The Packers shocked the NFL world last week sending the Dallas Cowboys packing and moving on to the divisional round to face off against the 49ers. Here are some final thoughts heading into kick off.
The story of the 2023 Packers is a story of nobodies. If you asked the average NFL fan at the start of the year to name a Packers player they maybe could give you Aaron Jones or Jordan Love. Past that there really was no one. This is the youngest team in the league. Not even fans did we know the players even if we maybe knew a few more of the names.
And it is that team of "nobodies" that I feel is the strongest point in the Packers favor going into the game against the 49ers. There is a lot to be said for a team that doesn't know who they are or what they are supposed to be capable of. There is even more to be said for the team that showed up last week and declared they would not go quietly.
In fact this team of nobodies is becoming a team of somebodies and that should terrify the 49ers because the big question is who's night is it tonight to make their name known. Last week it was Love and Doubs (we already knew Aaron Jones owns Dallas). This week it could be any of the rest of the cast.
What jumped out at me is the scale of the fight. The "castle" is massive with large exterior areas that are fought over before the massive interior of the castle is rushed. There are multiple points that guilds can fight over to get a piece of the pie at the end. It also sounds like thousands (yes thousands!) of players will be able to participate.
Massive castle map!
To go with the scale are also the siege golems that can be spawned. These massive beasts can smash walls or gates or serve as mobile transport (from the video you can see a golem carrying a group of players towards the outer walls). I am definitely curious to know more about the golems.
The castle itself also appears to have tons of features that can be destroyed so players aren't forced to bottleneck through a single gate. Players/golems can smash walls or small groups can sneak inside to open gates (requires multiple players to activate the gates). This is much more than some simple battleground mode; this is a full on castle siege with variety and different paths to victory!
The reward for winning also seems massive; translating to thousands of dollars in real world value. I am sure that will cause some to pause in regards to "gold selling" and "pay 2 win" which is fair but those items are persistent in every game (or game discussion) these days so I'm not going to let them ruin my interest here. Also key is that it is NOT a winner-take-all system; various guilds can fight over their piece of the pie and none of them appear to get anything if over all a victory is not achieved so this will encourage team work (hopefully!).
Coming from a game like New World where "end game" PvP "wars" are 30 minute instanced fights for 100 players (50v50) the described siege about to occur in Throne & Liberty seems much more fitting of the title "war".
I still have reservations about the tab-target / action combat hybrid that Throne features, but I can get past that if there is events like this on the scale (thousands of player's y'all!) that is being talked about. I've already seen other open world boss fights that occur with PvP active and the number of players present is just crazy! I really, really want to play this game now!
I did a thing that I said I was going to do: I made a Youtube video! My first video upload in -- checks Youtube and blog history -- 12 years!!! It's been a minute (or 6,307,200+ minutes to be more precise)! I was mostly encouraged to make the video to show my oldest son some things he could do with his video editing as he ventures off into his video making career. Also figured this would make a good blog post on how I combined some AI and design tools together to make this thing happen.
I had a few goals when setting out to do this video
Be done in a day
Use AI tools to make some images
Make use of sound effects
Create an intro and an outro I can use in future videos
Get feedback on how to do better
In order to be done with this in a day I decided early on that I needed to use a game I am less attached to. Had this been a New World video I'd probably still be agonizing over what footage to use or how to frame it. Asphalt 9 Legends was easy because it features super fast races with cinematic mode to capture the footage.
I did hit some issues on capture so will be looking for feedback and suggestions. I used AMD's software to do the recording. The game play was smooth but the video had some hitches and it didn't record in a format that I could use in Camtasia 2021 (I use this to chop up videos for work). I had to use Handbrake to encode the video recorded in AMD and after that encoding, even after playing around with settings a few times, it had a lot of freezes as can be seen in the final product.
Also AMD records my mouse cursor over the screen even though it is NOT visible when playing the game. Maybe I just need to use a different recording method or program? My son uses Microsoft Gamebar (or whatever comes up hitting Windows + G). I've also seen suggestions to use OBS (Open Broadcast Studio) for capture.
Next I wanted to hit some AI tools; mainly image generation. I used Bing's image generator which to come up with a "Let's Race" and "Crash" images to use in the video. I used Microsoft Designer to clean the images up and make backgrounds transparent. It works remarkably well but did find it sort of confusing and/or limited in what it could do. I had some final editing that I just did in Paint.net on my local PC.
Apparently "transparent background" to the AI means a checkered background. I used Microsoft Designer to remove the background and save it afterwards as truly transparent.
AI only got me so far. I've had a catchy tagline I've wanted to use for a while of "To the point, no bull, game play footage." with an asterisk of "*Not a pro gamer", but I couldn't get a decent image with the text so I ended up over in Canva creating my own. Canva was impressive for my first time using it beyond just copying a template from it! It also converted my work to short MP4 videos for easy use including a subscribe animation! Static copies of the intro and outro I created.
Intro (created with Canva)
Outro (created with Canva)
I also learned about Youtube's audio library which I nabbed some sound effects and free music from for the video. This was honestly an amazing free resource that I think should be recommended more; there is a ton to pick from.
So enjoy and I hope this maybe inspires some creativity out there! If this old gamer can do it so can you. Maybe even my kid will pick something up here from his old man!
The New World team gave their quarterly economy update for the game and addressed concerns from the community as well as provided insight on how they arrived at their last update. Watch below and scroll down for my thoughts!
The team did a good job covering what they look for in the economy and this time brought charts to go with it. In the last economy update there was more talk than visuals and the first video was shot well before it went live so the economy had shifted a good bit and thus felt like the developers knew what they were talking about. Most of those concerns are gone for this video; it was up to date to the current state and again brought visual aids.
The main core of the economy discussion was focused on the fluctuation of the economy between "sink" (more gold going out) and "faucet" (more gold coming in). This of course is a discussion as old as time within MMORPGs. The term "gold sink" entered the gamer lexicon to describe ways for developers to remove in-game currency from games. It is refreshing to see a developer actually show where a game is at in regards to sinks and faucets.
The ideal state, one would think, would be to be right in-between a sink and a faucet where as much gold that comes into the economy goes right back out. However, that is not realistic. Players come and go with online games and thus their liquid currency sits in stasis for when they come back. It was not clear from the New World video if they account of inactive players in the "sink".
Also an economy at equilibrium is... well... boring. Fluctuations between times where the economy is flush with currency and times when currency is hard to come by creates opportunity for those of us that like to "play the market". It also drives in game behavior and the types of content players engage in.
To me its less about where the economy is at and more that the developers are reacting to it and that is what this update cemented for me: AGS uses the economy and data behind it in making decisions. We can debate if they are the right changes or if the changes are released in a timely fashion, but the important piece is the economy is a driving factor for the team. For me that is a win.
The Packers surprise everyone, even me as one of their most diehard fans, and stomp the life out of the Cowboysgirls. The meme's even make themselves with the Cowboys fans reactions; my favorite below.
Just sharing this nice comment I got after helping someone out with Firestaff questions for New World on Reddit. While lots of folks just use Reddit or other platforms to complain about games every once and a while one person helps another out and shares some knowledge. While I may not have a heart; I am always willing to share with others in the games I am playing!
Reddit username blurred as they sent this via private chat message
I was caught a little off guard getting Wrath of Decimus multiple times, but I'm not going to complain having two copies of an awesome great axe since I can upgrade and change the 3rd perk on each for different builds.
I was also surprised by the perk mods as I had overlooked them as rewards. While not the rarest perk mods these were still in demand perk mods which are nice to drop in storage for future use.
The first 3 kills each day net unique event bonus rewards
Event armor and weapons (3 per day)
15x Dark matter (45 per day)
1 Obsidian Gypsum (3 per day)
Note: All unique bonus event rewards can be earned after 12 kills (so 4 days, 3 kills per day)
To go with the limited bonus daily rewards each kill will also net random armor/weapon drops including a low chance at Brimstone Sands named items along with consumables such as health potions.
The dark matter alone makes completing the event 3x a day worth it so I'd at minimum go for that. The random item rewards should also net a few extra dark matter from salvaging.
As far as weapon/armor rewards of particular interest there isn't too much (at least from my view). The main reward I am going for is the Wrath of Damicus great axe. The axe comes with Thwarting Strikes and Enfeebling Maelstrom and a random third perk. Per NWDB it can be upgraded to 700 GS and the third perk can be changed. This makes it an ideal great axe!
To a lesser degree there may be some value in the Vesuvius fire staff for PvE. Lots of folks sleep on the Mortal Refreshment perk but combining this staff with Refreshing Pillar of Fire on your armor (since the staff has a weapon perk already) can result in a machine gun of pillars coming out in PvE clump fights. So niche use in PvE for anyone interested.
Lastly, as a housing items hoarder, the cyclops statues look sweet! Good luck in the event y'all!
Continuing the "heartlessgamer playing around with AI" I asked Bing to summarize the news from the past day with Pax Dei's plans for Early Access.
NVIDIA featured Pax Dei gameplay footage during their CES 2024 special address. Mainframe Industries confirmed NVIDIA DLSS 3 will be included in "day one" of Pax Dei's launch. After a successful alpha test in late 2023, the game developers affirmed the highly-anticipated game is to enter early access in the coming Spring ¹. The game is a medieval flavored social sandbox MMO from developers from Blizzard and Remedy Entertainment ². The game will be available on PC and will feature AI accelerated DLSS 3 ². The early access offers are almost finalized with monetization confirmed as a single purchase grants access ¹. There is no specific date for Pax Dei's early access launch, but a second alpha test phase is in motion with sign-ups available on their website ¹.
