Tag: Overhaul

Anthem Finally Getting That Overhaul We’ve Heart Rumors About


It’s been a while since we last heard from Anthem.

Hard to believe Anthem launched nearly a year ago next week but it’s been pretty quiet on the western front with Bioware not doing a whole lot of updating to the game. It’s been so quiet in fact that people noticed Bioware hasn’t taken down the Christmas decorations, despite being nearly Valentine’s Day. Speculation has run rampant over the past few months, with signs pointing to Bioware working on an overhaul for Anthem that would address many of the bigger gripes of the player base.

Well that overhaul has been confirmed in case you didn’t read the title of this article. Bioware has posted an updated blog confirming that the team is still alive and working on Anthem and will be focusing on a long term redesign, with attention being paid to the core gameplay loop.

“Over the coming months we will be focusing on a longer-term redesign of the experience, specifically working to reinvent the core gameplay loop with clear goals, motivating challenges and progression with meaningful rewards – while preserving the fun of flying and fighting in a vast science-fantasy setting.  And to do that properly we’ll be doing something we’d like to have done more of the first time around – giving a focused team the time to test and iterate, focusing on gameplay first.”

There will be updates for Anthem as the team works toward the redesign, with events and store refreshes coming but the game moving away from seasons for the time being.

Source: Anthem

Gamigo Using Negative ArcheAge Reviews To Tease Something New


Gamigo is doing something strange. If you head over to a teaser website that is inexplicably still using the Trion Worlds domain, you’ll find a countdown leading to roughly Monday 8/19 at about 7:40p.m. EST. Since I’m pretty sure that Gamigo isn’t celebrating the end of my court internship, I’m going to assume it’s something related to their games.

The teaser gets even weirder when you read the scrolling testimonials titled “people used to say.” The players are clearly talking about ArcheAge, but even stranger the feedback in a lot of the commentary isn’t positive. It’s actually pretty negative and has to do with the game’s perception as being pay to win or the struggle to find housing.

“The P2W is strong with this one… Really hard to recommend it with something like that weighting down the whole experience.”

“I played when the game first launched. I ended up quitting after a few months because I was unable to build a house.”

“I played this game for about 2 days but gotannoyed that every thing took labor points.”

So clearly this seems to be leading up to an overhaul of some sort with a focus on pleasing the people who quit because the game was too aggressive with its microtransactions and not user friendly in terms of player housing. MassivelyOP noted that earlier this year it was suggested that a monetization overhaul would be coming to the game at some point. Is this that update?

Only time will tell.

Jagex Leak: Combat System Overhaul Icons




 

 

In case you don’t play RuneScape, earlier this month CEO Mark Gerhard responded to player criticism over the controversial Squeal of Fortune with the following message:

…it should be evident that we just gearing up for our most exciting and biggest content year ever……….. including a complete upgrade to the combat system later this summer!

The update may come sooner rather than later, if the above leaks via the RuneScape official wiki are to be believed. According to reports, the combat overhaul will bring RuneScape more in line with other MMOs, introducing a hot bar (which the above images would presumably fill) and balancing out the combat system to work as intended.

More information to come, hopefully soon.

All Points Bulletin: Massive Overhaul Coming


Chicken and biscuits

The last time I talked about All Points Bulletin, I believe I said something along the lines of…

“…if Realtime Worlds wants to bill itself as a competitive online shooter, then the shooting and driving mechanics need to be overhauled yesterday.”
-Omali, MMO Fallout, On All Points Bulletin

That’s it. Dave Jones of Realtime Worlds has already said he expected All Points Bulletin to receive bad reviews, and his prediction came true almost immediately after the game launched. The major points that the reviews and critics of the game focused on were the driving and shooting mechanics. For a game that bills itself around driving and shooting, driving a car was a test of patience, and shooting was a matter of who had the better gun or the best camping spot.

In a recent announcement on the website, Realtime Worlds put out an article titled “The Road Ahead.” In the article, Neil Castle announces plans to overhaul the driving system, allowing for the same old drifting while also increasing handling and giving the vehicles less of a sloppy feel. In addition, all aspects of the shooting and weapons systems are being looked at and balanced.

These are just two updates coming in a major overhaul to All Points Bulletin, that will change the way missions are structured, how cheaters are dealt with, players camping in certain areas, and more. Hopefully this will bring just the upgrade All Points Bulletin needs to become the driving, shooting game that people might actually want to play for the driving and shooting aspects (and not just the character creator).