Tag Archive

No Date For NA Arena of Valor Switch Beta Test, Transfer of Mobile Progress Possible


Posted on January 18, 2018 by Rae Michelle Richards

Popular mobile Multiplayer Online Battle Arena Arena of Valor was originally set to make its debut on the Nintendo Switch in North America last month, needless to say the scheduled beta Christmas time beta test never materialized.  Outlet Comicbook.com got a chance to sit down wth reps from publisher TenCent and get an update on the upcoming Switch port, plans for North American beta testing and obviously quite a few questions about the licensed D.C Comics heroes.

It seems like TenCent will roll the beta version of Arena of Valor in European territories first with North America to follow sometime after. Just as the mobile version on iOS and Android was launched in European territories first, TenCent will start taking applications for Switch Beta testers very soon – with a later, unspecified date, in mind for North America.

“The Nintendo version of Arena of Valor is being handled by a different team at the moment. We’re supporting the Nintendo version with beta testing, branding, and everything company-side. We have the closed beta testing coming up for Europe, and after we have the results from that beta testing, we’ll have a more clear timetable for launches in different regions.”

Comicbook.com also asked a question that I hadn’t considered – would it be possible for mobile players of Arena of Valor to transfer their gold, talent shards and unlocked heroes to the Nintendo Switch version? TenCent says that this is certainly technically feasible but they do have to consider the imbalance that this would create for new players who are just starting out on Switch.  From the sound of things there’s still some deliberation going on about the possibility of porting over account progress from one platform to another.

“We had that discussion earlier, internally. The answer is that the decision is still being made. It is technically possible, but having people on the mobile version and Switch version competing with each other may compromise the arena as a “fair” arena, if you see what I mean. Because they’re using different devices, when they compete with each other we feel it could generate complaints of unfair competition, so we’re still balancing it.”

Lastly, the topic of Monetization has of course came up. Naturally with many calling last year – “the year of the loot box” – it is understandable that potential players might be a little skeptical of a free to play title on Nintendo’s latest platform. From my own personal experience, Arena of Valor is filled with blind boxes (loot boxes)  – both in the “free” daily variety and those paid for with real currency.

“We haven’t made a decision about that. Monetization has never been the “start.” It’s not the major concern early on, for any version of the game. We will have more information after the beta test in EU.”

Arena of Valor will launch sometime in 2018 in both North America and Europe. The free to play mobile version is currently available in most countries on both Google Android and Apple’s iOS platforms. I’ve played a couple hours here and there on my phone and found it to be a competent M.O.B.A experience, even if I don’t really recognize or resonate with many of the heroes on offer.

[Source]


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Pokémon Sun and Moon updated to Version 1.1 today


Posted on January 10, 2017 by Jason Nason

If you’ve booted up your copy of Pokémon Sun or Moon today and tried to connect online you’ve no doubt seen a notification that the game needs to be updated.

Oddly unlike most games on the Nintendo 3DS there is as yet no prompt to perform the update in the Nintendo eShop. A quick search in the eShop will find the update, which you can download for the appropriate game. The update is required to use online services with Pokémon Sun and Pokémon Moon.

Read More


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Zombie Vikings: update and coming to Steam!


Posted on December 5, 2015 by Erika

Previously released on the Playstation 4 in September, indie game Zombie Vikings from Swedish developer Zoink Games is being released on Monday, December 7th for Steam. For those not familiar with the game it’s an entertaining adventure of up to four undead Vikings on a quest though Norse soil to retrieve Odin’s lost eye. With the Steam release coming around the corner, also comes a major update for the game, which will also be available for the PS4 later in the month. Among the updates are-

  • A unicorn pig named Oink for Single Player, which not only will accompany your viking, but also has the ability to carry items on it’s back and eventually strap a cannon onto it!
  • New Enemies
  • A weapon progression system where the player can unlock weapons by completing levels
  • Weapon improvements across the board, including special abilities for every weapon and stats in the store
  • Combat improvements including target hints, better damage stat tracking, mini health bars for enemies, and directly rolling

In addition to that, the Steam release will be including Steam Cloud Saving, and Steam Trading Cards.

The Steam version releases on December 7th at 7:00AM PST and includes the update for $19.99USD with a 20% launch discount for the first week, so if you’ve been wanting to get it, now’s the chance! In addition to that, a bundle containing DLC characters Frostbjörn and Raybjörn along with the game’s soundtrack will be available for $24.99USD.

Zombie Vikings will be available for purchase on Steam and is currently out for the Playstation 4


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Fallout 4: Bethesda to Release 1st Patch for Game to PC, (and later Xbox One and Playstation 4)


Posted on November 20, 2015 by Tamsin Heineman

Seems by next week we’ll have our first (much needed) patch for Fallout 4 from Bethesda, which is coming to PC first followed later by Xbox One and Playstation 4 releases.

Our process for updating the game will include releasing a beta patch on Steam, followed by full release on PC, then release on the consoles. This process has worked well for us in the past and allows us to get more fixes out faster. Expect to see more updates, that are smaller and more frequent, than a few big ones. This allows us to make sure each fix is working right, as any change can have unintentional side effects in a game this huge. We expect the first beta patch to be up next week.

Official blog post here with full details.


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World of Warcraft: Upcoming Changes [Blizzcon 2015]


Posted on November 6, 2015 by Tamsin Heineman

Article By: Tamsin Skye Heineman

Today at Blizzcon, Blizzard revealed some upcoming changes for World of Warcraft based around player feedback. There are some very nice changes coming that I think will make a lot of players very pleased.

Here it is in text form from Blizzard themselves. The images from the panel are included at the bottom of this post.

Classes

  • The goal of the class changes was to keep classes fun, stop the PvP CC madness, make numbers easier to understand and slow down the pace of healing a little bit.
  • Removing abilities will make the game more fun.
  • Fantasy, visuals, cool effects, powerful, interactive, and abilities with a clear purpose are fun.
  • Redundant abilities are not fun (Frostfire bolt / Frostbolt for Fire and Arcane)
  • Abilities with inconsistent fantasy are not fun.
  • Situational abilities are not fun (Nourish)
  • Abilities that have been balanced to mediocrity are not fun (Mortal Strike)
  • Abilities with no feedback are not fun (Blood Strike – No real animation, visual, or fantasy)
  • Abilities that are unreliable are not fun (Feral druid positional requirements)
  • Complicated abilities are not fun (Symbiosis)
  • Returning players had more and more trouble figuring out how their class worked as more abilities were added. You shouldn’t have to go to another website just to figure out how to play your character.
  • The old talent system was scrapped to help combat this problem, but it didn’t solve it.

Healing

  • Players didn’t enjoy healing because of health bar whiplash, players were always almost constantly dying, healing consisted of spamming heals constantly.
  • Smart heals were too smart, the game was playing itself for you, you didn’t have to do any targeting. You ended up with a healing rotation and not paying attention to who was injured.
  • Mana was scaling poorly, lower item level characters had not enough mana, higher item level characters had excessive amounts of mana.
  • In Warlords, players have double the effective health, giving you longer to think and target your heals.
  • In Warlords, smart heals aren’t as smart. They just heal anyone who is injured rather than the most injured.
  • In Warlords, healers will have enough mana even at lower item levels.
  • In Warlords, Spirit is now on less slots, so you can’t trivialize mana anymore.
  • Healing will be more tactical and allow players to make decisions while healing in Warlords.
  • Players will have sufficient mana but not excessive mana in Warlords.

Items

  • Once a tier token dropped, you had to go to a vendor, find the right item, figure out what gems and reforges you need, upgrade the item, and then you were finally ready to use it. Once you were ready to use it, you may have to change gems and reforges on your other items as well.
  • Kill a boss, loot an item, equip the item.
  • Tier tokens will convert to an item just like the Timeless Isle tokens, this removes one of the steps.
  • Hit and expertise are removed from the game, meaning you don’t need to reforge and regem all the things with every new item you got.
  • Item upgrades are also gone, removing another step.
  • Enchants and sockets are on fewer slots now, helping remove another thing to do.
  • Caps and breakpoints are gone, making stat customization easier.
  • In Mists of Pandaria, loot can drop that no one in the raid can use, which didn’t feel good. Set bonuses and stats that switch on your main armor slots help with this problem. Spirit not being on most slots also helps.
  • Dodge and Parry are now bonus armor.
  • There are now more sources of loot, especially during questing and leveling in Draenor.
  • Versatility, Multistrike, Tertiary stats, gem sockets, and randomly upgraded quest items also help to add variety.

Q&A

  • Gladiator’s Resolve was a small enough change that it didn’t need another spec.
  • In case you missed it, the legendary item in Warlords is a ring.
  • Legendary weapons can be added when they fit the story / current state of the game.
  • Discipline priests couldn’t be nerfed earlier because so many guilds relied on them. Making guilds unable to defeat an encounter they could defeat yesterday is not fun. Doing so would have required retuning many of the Siege of Orgrimmar fights.
  • Seeing the bonus on tier tokens before they are used is something the developers are looking at. The wrong person getting the bonus won’t have a large impact on the raid (but it will to the person getting the loot).
  • There is still significant complexity, challenge, and depth in the game even after the Warlords changes. Specs are assessable as possible, but there is still depth in the class gameplay and encounters.
  • Tanks are better at soloing and the game isn’t really balanced around it.
  • Everyone will be able to solo old content at some point, some classes may just take more gear or time than others.
  • Druid travel forms being separate buttons is something that will be added with glyphs.
  • Shadow priests getting new / updated visuals is something that might be addressed in the future.
  • Mana gems didn’t add anything interesting to the gameplay, so it was removed.
  • Destro DPS is fine at level 100.
  • Raid cooldowns aren’t as important anymore, so there should be significant diversity in classes brought to raids.
  • Rogues needing to be behind the boss is part of overall awareness needed to play the class and how the encounters are balanced.
  • Professions making things that no one would ever use didn’t make sense, so going forward you can craft actually useful things while leveling. The dust from DEing things should still be sufficient. The amount of dust required to make things is tuned around the amount of dust available.
  • Adding more filtering and options to the dungeon finder would just increase queue times, especially for DPS. The Group Finder should help players that want to make groups for non standard runs.
  • The combo point UI could be improved, but a solution hasn’t been found yet. The team will look at what solutions players come up with for displaying combo points.

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Wii U Emulator Cemu V 1.01 Update Brings Faster Game Loading


Posted on October 25, 2015 by Rae Michelle Richards

Wii U Emulator Cemu Update Brings Faster Game Loading

A few weeks ago the world’s first Nintendo Wii U emulator Cemu hit the scene and now the program’s developer has released version 1.01 which brings with it enhanced loading times and graphical improvements.

If you are expecting to play the latest Nintendo releases on your PC with Cemu you might be a little disappointed. However, the emulator does support encrypted disc images which means that testers have got games like Mario Kart 8 and The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD to load up until their “press start” screens.

As of right now there is no controller customization and all of the gamepad functionality is locked on to the keyboard.  There is also no audio support in this early build of the emulator. Also potential users who are using AMD processors are out of luck, currently loading Cemu will result in a black screen.

Here’s the full list of changes from V 1.01:

Changelog:
1.0.1:

  • Improved accuracy of shader emulation
  • Implemented many system functions leading to higher compatibility
  • Added support for statically loading and linking multiple RPX/RPL files (WUD only for now)

With the release of the latest the community has already took to YouTube to show off some of the changes. Here’s a brief video clip showcasing the improved shader emulation in action:

[youtube id=”Qzzo3qGuCfQ”]

 

Will Nintendo strike down the Cemu due to the fact that the Wii U is still struggling in the marketplace? Generally emulators have been safe from legal action in the past, with the exception being those that require the BIOS files (internal firmware) dumped from a console’s memory.

The UCLA Journal of Law and Technology summed up the PlayStation emulator situation thusly:

For emulators of the Playstation, however, it is the emulator itself that has drawn the ire of Sony, maker of the Playstation console. Sony’s attack against Playstation emulators is based on the fact that the emulators requires a copy of the Playstation basic input/output system (BIOS) in order the function properly. Because the BIOS is copyrighted by Sony, emulators that utilize an image file of the Playstation BIOS or was developed using information reverse engineered from a Playstation bios are illegal.

Nintendo has been known to actively target sites and individuals that provide the images of their games (ROMS / ISO) available to the public. There also was the famous ULTRAHLE legal issues from the ‘90s where Nintendo took on the developers of one of the first N64 emulators. According to  Standford University this may have actually lead to a legal precedent regarding the availability of emulators:

This was not a lawsuit per se: Nintendo never sued Epsilon and RealityMan, the authors of the UltraHLE Nintendo 64 emulator (it is common for figures in the emulation community to go by pseudonyms), but were considering doing so for about a month earlier this year. The company decided not to pursue legal action in early March, but the threat of a Nintendo lawsuit may have been one factor in the developers’ decision to remove UltraHLE from the Internet only hours after it was initially posted online. Had Nintendo decided to sue, the case would undoubtedly have been a precedent setting one for the legality of software emulation.

We will keep an eye on the Cemu situation and perhaps one day it will become advanced enough to become as ubiquitous as the Dolphin Emulator which has provided us with some absolutely stunning up-rez’d versions of Nintendo Wii / GameCube games.


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What’s New On PlayStation – 05.20.2015


Posted on May 20, 2015 by Rae Michelle Richards

The big release this week is CD Projekt Red’s epic role playing game The Witcher II: Wild Hunt. If you own a PlayStation 4 and love RPGs now might be the perfect time to jump in and finish Geralt’s story in this truly next generation and immersive game.  Ideafactory International gives Hyperdimension Neptunia fans a reason to try out a brand new genre with Hyperdimension Neptunia U: Action Unleashed. There are plenty of other new titles available this week so check out a full list after the jump.Read More


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Halo 5 Multiplayer Beta Expands With New Maps & Modes


Posted on January 4, 2015 by Rae Michelle Richards

Owners of Halo: The Master Chief Collection can now enjoy the Xbox One only multiplayer beta for Halo 5: Guardians. Players were able to ring in the new year with a killing spree as the beta began last week on December 28th and will last until January 18th. A major update to the beta was released a few days ago that adds more weapons and a brand new game mode.

The new mode is called ‘Breakout’ where every player begins the match with only one life and the first team to win five rounds claims victory. In terms of new maps  Regret joins the list of available maps, Regret is a remake of the multiplayer map Midship from 2004’s Halo 2. 

Check out a full list of maps and weapons available in the beta below after the jump.

Read More


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Progress Of The Starbound Beta


Posted on December 10, 2013 by Les Major

Chucklefish, the developer behind the recent Terraria-like space adventure, has kept beta players going with lots of fast and furious updates. They’ve actually apologized for a slow update progress, which is surprising since they only released the beta on December 4th and this is already the second patch sent out today. Perhaps there was mention of an update sooner on their forums or such.

So far Starbound has been lots of fun! Unlike Terraria, you planet hop in your space ship you can beam up to from each planets surface. Things such as coal and wood can power your ships fuel up, allowing you to go out into a star chart and pick what planet you want to visit next. Also, planets are looping environments, so there’s no massive ocean blocking off either side of the map. Read on for Read More


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Nintendo Updates Swapnote


Posted on April 11, 2013 by Jason Nason

Nintendo released a small update to their Swapnote application this morning which can be activated either from the eShop or the application directly. Swapnote will send you right to the eShop update page.
The software update now available for the message-sharing application will allow users to attach photos and audio recordings when replying to notes, take photos or record audio from within the application, use a different pen color on each page and undo their last pen strokes. The update will also offer faster load times.Read More


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Nintendo Requests Not To Turn Off Your Wii U While Updating


Posted on November 23, 2012 by Les Major

You’ve probably seen in any number of games, or even on your PC not to turn it off while updating or saving. Nintendo is reminding users however due to the lengthy initial update for the Wii U. They “highly recommend that any Wii U owner does not stop the system update while in progress.”

Updating may take an hour or more the first time depending on your internet speed. Powering off during this may damage your system. The update enables numerous features including Miiverse, Wii U Chat, the eShop, and the ability to download video-on-demand applications.


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