Big spike in blog traffic this morning! Not sure why these 3 posts or why analytics says the biggest spike in visitors is from Poland but I'm open to be entertained to see where this goes (or get some sort of explanation it's not real like Google has done in the past).
To go with my Frigid Inferno (heavy fire staff / sword and shield) build I updated my transmog in New World. I wanted to lean into the Frigid Dawn armor set and ice theme.
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| Stone cold. |
Not shown, but similiar to the firestaff the shield skin is Frigid Bulwark from the winter event patterns. The only other change I've thought about is making the sword have the Iceburst skin. Enjoy!
I have to admit the game looks visually better with each developer update and that stands out the moment the demo starts. I am really digging the look of the town (called nodes) and it is still crazy to think most of these towns will be player placed and upgraded.
The demo shows commissions which immediately brought "quest boards" to mind of every MMO in recent memory. However, the difference that eventually pays off in the demo is that the commissions feed into more and more of what Ashes is advertising as it's main attraction: a living and dynamic world.
Think of the commission as a kick start to get players out of town and into the opportunity to unlock a chain of events that contributes to a dynamic change in the world. Players can of course just skip the opportunity as Steven does in the demo and get a train of enemies rolling around, but more exciting was to see the world change as different actions are taken.
In the video we get to see a sudden thunderstorm form as new enemies appear in an open world event. The event intertwines with other quests in the area before hinting at unlocking a larger transformational world event at the end of the video.
Plenty of MMOs have dynamic open world events, but the "revolution" Ashes hints at is that all actions are leading to changes in the world that are stickier than other games. A real "fear of missing out" model where server 1 will be different than server 2. Add in the nodes mentioned earlier and the game is starting to show the real possibility to be that revolution we've all wanted in the MMORPG genre.
This isn't to say all of it was revolutionary. There was still the same old static -- I will never move from this spot - quest givers. Enemy AI wasn't all that impressive; easily defeated by the age old tactic of running away. Combat looks noisy (too many effects) and for a few updates has shown a favor towards kiting enemies.
While I could nitpick more I won't. I am cautiously continuing to grow excited about the possibilities of this game. With only Alpha 2 planned for this year there is still along road to go here for betas and a launch, but its going to be a fun one to check out each month in the developer updates.
Create a post on X (or whatever social media of choice) and share it on a site like a video game's forums and it's cool. But create content on your own blog you've run for 19+ years to share and you are just a bottom sucker of the Internet. Just blogging things.
New World has an update on the public test realm (PTR) for the new artifacts coming in Season 5 (March 2024). The biggest change is to Phoenix (the new amulet artifact). The changes are covered in the following YouTube video from TrickTrick.
As noted the big change is to Phoenix. The initial version had a perk that was a copy of the original Defy Death ability for Hatchet.... which was long ago nerfed out of existence in the game. As expected there was an uproar in the community that it would be coming back on an amulet that anyone could use. Fortunately the developers changed how it will work with Phoenix. The new PTR wording is below:
Phoenix Vengeance: When you receive lethal damage, avoid death and become invulnerable for 4s, after which you die. (180s cooldown).
The last part is the key: the player will die no after the four seconds expires giving them a last hurrah before taking their dirt nap! However, as noted in the video there is a way on PTR using Ice Gauntlet's Entombed ability for a player to avoid the "die" portion. That has to be fixed or this is going to be abused. Even with that oversight fixed this is still going to be strong; especially for those players that love diving into piles knowing they are going to die anyways and just want to take a few folks down with them.
The spear artifact Venom was changed to only trigger on heavy melee attacks from the other equipped weapon. Previously it included ranged attacks so, as an example, bow heavy attacks triggered Venom. Ranged weapons are already very strong in the game and this would of made them even stronger. This is a good change.
The third artifact changed was the Tempest Fury Great Axe where Keen Speed was replaced with Refreshing Move. This was a sensible change since the weapon already has a ton of speed boost built into it and didn't need anything extra. Refreshing Move is a sought after perk on Great Axes for bruiser builds in war and as called out in the video by TrickTrick this will likely see some action in wars. Personally I am going to try a "spin to win" build with the Fortifying Whirlwind aspect.
Just a few screenshots from trying out No Man's Sky this weekend as part of it's free weekend. The game seems very complex but I was digging it after about an hour of play. I got blown up in space though so ended up on a planet repairing my ship which requires me to build a base first to craft all the repair parts. The systems seem to go very deep so a bit of a learning curve that I didn't get to explore further as the free weekend expired.
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| Scanning... |
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| Refining |
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| Floating space junk I never got around to exploring |
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| Look ma! I'm a space man! |
No; this doesn't replace Mastodon (via gamepad.club's instance) for me. As I posted on Mastodon here is how I look at the two:
Mastodon via gamepad.club is my comfy local coffee shop where I can stop in and have a long sit and a comfy chat.
Blue Sky is a busy airport where I whizz by and get whizzed by; when something catches my eye I veer off course to check it out. I'm as likely to chat about a hot new book release as I'm to be caught staring at the sports game on a TV.
Crushed a couple Outpost Rush matches back to back in New World landing first place both times and walking away with wins in very competitive matches (as opposed to getting rolled or doing the rolling).
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| W: 1000 to 741 / 13 kills, 43 assists, 3 deaths |
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| W: 1000 to 911 (close!) / 6 kills, 55 assists, 2 deaths |
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| Patch notes! The best kind of present! |
For Valentine's Day we received the patch notes for the upcoming public test realm (PTR) updates for New World's Season of the Guardian update! Lots of exciting changes here so let's read through the finer details.
First; I had a prior post going over the bigger topics so don't want to rehash them here. You can read that here: Exciting Changes Coming to New World. That post covers the new 10 man trial, the new artifacts, controller support, main story redesign, cooking overhaul, and magnify changes. For this post I'll key into other notes.
The big one of course relates to fort doors in Outpost Rush (OPR); currently the true invincible end boss of the PvP game mode!
We are implementing the following changes to address ongoing feedback regarding OPR gate strength, while still being mindful of PvE players who prefer focusing on building up fort structures. We will continue to monitor feedback on this topic and consider further changes as necessary.
- Added a 50% weakness for Siege damage to fort gate doors, allowing siege weaponry (e.g., powder kegs) to deal bonus damage to these structures.
- Reduced the Strike/Slash absorption of fort gate doors from 10% Strike/20% Slash to 0% for both, ensuring that Strike and Slash damage types are not reduced when attacking gates. We aim for melee to have a bit of an advantage on the gates, as Thrust/Elemental damage is more prevalent in ranged weapons than melee.
- Increased build and repair time for fort gate doors by 25% for the T2 gate and 50% for the T3 gate, reducing the strength of each repair tick.
This change should make doors less invincible and more of a speedbump as they should be. The change is looking to strike a balance between attacker and defender which is good.
More changes are coming to equip loads. The notes:
Equip Load Changes
- Medium equip load is now the baseline, with damage, crowd control durations, outgoing healing, and block stability values adjusted to 0 across the board.
- Heavy equip load: has a 20% decrease to incoming CC status effect durations and +15% block stability. Trade-offs of -15% damage and -30% outgoing healing. Also has increased threat generation from taunting gems and perks to account for the decrease in damage output.
- Light equip load: has +15% damage and +30% outgoing healing. Trade-offs of -15% block stability and +10% incoming CC status effect durations.
Comments:
Medium: good change. Medium lacked an identity and while "default" isn't sexy it is at least something.
Heavy: this feels like a damage nerf but I need the experts to break this down for me on what it really means. The rest seems fine and I am trying to figure out if this means the 55 stamina dodge is gone in favor of 50 stamina dodge again.
Light: similar to heavy; this feels like a damage nerf but need experts to weigh in. I don't like that the healing boost is so much in light. Feel sorry for healers being boxed into light so aggressively.
Another small change I caught in the notes: "Players now have limited rotation while dodging forwards or backwards." I believe this is related to players being able to pull of some very fancy dodges that are frankly annoying because they defy the logic of the characters current position vs where they can get to with the dodge. Maybe this will correct that.
Yay! "Increased the total number of active artifact quests a player can have simultaneously in progress from 5 to 10."
Boo! My heavy flamethrower build keeps getting beat up! "Ensured mana regen does not occur while Flamethrower is active"
It's the little things that matter (and now count!): "Killing small prey with a mount now progresses quest objectives and awards XP."
Also hiding in the notes was an extensive section on changes to PvP ranks and rewards from the track. Over all the rewards will be better the higher rank you are including higher gearscore of armor/weapon rewards. Proof will be in the pudding and I feel sorry for lower rank players who will still be getting basically worthless gear rewards since lower ranks will have lower gearscore rewards. For those of us at Rank 200 this should be a good change.
The magnify changes are also written out so it is good to read that you can choose between how it works today and the new model where you pick the attribute. Somewhat confirms we can still use magnify to split stats if you do it correctly (for example I can get 300/300 with my current build which has 7 magnify pieces). Exact wording below:
Adjusted how Magnify functions. Magnify now has a drop down on the attribute screen, and players are able to pick between Highest Stat (current functionality) or any of the other core attributes. If picking a core attribute like Strength, all of your magnify points will convert to Strength.Next, and maybe I am just hopeful for the future, there is mention of a seal extractor. I am hoping this lays the ground work for other types of extractors to get valuable resources out of our gear.
Added Seal Extractors to the Faction Shops, allowing adventurers to remove custom attribute seals from their faction armor and revert its attribute back to Constitution.
And last but not least: "Increased player wallet coin cap from 500,000 to 1,000,000." Now if I could only get more than 500k gold :(
New World's mini event, Year of the Dragon, has been active for a bit. It is a light weight event with light weight rewards to go with it.
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| Burning down the Year of the Dragon with my flamethrower! |
The good thing about the event is it is quick to participate in each day. The bad thing about the event is that there is no challenge to it; even if you are doing the world event solo. I don't mind that there is easy content, but this is too easy. A little more challenge would have been welcome.
As far as rewards AGS continues to trend of event rewards being 675 GS which effectively makes them worthless as 675+ GS gear is easy to come by. The skins are not even all that special so there isn't a transmog driver.
The event does introduce a new consumable, the Spicy Hotpot, that grants bonus faction token gain for an hour. You can only get one per day so it is a premium consumable and lots of folks are willing to pay a good price for yours if you are open to selling (I sold mine the first day for 1500; now averaging about 800 per day).
Over all a forgettable event but one I don't mind hitting daily for the minimal rewards.
