I've been enjoying Season 4 of Battlefield 2042. The game is in a really good spot. I wanted to take a break from my normal "support" role and play the more aggressive play style with the Assault class and specialists. I've become a big fan of Zain and landed some great matches; either topping the scoreboard or landing in the top squads.
While I am more "aggressive" playing assault I am still "support" in my non-existent heart so I spend a lot of time watching flanks for the team. It is surprising how many kills you can get when you learn the spots where better players flank and just wait for them. They never expect someone to be waiting for them and I have been able to wipe entire squads.
Ghostcrawler, of World of Warcraft fame, was seen as one of the few lead voices in the MMORPG space. Similar to the "Yoshi P" of Final Fantasy 14 or Steven Sharif of Ashes of Creation: single people that the community puts on a pedestal above all other developers.
Also Ghostcrawler leading a new MMORPG project for a company that has the resources that Riot Games has was a promising combination. League of Legends (Riot's flagship) is massive and building an MMO from it's already established world is promising. Ghostcrawler was icing on the top of the cake. He made us all feel better about this massive undertaking and it being done right.
It will be sad to see him gone from Riot and will no doubt cast more doubt on the legitimacy of Riot's MMORPG. The game was confirmed as in development but never promised it would make it to the finish line. Ghostcrawler being gone is a strike against it.
Ashes of Creation's monthly update focused on the user interface (UI) and it featured screenshots! I used an exclamation point so I must be excited. Right? You may want to read on.
I know, I know! Ashes of Creation is a work in progress so if I don't want to follow a game in development then I shouldn't follow it. I shouldn't be here complaining about it either but if you know me then you know I can't help myself.
The reason I choose to dig into Ashes of Creation is twofold. One: it is the promised one; the savior of this MMORPG genre that I love so dearly. Two: it has no issue taking money from people all while saying it doesn't need our money. If a game developer can take the time to sell calendars for an unreleased game then it can stand up to some criticism about taking its damn sweet time to release a game.
Ashes is under a glacially slow pace of development. Years (yes, years) ago you could buy the "indie studio" but Interpid Studios is way past being a small indie game developer. Ashes makes a lot of promises and yet shows very, very little in their updates which is concerning for a game this long in the pipeline.
Which brings me to my main gripe: Ashes should be showing us more at this point. If they can't then this game is so far out in the future we shouldn't be talking about it and the team definitely shouldn't be wasting cycles on calendars or monthly live streams.
Look at Pax Dei coming out of left field and generating buzz and showing more in a short intro video than the entirety of six years of Ashes updates. Pax Dei seems much closer to an alpha than Ashes. This may seem a poor comparison. How long has Pax Dei been in development? This is a fair criticism, but Pax Dei isn't asking for my money and isn't clogging up my feeds with lackluster updates. If Pax Dei hits the 6 year mark of monthly updates without showing anything close to a finished game then we can revisit it.
Back to Ashes.
As with the recent class updates the UI update this month was a typical lackluster update. A developer was brought on and talked about their team and their approach. Then some screenshots were shown of different UI components which were followed by yet more screenshots of sample user interface windows which were followed by... more screenshots.
I don't think once during the UI update we saw an actual functioning UI overlaying a game being played. That is concerning. There is a place for showing the static components of a UI, but the magic of a UI is seeing it and how it interlaces with the underlying game. How a UI functions is as critical as how it looks. All we got from this update was how it may look because we didn't actually see it in the game.
There has been a lot of praise in the Ashes community around this update and how "good" the UI looks. I am not sure if these folks are playing ancient games or are that detached from current offerings, but the UI screenshots shown were as generic of a UI as I could imagine. There was nothing to write home about. If anything I'd of said the UI is a little too artsy; I prefer a utilitarian approach. The game can be beautiful and awe inspiring, but the UI needs to be functional.
If it's not clear; I was not impressed. This adds to the mounting concern I have about Ashes. Each update is lacking in substance on the promised topic. We had an entire UI update and didn't see the UI being used. We heard more about promises of the UI: customization, sizing, and accordions. Did we see these in action? No. It is like anything else with Ashes: promises. Promises that may or may not be delivered. This was not an update that screams to me that the game is approaching any state of release.
I don't need the podcast to break down this one. Congratulations to everyone that had cannibalism on your apocalyptic bingo cards! Game players knew we would get here but it was a shocking awakening for TV-only viewers. Episode 8 was an uncomfortable episode to watch, but don't worry Joel is back so we're good.
I will have to admit that the show got the pacing and tension-building right in this episode (a top critique of mine for past episodes). This episode had a solid reveal going from a "something's not right here" to "oh sh!t!" in a slow, dreadful series of events. It is unfortunate it had to feature a miraculous recovery by Joel that required viewers to suspend disbelief yet again in a show that does nothing but expect viewers to suspend disbelief.
Also I am not sure if this is what the show was going for, but in an episode starting out with bible reading isn't it cliche our savior Joel rises from the dead. Anyone that thought Joel was ever in any danger (or Ellie for that matter) has never played a video game with side quests.
I do want to harp on the "sense of danger". As uncomfortable as this episode was to watch it was more from the creep factor than it was from any sense that something bad would happen to our main characters Joel and Ellie. Like a video game its just a case of finishing the side quest to get on with the main story.
Can we dispense with the cannibalism as well please? It is uncomfortable to watch and detracted from an otherwise great tension builder of the creepy preacher targeting a young girl. We could have gotten all of the drama of this episode without taking the cannibalism.
Anyways, Joel is back to a full healthbar so on to new adventures.
Pax Dei is generating a lot of buzz, and in my opinion, it should serve
as a warning to games like Ashes of Creation. The first trailer offers a
glimpse of combat and the user interface, all from the perspective of
the in-game engine. If games like Ashes don't launch soon, titles like
Pax Dei may swoop in and steal their audience. The first look of Pax Dei
is pretty impressive, and it has convinced me to join the queue for
alpha access.
Not only were the visuals striking, which is to be expected with the Unreal Engine, but I felt like shots were taken at games like Ashes that have been hesitant to show combat and user interface as both were featured in the Pax Dei release trailer. Granted it is not in depth but it gives me hope the game is further along than just being a set of ideas.
Also impressive in the video was the support for cross platform. They showed the game on a tablet which is exciting. I don't do much gaming on mobile platforms but that is because most games don't offer it as a supported option; the more I see games like this support it the closer I get to jumping into gaming on something other than my big rig.
I didn't know this game was out there working its way towards an alpha, but after the trailer and some of the interview videos I am firmly in the camp of "excited to see what comes next". Again, I got the sense Pax Dei is closer to reality than games that suck up a lot of community buzz currently and the MMO market is ripe for some disruption.
Flashback episode! You know; because the show was over when we found Tommy last episode so we needed something to make more episodes out of.
One of my main issues with the show is the representation of the world "20 years later" and this episode did nothing to quiet the screaming in my head. These folks are awfully lucky that everything just keeps on working 20 years later. Just throw the switch and every light, arcade cabinet, and whatever buzzes to life. There is no chance over the 20 something years since the world collapsed that any of the items in a mall would have been scavenged.
One major issue I have with the show is its lack of ability to build tension. Although I will admit that the mall was a pretty cool setting, we knew something related to the infected would happen since the show is too formulaic to let the infected not ruin the moment. However, the show fails to put the pieces together in any sort of dramatic way.
Similar to Episode 5, the big showdown at the end of the episode gets minimal setup, and when a single infected interrupts, it feels like nothing more than a reason to ruin the moment. In the game, as I gathered from the podcast for this episode, there are multiple fighting sequences in the mall. These fighting scenes give weight between "scenes" and help build tension.
In the show we get a quick cut of an infected coming to life (which is baffling; in prior episode these static mushroomed infected are NOT a concern at all) and a couple doom-y camera pans, but otherwise there is not much more going on here than a trip to the mall until a rustling is heard.
In the show the more the infected show up the more it makes me as a viewer laugh at "what the heck is this infection? People are really scared of this?". Again, these mushroom sprouted dead bodies were of no concern just a couple episodes ago but now are coming back to life. How hard was it to just have an infected stuck in a closet that they opened? Give us a jump scare after making us feel safe all episode. We didn't need a poorly "whats that noise" character moment when we knew what the noise was.
What about Joel? Sorry, almost forgot we left the last episode on a cliff hanger in the present timeline. Glad the episode sorted that out and that he will be OK after a gnarly stitch job by Ellie. I am sure Joel will be back to normal next week. This game, err show, really does love the cliche "video game solutions" whether a flashback scene or a magical cure all solution scavenged nearby.
In my And Nope post the news broke that New World would not be introducing the ability to upgrade 590+ randomized epic (purple) gear and the patch note was struck from the record. The patch note has now been unstruck from the record with a few modifications (for now; we are still getting the whole thing it sounds like in the future).
Yay? Maybe?
Still some details to hammer out with the statement. It says OPR gear already does this but last I checked that was only Rusher weapons and not just your random 590+ purple armor or weapons from OPR caches. War is still a cool kids club; one that really honestly doesn't need any more of a reward than it already gives but I can let this slide. Invasion reward upgrades are a good deal though; it is honestly getting hard to field invasion defenses. Gear from gypsum casts is the real big one for this change and I am glad I have 100+ orbs saved up!
As noted it sounds like they want to bring it to the rest of the pile of junk items in the game (at least the purples) so holding some outside optimism on where this is going. I for one love the idea.
