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Marvel Heroes plans for a more awesome team-up system
While it's all groovy to have a sidekick to run around with your superhero in Marvel Heroes, apparently the team and the community felt as though the team-up system needed more work. That's why Gazillion has a major revamp of team-ups planned for Q1 2015. According to a new dev diary on the subject, the revamp will cover a range of improvements to the system. Team-up characters will see more customization, expanded power trees, a level cap of 60, increased survivability, synergy bonuses, and new powers on top of improvements to old powers. Players will also gain more control over what their team-up companions do on the battlefield. In addition to the developer diary, there's also a forum FAQ to deliver even more information on the planned revamp.
Das Tal devs: 'We don't even own a gauntlet'
Yesterday, we posted about an article penned by Das Tal Head of Communications David Wells in which he threw down the proverbial gauntlet, as we put it, at ArcheAge's feet; he laid out many of ArcheAge's faults and explained how Das Tal, an admittedly indie sandbox, could improve on the format and avoid some of ArcheAge's infamous mistakes. This prompted a fiery debate, particularly among ArcheAge's fans and frenemies, over sandbox design in the indie and AAA space. Das Tal Managing Director Alexander Zacherl hopes to expound on that treatise with a letter to players of his own; he emphasizes that Fairytale Distillery's intent was not to provoke a duel with ArcheAge but to improve the studio's corner of the genre. We've agreed to publish that letter in full today. Read on!
Hungry? Elder Scrolls Online is revamping provisioning
When The Elder Scrolls Online's Update 6 launches later this month, characters with the provisioning skill should go make us a sammich. Just kidding. But if you do decide to make us a sammich, you'll find the process much more streamlined and effective, as ZeniMax is plotting a major overhaul of the profession. In a dev blog posted last night, the studio explained that it will be reducing the overall number of ingredients in the game, adding new recipes, updating the cooking UI, and giving food additives some oomph. Roleplayers will be happy to learn that lootable food-related objects will soon yield appropriate ingredients (apples from apple baskets, for example), and food buffs will make a bit more sense, like "meat dishes [that] increase your health and fruit dishes [that] increase your magicka." If you're not actually a cook yourself, all you really need to know is that you should start skinning fish, cows, and chickens for meat and that drink buffs won't suck anymore. Hooray!
Star Trek Online revamps bridge officers
Your loyal Star Trek Online crew deserves some recognition for its tireless work at raking you in XP, don't you think? Well, even if you don't agree, Cryptic is planning to give some major love to bridge officers in an upcoming patch. The team posted a dev diary today outlining the revamp to players' faithful companions: "From a high-level standpoint, the updated bridge officer training system is focused on allowing players to invest in their bridge officers by training them in any of their class and specialization abilities, which can then be easily swapped in and out on the fly." These changes will allow for a more flexible and customizable crew that can cross-train in intelligence and other potential specializations. The dev diary goes on to detail how officers will be trained going forward and what benefits players will get from these buffed-up buddies.
City of Titans shows off socketed model
There's a long way to go before City of Titans reaches the superheroic heights of its spiritual forebears, but the team is eager nonetheless to show that progress is being made. That's why it's putting on a 12 Days of Devmas series, kicking off with the revelation of the fully socketed body model that the team is using for testing purposes. "Odo's an artist's model we're using while we continue to develop the base body mesh," the team posted. "He lets us continue work on the rest of the game while we develop the sliders and other parts that make the characters super. Of course, you'll notice he still has every joint that the final character will have. Fingers and all. He's the digital version of a wooden artist's mannequin, with all the flexibility of our real model." In successive posts of the series, Odo is shown with various weapons including a slide rule and keytar. [Thanks to Bryan for the tip!]
The Elder Scrolls Online's Undaunted Pledge system promotes daily dungeons
Are you wandering around The Elder Scrolls Online in a post-Update 5 haze, lost on what to do? Wander no more: ZeniMax has released a dev blog today to give you some guidance. The guide details the pledge system of the Undaunted, whose tasks are reminiscent of daily dungeon quests in other themeparks. Starting at level 45, players can swear themselves to the Undaunted faction, which offers two daily quests to complete dungeons, one veteran and one not. Depending on how well they complete the dungeon and the difficulty of the encounter, players will be awarded reputation with the faction as well as a key to unlock a sweet chest of loot. "The Undaunted chests can contain a variety of helpful loot, from valuable Ornate items and soul gems to unique items sets and attention-grabbing shoulder pieces fashioned from the very brutes you've slain," writes ZOS. The full guide is on the official site.
Guild Wars 2 is revamping dailies... again
ArenaNet has just announced that it's revamping Guild Wars 2's daily achievements... again. "We want to give players the opportunity to try things they may not normally experience and feel like the rewards they earn for doing so mean something," says the studio. "Rather than [give] a generic reward for all achievements, each one will give players something that is thematically tied to the content they're playing." Completing dailies will allow players to earn everything from achievement points to fractal relics and badges of honor, depending on the daily's difficulty and type (PvE, PvP, WvW). The studio is also rolling out a new achievement track that replaces the old monthlies system and rewards players just for logging in. "One way to think of this is like a holiday calendar that gives you a new present from ArenaNet each day," the devs write. "There are 28 individual rewards on the track, each one building toward an epic chest containing a permanent 1% increase to account gold find and your choice of either ascended crafting materials, materials necessary for crafting your legendary weapon (including mystic clovers), an additional sum of laurels, or tomes of knowledge." Yesterday, the studio revealed that the ongoing season two plotline will be on hiatus through the holidays, being replaced by Wintersday. Season two resumes on January 13th.
Camelot Unchained tackles building systems, ability crafting
City State Entertainment has continued its daily Camelot Unchained updates with another batch of notes on the ongoing state of the build as the team gears up for alpha testing in 2015. Studio boss Mark Jacobs says that his crew has done a first pass on the building system as well as the ability crafting system UI, mage VFX and casting, and the grass system. The team is also working on improvements to client performance. "Last month we rocked the network and PhysX side," Jacobs wrote. "Now we begin to do the same on the client side." Critical improvements to duck pedestal collision are also included in the notes. Check the whole list out on the official site to understand that joke.
The Repopulation expands alpha and focuses on bots
Above and Beyond has published The Repopulation's end-of-November report, and it's a doozy. The studio discusses the embiggening of its alpha thus far and the addition of new servers to handle the load. The devs have also been working on housing and city locations, a new character versioning system, a new cloning system, nation deeds, facial animations, and tooltips. Perhaps of most interest to sandbox fans disillusioned with this year's sandbox drama is A&B's focus on its bot detection code. "Our philosophy with bots is that once the game launches it is not really beneficial to ban characters unless they already invested a significant amount of time into the characters, otherwise they can just create a new free account and you need to detect them all over again," the devs wrote. "So we've focused our attention on reducing the benefits of botting. In addition skill gain penalties and stoppage, botters will see their harvesting results capped in quality, and a complete shut off of loot." Capping off the dev letter are 17,356 words' worth of patch notes. We counted. Check every last one out at the official site.
The myth of Skyforge's Celestial Fortress
Guess what, story fans? Skyforge has lore! Today's dev post explains the myth behind the Celestial Fortress, an epic construction project floating in the sky meant to safeguard the planet Aelion from its own inward-spiraling moon. "While historians still argue about its true origin and meaning," intones the narrator, "only one historical fact remains clear: the Celestial Fortress which the symbol represents prevented the destruction of Aelion." Well, that and the Roche limit, but this is sci-fantasy lore, not astronomy. Carry on, storytellers! We've included the new concept art of the Celestial Fortress below. Don't forget that Skyforge's browser minigame competition to win a beta key and other prizes is still ongoing for the next several weeks.
Elder Scrolls Online walks you through crafting writs
Fun fact: Elder Scrolls Online's Update 5 is about a month old at this point and is now able to roll over and distinguish shapes. Among its treasure trove of new features was the introduction of crafting writs. However, in case you are a little confused or curious what these are and how to do them, ZeniMax has crafted (get it?) a new dev diary to walk you through the process. To be able to take on writs, players will first need to become certified in a desired crafting profession by undertaking a related quest. Once completed, players can accept a task from a writ board to craft specific goods and turn them in for rewards. Each category of writ can only be fulfilled once a day, and completing them can even net you survey reports to point you toward a cluster of harvest nodes.
The Secret World's nightmarish Issue #10 coming 'in next couple weeks'
Content-loving The Secret World fans will be happy to hear that the next issue is just a couple weeks away. Joel Bylos' November Game Director letter has announced that Issue #10 Nightmares in the Dream Palace will go live "in the first half of December." That means more Tokyo locations, a new mission chain, new AEGIS shields, and more interesting characters will soon be available to enjoy. Want to wander the docks and the shipyards? How about prowl around an abandoned quarantine camp or the Orochi tenements? Those locations and more will be available for exploration. Can't wait to hear and see more? Keep your eyes peeled for Massively's hands-on with issue #10 this week! Not all the goodies are dependent on owning the issue, either. The accompanying patch brings quality-of-life improvements including bug fixes, a UI editing mode, and an updated con system to help newer players. And what's TSW without a great holiday event? The letter also introduces this year's new Christmas event, which will run from the middle of the month until just after the new year. Called The Christmas Conspiracy, it begins with an invitation to see a performance of "The Magic Flute" at the Albion Theatre and entails working to stop the Phoenicians from stealing the very heart of Christmas itself. Previous Christmas events will also return.
New trailer for Destiny's The Dark Below glances at gameplay
After Destiny's cinematic introducing the story of the game's upcoming DLC, The Dark Below, leaked, Bungie opted to issue a more explanatory video. As seen on Game Informer, the developer diary-style trailer discusses the "one way trip" nature of The Dark Below's design. The trailer also introduces Eris Morn, the merchant and primary quest-giver that failed to defeat the DLC's main villain Crota in the past. The Dark Below will launch on December 9 and adds new gear and maps to the game, which are also shown in today's video. The DLC will cost $20, and it is also part of the Destiny's $35 season pass program. Those that buy the expansion will also receive a new Sparrow vehicle capable of performing some fancy tricks. [Image: Activision]
Guild Wars 2 streamlines PvP queuing, adds map voting
How can Guild Wars 2's PvP experience be improved? By streamlining the flow, baby! A new dev diary posted today talks about how ArenaNet is working to improve match flow, starting with the elimination of PvP rosters and simply allowing players to queue solo or with a party. Other significant changes include replacing AFK players before matches begin, group voting on favorite maps, and using the dishonor system to ding those who leave or go AFK during matches. To get into PvP matches, players will now be required to go to the Heart of the Mists, which is being outfitted with additional core services so that it can be a fun social hub between games.
EVE gives more market data tools to the mod community
EVE Online is such a mod-happy game that there's an official site for it, and it's on this site today that CCP said that it will be giving another valuable information-gathering tool to players with the advent of a new searchable resource. "We also are making available the MarketType resource. MarketTypes is a collection of all possible MarketType resources," the devs posted. Being able to search market history and orders will help modders pull in data from multiple regions and should be in the game with the Rhea content patch.
Guild Wars 2's revamped sPvP rewards skillful play, not just wins
ArenaNet's Justin O'Dell is on dev blog duty today for Guild Wars 2, and his post is all about planned updates to the game's sPvP matchmaking and ladder ranking systems. "We decided to move to a score-based search method that takes into consideration several metrics that we believe are important for a match to be fun," he explains. "We chose a score-based system over other methods because we found that it's a good compromise between the often competing goals of match quality and short queue times." The system will do its best to match players by skill level, rank, party size, and so forth. Points awarded through the ladder ranking system are determined by final score and odds of victory in an attempt to ensure that playing well in spite of a loss is encouraged and that luck isn't the driving force in ranking. "Imagine a world where everyone took the saying 'It's not whether you win or lose, it's how you play the game' seriously," O'Dell says. "Wouldn't that be great?"
CIG kicks off Star Citizen Meet the Devs video series
Cloud Imperium has kicked off a new video series called Meet the CIG Devs. Episode one focuses on production coordinator Darian Vorlick, who is profiled via a question-and-answer vignette that's long on personal info but relatively short on game-specific stuff. Still, it might be worth watching if you're curious about the personalities behind the curtain on the largest crowdfunded project of all time. Click past the cut to view Episode 1.
EVE Online turns manual control of ships over to players
For the first time ever in its history, EVE Online is experimenting with giving players manual control of their starships. The change was prompted by observing new players who were frustrated that the game didn't include standard WASD controls. These "simple" controls will be introduced as an optional beta feature in next month's Rhea update. CCP also posted a list of other features that we'll be seeing with the upcoming content patch. Players will enjoy an improved star map, try out new ships such as the Confessor tactical destroyer, experience more atmospheric asteroid belts, and no longer lose skill points or clone grades when podded.
Wormholes opening up 101 new EVE Online systems
Think you've explored most of the known galaxy in EVE Online? First of all, that's a lie as the game is stupid big, and second, you won't as of next month anyway. CCP announced that one of the big features coming with the December 9th Rhea update will be 101 new wormhole systems opening their doors for business. The wormholes will be separated into three categories, starting with 75 "standard shattered" systems filled with broken planets and minable ice fields. Then 25 of the new systems will only allow smaller vessels to jump through. And finally, the 101st will be Thera, a story-heavy location that will be the largest system in the game. Like small ship shattered systems, Thera won't admit capital ships, but will host four stations for those who venture into its domain.
World of Warcraft's garrisons 'like a personal guild'
Experiencing garrisons in World of Warcraft is no longer an exercise in daydreaming but an immediate reality with this morning's launch of Warlords of Draenor. That doesn't mean that Blizzard is finished with talking about it, as it's shouting a final garrison dev diary today to the crowd that's already streamed out of the front door. This fourth dev diary is mostly concerned with showing how this feature can benefit players and how they can be accomodating to different playstyles. "Your Garrison operates more like a personal guild that you lead," Blizzard posted. "Whether you check in on it multiple times per day or a few times a week, you can set up your Garrison to give you rewards and present you with challenges at varied intervals." Every two levels of the expansion will open up more garrison options, and these instances will also offer weekly quests that tie into the storyline. You can even end up building a monument to your mighty ego if you overcome one of a handful of significant tasks.
