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Trion Worlds Reverses Course, Now Threatens Bans For ArcheAge Blockades

ArcheAge faces the kind of balance that comes with games that promise absolute freedom: Allowing griefing versus keeping customers. Since its launch, Trion Worlds has used the term “emergent gameplay” as a tool to pass off any complaints about players utilizing the game’s collision mechanics to block trade routes in non-pvp zones, parking their vehicles over player owned land to prevent someone from farming, and circling around buildings to prevent access to certain areas.

In an announcement posted two days ago, Trion Worlds announced that blockades will no longer be allowed in ArcheAge.

Starting on October 23rd, users may no longer set up roadblocks/blockades anywhere in the game via any means (vehicle, ships, avocados, or otherwise.) In addition, we’d like to reinforce that users may not use their vehicles, ships, bodies, or another means to block someone from planting on their private land, interactable items, or from blocking NPCs in such a way that they cannot be interacted with.

While a large portion of players posting against the changes point to the game’s player vs player systems, Trion’s own Seraphina Brennan notes that very little blockading is done in conflict zones.

(Source: ArcheAge)

CCP Proposes Tradeable Skills, Community Not Enthused

CCP’s latest dev blog talks about coming improvements to the character bazaar, where players can buy and sell fully formed avatars in order to discourage less safe sales that would happen anyway on websites like Ebay. A majority of the updates concern the fact that the bazaar, while handy, is still too complicated for many players to confidently use, CCP has stirred the hornet’s nest with the announcement that players will be able to break their characters up into chunks and sell them piece by piece.

Effectively, you’ll be able to buy and sell individual skills without taking on the associated, and highly sought after, username xXx_420sm0k3W3eD_xXx.

By putting more control of your characters in your hands we hope to improve the game for everyone. Whether you’re an older player who would rather have ISK than those mining skills you don’t use any more, a clever new player looking to invest your fortune into your character, a Corp leader trying to move everyone into a new doctrine or someone like me who just realized that they would rather fly Armageddon’s than Stilettos, this feature has you covered. This all fits nicely to our overall game design philosophy of giving you control over your experience through cooperation and competition with each other.

The associated forum thread has broken two hundred pages, with CCP’s supporters pointing out that the function has essentially existed for years, albeit in the form of a full character rather than its individual stats.

(Source: Eve Online)

Defiance TV Show Cancelled, Game Continuing

Trion Worlds has assured players that Defiance the game will continue long past the life span of Defiance the tv show, which is good news because the latter has been cancelled. Syfy announced that the television show will be getting the axe after three seasons, the latest not producing the kind of viewership that the channel needed in order to continue on to another year.

Luckily, Trion Worlds owns the Defiance IP, so the game is going nowhere so long as they have anything to say about it.

We’ve had a great time working closely with the team of stellar writers, designers, producers, and actors on the Defiance TV show. Like many of you, we’ve all enjoyed the stories they told week in and week out. Let’s treat this as a fond farewell, in celebration of a successful three year run of a show that broke a lot of new ground and brought an incredible quality experience to its viewers.

Fans of the TV show can still hold out hope of a revival by Netflix/Hulu.

(Source: Trion Worlds)

[Community] Blocked & Kicked: Payday Community Targets Customers

Editor’s note: Community is an editorial column where we discuss pressing issues in the gaming community, including outside of the MMO genre. The acknowledgement of events or actions by individuals or developers should not be misinterpreted as our approval of said actions, unless explicitly stated.

If you haven’t been paying attention recently, the Payday community is in a bit of an upheaval following the unveiling of Crimefest, Overkill’s celebration of the Payday series’ fourth anniversary. The celebration is being accompanied by ten days of updates and ten days of free game time for those who have yet to pick the crime shooter up. Overkill launched Crimefest with the Black Market, a system similar to Team Fortress 2 and Counter Strike where players receive lock boxes and must pay real money to open them. Inside said lock boxes are weapon skins of varying type and rarity, some offering bonuses that alter gameplay.

Microtransactions are a highly divisive topic in the gaming community, one that has only become more openly hostile as developers continue to include them in genres where they had previously been absent, with games like Tomb Raider, Halo 5, and now Payday 2 going down the route of blind box rewards. Especially egregious in the eyes of the Payday community is the fact that Overkill has not only denied multiple times that microtransactions would ever come to Payday, but shamed those who dared to think otherwise.

You would expect that an exodus of players would follow such an update, and there is certainly no lack of “I quit” threads being posted to the forums, but certain members of the community are taking another approach to showing their contempt for microtransactions: They’re targeting Overkill’s customers. One of the topics you’ll see being discussed on the Payday 2 Steam forums is the topic of how to curb item purchasing among those who will happily buy drills at $2.49 apiece, and the answer is simple: remove them.

Among those dissatisfied with Overkill’s new microtransactions, a number of players have pledged to kick and ignore any players that join their lobbies with skins gained from microtransactions. Evidently if you can’t physically prevent someone from buying items that are available to them, there is always the option to make their ensuing gameplay experience as miserable as possible, thus either forcing them to quit or diminishing their ability to play.

How widespread this sentiment reaches isn’t clear, while you can find a fair number of people in the forums pledging to block anyone with cash shop skins, I did not personally witness anyone removed from public lobbies while playing over the past few days. This is likely to be a very small minority of the active community, and one that most players will never encounter. Regardless, it will be hard for Overkill to ignore the growing discontent in their own community over the update, and the developer has promised to respond to complaints once the ten day event is over.

DarkScape Drops Experimental Update

This week’s DarkScape update is being dubbed “experimental,” in that it introduces a few new features to combat griefing through combat and in summoning shops. First of all, dying in RuneScape with the protect item prayer now results in a cooldown period where the prayer cannot be used. For skulled players (those who have recently attacked someone), the cooldown is five minutes. For non-skulled players, the cooldown is one minute.

Secondly, summoning shops have been reverted back to personal stock. A previous update had made shop inventories shared across all players, resulting in the stock of summoning shards (required for the summoning skill and virtually unobtainable elsewhere) being at or near zero across the game’s servers. The personal stock has also returned for waterskins.

There are more update details in the patch notes at the link below.

(Source: DarkScape)

Neverwinter Introducing New Astral Diamond Sources

Those of you keeping watch on Neverwinter are well aware of the game’s ongoing issues with Astral Diamonds, a main trade currency and target for gold farmers, not to mention a direct line for players to obtain Zen without paying any real money of their own. In the most recent dev post, lead designer Scott Shicoff details upcoming plans to introduce new sources of Astral Diamonds.

Hey everyone, Scott here today with a quick note about Astral Diamond sources. As you know, we recently made a change to increase the AD players earn via queued content. We know that players can’t always participate in that content, so we are looking at more ways to get AD into your hands. These first changes will be coming very soon.

Starting soon, players will be able to complete weekly quests in exchange for Astral Diamonds. It is just the first update to address the situation, and Shicoff assures the community that PWE is monitoring Astral Diamond movement and will use that information to mold further updates.

(Source: Neverwinter)

Grab The Park For $9.99

The Park is Funcom’s first return to single player gaming since Dreamfall: The Longest Journey in 2006. Launching October 26th, The Park is a self-contained story in the universe that players have been exploring in The Secret World. Players take on the role of Lorraine, a mother looking for her lost child, as her story unravels over the course of the game.

Amusement parks are happy places, filled with the joys of childhood and the exhilarating rush of fantastic rides to be dared. That was the vision of eccentric business man Nathaniel Winter when he opened the doors to Atlantic Island Park in 1977. Unfortunately, the park’s history turned out to be one plagued by tragedy and drama. Its freak accidents, grotesque killings and ghostly hauntings have inspired many a sensational headline, and locals worry the park is far from done claiming innocent lives.
For Lorraine, it’s where her worst nightmare began.

The entire experience promises to be short, just an hour or two. Those who pre-order will be able to get their hands on exclusive items for The Secret World, including the Chipmunk Killer costume and a set of talismans.

For those unwilling to throw the money down, MMO Fallout will be covering the game post-launch.

(Source: Steam)

Triad Wars: Grab An Ethereal Blade

Triad Wars has a new Halloween themed challenge available for all players. Log in between now and the 13th and you’ll be able to take part in a new challenge, taking you to a zombified Hong Kong where the Jiang Shi roam the city. Complete three tiers by racking up your kill count of these roaming zombies to receive money, face, and eventually an ethereal blade (pictured above). The challenge is one of four spooky challenges to come to Triad Wars over the coming weeks.

Players can also get their hands on Halloween loot bags containing various loot. This challenge lasts until October 13th.

(Source: Triad Wars)

DarkScape Drops High Alchemy

High alchemy is a spell in RuneScape that transforms items into cash, at the cost of fire and nature runes and with the benefit of being a potentially fast and profitable way of training magic. Incidentally, the spell has also been the root cause of much of RuneScape’s inflation in the past, a problem that the DarkScape team hopes to rectify with today’s update. DarkScape players logged in today to find that high alchemy has been removed from the spell book, although its limited uses still exist on the explorer’s ring.

Jagex has talked recently about how DarkScape’s new economy allows them to make more drastic changes to the game that wouldn’t be possible in RuneScape 3 or Old School. Considering the more hardcore nature of the game, Jagex plans on introducing a variety of extensive changes to fit the existing game around the new structure. Whether or not something will be introduced to replace high alchemy will be seen.

(Source: DarkScape)

Albion Online Introduces Auction Bidding For Housing

Albion Online is ditching its upkeep system in favor of a new way to keep you paying for your plots of land. Initially, plots of land will be considered unclaimed until a player puts down a bounty of silver to take over ownership. After a set amount of days, generally one or two months, the plot of land will come up for auction during which other players can outbid you for your plot. If another player wins the plot, they take over not just the land but the buildings that were erected there by the previous owner.

The good news is, the owner isn’t completely out of luck. For starters, owner bids count as double, so you only need half as much money to fend off competing bidders. Secondly, land owners receive a compensation based on the value of the buildings on their land should they lose the bidding war.

The goal of this new system is to prevent a constant blockade of building plots – and also to give players joining Albion Online later a fair chance at owning a desirable building space. Theoretically, players now can purchase any plot – as long as they are able to outbid the previous owner. With this change, we want to encourage a more fluid market and also bring some additional „economic PvP“ into the game.

(Source: Albion Online)

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