Thursday, May 09, 2024

Water World Online!?

Age of Water logo
 

 If you're anything like me, you have an inexplicable love for the 1995 cult classic Waterworld. There's just something about that post-apocalyptic, ocean-bound setting that captures the imagination. Well, get ready, because a new game called Age of Water is bringing that dream to life in the form of an open-world survival crafter! Big shoutout to the folks at MMO Bomb for putting this gem on my radar.

 First; a video teaser and then more about the game down below the video.


A Drowned World Ripe for Exploration


In Age of Water, our planet has been almost entirely submerged by rising sea levels, leaving only the tallest mountain peaks as scattered islands. You'll step into the shoes (or should I say deck boots?) of a survivor, sailing the endless open waters on your very own customizable ship. I'm talking full-on ship customization - outfit that bad boy with cannons, reinforced hulls, fancy sails, you name it.

The best part? The entire game world is one seamless ocean experience with no loading screens as you sail from area to area. Just uninterrupted, glorious naval exploration and combat. Speaking of combat...

All-Out High Seas Warfare


Get ready to channel your inner pirate captain and engage in intense naval battles against other players or hostile AI forces. Proper ship positioning, crew management, and a keen aim with those cannons will be crucial. I can't wait to join or create my own pirate crew, upgrade our armaments to the nines, and become the undisputed rulers of the high seas!

A True Survival Experience


But it's not just about the combat. Age of Water promises a gritty post-apocalyptic survival experience. Resources will be scarce, so scavenging, crafting, and trading will be essential. I'm looking forward to scouring the remnants of the old world, establishing trade routes with fellow players, and maybe even building up settlements on those scattered island refuges.

Managing my crew's food, water, and morale while braving the harsh elements? Sign me up! The struggle for survival in this drowned world has me hooked already.

What's Next on the Horizon?


Now, Age of Water is currently in early access, but the developers have an ambitious roadmap planned with regular content updates and new features on the way. As it stands, you can already experience the core sailing, combat, and survival gameplay, but there are bound to be new mechanics, storylines, and maybe even clues about what caused this global flooding event.

Who knows, we might even get a chance to start reclaiming the land from the relentless waters eventually! The possibilities have me giddy with excitement.

All Aboard for High Seas Adventures


If you've been craving a truly immersive, open-world naval experience with survival elements and the thrill of ship-to-ship combat, Age of Water should definitely be on your radar. I know I'll be setting sail and carving my own legend into the depths. Who's with me? Let's ride the tide and uncover the secrets of this drowned civilization!

Wednesday, May 08, 2024

Bigger Badder Battlefield... but will it be Better?

battlefield
 

 News is out that Battlefield is doing what I always proposed that they do: create a Battlefield live service game that is meant to continue in perpetuity instead of a new game every couple of years.  Singleplayer is also intended to be part of the focus and not just multiplayer. From the article:

Sounds like the series’ steps into being a live service game will continue apace, then - though the implication of a “connected” single-player offering raises more than a few questions after the shuttering of Ridgeline and heavy multiplayer focus of the last few games, especially as Wilson insisted “compelling storytelling” is part of the formula.

 Apparently it's shaping up well according to the boss man over at EA

"A few weeks ago, I was visiting with the teams and I couldn't be more excited about what they showed and what we were able to play,” Wilson said.

 Of course no dates or further details have been provided.

 The real question though is going to be "will it be better?".  Battlefield (and for that matter Battlefront aka Star Wars Battlefield) have had a rough go over their most recent iterations.  Battlefield 2042, even though I rank it on my top 5 BF games, did not hit the mark out of the gate.  Battlefront 2, even though it changed course, was hated by the community for it's shenanigans.

 I am personally optimistic that a new live service focused Battlefield is the right direction for the franchise instead of chasing the Call of Duty model of a new game every year or two.  Throw in some singleplayer that weaves its way in and out of the service and even better.  But please, please make a good game first.

Tuesday, May 07, 2024

Checking Boxes In New World

 I have 3,000+ hours played in New World.  You may assume I've done and seen everything there is to do in the game, but you'd be wrong.  I have some low hanging fruit that I've not checked off the list and I decided now is the time  to start working on them.

 The first fruit hanging in front of my face was leveling all weapon skills to weapon level 20.  Flail, lifestaff, and void gauntlet were the three weapons I had not yet leveled.  So I grabbed one of each and popped one of my 22 extra "weapon XP boosts" and headed out to Brightwood Isle.

 Why Brightwood Isle?  Because it is a level 30-35 elite zone and if you are max level it is the prime spot for weapon experience.  A few hits per elite enemy results in 100-150 experience.  This makes quick work of the weapon levels.  Note: if you are not max level weapon XP is lower so wait until end game to level weapons as a dedicated activity; while leveling just play what you enjoy.

A screenshot from the MMORPG New World showing all weapons leveled up to 20
Level 20 across the board!
 

 Next on the agenda was getting some of my favorite heartrunes upgraded to 700 GS (gearscore).  With Rise of the Angry Earth expansion New World brought upgrades from 625 to 700 to the heartrunes, but the buff is minor so wasn't an item to go out and chase immediately.  But with hundreds of thousands of gold in my pocket and supplies overflowing my storage it was time to get a few to 700.  

 The first up was my Stalwart Heartrune of Stoneform which is now 700 GS!  Now I need to sort through inventory to figure out which ones to do next but stoneform is the primary one I use across my current rotation of builds.  Detonate is probably the next logical one to upgrade.

A screenshot of a 700 GS heartrune in New World
700 GS
Stalwart Heartrune of Stoneform

 Next I wanted to set up a couple new builds and those builds were best suited by Frigid Dawn armor pieces.  I already have a full set of Frigid Dawn for my tank and PvP sets, but it is so good I need it for more!  Fortunately Glacial Tarn was on the mutation rotation so I hit the queue button in the new cross-server group finder.  Since I play tank the groups were fast to form and after a dozen or so runs I have all the new Frigid Dawn pieces I need for my Flail and Sword/Shield build!

 Another set of boxes to check was completing some artifact upgrades.  This requires some adventuring and completing various activities as well as letting some of my gold supplies go to buy upgrade materials.  I was able to upgrade Nature's Wrath (medium chest), The Butcher (sword), Odo (flail), Serenity (greatsword), and am almost done with Blooddrinker (ring).  Here is what I put on each for the final perk slot:

  • Nature's Wrath - health.  I am using this in a few builds and health was the most universal.  If I was just using it for light Firestaff builds I'd have put Flame Harnessing on it for the + fire damage.
  • The Butcher - Adding a Gem Slot made the most sense here so I can add a gem for the situation I want to use The Butcher in.
  • Odo - Burdening Smite is the best perk here for my PvP flail build I am working on.
  • Serenity - Adding a Gem Slot made the most sense here.
  • Blooddrinker - TBD; not sure what I'd put on it when I finish it.

 The best part of all these artifact upgrades is it freed up quest slots to start more artifacts (you can only have 10 started at one time). 

 Speaking of artifacts I still do not have The Wall so that is on my list next time The Ennead is on mutation rotation.  Note: 43 mutation runs previously without it dropping so hoping the pity mechanic kicks in this next time!

Monday, May 06, 2024

Monday Screenshots: New World New Look

 This time on Monday screenshots... my new look at in New World!

A screenshot of the MMORPG New World and a character standing with their new armor and weapon skins
A glass firestaff!?

A screenshot of the MMORPG New World and a character standing with their new armor and weapon skins
A cleverly disguised tower shield.


Thursday, May 02, 2024

Today

 Remember when I said yesterday I'd get back on track with blogging daily?  Then work happened today.

Everything is fine.


Wednesday, May 01, 2024

April 2024 In Review

 Taking some inspiration from The Ancient Gaming Noob (TAGN for short) I wanted to start up month-in-review posts.

An AI generated image from prompt an image to represent a blog post summarizing the month of april
Microsoft Designer / prompt "an image to represent a blog post summarizing the month of april"

The Blog

 I will likely write a bigger post about this but I had a "surprise" after researching recent random traffic spikes.  The findings are best explained in this summary which guided me through blocking spammers that are abusing Google Analytics GA4 tags.  Needless to say my bubble was deflated as 90% of the traffic to my blog has just been spam and not real traffic (which explains why I see so few comments).  So where I was thinking I had 1,000 visits a day I really just have 100 (and that may still be high).  

 Anyone using Google Analytics should read that article and take the actions to block the spammers and build reports to review your historical traffic without that traffic counted.  I did parts of this through April so won't have a full picture quite yet and will share more on traffic stats in future monthly updates.

 In other metrics:

  • Posts:
    • Target: 22 (at least one per week day)
    • Posted: 16
    • Difference: -6
      • Why the miss?  Work.  It's been busy so spare time has been gaming instead of blogging.  Fortunately clearing up here for May to get back on track.
  •  Search Trends
    • "new world ultimate trophy" is the main search driver to the blog and then hundreds of other New World search terms after that (daily checklist, season 5 artifacts, upgrade named gear - just to name a few)
    • "call of the wild the angler multiplayer" is the big non-New World driver anytime that game seems to have a hiccup with this multiplayer features.

What I Played

 New World continues to dominate my time even though there isn't much new to do in the game.  My main focus has been on 3v3 arenas and the Springtide Bloom event.  The spring event, while bugged, was a good "do it and chill".  The bug let you get rewards faster so I was able to get all skins and rewards from the event with less effort than expected.   For 3v3 arenas I peaked into the top 10 for wins briefly for Season 5 and am back to 12th.  My main playing partner hit #1 though so that was cool to see; though both of us lack the time to stay on the top for the full season.  We'll still give it a go though.

 Fallout fever caught me as it has so many others and I gave Fallout 3 a couple hours of attention, but will admit it fell off almost immediately in favor of New World.

 I also got time with the Pax Dei Wilderness Alpha and spent several hours there.  The game has a good bit to improve but there is a little glimpse of promise of game there.

Years Ago

 One thing I wanted to steal from TAGNs is his look back over the last twenty years (we're getting old!).  My look back will mostly be from my blog history but a real life event may pop in here or there.

1 Year Ago

 April 2023 brought us Season 1 in New World and Rabbits Revenge (which due to patch delays we did NOT get in 2024).

5 Years Ago

 April 2019 caught me in my drought of blogging so had no posts, but my youngest son was also just turning 3 months old at the time so I was plenty busy.

10 Years Ago

 April of 2014 was all about the MEGASERVERS coming to Guild Wars 2.  Ten years later and we still have MMOs thinking they can launch with single servers.  How I wish New World had a megaserver model!

15 Years Ago

  April of 2009 I was looking at the news about A Dance With Dragons being delayed and fifteen years later, while we did get Dance, we have NOT gotten the next book in the series!  But GRRM is not my bitch so I'll leave it at that (if you get this comment you get it).

 20 19 Years Ago

 Technically I have 20 named years on my sidebar, but mathematically 2005 is only 19 years ago.  And April of 2005 I was not yet blogging, but that was all about to change as I started in May 2005!  Which means I was thinking about it in April!

Tuesday, April 30, 2024

Pax Dei: Wilderness Alpha Feedback

 The Pax Dei Wilderness Alpha has come and gone and I put a few hours in so have feedback to share.

Welcome to Pax Dei!

 First, the world feels immense in scale and that is apparent from the moment you start out picking where you are going to put down roots in the world.  The size of the world is reinforced as you begin running around looking for resources and realizing hours later you still haven't left your own starting zone let alone reached any of the many other zones on your server.  

My starting zone; one of many, many zones.

 The next reality that hits is that you can claim any piece of this world (at least the zones I was playing in) as your own and begin building a home.  Pax Dei is a survival crafting game where you carve your spot out in the world.  Err well maybe not so much a survival game but definitely crafting and building your place in the world.

 I did find it confusing what my purpose was in the game.  Was I meant to just plunk down a claim and build a house? Or was I building towards producing armor and weapons to go on an adventure?  The game leaves this open ended which may be fine for some players but personally I found it unappealing.  I felt like the game should have nudged me in some sort of direction.

 There was no tutorial so I had to spend some time on Discord asking how to get started.  Part of the issue was that when I started the beginning materials were not abundantly available in my area.  It seemed like that may have been a bug because they were more easily located later in the test.  A tutorial that assures resources to get started would be ideal for launch.

 Once I had starting materials I was off and crafting.  The game was on par with any other crafting survival game except there is not a pressing survival component (i.e. I didn't starve to death immediately).  I built a campfire.  I built a starting workbench.  I built the next thing and the next thing and...

 ...then I hit a wall.  The crafting progression has some bumps.  As I mentioned early on in the test some of the starting materials were tough to find.  My first day I couldn't find clay so I couldn't make a kiln and thus everything past that was blocked.  Later in the test I encountered recipes for starting crafting stations that had steep material requirements and little help guiding me to where to get them. I think the progression can be smoothed out with a pass on what recipes require what materials so they fall in more logical order.

Eventually I was able to get a kiln.  Don't ask where my clothes went.

 Gathering was also bumpy.  Again there was clear issues early on where some resources didn't seem to be available or weren't re-spawning (at least that's my guess).   However, part of the issue is the game seems to have a "node" system so there were times where I was surrounded by rock but I couldn't actually gather any of that rock for recipes that needed rock.  I got used to games in this genre, like Enshrouded, where you can just go bash a rock pile to get rocks.

Rocks, rocks, everywhere but I can't gather any of them.

 One thing that I had hoped would happen naturally was that if I hit a bump in progression that I could rely on a neighbor who maybe had made further progress but I found it very difficult to interact with players in the game.  In fact I don't think I once was able to communicate or interact with anyone even though we ran past each other numerous times.  I had to jump out to the Discord server and even then couldn't find folks in my area and I wasn't up to run long distances to get to them.  The game needs to make it simpler to find and interact with other players.

 Crafting in the game features both station crafting where I stood at a station and crafted as well as factory crafting where a station took inputs and some time later provided an output.  When crafting there is a chance of success or failure that improves as skills improve.  Personally I didn't like this as there was only a "down side" (i.e. failing the craft) and no "up side" where if you got lucky you got a bonus or some masterwork version of something.  

 Also each individual item has to be crafted by itself and the success/failure bar has to fill up for each.  Unfortunately this meant a lot of time just watching the bar go up and not a lot of time playing. Add in the progression of recipes and a massive quantity of inputs required and players in the alpha found themselves spending hours just standing at stations doing nothing.  I would recommend they get rid of the success/failure mechanic and just make bulk crafting instant.  Don't waste players time.  It is fine to have "factory" stations that are time gated  but once I have materials just let me craft with one click.

 As I continued to play I made progress and eventually equipped myself with a weapon and shield.  This brought me into combat.  My first encounter was with a bear which ended with me dead.  I opted to pick on a boar next which... also ended in my death.  Each death meant a run back to get my corpse to get my items back.  Corpse runs are fine I suppose.

 Boar or bear there is risk to fighting with the basic weapons and part of the problem is combat is... how should I say this... bad.  It is just bad.  As it was an alpha I feel like I owe more words in feedback so I'll try to give some here but don't let these words lead you to believe there is anything to this combat system.  It is really, really bad even for an alpha (note: they have also said this is the combat system they expect to have for early access).

 The first issue with combat is there isn't anything to it.  You left click to attack.  That is about it.  Combat feels floaty and your actions lack weight which is odd because combat is terribly slow.  Animations are... not good... making it hard to connect with what is visually happening to what inputs you are providing.  Add in desync situations with the client/server connection and it's a poor experience.  I can't see myself playing a game with a combat system this poor.  New World combat has spoiled me.

 Visually the game offers stunning views, but I found the details to be less impressive once you were up close.  The mountains are stunning at a distance but generic up close with no character.  The world is clearly procedural generated for the most part and thus lacks any points of interest unless you walk for long distances to somewhere hand crafted.  I suspect player buildings will make it more interesting once the game is live but player buildings currently don't offer much of interest aside from "oh cool" or "not sure what they were building" moments.

 For an alpha test the game offered a lot of pieces and I really liked day one where a little neighborhood started popping up.  Crafting and building are in a good spot and can get better with more reviews of progression and recipes so they are more logical.  Seeing other players share their builds there is a lot of potential out there in seeing the world come alive.  If the game can then add in some better reasons to seek out and work with other players it will hit a sweet spot for some gamers.  However, combat 100% needs a do-over. If they cannot massively improve combat this game is going to miss for many players. The crafting/building is NOT better than other games in the genre and the only advantage Pax Dei has is it's massively multiplayer with the promise of thousands of players building in the same world together.  If they an figure out combat and interesting content to go with it this game will be a winner.

Some more screenshots:

Swim two feet, die.

Amazing views.

Again, don't ask about the clothes.  No, I didn't finish my house.


Monday, April 29, 2024

Monday Screenshots 4/29/2024: New World

 Some Monday Screenshots for you; this time from New World!


A screenshot of the arena leaderboards from the game New World
My good friend Indestructible, on Valhalla server, reached #1 on the arena leaderboard.  I am in 12th.

A screenshot of playing music in New World
Playing some music inbetween picking flowers during Springtide Bloom


Sunday, April 28, 2024

Farm Game Fest!?

farm fest steam

 Steam is holding a Farming Fest event starting tomorrow.  Get your farm game on!  As I just got most of my garden planted out this past weekend I'll be on the lookout for a farm a chill game.


Monday, April 22, 2024

Steam Backlog: Fallout 3 (and a fix for crashing when you click New Game)

 This post is part of my running series: My Steam Backlog (see all MySteamBacklog tagged posts).

 I jumped back into Fallout 3!

A screenshot of Fallout 3 pip boy
Oh how I've missed you Pip-Boy!
 

 First; I kept crashing when starting a new game in Fallout 3 and a little searching directed me to needing a DirectX9 file.  Once downloaded and placed in the right folder I was off starting a new game.

 One thing I realized off the start was that Fallout 3 does not use cloud saves of any sort so all of my past adventures are long gone.  I had to start back out at the beginning which is literally as a baby coming out of my mother.  Then I explored the vault as a toddler > teenager > young adult before finally heading out into the wasteland.

 Once out into the world I had to admit myself the game graphics feel dated.  It is amazing to me how games that looked "amazing" 10+ years ago just don't hold up anymore.  That is both a good and bad thing I suppose.  Good that we've seen such amazing progress in graphics but bad in that I don't get the same sort of nostalgia hit from a Fallout 3 as I do from a stylized graphical game like a Super Nintendo RPG.

 I made my way to the first town in the game which is named after the nuclear bomb at it's center: Megaton.  This is where my journey ended for now as I have to contemplate how I want to solve this particular puzzle :)  Anyone that has played the game knows what decision happens here.

A screenshot of the children's book used to set starting stats in Fallout 3
The clever way that Fallout 3 has you set your starting stats via a children's book... while you are playing as a toddler.