Challenging No More

 And we're back (nothing too major; thankfully).

 While I was away New World decided things needed to be less challenging.  Update 1.9.3 is on the live servers as of 5/10 and with it numerous season pass challenges and activities were dialed back making them challenging no more.

As an example; this challenge was reduced:

Outpost Rush Domination
    Reduced required Outpost Rush wins from 100 to 30

 The season is approximately 97 days long (Apr 3 - July 6).  For this challenge at its original goal of 100 it would mean a player would need to net at least one win a day if they play every day.  That seems like a good challenge.  It is not something everyone will get and feels like an accomplishment if you do make it.  But moved to 30; that isn't much of a challenge and many more players will hit the challenge complete.

 If you follow the release notes an axe was taken to many of the challenges.  This is unfortunate for anyone that was pushing for the original targets in the hopes of gaining the coveted "look at what I did!" feeling.  In my own experience I logged into several challenges and season journey steps being completed; netting me 5 pass levels (putting me at 90+; cruising to 100).

 On one hand I am a fan of when things are made easier on players, but at the same time I like actual challenges.  So I'm on the fence with all these changes; though considering I am pretty much done with the season pass and journey it doesn't really matter much.

 My hope is the New World dev team learns from Season 1 and makes future season's and their challenges actual challenges.  Tie unique rewards to them so that players can feel rewarded for hitting the challenges.  These don't have to be game changing rewards, but there is nothing wrong with throwing out some unique housing items or cosmetics or titles.

 With that said I do want to give credit to the devs on other changes that made things less challenging for the better.  My favorite is the reduction of Flame Cores required for a cast; down from 10 to 3.  Also you can now create 6 casts per day - up from 3.  Also the gear you get from the casts is much improved.  This will make the "craft X casts" season challenge really easy now, but there is some great benefits from this.  

 The change opens another path to turn gold into umbral shards as you can just buy 18x flame core each day, craft 6 casts, and each one rewards up to 400 shards for up to 2,400 shards a day (not to mention you get improved Human Ward/Bane gear from the casts as well).  Combine these shards with shards you can "buy" via infused fragments and there is a good path for converting gold into umbral shards for those players that don't want to get them via other means (players like me!).

 Anyways; I am off to grind more named gear drops which is my current kick in New World.

 

Emergency Room; No Gaming

 What a week.  My phone died (original Google Pixel was 7 years old) and then my youngest ended up in the Emergency Room.  No gaming this weekend.  My youngest is good though; just had to rule out something more serious than a common stomach bug.

May the 5th be with you!

May the 5th be with you!

Ha!  See what I did there?  #legend

Cuatro De Mayo!

Happy Star Wars Day

May the 4th be with you!  You'll need the force if you are trying to run Star Wars Jedi: Survivor.

New World: Farming The Tangle

Farm. Sleep. Repeat.

 With my Infernus farm build resulting in acquiring Infernus I wanted to look at what else I could farm up using the build.  Fortunately there is plenty of stuff to farm in the general vicinity. Specifically I am now on the hunt for parts of the Corrupted Rage set: specifically the gloves and helmet (as I have Chardis pieces for my other Ancient tank gear set).

 And the helmet dropped for me last night so just need to nab the gloves! 

 So I will be in The Tangle farming away if you need me!  If you have any other recommendations on items to farm for drop me a comment.

Ashes of Creation Looking Better: Mage

Mage Preview

 Ashes of Creation featured the mage class in their most recent monthly update.  This was the most promising look at the game in a while.  

 First, I want to highlight the format to this archetype preview was better than it's predecessors.  There was structure and thought behind what was shown and why it was shown.  Details of abilities accompanied the on screen display.  Abilities were showcased before jumping into content.  I walked away understanding the direction they are headed with the mage.  In past archetype previews I didn't walk away with an understanding of the class.

 Second; USER INTERFACE! We saw USER INTERFACE!  Finally.  The UI is critical to understanding the game.  We saw two stacked hot bars, some indication of equipped weapon, cool downs, and a little bit of the inventory.  UI needs to be featured more.  It is the biggest missing piece to help drive confidence the game is making more progress than just being able to show off animations and basic combat.

 We also got to see a few other things.  Most notably was the gliding (flying?) mount (23:12 in the video).  The animation from take off, gliding, to landing were awesome.  Enemies also aggro'd as the mount glided or walked past and there was quite the train of enemies gathered up.  I am not sure if this is how aggro is intended in long run, but definitely some early-days MMORPGs vibes there!

 Also numerous times in the video we got to see the character traverse various world obstacles. The traversal looked smooth and gave me confidence that they are headed in the right direction for movement and how it feels to the player (i.e. I can climb that rock in front of me vs it being an invisible wall).

 This is the first class preview where I can give a solid "thumbs up".  The more of the various game aspects that are mixed into these previews the more confident I will be that the game is heading towards a test! 

Why New World! Why!?

Wispy Spritz and Fire Motes!?

 New World's new spring event is live: Springtide Bloom.  The event has players zipping around the world killing wasps and picking flowers.  There is a trick to killing the wasps you can harvest the flowers and that trick is having Wispy Spritz on hand.  While plenty of Wispy Spritz is given away in the event the crafting recipe is a head scratcher as it requires fire motes; the most expensive motes in the game... so the price... as expected... is going up (2 to 2.48 gold per on my server).

 This highlights this weird imbalance New World has with some components. Some are overused in many different recipes and then get scooped into event recipes like this situation; and other resources in the same family have significantly less use.  In the mote example; Fire Motes are the most used mote and now is the most-most used because of the event kicking off.  Why New World? Why!?

Why!?

New World Discord

Goodbye New World Forums

 New World is shuttering their forums and moving their community interaction to Discord. I would link to that forum post but whats the point when it won't be there in the future so here's a screenshot instead.

 Maybe I am just an Internet boomer but I liked forums and I am going to miss the New World forums.  I thought the forums were well organized and functionally strong.  I really liked the dynamic timezone conversion capability so that I was always seeing event times in my local time.  It was also easy to search via search engines.

 I enjoy Discord as a voice comm platform but I really have not liked it as a means for replacing a game's website and forums.  I just don't find Discord functional in the way a web sites are.  It is also "yet another" program I need open on my computer.  I get it that many gamers live in Discord but I am not one of them; I live in my web browser (yes... I know you can use Discord in your browser... but that doesn't mean it works like a normal website).

 Either way I didn't spend much time in the forums.  The main use was when I am encountering a bug or connection error and seeing if others were in the same boat.  Discord should be good for this as I am sure folks will pile in with any widespread issues.  So I'll give Discord a try and lament not having the forums anymore.

 What are your thoughts?  Leave a comment.

Steam Backlog: Battlefield Bad Company 2

One of the best!

Funniest Battlefield ever sir!

 Next on the journey through my Steam backlog: Battlefield Bad Company 2!

 I am too obsessed with Battlefield 2042 currently to jump back into Bad Company 2 so this post will just be about my fond memories of destroyed battlefields!  This is one of my all time favorite Battlefield titles!

 Not only did this game have great multiplayer, but it also featured a great single player game.  In fact its the only single player campaign in the entire franchise that I can remember playing.  The characters were memorable and I can still hear "Rainbow Sprinkles"!

 Just watching that video brought back so many funny memories from this game's dialogue. I would even go as far to say that if Battlefield gamers were turned into virtual soldiers these yahoos would be the result.

 And talking about the rainbow sprinkles on the top: not only was Bad Company 2 amazing but so was it's Vietnam campaign.  For years I returned to play the Vietnam multiplayer.  Great maps and even better features! Ever see a helicopter airlift a tank into the middle of the battlefield?  Well guess what you can do in BFBC2 Vietnam!  Oh and the river patrol boats were overpowered... just saying.

 Regardless of Vietnam or the game proper the underlying gameplay was spot on.  Guns felt great.  Map destruction was top notch.  Vehicles felt balanced.  And one of the most controversial changes was removing the prone position.  If you wanted to snipe you had crouch as your best bet.  

 So many good memories here and this spot in the backlog is also timely as, unfortunately, EA is desisting Bad Company 2.

 

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

Another Diablo 4 Beta!?

 The rumor mills are in full motion this morning after a "accidentally" posted Slack message tweet hit the Twitter from Rod Fergusson.  It suggest a secret announcement is coming with the upcoming Diablo 4 End Game stream.

 

 

 Combined with a tweet from the official Diablo account the suspicion is we are getting another beta; likely focused on the end game content of Diablo 4. 

 

Get ready to block your calendars folks!

Note: I am opting NOT to link to Twitter; so screenshots is all you get!