, of which we’re thrilled about having on the team. He has been able to take some of our conceptual ideas and put them to canvas, helping us develop new branding for the project as well as developing and implementing custom aesthetics and equipment for the game world. He has also proved to be an amazing conceptual developer and has personally spearheaded the development of a few of our new systems of this iteration of the project, and we’re very fortunate to have talent like his adding to the team of Requiem. In addition to our core development team, we also draw heavily from our community for assistance. We operate a community development team that we’ve invited dedicated veterans of our community to (shout out toBurzandCons!) that help us with development tasks, balancing and design workshopping. We’ve also have a group of community volunteers that help us out with the arduous and meticulous task of map development and decoration, and a few members whom contribute to the project with helping us out with our wiki, contributing lore, and even contributing music to use in-game (thanksLE!).
Not all of our Readers have experienced UO firsthand. Can you give us your description of the game, in general?
Ultima Online is one of the earliest MMOs and originally launched in 1997 to fairly decent popularity. I believe at its peak, it had around a quarter of a million paying subscribers. While that might sound a little low compared to the massive numbers games like World of Warcraft draw today, it’s touted as being the very first MMORPG to reach the 100,000 subscriber mark, and really blew a lot of the other early MMOs out of the water. In its prime, it was truly something special and new; one of the first real popular entries into a genre that was just starting to break ground with PC gamers. MMOs were so new back then that the idea of subscribing monthly to anything - let alone a video game - over the internet was still something that wasn’t at all mainstream.
What made Ultima Online fairly interesting for its time was that it launched as a true sandbox world; there hadn’t been many quests aside from escorting some Seekers of Adventurers around from town to town for a bit of gold, and any content outside of PvM was created by the players themselves. NPC vendors were limited, and the concepts of things such as reputation grinding for end-game loot simply weren’t ideas back then - to get good gear, you had to seek out players and their shops all over the map. Ultima’s aesthetic and game-engine choices had also lent itself to being something rather unique, even to this day, as the game engine is rendered in an isometric perspective just like early Infinity Engine RPGs, Diablo and Path of Exile, every piece of artwork in Ultima is hand-drawn, and even the animations themselves are illustrated frames of artwork as opposed to 3D models. While over the years many games have found more efficient ways of making games and handling equipment and models, UO’s art choices have kept it charming enough that it still ages well as opposed to early 3D games that suffered from simple models and low-res textures. When Origin originally designed UO, they seemed to have had a focus on semi-realism and immersion as guiding principles of their game design. For example, everything in the game world was represented as an item that could be placed on the ground, thrown away, stored in a chest or traded with another player - there were no generic “bag” models for some items the developers didn’t make art for. Building upon that idea, PvP was both meaningful and dangerous; if you lost a fight, odds were you lost everything you had on you, to include armor, weapons, gold, bandages and even the dining room furniture you might have been carrying back from the local vendor. For such an early entry into the genre of MMOs, the game design decisions had really captured a lot of people’s imaginations and interest, as they all culminated together to form something almost like a “middle-ages life” simulator.
The belief that I have that early UO was as much a sim as it was a MMO is further reinforced by the original creators work on UO’s character development systems - where most MMOs nowadays are class or role based, UO had around 50 seperate skills that were rated on a proficiency level from zero to one-hundred percent, which you raised mainly through use, such as hitting a monster with a sword to raise your Swordsmanship skill. You could have any combination of these skills, up to a 700% total cap, at any time. You could also raise and lower these skills whenever it suited you or your playstyle. You also had to raise your stats, Strength, Dexterity and Intelligence, through use and development of these skills. There were no levels or experience points, just you with a sword or a fishing pole trying to raise your skills up. Throw in a few craft skills which gave players the ability to not only craft traditional MMO gear such as weapons and armor, but also more “RP” items like furniture, clothing, musical instruments and food that existed almost solely for decorative purposes, and you were left with an truly unique and compelling game experience that wasn’t like anything else that had ever been on the market at the time. For many of us that cut our teeth with UO, it was an experience that has yet to have ever been recreated faithfully in games that have come after it, and that’s probably why the game’s emulation scene is still active to this very day.
Aren't you afraid that the original game's age could discourage some of your audience? How does such an aged production translate into modern trends and our understanding of game development in 2021?
I think a lot of the early design decisions that went into the initial creation of Ultima Online have helped keep it relevant as a medium for what we on the team of Requiem try to do best; the support of enforced roleplaying. The isometric perspective, the art decisions, the free-form gameplay and sandbox elements of the base-game all come together to make a really strong foundation for a project like ours. Where we can truly achieve modernization and keeping the game relevant is through taking advantage of the community that exists to support and further player-ran UO development. Combining the game’s base foundation with the larger community efforts of private server emulation (such as RunUO and ServUO) along with the excellent work of the ClassicUO client emulation scene (a project that has modernized and expanded UO’s client with new quality of life features for a modern era), we’re able to update and expand upon a twenty year-old game with modern game design decisions and features. We’re not just limited to editing a game through config files and settings when developing our project; we’re actually able to use UO as more of a game engine to house any and every idea our development team can conceptualize and create. Using C# and modern art and asset development tools, we’ve been able to develop and implement new skills, completely custom mechanics, new art assets to include UI updates, new animations, and even custom sounds and music. Only our imagination (and time!) is the limit, and we’ve really taken advantage of this fact with Requiem.
Ultima Online in of itself is also a title that has still remained operational as a live product for more than twenty years now too. It has seen numerous updates, expansions, upgrades and content additions. Our entire development team are also avid MMO fans and have collectively played together in modern numerous titles, ranging from mainstream games such as WoW, all the way to more niche projects such as Life is Feudal. All in all, while the spirit of UO is very old soul so to say, it is not a direct transplant from the late 90s, and neither is the development team working on this project.
All right, but what’s the main concept of Requiem? How does it differ from the “default” Ultima Online?
“Default” Ultima Online is in itself a sandbox MMO in which players are expected to seek out and create their own content, be it anything from harvesting and crafting, fighting monsters and exploring the map, or waylaying unexpecting travelers and striking them down for their belongings. In the early heyday of UO, the idea of structured quests, reputation farming or even raids did not exist. MMOs have come a long way since the early days of UO, and while Requiem owes its DNA to UO, we have tried to lean more heavily into modern game design philosophies than those of the late 90s.
As for the concept of Requiem, I’d say that is two-fold. First, Requiem is a project based around the ideas of providing to the community an enforced role-playing environment in which every element of the project, from it’s aesthetics to it’s mechanics, are designed in mind for such an activity. We have sought to establish a community in which we’re not just modding Ultima Online, but creating our own take on it, imagining if it had followed a path that focused upon intricate, pen and paper inspired character development and an enforced role-playing environment. A very small example of this design philosophy that comes to mind immediately are our player profiles. In traditional Ultima Online, role-players were given a small profile window to tell a little about their character, be it their immediate appearance or their back story. On Requiem, this is taken to a much more intricate level of detail; we provide to our players the means to write and save profiles of their characters and to choose graphical avatars that represent their facial features. You can then use a simple command or menu option to look at any player-character in the game and get a window that shows to you the basic bodily attributes the player’s character chose for their persona, such as height and weight, along with their description and character Avatar artwork. While such a feature might sound like a minor thing at first glance, we’ve found that these small quality of life additions help promote and propagate role-playing in our community, and leads to more immersion and more fun.
The second half of Requiem’s overall concept is its story, which has been running more or less for the better part of fifteen years. Where default Ultima Online really didn’t have that much of an overall story outside of founding lore and plot, Requiem is far different. In order for us to have an enforced role-playing environment, players have to know what sort of world their characters are a part of. For Requiem, that world is one that is heavily inspired by a low to medium fantasy concept that draws upon the spirit of Lovecraftian horror, the genre of Grimdark fantasy, and the horror elements of IPs like Diablo. While a lot of people instantly think of knights in shining armor, lithe and beautiful elves, Arthorian legends and the round table, and epic battles against building-sized dragons when they think of medieval enforced roleplaying, Requiem is quite a different beast. The world at large, Eden, is about thirty years into what many believe is the Apocalypse, and large swaths of the Venerated Republic of Decus, the story’s main setting, are consumed by mindless hordes of the undead. Knights and elves are replaced with Templar and Inquisitors scouring the lands for enemies of the Church and Faith, and building-sizes dragons have been traded our for sentient mounds of viscera, hordes of shambling zombies, and daemonic cambions whom stalk the countryside, stalking and hunting unsuspecting adventurers for sport.
You have mentioned – be it on Discord or in the forum posts – that most of your playerbase are grown people with professional and personal responsibilities leading to a very limited amount of time available for playing. How does it relate to the fact that it’s an enforced RP server, full of player-led factions, Game Master-driven, Player-supported events and the world is really living, even when the Player’s offline? Shouldn’t we be afraid of falling behind: both mechanically and story-wise?
This is a great question, and we’ve put a lot of thought into how to support a community that can feel accessible and fair to a spectrum of players, ranging from those who can devote a lot of time in-game and to those that can't. First and foremost, from a mechanical standpoint, our philosophy and game design concerning how a player develops their character is influenced heavily by the concept that if they have become a part of our community, they are by nature a part of our story. Thus, characters have lives of their own that are independent from the physical time their players may be able to devote to them. It can be very discouraging as a player to know that you only have two or three hours to jump in the game and have some fun knowing that you're hundreds of hours behind your peers in terms of mechanical character development. What we have done with our core mechanics on Requiem to help alleviate these issues is the creation of a parallel character development system that exists in tandem with our more traditional mechanics. Known as our Animus system, characters in our game world earn a passive stipend of experience that can be spent to invest in nearly anything related to the development and progression of your character. This includes skill points, stat points, and even special skill abilities. Acquisition of this experience happens every hour, and it’s given a generous bonus depending on a few different factors to include how many other players are online at the time, and more importantly, a bonus if your character is within a local hot-spot that is used for role-playing, such as a tavern or a safe town. What this does is allow for players to spend their time as they see fit - even if you only have an hour or two to log in for the night, if you’d rather spend it just role-playing and catching up on the latest rumors, you won’t be completely neglecting the progression of your character while you do so. This system is extended to offline characters as well, for a period of up to two weeks, so if you have a busy week and can’t make it in-game until the weekend, you still have some built up Animus waiting for you to spend on raising a skill or purchasing some skill abilities. We think that with the incorporation of these two development ideas, our players are able to still make forward progression with their characters regardless of how much time they may be able to devote to being in-game in a given day or week.
The Animus system is also intertwined with everything else in-game that you can do, such as crafting, harvesting, exploration, and even hunting and slaying monsters and animals. Perhaps your ideal character is a legendary blacksmith that sits around town honing his trade in the public craft hall, considering that you don't have the time to go out and explore every inch of the map and claim dominion over every foe you come across. In many other games and UO shards, pure progression through harvesting and crafting would be very hard - in Requiem, it’s easily achievable through our Animus system. You can even use all of that experience your blacksmith has been earning to raise other skills, such as Swordsmanship, allowing you to role-play the idea that in his free time, your character has been taking lessons from a local expert or some such idea. What this does is allow our players to progress in a way that feels comfortable to them. Of course, natural progression through skill gain is still a thing too - and for those players that have a ton of time to devote to playing, the Animus system starts to have diminishing returns within a twenty-four hour period, as to keep things fair for all.
Falling behind with the story-line is a whole different problem, one in which we’ve also taken proactive steps to try and prepare for. First, any major storyline quest or event that our staff holds is held to a standard of requiring at least a week or two lead-time and out-of-character notification to the player base so people can plan accordingly - this gives everyone a chance to try and make it to our big events. Second, we have incorporated a means for our Faction leaders to be able to plan and advertise their own in-game events through in-client tools that allow the rest of the playerbase know when something might be going on or is planned. This allows our players to facilitate communication between themselves in regards to organizing and planning events big or small. Lastly, we have numerous mediums that we use to communicate to the shard what is going on with the story - this includes in-game newspapers, forum update threads, and most importantly our Living Story concept, which is a narratively written novella that we develop and publish to our website that explains our main plot and what the players have done to influence and affect the outcomes of our own internal and confidential plans for the story. This part is especially fun for us on staff, as we’ve a lot of ideas for where we want to go with the story, and depending on what the players do and accomplish in-game, those plans can go right out the window.
The 20 best offline RPGs for PC! 2021. Shadowrun: Hong Kong is a game inspired by table RPGs, with strong elements of fantasy and magic, but with a visual and also a cyberpunk footprint. It also reminds you of strategy games like XCOM, because you must decide the best approach to keep advancing in the game. Asphalt is one of the best racing games for PC in 2020 that you can play offline with your Windows device. In this runner game, players will be given a chance to handle top supercars like Porsche and Ferrari by winning the car mastery challenges. Both single-player and multiplayer modes are available in the game. Definitely one of the best offline games for PC Windows 10 free download. Crusader Kings II - Launch Trailer In the base version, you get to play as one of the Christian rulers and expand your territory either via conquest or inheritance, increasing the glory of your dynasty in the process. Which is the best offline game in the world? The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is a popular offline game. For more options to pick from, check out this list of the best PC offline games. Is Asphalt 9 offline? Plants vs. zombies is the best boredom buster because it offers you an incredible interface with so many exciting levels that you have to accomplish. Plants vs. zombies is one of the best offline games for pc because it provides a smooth gaming experience. From the graphics to the sound effects, everything is up-to-date. Portal 2. The 25 best offline PC games. An extremely original puzzle that, without a doubt, is among the best offline games for PC. Portal 2 equips you with a portal weapon that you need to use to solve different puzzles and thus pass each level. Asphalt 8: Airborne, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, and FlightGear are probably your best bets out of the 23 options considered. "Beautiful graphics" is the primary reason people pick Asphalt 8: Airborne over the competition. This page is powered by a knowledgeable community that helps you make an informed decision. Our list of best free strategy games for PC will surely satisfy you. 1. World of Warships World of Warships is an amazing MMO game you must try. Platforms: Microsoft Windows, macOS, iOS, Android, PlayStation 4, Xbox One; Genres: MMO, TPS; Mode: Multiplayer; In World of Warships, players are invited to become commanders of their very own warship and amass a great naval fleet of 200+ recreated ... The 15 Best Offline PC Games To Play Right Now. Online multiplayer just works better on PC. But you can still find tons of amazing offline titles to choose from. Best Offline Games for PC. Those late-night multiplayer sessions can be really fun sometimes. Surely, everything is better with friends, they say and you’ll agree with that at some point. However, after a long day of work and studying, I like to relax with offline games. Sometimes, it’s satisfying to let yourself indulge in a great single-player story and forget about any problems ...
Top 25 Best Single Player PC Games of 2015 - 2018 - YouTube
5 best single player survival games PC. 5 best pc survival single player games. Best survival games pc. Survival open world pc.Buy Digital Games at low price... Ranking the highest-rated PC singeplayer videogames. These are the highest rated modern singleplayer games from 2015 to 2018 Support this channel by getting ... I DON'T OWN THE CLIP/GAMEPLAY. THE ORIGINAL GAMEPLAY ARE FROM HERE:1)Battlefield bad company 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkzZoMiPS_M&t=140s2)payday... IsItThatGame™ presents Top 10 Offline Racing Games for android and ios 2019!These are some of the best high graphics games which you can download today and p... Here’s our ranking of the best free-to-play titles on the PC so far. It’s a collection of the top MMOs, RPGs, and team shooters. You may get these games by c... Hello Peeps, #Inspector here🕵This is the Top5 Offroad games for PC. Media Inspector Support Gamers with Discounts up to 90%🌑Instant Gaming https://www.inst... Your home for the best game with videoTop 10 Best Multiplayer Games For PC, video brought to you by Anagas Top Game Console: http://bit.ly/2MRyEdv All Play... Prepare for your cut-ometer to go off the chart. It’s time for the most adorable games of all time to hit you in the eyeballs. Here are the 10 cutest games o... 18 Best Free Racing Games for PC Best Free to Play Car Racing Games for PC Video by Game_track Hi and Welcome back to Game_track. This video shows some of ...
![Interview with Ultima Online: Requiem's Team Leader (fan-made) [Part 1 of 2]](https://b.thumbs.redditmedia.com/oNxaYgzadg4rOuM8YruYDIcj3QX-zX0QcGvEZ45q8hg.jpg "Interview with Ultima Online: Requiem's Team Leader (fan-made) [Part 1 of 2]")
