New World October Dev Update

 New World has posted their October Team Update.  The video is embedded below and read on for my summary and thoughts.

A summary of the update 

• BDLG and Redbyrd visit!
• Current roadmap is complete except leaderboards which are still a work in progress
  
• December Winter Convergence Festival will be back
• New expedition in December that is "pretty fricking cool" that is a combo of Amrine and Starstone (both lower level expeditions) for end game expeditions mutations
• Updated road map in December
• The sandworm in Brimstone will be a raid
• Territory control changes coming in the next few months; changes to influence and how war is declared.  Bigger plans as well but not ready to talk about yet.
• A springtime event is being worked on for next spring (which means all seasons have an event)
  
• Cross-server Outpost Rush is coming!  This is their first step in cross-server content so they will look to learn lessons here and expand to other instanced content.
• Gear sets and management system; taking slowly to make sure they get it right and expect long test period on the PTR
  
• Two new expeditions featuring Varangian Knights
• Group finder improvements
• Transmog system is being worked on
• Fresh Start Servers on track; slow roll out of worlds with multiple phases so you can plan when you want to jump in
• Return to Aeternum community event (watch the video; its complicated but sounds fun)
  
• Redbyrd and BDLG asked questions to the combat developers
  
• Devs confirmed there is too much "escapability" in PvP so are looking to nerf the worst offenders such as the recent changes to rapier.
• Musket was called out by Redbyrd (good for PvP but weak in PvE).  Changes for it are being tested with fall off damage for longer range and less stamina damage when blocking shots.
• Firestaff flamethrower pain point; more mana consumption for using it vs the infinite flamethrower it is now
• Armor balance; specifically blocking and light DPS meta was discussed.  Looking at stamina damage while blocking (reducing it mostly) and how blocking works in group situations.  Goal is to improve blocking viability.
• BDLG asked what the ideal meta is for the combat devs.  Answer: more melee oriented than it is now; dev agreed it is too ranged dominant currently.
• BDLG asked about PvP arenas. Answer: dev not happy about where arenas are at and talked about the recent update to split group and solo queues and gear score scaling.
• Redbyrd asked about group finder for PvP game modes.  Unfortunately no immediate plans.  Bummer.
• Territory control had a features section in the video
• Talked about changes in recent patch
• Distributing gold to all faction members from taxes is not being considered
• War fatigue system in testing on PTR and focus to address shell companies and ensure more players can get into wars vs just the cool kids club as it is currently
  
• Influence system change to drive players to certain zones during certain windows to drive open world PvP
  
• BDLG questioned how they will combat zergs in this scenario.  Hoping long timing windows and having multiple hot spots will help spread out players.
• Practice wars are something they want to do, but not on roadmap yet
  
• Crafting section
• Continuing to work out the pacing of gathering, refining, and crafting gear so that they line up (i.e. if you are a level where iron is common, then you are refining iron, and then are crafting with iron and thus keeping them all in pace).
• Talked about crafting better gear; they want to give players more agency and control (i.e. more predictable outcomes).  Goal is to just taking smaller steps such as timeless shards and golden scarabs to get better outcomes from crafting so you feel rewarded for doing something out in the world and getting a reward like the scarab.
  
• Talked up trade skills and how satisfying it is to chop a tree down in New World (which I agree) and how future trade skills need to bring something to the world (like music and how it brought relevant buffs)
• BDLG asked about how you can't tell what recipes you have unlocked and those that may be out there to unlock.  No plans currently.
• Depth of crafting
  
• There was a section on Brimstone Sands questions
• Can we fight the sandworm?  Already noted at the start of the video that it will be a raid.
• Brimstone set new standards for content and world building for the team and thats the standard going forward
• Brimstone is a large zone but is on the larger side of zones they expect to have.  More likely to see zones closer to Reekwater or Ebonscale Reach.

 First, I was stoked to see Redbyrd and BDLG from Studio Loot helping to host the update.  They have hosted the New World to Go podcast since long before launch and as far as I know are the only New World focused podcast that is still going post launch.  They are also all around good dudes and run a great site over at newworldfans.com.  Their presence gives me confidence that Amazon Game Studios gets how important community is in these games.

 The best part of BDLG and Redbyrd's presence, even though I am sure they were kept on a short leash, was that they spoke for the community and did it well.  You could feel the passion and love for this game as they talked with the developers.  I almost lost it when BDLG said "BOWPR" out loud (for anyone not hip to the lingo; bow is a very strong weapon in the OPR (outpost rush) game mode and it's to the point there is so many bows we just call the entire mode BOWPR). These two are the perfect ambassadors for the game.

 Next it was good to hear gear sets are still being worked on and that a transmog system was also under work.  These are key systems for a game that has as much variety of gear available and asks players to change gear as often as this game does.

 The comments on combat were all refreshing to hear.  They acknowledged range is a problem and that melee is getting the short end of the stick.  The discussion around blocking in PvP was well received (by me at least) and it will be good to get another avenue of play into PvP that isn't just damage or healing.

 I will save my thoughts on territory control for a future post.  In short; I still don't think they are headed in the right direction.  They need to stop making it a cools kid club activity.

 No major updates for crafting this go around which feels like it is in a good place.

 It was good to hear Brimstone Sands is the standard going forward (as far as quality of content, not zone size).  I am still working through the zone and it's quests and having a blast doing so.  I will share more thoughts later this week.

 Over all another solid update this month and very cool to see the community be such a key part of this one as we crossed over the one year mark for the game.  I get more excited every time this dev team puts out an update.

Misery Monday

It's been a while since I've dealt with a Packers team with a losing record this far into the season. The offense is lost and lacks play makers or the ability to get the ball to the couple of play makers there are.  Special teams is a liability.  Defense at least is middle-of-the-pack, but lacks any form of consistency.

But at least I have /r/NFCNorthMemeWar to make me laugh.

 

 

Sunday 10/16/2022 Post

 Yes this is a week late.  That's how much it hurts.  We'll see how this week goes.

Some Screenshots from Brimstone Sands

 I am away this weekend camping in the real world MMO.  Enjoy some of my screenshots from my brief adventures in Brimstone Sands!

And here we go... after unlocking the quest to access the zone.

SQUISH! Small scorpions get squished by running over them.

A cozy camp.

O_O This legendary rapier was a quest reward for one of the first quests!

More legendary quest rewards!

I swear there was a giant sand worm in this picture when I took it!

Amazing atmosphere in the desert.

A tower to explore (have not gone in yet!)

The main city.

A pool in the main city.

Amazing places to be found in every nook and cranny; or canyon in this case.

And last, and not part of Brimstone Sands, but this is the new facade for Monarch's Bluff

New World is so fun to play right now

 New World is so fun to play right now.  That's it.  Fun.  I love the Brimstone Sands update so spending time there instead of writing anything of length here today.  More comments next week on my impressions.

Brimstone San... oh shiny... New World Buddy

 I beat down the login queue, fixed my crashes (driver updates and a specific driver rollback), and enjoyed some of Brimstone Sands last... oh what is this shiny thing... New World Buddy!?  I will get to my Brimstone Sands impressions (probably next week), but I really want to talk about this tool.  It is very slick.

Oh shiny!

First there is the question "aren't mods against the terms of service?".  

No Games or Mods: sorry, but it's not okay to make your own game using our game content or to create mods. If things change for a particular game, we'll let you know.

Yes, mods -- as can be seen above -- are not allowed.  However, this tool is not a mod.  It does not interact with the game.  It is simply showing the same data that any of the New World websites such as New World Fans or NWDB are showing.  In fact I suspect many of it's data sources are the same as those websites.  

In addition to giving quick access to tons of information about items, crafting recipes, perks/abilities, and points of interest it also has an amazing feature for tracking gear sets.  When I clicked into the gear builder and started putting together my build for tracking I realized how slick this tool was.  You can select any gear and if it has set attributes/perks it brings them in.  If the gear has variable perks it lets you set them to what you have in game.  Then it has a screenshot tool that lets you quickly screenshot the build (see screenshot below - just me playing around to track a build so its not complete).

Output from screenshot tool on Gear Builder

There is also quick reference to information such as umbral shards required to upgrade, XP required to level, and crafting recipes (especially helpful this release with the introduction of Heartrunes and Runeglass gems that require a lot of materials to be collected).  On top of that there are various calculators such as gear score and access to crafting calculators with the ability to import prices from nwmarketprices.com for your specific server.

Over all this is just an amazing tool for a community member who made it "because I got tired of tracking things in spreadsheets".   I absolutely love things like this coming from the community and it enhances my play experience with the game.  I understand why AGS had to crack down on things like the in-game overlay map tools that were being built because its a step too close to interacting with the game.  But this, this little buddy, is amazing and just brings information to your finger tips as well as giving a better solution for build tracking than using a spreadsheet.  I can't imagine AGS would have issues with this tool as it just a glorified website in an app.

Want to give it a try?  First; you do have to trust this developer as Windows will flag it as not trusted.  Proceed at your own risk.  See the info below (and there is a discord server linked on the site if you want to get more involved):

This is an open source windows application (electron app)
https://github.com/giniedp/nw-buddy
http://nw-buddy.ginie.eu/

Brimstone Sands First Impressions

 My Brimstone Sands update impressions thus far...

...which means I haven't gotten to play in the new zone yet (Castle of Steel server).  The times I did get in I hard crashed (PC shuts off) so have been working through drivers and other possible causes on my computer.  Honestly a little frustrated with the queues and the fact you have to be in game to transfer servers (which means I have to wait ~3 hours for the login queue during peak hours if I did want to transfer to a lower pop server) and then only to have my PC crashing with the game.

Anyways; I don't have any actual impressions to share yet and I have a pretty packed week and will be away this weekend so I may be a week late to the launch party here.  Apologies to my faithful reader(s?).

 Back to my pre-launch predictions from yesterday's post: Here. We. Go. Brimstone Sands is here!  I questioned what sort of player bump we would see with the release.  

The answer looks to be about a 25k peak player count increase (40k increase to 65k) according to Steam DB charts.  Note: this is players that have the game open (not necessarily logged into a world).  Today as of 11:30a EST we are back up to 52k but leveling out faster so assume peak may be less.

A noticeable bump to peak concurrent but not the meteoric upturn some predicted (I saw many folks say we'd be back over 100,000 peak concurrent users).  

This is still a good increase and the peak login queues (3+ hours!) on the original merged servers in NA East shows players are coming back to check it out.  We will have to see where it is at after a week and things settle down a bit and then what the remaining effect is in a month.  Twitch viewership was also up but influenced by drops + major streamers returning.

Are you stuck in queue as well?  Drop a comment and we can commiserate together.

 

Here. We. Go. Brimstone Sands is here!

 Brimstone Sands is coming to New World and the patch notes are HUGE and if you are reading this as of 9:30 AM EST on 10/18 you can get the patch and get logged in.  There is a ton to unpack with this update so I will share my thoughts on different aspects as I play through them over the next few days.  For this post I wanted to toss out my prediction for player population expectations and if we will see a bump here or not.

There is a lot of buzz around this update and New World has seen an increase in peak concurrent players since its announcement (15k to 40k peak).  This is a good sign that the changes announced are taking the game in the right direction as it seems many of the returning players came back to get ready for it.

Even with the buzz I am still leery on whether we will see a large bump in players beyond what we've already seen.  Here are some of my reasons why we may not see a bump:

• The previous free weekend event was a total bust and registered no bump to peak player counts
• The big PvP arenas update had good buzz (nothing near Brimstone Sands but still some buzz) and it had no impact to peak players.  The first "official PvP arena tournament" was a total bust.
  
• As mentioned already, many players already returned to get ready for the patch, so we may be at the bump peak.
• Fresh Start Servers, which are the biggest draw for a bump, don't come out to 11/2.  We may not see a real bump until then.
• Last: we may see the big streamers bring a crowd, as they always do, but I am sure it will be short lived albeit painful queues on the servers they end up on.

I may be proven wrong and we return to six figure peak concurrent players and I'll be fine with that outcome, but I also wanted to prepare myself for the possibility the game's popularity is at or close to its peak.  Time will tell and I look forward to finding out!

What are your predictions?  Leave a comment.

Warhaven Playtest Error: Failed to connect to the lobby. Please try logging in again later. - Not DNS

 Day 2 and still getting Failed to connect to the lobby error with Warhaven's playtest.  Oh well.  Probably giving up after today.  Note: the most recent feedback is it wasn't antivirus/firewall/security but DNS and that changing your DNS servers to Google (8.8.8.8) would be the panacea.  Narrator: It was not.

Warhaven Playtest Error: Failed to connect to the lobby. Please try logging in again later.

 This is my experience with Warhaven's playtest; or really not-play testing anything at all because I can't get past this error: Failed to connect to the lobby.  Please try logging in again later.  I've tried everything from ensuring its allowed in the firewall, to disabling things like Malware Bytes and other antivirus software.  Nothing works to fix this that I've found.

Oh well.

Saturday Update 10/15/2022: New World lessons learned and Warhaven Beta

A couple quick items to meet my "post a day" quota for today.  

New World lessons learned

 First, Scot Lane has a guest article posted on Venture Beat: New World: What we’ve learned during our first year.  I will have some more thoughts on this article to post later this coming week, but for now I am really glad to see this quote up front:

There is a saying that live games are owned by the development team until launch, and then at launch they become the players’ game. I couldn’t agree more.

I couldn't agree more myself and feel this is how the New World team has and continues to handle this game.

Warhaven

 Second, I caught wind of a game called Warhaven that is in a free beta period.  Ironically it caught my attention because of New World and the below video posted by Atlas Fishmo on Youtube.  What I like about what I've seen so far, and I hope to play it later today after it downloads, is that the combat has weight to it.  

This isn't the rollie pollies combat of New World; this is medieval combat with some heft and weight to it.  Fights are up close and personal and attacks and abilities are highlighted so the player can understand what is going on without having to rely just on catching an animation or sound clue.  I will share thoughts this week on my experience.

New World: Piecing a build together for Firestaff/Warhammer

  I watched this video (embedded at the end of the post as well) on YouTube for a unique build combining the Warhammer and Firestaff in New World PvP.  It caught my attention because it focuses on the incinerate skill which brought back memories of my first "build" I played at launch to level from 1-60.  At the time I rolled around in heavy armor with a firestaff and sword/shield; incinerate skilled out for life gain.  

  The flow went: run around and get the attention of twenty mobs, pull them all together, and slam down incinerate and regain a bunch of health and watch everything burn to death.  Rinse and repeat.  To be honest had I connected the dots with warhammer's area of effect stun with shockwave back then I would have dropped sword/shield.

  Fast forward to now and I play a heavy melee sword/shield and hammer build, but have been looking for something new to give a whirl because, to be honest, playing heavy melee is just penalizing yourself in the light-armor-dominant PvP meta.  I also don't want to just jump on the flavor of the moment builds or abuse the broken weapons like rapier.  I want something unique and thus I want to piece together the build from this video and got some insight from the related Reddit thread.

Attributes

Based on the video we can estimate

CON: 150 (up to 200)
INT: 300+ (i.e. everything else)
Assuming nothing is added to strength; hammer is just for the stun and not for any damage.

Weapons 

Warhammer with the Sundering Shockwave perk to maximize damage

Firestaff with Stable Incinerate (gives you grit so less likely to be interrupted) and Thwarting Strikes (gives more damage when you have grit.. which you get from the stable perk)

Weapon Skill Trees

Hammer is focused on Shockwave, Wrecking Ball, and Clear Out.  All compliment the main concept of getting in, locking down targets, and dropping the bomb.  Clear Out I think is interesting to send everyone flying with burn stacks.

Firestaff is focused on the left side of the tree for incinerate and the rune to place on the ground to max out damage.  Fireball for some damage and Burnout as well.

Armor

Armor will be light as the light dodge is critical to get in and out to drop the bomb.  Light armor also gets +20% damage.

Armor perks 

• 5x Resilient (required for PvP)
• 2-3x Freedom (assume critical for getting in and out and minimizing effect of CC abilities)
• Shirking Fortification is probably worthwhile here since you are up close and personal
  
• Shirking Energy would be good since its available to light
• As far as weapon perks on armor Empowering Fireball is the only one that jumps out at me
• For fun maybe Repulsing Clear Out to send folks flying even farther after incinerate
  

Amulet/Ring/Earring

Not sure here; don't know whats considered good for mage.  Will have to research this.

Video embed:

Games I'd Play: Battlefield-as-a-service

 Every once and a while I find myself day dreaming about games I'd like to play.  One that recurs to me is a Battlefield-as-a-service game where instead of releasing a new iteration of the Battlefield franchise every year instead we'd have a single Battlefield game where they just release new maps and campaign settings (WWII, modern, future, Vietnam, etc) as part of the service and throw a battle pass on it to tease money out of our wallets.  I honestly wonder why this doesn't already exist.  I'd play it.

My theoretical Battlefield game would also take us back in time to the style of game that Battlefield 2 was.  Battlefield 2 had two amazing features I have missed in every Battlefield game I've played since: commanders and replay.

Battlefield 2 allowed a single player to take on the role of commander and instead of going pew-pew around the battlefield that player had a top-down view directing squads of players to objectives and calling in artillery strikes on areas.  The enhancement I'd make to bring this feature back would be a ranking system for commanders that way its not just luck of the draw on who gets to take on this key role.  Yes, this would gate keep some players but I think its one of those key roles that could make this sort of game that much better.

Battlefield 2 also had a replay system whereby you could go back and replay the entire match.  Many games have this system to a degree, but Battlefield 2 is the only Battlefield I am aware of that has had it.  I spent hours replaying matches, watching epic fights, rewinding them, re-watching them from different angles, and then capturing epic combat footage.  I made a good number of videos (which sadly were lost to the now defunct Google Video platform that Google had before they acquired YouTube).  

Yes, we live in a world of streaming and super simple video capture, but a replay system allows for so much more than just what a single player's view was.  With the content creation tools that exist today a replay system would be an amazing capability and I have no doubt would result in some epic community created content.

I also think graphics engines are at a point where you could use a current state engine for years without a concern about it looking "old" in a couple.  This would be a key element to making Battlefield-as-a-service.  

Of course I mentioned battle pass and I understand that may tilt some players, but I think its the reality of the current market for these types of games.  If it was combined with new maps, weapons, and campaign settings it would be almost no different than buying "Battlefield version 2022/2023/2024/2025" and the improvement is that your investment per pass is building on all previous passes.  Compared to when I started playing Battlefield 3 it didn't matter what I had accomplished in Battlefield 2.  Ideally a battle pass would focus on cosmetic and "battle medals" type awards and not any power increases (i.e. don't tie unlocking access to a weapon behind battle pass).

If this game were made I'd play it.  Would you?  If so, leave a comment.  If not, believe it or not, still leave a comment.

Netflixed: Ozark

 The Netflix show, Ozark, is a stressful show to watch.  It was nicknamed the "depression session" in our household as we binged through the four available seasons and each episode saw the main characters go through one depressing change of events after another.  We had watched the first season when it first came out but hadn't returned for its follow ups until now.  After watching the series finale last night I kind of wish I hadn't picked it back up.

Beware; spoilers ahead!

I honestly don't understand how so many good shows fail to land a decent ending. Game of Thrones is the most famous, but there are many others in the modern era of binge-worthy television shows that just can't get it right.  Ozark is another one on the pile and probably closest in feeling to the series finale of The Sopranos.  It is classic fade to black leaving the audience wondering.

Fortunately (or unfortunately maybe) the last season's story line is so unbelievable that as a viewer I was well prepared to be let down.  There are so many plot holes and questions and then a last second (literally the last seconds of the show) "oh hey I'm back" character appearance before the fade to black.  Also the season throws one ridiculous situation after another at our main characters who in turn find one more perfect miracle solution to get out of it. Then the ending.

The ending is a let down.  The Byrde family is happily back together murdering someone (assumed as the screen fades to black before a gunshot sound plays) to keep the gig going.  Throw this on top of the fact we just watched Ruth get whacked for literally no reason because some character blurted something out.  Oh and Nelson was killed by whats-her-face.  What was Nelson even doing?  We will never know.

The ending and lead up to it through the latter half of the season is just baffling.  The situations were so stressful to watch as well that it made it hard to enjoy but also hard to not want to binge the next episode and the next and the next.  Unfortunately that stress is unrewarded as the Byrde family is right back where they started: a family tied up in a criminal enterprise looking for a way out.

Another thing that rubbed me wrong was Marty's flirting with "do I really trust Wendy?" when he pours his heart out to his daughter Charlotte.  This was a pointless scene though as Marty goes way out of character to keep letting Wendy ruin any chance he has at saving his family.  Its OK though; the show writers just snapped some fingers and all miracle solutions were easily obtained off screen for Marty.

Most egregious of problems in my book was the final season kicking off with a car crash only to leave the viewer hanging and going back in time.  Then we eventually get to that car crash in the final episodes and it MEANT NOTHING TO THE STORY.  What a fucking wasted tease to have that as the kick off to the final season.  The scene was fine, but it didn't need to be teased as some huge ending moment.  Well maybe the scene was not fine; it was just one more ridiculous scene on the pile of ridiculous scenes.

Damn it.  Typing this post has stressed me out.  I want Season 1 Marty and Ruth back in my brain.  There was so much possibility there.  Another great series wasted with a shit ending.

Disagree?  Love Ozark's ending?  Leave a comment so I can tell you that you are wrong.

(Untitled)

 

I've got nothing.  But here's a post for my post a day :)  

A PSA for the PSA: New World, Easy Anticheat, and your computer's security software

 There is a PSA (public service announcement) circulating for New World players that proclaims a fix for "desync" (i.e. your computer and the game server being out of sync).  The fix asks you to exclude Easy Anticheat (the anticheat software used by New World) from your computers security software (usually just Microsoft Window's firewall).  This PSA is asking users to punch a big old hole in your computer's defense against rogue actors on the internet so consider this most my PSA for the PSA.  

DON'T DO IT (and no, I won't link to it)

This change is a bad idea and any "positive" result from making the change is likely a placebo effect.  While there is a plausible technical explanation that game + anticheat traffic is being combined together and thus allowing anticheat a free pass through security processing will improve performance it is an unlikely scenario.  If it is actually happening then that's a risk in and of itself.

For science I did make the change and there was zero change in how the game performed.  With the change reverted the experience is the same as it was when the change was in effect.

Why is it a bad idea to make this change?  Because anticheat software has unfettered access to deep levels of your computer to catch cheaters.  That unfettered access is fine if all its doing is trying to catch cheaters, but if that anticheat is ever compromised (see video at end of post) then letting it bypass security software is a terrible idea as it will give hackers that same unfettered access to your computer.

If I was a hacker that had access to compromised software this type of PSA to a group of users motivated to make the change is exactly the sort of stuff I'd love to see.

I could go on and and on about this, but instead I'll leave this below video on the risks with anticheat software.  I'd encourage anyone evaluating making this change to watch this video and decide if any possible benefit is worth the risk to giving anticheat a free pass to and from the internet.  Anticheat is a necessary component of online gaming, but there is no reason to take extra steps to make it any more of a risk.