Category: Editorials

Diaries From H1Z1: How Does It Get Continually Worse?


I want to talk about H1Z1 on the Playstation 4.

H1Z1 has become the Battle Royale of choice for me, partially because I have invested enough time and money ($20) into the game that I’d rather not start anew on another BR title and partially because I like the simplistic gameplay. I don’t have the reaction time to build and play Fortnite at a decent level and PUBG is a bit too much of a broken mess most of the time to keep my attention while Realm Royale’s player base was crashing hard. Plus my character looks like a total badass.

That said, I have to hand it to Daybreak for instituting the battle pass into H1Z1, because if it weren’t for the fact that I can log in a couple of times a week and churn out some decent ranks, I would have stopped playing out of frustration a long time ago.

It could be because the stamp missions in H1Z1 are broken beyond recognition. It only took five times entering and reentering the training grounds before the game recognized me picking up an AR weapon for the achievement, and after the third time I picked one up in solos for it to register that mission completed. While writing this article I spent the fifth match in which I used the “wave bye” emote three times during a match without it registering completion. What the game did register is me surviving to place in the top 15 in Fives which we didn’t (we placed in the top 20), me driving an ARV 1000 meters in any BR mode (I didn’t), placing in the top 15 without using bandages or first aid kits (I had used numerous), and one achievement I had actually accomplished in reviving a teammate and one for finishing three fives matches.

Free for all, to put it bluntly, sucks on ice. The Battle Royale engine that Daybreak has put together is clearly not built to house this many people in this close proximity on the Playstation 4. I play with the Playstation 4 Pro which is connected to an ethernet and sits within arm’s reach of my router, on a Verizon FiOS line running to the tune of 150mbps. I’m not humble bragging about my internet speed, I’m just pointing out the kind of connection I’m working with. At many times, H1Z1 Free for All gets such bad lag that the original Everquest has less character rubberbanding by comparison. There’s nothing that says engaging gameplay quite like pumping a full clip from an automatic weapon into someone at close range and having none of the shots register, only for the game to recognize that you actually died five seconds ago from a guy who was probably killed before he pulled the trigger.

And because the zone is so small and seemingly randomly placed, the spawn points are absolute trash. You’ll find yourself getting thrown into the wide open valley only to be immediately popped by the group of snipers that were already aiming in your direction. If not an open valley, you’ll be lucky to minimize the number of times that players will spawn in right in front of you, only to gun you down while still in an immune phase, or twenty feet behind you only to do the same. Get a good spot? Think again, because the random spawn system loaded you up with the worst weapons possible and screw you.

This of course assumes that the game properly loads itself while spawning you into the world, and doesn’t let you die while the loading screen is still up. This also assumes that the game grants you any immunity and doesn’t just let someone with a high powered sniper pop you in the head the second the loading screen does disappear. This assumes that the loading screen appears and doesn’t just leave you hanging as a spectator. This assumes that the game responds to your pressing X to respawn and doesn’t just ignore your controller. This assumes it doesn’t crash to the console dashboard. This assumes that it lets you bring your weapon out.

It’s incredible how the further H1Z1 gets away from launch, the more it seems to degrade in quality. Some stamp missions are broken, some weekly missions are broken, Free for All is broken, experience boosts seem to be broken, the master coins you get after completing the battle pass are (for some) broken.

Bad Press: How The Net Got Scammed By (Yet Another) Marketing Scheme


In the world of marketing, you’re only as valuable as the number of people still talking about you. This is why Coca Cola, a company who you could only be unfamiliar with if you live in one of those tribes that hasn’t yet come into contact with outside society, spends billions (with a B) of dollars on advertising each year to remind you that Coke exists, that you should drink Coke, and that you should definitely drink Coke and not Pepsi. I recommend the caffeine free version of the standard Coke, it tastes less syrupy.

But if there’s anything that should calm your nerves in the era of mass data collection, it’s the knowledge that the bozos in marketing for the most part don’t have the faintest clue on what to do with that information. Case in point, Aldi supermarkets recently launched a marketing campaign that has been compared to that disastrous Bully Hunters program, the one that turned out to be a giant scam so Youtuber Casanova could get a free Vertagear chair to more comfortably shout homophobic slurs at tweens online.

The program is called Teatime Takedown and the concept should be familiar to those who watched the Bully Hunters con. Hand over your kid’s gamertag and Aldi will send an elite hit squad to kill your child. In the video game, that is. The whole idea is that it forces the kid to go downstairs and have dinner, presumably in silence as their parental figures sit at the dinner table browsing cooking recipes they’ll never make via Instagram on their phone while taking a few moments to complain about how playing video games rots your brain. It’s an actual program, allegedly. Sign up on the main Facebook page and Aldi will send a team of adults to fail at disciplining your child as much as you did.

To the layman, the marketing campaign may seem stupid since all it has done is generated a discussion about how the program is ridiculous, it won’t work, it relies on parents knowing their kid’s (1) gamertag and (2) what game they are playing at that moment, (3) that the game is joinable, (4) that the elite team can beat the kid, and (5) that beating him won’t simply change the situation to a family watching their dinner get cold while also listening to the muffled sound of a kid throwing a tantrum while probably throwing many, many vulgarities at the television upstairs. This followed by a lovely dinner with some kid fuming, slamming his utensils, and generally ruining everyone’s meal. And since you signed up for Aldi’s elite gamer service, we all know you’re not a competent enough parent to do anything about that either.

To the Aldi marketing team, however, this is more than just ginning up a bunch of comments about how their local Aldi is dirtier than a unkempt KMart and a poor man’s Trader Joe’s, and more about generating that free coverage. Because in the heads of incompetent marketing teams, attentive eyes means paying shoppers. In fact, the folks at Aldi did so much research that they can shoot your child dead over Xbox One, PS4, and Twitch. You just know some out of touch, 50+ year old executive threw Twitch on there. It’s a gaming platform, his granddaughter spends all day Ninja’ing the Fortnights on it or some rubbish.

As one commenter on Destructoid put it; if you want to troll your kids into not playing a game, you can always dab in front of the TV until they stop.

Normally I would fault the press for giving attention and free marketing but I’m going to hold off in this case since it’s clearly not going to go in Aldi’s favor. With virtually no positives coming from this campaign, the company has instead painted itself as hiring creepy adults to stalk children and likely be paid to be humiliated on Call of Duty by some nine year old who shoots them in the head and teabags their corpse. The concept is so incompetent that the only people outraged are streamers who are already paid to feign outrage and act like reactionary children. Ultimately, all Aldi did was shout “who farted” in a crowded elevator, bringing attention to the fact that they’ve clearly soiled themselves.

The announcement tweet has managed to amass 182 retweets and 572 likes in the course of three days, making the campaign about as viral as the Measles in a properly vaccinated society. Still, who knew that Aldi existed in the UK? You learn something new every day.

Falling Out #5: The Best Laid Plans


And they would have gotten away with it if it weren’t for you pesky Reddit nerds.

Black Desert Online Launches Today


Black Desert officially hits Xbox One today, says developer Pearl Abyss.

The base game can be purchased for $9.99 USD and contains instant access, with higher editions at $29.99 (standard), $49.99 (Deluxe), and $99.99 (Ultimate). The full release starts with a 55 level cap. Pearl Abyss also announced the Black Desert Partners Program, which looks to build meaning relationships with content creators.

“Launching Black Desert on Xbox One has been a long development journey and we’re so thankful for the support of the Xbox community along the way”, said Robin Jung, Chief Executive Officer at Pearl Abyss. “Through the community’s feedback and continued interest in Black Desert over the course of the past two years and multiple betas, we’re happy to be able to launch the game today and look forward to adding additional content in the near future.”

Anthem Is Hard-Crashing On Playstation 4


Anthem on PS4 may be more of a hazard than previously known.

A growing number of users on the official Reddit have begun reporting issues regarding Anthem not just crashing, but completely shutting down their Playstation 4. The thread has garnered a number of confirmations from other players noting that the system treats the shutdown as though the player had pulled the power cable.

“When encountering a crash or game error, sometimes I get booted to the main menu or out of the game completely to the PS4 dashboard. But twice now when trying to matchmake my PS4 has completely turned off. Don’t worry about the loot patch ffs, sort the bugs out first please”

For their part, Sony is apparently still denying refunds to a large portion of people despite the game being broken, possibly to the extent of risking damage to consoles. EA/Bioware are apparently aware of the problem but have not released a statement.

Source: Reddit

Falling Out #4: To Hell and Back…To HR


On this episode of Falling Out, Bobby Kotick comes face to face with a force so evil that even he is powerless…Human Resources.

Sprites created by Stephen Challener (Open Game Art)

Falling Out #2: The Ghost of Christmas Obvious


Given the history of Electronic Arts, the only thing I’m worried about is the date on the gravestone being too far into the future.

Scenery © 2012-2013 Julien Jorge <julien.jorge@stuff-o-matic.com>
Gravestones: Carlo Enrico Victoria (Nemisys) & Tuomo Untinen,  Casper Nilsson, Barbara Rivera
(Via Open Game Art)

Falling Out, The Re-Reboot #1: At Cliff’s End


It’s been roughly six years since the last Falling Out comic which gives us a good year on our topic’s relevance. New episodes of Falling Out every…let’s play this release schedule by ear.

Sprite credits: Stephen Challenger, Matthew Nash, Charles Gabriel (via OpenGameArt)

Whatever Happened To: The Earthrise Reboot


Earthrise was a sandbox MMORPG that some of you might vaguely recall from many, many years ago. It launched in 2011 under Masthead Studios and could best be described as an unmitigated disaster from the get go. The game just wasn’t good, it offered manual aiming but neither the server or client performance to pull it off. Gameplay consisted of a laborious grind, the game seemingly punishing you for deciding to buy into it by tying its combat to one of the most dull systems in the genre while also forcing you to grind thousands of creatures to build your gear to grind thousands of creatures to build better gear.

Needless to say, the game died fast and one year later in 2012 Masthead Studios handed over control of the title to Silent Future who have been, well, mostly silent about the future of this game.

When we last talked about Earthrise, the MMO was gearing up for its closed alpha testing for a reboot under developer Silent Future. That news was over six years ago. Since then, the servers and website have gone up and down but the title has seemingly been abandoned in recent years. The last update on the game’s Twitter and Facebook pages was from 2016, but the website itself has been dead for a couple of years now and the servers themselves have been offline for an indeterminate amount of time.

Interestingly, I happened to get a response from the official Facebook account for Silent Future confirming that the game has not been cancelled. As far as the game being actively developed, that is up in the air. I’m interested to see what Silent Future is going to do with Earthrise, since after seven years you might as well have just used the assets to try and build a new game. Earthrise was dated and functionally a dead end even back in 2011 when it launched, I can’t imagine the MMO gamer base flocking back to the game that they universally rejected after such a long absence.

Source: Facebook