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Twitch Drops expansion rewards viewers when streamers play well
Thanks to streaming services, watching people play video games can often be as fun as taking part. Game studios have paid close attention, often enlisting big name streamers to generate buzz for their upcoming titles via reward systems like Twitch’s Drops platform. Riot Games set Twitch records when it allowed viewers to grab a beta key for its new 5v5 shooter, Valorant, simply by asking that they tune into an activated channel.
Loot drops? Eternal Crusade says no.
If you haven't figured it out yet, Warhammer 40,000: Eternal Crusade will not be like most MMOs or online co-op games, especially in the looting department. In an interview with 2P.com, Behaviour Interactive announced that the game will have not dropped loot but rewards from NPC bossses. "You'll be given rewards from your high command," Behaviour said. "Attack the enemy positions, defend your bases or free them from the Tyranids... this is what you are asked to do and this is what you will be rewarded for. Once you get enough reward tokens you can exchange them from some special ammunitions or equipment. There is no direct drop system in the game." The interview shed light on many of the game's features, such as its single resource (requisition points), the possibility of purchasing elite units, and the challenge of balancing melee and ranged classes. [Thanks to Halldorr for the tip!]
Warlords of Draenor: Getting resources for your Garrison
The player's Garrison is one of the central features of Warlords of Draenor, coming with its own special Hearthstone, and in many ways taking the place of a faction hub. Depending on what kind of structures you choose to build in your Garrison, you can have your own crafting centers, bank access, auction house, PvP center, and more. However, to build any of them, you need resources. In fact, to do just about anything with your Garrison you need resources. You need them for buildings, for crafting, and in order to send your followers on missions. So, just how do you get Garrison Resources? Well, I'm glad you asked. There are a variety of ways to earn your Garrison Resources in Warlords of Draenor, some easier than others.
WildStar to make character upgrades easier
The WildStar devs claim that they are listening to players' concerns over the infrequency of AMP upgrades and ability tier unlocks, which is why the team is planning to roll out several improvements to these drop rates in an upcoming patch. "For the uninitiated, players earn AMP power points and ability tier unlocks naturally through leveling up in WildStar," the team posted. "Special items can be found throughout the game however that further boost your character's AMP points and ability tier unlocks. These items, based on our data and from feedback from players, simply do not drop enough." Players will see a drop rate increase from level 50 creatures and PvP victory bags. On top of those, the team is putting in one-shot items from endgame reputation vendors, the prestige vendor, gold medal veteran dungeon rewards, and at path levels 15 and 30.
Flameseeker Chronicles: The curse of Guild Wars 2's precursor weapons
My wife doesn't play Guild Wars 2 any more. She hasn't exactly made a deliberate choice to leave the game and never come back, but she used to play every day. Some time around the end of season one of the living world story, she started logging in only every week or so, and then finally not at all. She dips in for a few seconds to unlock the new story chapters, but only because I remind her that they're out. This is the first time the two of us have been seriously invested in different MMOs. When she stopped playing GW2 as often, she dived headfirst into Final Fantasy XIV, which is totally understandable because it's a great game and I play it casually myself. Normally I wouldn't consider this development to be article material because people drift away from games they used to love and find new ones all the time, and it's not necessarily a bad thing. But this wasn't a natural split: When I told her about all of the cool story stuff happening in season two, my wife's response was, "That sounds neat. Has ArenaNet implemented precursor crafting yet?"
WildStar unveils the details of raids
WildStar wants to have its raids be big. Big in size. Big in rewards. Big in engagement. Big in lots of ways, in short. The team has talked about them in passing elsewhere, most notably at PAX East 2014, but there still hasn't been a nice big info drop about raids that potential players could really sink their teeth into. Like the sort of reveal that accompanies a new DevSpeak video. So guess what's past the cut? Go ahead, guess. Very good, it's the raiding video (something you could have concluded from the headline, yes), but there's more besides. We had a chance to sit down and talk with Brett Scheinert, the dungeon & raid lead developer, regarding these high-end encounters and what will set WildStar apart from other titles offering a raiding endgame. And despite what those opening lines might have made you think, it's not just about size. (It's also Spinal Tap references. You can guess which ones.)
Diablo III's 2.0.4 patch makes resplendent treasure feel more resplendent
Blizzard has patched Diablo III to version 2.0.4 in the Americas. There are a decent number of class tweaks in the patch as well as an adjustment to the drop of unique legendary crafting materials. They've been "significantly increased," if you're wondering. There are a few itemization changes, too, including an adjustment to to treasure drops from resplendent chests. "The treasure from Resplendent Chests has been improved to feel more resplendent," Blizzard says.
Marvel Heroes promises a weekend of luck and legends
March 17th is St. Patrick's Day, and that means it's time for everyone to get lucky. Especially players of Marvel Heroes, since the game is running its Lucky & Legendary Weekend in celebration. And what does that boil down to? Why, it means you have a lot of options to get lucky with legendary items in (potentially) legendary ways. You might need to get a bit lucky to get everything you want, though. The biggest element of the weekend event is crafting the legendary Pot of Gold, crafted with dropped pieces of rainbows that can be found during the event. There's also a new random costume case that allows for a chance at all sorts of different outfits for your heroes and a game-wide reworking of drops to be more festive for the duration of the weekend. So if you feel like staying up all night to get lucky in the game, you've at least got some convenient reasons for doing so.
Final Fantasy XI celebrates 11 years 11 ways
Final Fantasy XI is 11 years old this year (11 years and six months at this point, but that's nitpicking). So it seems appropriate that the title is kicking off a big anniversary event on November 11th. Except that it's really kicking off not one big anniversary event but 11 smaller ones. You see the theme at work. Whether you've been around for all 11 years or just 11 days, there's plenty of rewards available for everyone. Seal drop rates are improved for all characters in a party during the anniversary timeframe, as are are double synthesis skill increase rates and several seal-based battlefield rewards. Players will also earn double experience, doubled Salvage drops, doubled Monstrosity experience, doubled Shining Stars in Mog Gardens... the list goes on. Almost anything you choose to do between now and November 25th will see a significant boost, so take a look at the full list of bonuses and get ready to enjoy 11 bonuses for the next 14 days. (They can't all line up perfectly.)
The Mog Log: Final Fantasy XIV's patch 2.1 on the endgame
Two months out from Final Fantasy XIV's launch, I haven't had a chance to talk about any of the information we've seen about patch 2.1. That is kind of great. I haven't been thinking extensively about what the next big thing will be because I'm too busy enjoying the game right now. But that patch is approaching, and you'd better believe that it's going to include enough stuff to shake things up again -- enough that I could really write four or five columns just looking forward to what's coming next. First let's look at some of the elements that are going to seriously affect the endgame this week.
Patch 5.4 PTR: Initial ilevel ideas for the new raid levels
Blizzard Lead Systems Designer Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street has tweeted the developers' preliminary item levels for the next tier's raid gear. Patch 5.4 is bringing in flexible raiding, a fourth difficulty level, which sits between Raid Finder and Normal raids in terms of both item level and difficulty. 5.4 ilevels aren't finalized but we're thinking something like 528 LFR, 536 Flex, 553 Normal, 566 Heroic. - Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) June 12, 2013 Do note, first and foremost, that these numbers are not finalized. They should be taken with a very large pinch of salt, and are subject to considerable change. The PTR isn't even live at the time of writing this post, so let's not get ahead of ourselves and proclaim the end of days for raiding. So let's look at the current item levels. Raid finder drops 502, normal mode 522, normal thunderforged 528, heroic mode, 535, heroic thunderforged 541. So, the gap between normal mode and LFR has been widened, from 20 to 25, with Flex sitting 17 levels lower than normal mode. The gaps above that are the same, but there's been no mention of something like Thunderforged gear. For heroic geared raiders, Flex seems like a logical difficulty at these levels, but there will be some theorycrafting that needs to be done to ascertain whether the new tier's potentially lower-level drops will outdo their current gear thanks to set bonuses, trinkets and the like. What this ilvl distribution seems to be saying is that heroic-geared raiders shouldn't need to run LFR at all. But, this is all subject to change.
Guild Wars 2's February update gives players a bit more loot
Guild Wars 2 might sell itself as not being a loot-focused game, but let's face it: No one wants to pound on a giant for five straight minutes without getting a new sword. So players were more than a little annoyed when exactly that was happening. After extensive investigation, director Colin Johanson posted to the forums confirming that the team believes it's found the problem and will be fixing it with the large patch later this month. The short version is that the game has a set of criteria to determine whether or not a player gets credit for killing an enemy and whether or not said player gets loot. Unfortunately, the conditions for getting loot from a target, especially high-health targets like most Champions, were extremely restrictive and could easily result in players deserving of loot winding up empty-handed. The next major patch will correct this issue, with better criteria for determining loot drops and an assured blue drop from any Champion killed.
Tons of apps on sale to kick off Memorial Day weekend
It seems like it's been a while since we had a big holiday weekend full of app sales, but the wait is over: Memorial Day is coming up in just a few days, and app developers are bringing down prices all over the store to celebrate! EA's got most of its games on sale for just 99 cents, including Flight Control Rockets, Trenches 2, and Burnout Crash. Some really great deals in there. Because We May is a big coordinated indie gaming sale going on, and pretty much every great indie game on iOS has been brought down to 99 cents. Too many great titles in there to list: Puzzlejuice, Swords and Soldiers, Fieldrunners, Super Mega Worm, 1-bit Ninja, Aftermath, League of Evil 2, and a whole lot more. Seriously -- go buy some iPhone games. Above has dropped to free. Cut the Rope: Experiments is free. Mini Motor Racing HD has gone free. And side scroller racing game Dream Track Nation has gone free as well. Business Card Reader from Shape Services is now $2.99, down from $4.99. Man oh man that's a lot of great, really cheap games. Especially that Because We May sale -- seriously, go look at it, both for iOS and Steam.
The Azeroth Ethicist: Cheating (or not cheating) the roll system
I was healing a Well of Eternity PUG a few days ago when I got a whisper from the group's warrior tank. Warrior: Could you help me out with something? Me: Sure, what do you need? Warrior: If Varo'then's Brooch drops at the end, would you roll on it for me? Me: Um ... I'd been off in my own little world watching health bars and thinking about next week's Shifting Perspectives column and hadn't paid any attention to the group's composition. It turns out the DPSers were a mage, a hunter, and -- oh, there we go -- a frost death knight. So in the event that the strength trinket dropped, the warrior tank wanted me to roll on it and, if I won, give it to him over the DK. He probably asked the mage and the priest to do the same thing, but the group was quiet in party chat, so I have no way of knowing. We had a small and, to his credit, civil conversation over it, and there are a few issues here on which I'd like to get readers' opinions.
The Daily Grind: Do you like need vs. greed loot distribution?
MMO gaming: It's all about the loot. OK, maybe not all about it, but there sure is a lot of thought and angst devoted to the items that fall from various AI-creature piñatas -- who got the best stuff, who didn't get any stuff, and how it's not fair that he got better stuff than you did. Different games may offer different methods of loot distribution, like a round-robin option or Guild Wars' pre-assigned drops, but need before greed is still a long-standing and familiar method. So what do you think? Does the system, which relies largely on players rolling fairly, still work well, or has its time passed? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Wings Over Atreia: Boss world tour -- Eltnen
They're big! They're bad! They're da boss(es)! And they've got your loot! That's right: Lurking about all corners of Aion, powerful monsters beckon (lure?) Daevas with promises of tantalizing loot and illustrious glory. Who doesn't like the rush of downing a powerful foe or nabbing a coveted item? Previous tours of Heiron and Inggison scouted out said monsters and offered some tips as to who was worth fighting and who should be avoided when hunting alone. Those lands focused on higher-level players. However, with double XP weekends throughout January, there will undoubtedly be an influx of players in the lower levels. What better time to take stock of the bosses available to this crowd? This week, Wings Over Atreia takes a tour of Eltnen to expose the available bosses to treasure-hungry Daevas. Be warned, though: The opportunity to take on these behemoths may be short-lived during a time of double XP, especially when combined with mentoring. So before you move on to bigger, brighter lands, take a moment to stop and smell the roses -- or kill the bosses, as it were.
Fallen Earth's newest patch aimed at improving a life of crafting
Crafting has always been one of the major elements of Fallen Earth, and with good cause, really: you're in a post-apocalyptic wasteland and you can't just buy all your supplies down at the S-Mart. But that doesn't mean crafting is all roses and happy thoughts; some items are far rarer than necessary and others present in useless abundance. It's ripe for some revisions, and that's exactly what the game's newest patch, set for release on October 4th, is meant to address. Several recipes have been streamlined, with unnecessary parts removed from the equation to make a crafter's life easier. At the same time, craftable items are being removed from merchant inventories, encouraging players to seek out other players or assemble the items themselves. If you're feeling a bit leery of the changes, though, fret not -- you still have a couple of days left to stock up on materials.
Itronix GD2000: a rugged handheld for your skydiving, bullet-dodging, building-scaling lifestyle
Taking a break from BASE jumping to shop for your next rugged computer? If you can't wait for Panasonic's Android Toughbook slate, consider the just-announced General Dynamics Itronix GD2000. The PR mavens promise this handheld performs like a full-sized notebook, thanks to an Intel Core Solo processor. Weighing in at 2.4 pounds, this beast can run for six hours on a lithium-ion battery; it also boasts a sun-friendly 5.6-inch, 1024 x 600 LED touchscreen. Fully integrated satellite GPS will help you reach your top secret rendezvous point, and WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity will keep your Twitter feed updated along the way. But how rugged is it really, you ask? The case is Ingress Protection (IP) 54 rated, the company answers, meaning your new purchase is protected from dust and splashing water. When you're ready to build your own – maybe upgrading the standard 64GB SATA drive and adding cellular networking – prices start at $4,900.
The Daily Grind: What rewards aren't worth the effort?
A gauntlet of fiendish bosses. Horrible traps and puzzles solved in an instanced format, with no chance for other parties to help you. A collection of dangerous encounters and perilous chances with your characters, in which a single death would mean undoing hours of work. All of that work for... a cosmetic helm? While Final Fantasy XI has some brutally difficult bosses, they drop powerful rewards. But even then, sometimes you might look at the rewards they drop versus the slightly weaker rewards available elsewhere and decide that the effort is just too much. It's not that the rewards are bad; it's that the rewards don't match up to the strategy and careful play required to have a chance. So when have you run into rewards that don't feel like they're worth the effort it would take to obtain them? Is it a matter of too much time or too much challenge for too little benefit? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Vodafone UK bids adieu to Galaxy Tab 10.1v, likes its slates skinny
Back in February, it looked like Vodafone UK was more than happy to get its hands on the original Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1v, but with the impending UK release of a younger, slimmer model, the carrier is giving the 10.1v the boot. According to some helpful tipsters, customers who showed early interest in the thicker version of the tablet have received an "important update" from Vodafone saying, "We've decided to add the slimmer Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 to our range, which will now take the place of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1v." The landing page for the original 10.1 has also been removed from Vodafone's website. Looks like it's a sad day for our friends across the pond who like their tabs with a little extra cushion, not to mention an 8 megapixel camera. [Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
