Tag: Trion Worlds

Atlas Reactor: 11 Tips To Do Well


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Atlas Reactor is the latest game from Trion Worlds, a turn-based competitive MOBA with heavy focus on twitch-based gameplay. With the free weekend starting, Trion Worlds has passed along a list of eleven tips to help players outsmart and outgun the competition.

After reading the list below, feel free to check out Atlas Reactor at no cost until June 5th.

1.  Dashes are incredibly useful. Use them to dodge Dash phase and Blast phase attacks, or even save allies by dashing into the path of a shot meant for them!
2. Sometimes the best move is standing still. Traps laid down during the Prep phase can punish players that Dash or Move.
3. Knockbacks and Pulls are very powerful when used in conjunction with Traps. These displacement effects always happen at the end of the Blast phase.
4. Being next to a wall will reduce damage taken from that direction by 50%, unless the attacker is also adjacent to you.
5. You can “chase” a player by right-clicking on an opponent (or Ally!). When you chase an opponent you will try to move where they move to. Chasers will move at the end of the Move phase.
6. If you think an enemy is going to chase you, make sure to run through some ally traps; you won’t take damage, but your enemy will!
7. Free Action abilities do not count towards the usual limit of 1 ability per turn; if you don’t use an ability, you can sprint (double movement), which can help get you back to the fight or out of a bad situation.
8. When choosing where to move, you can right-click more than once to set waypoints, which are great for moving around traps or through powerups on the way to your destination.
9. There are light indicators at the base of powerups that will tell you when they will spawn. Landing on one when all 3 light indicators are lit up means you will automatically get that powerup next round.
10. You can see powerups even in the fog of war. If you see one disappear you know an enemy is around that area.
11. During Decision Mode, mousing over an enemy will display the cooldowns of his abilities, letting you know if s/he can dash or not. Mousing over allies shows the abilities they are targeting this turn. Holding Alt will display all of this information at once. If you Alt + Click, you will ping the map.

Trion Worlds Names Its AbleGamers Winner


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The Ablegamers Fellowship provides scholarship money and internship opportunities to help up and coming game developers with disabilities to make an impact on the industry. With dozens of entries in the bag, Trion Worlds has announced the winner of the first Ablegamers Fellowship: Alex James Ryan.

AJ, as he is known in disability and gaming communities, is an extraordinary individual with the kind of drive and passion AbleGamers and all of the sponsors of the Fellowship were looking for. He uses a combination of assistive technology and superior feet-skills to destroy the competition in Mortal Kombat and one day the game development field. With dozens of independently released titles already under his belt, we know AJ will go on to do amazing things for the game accessibility movement.

While Ryan originally intended on becoming a games journalist, he changed sights over to development after a meeting Jay Moon (Turok: Dinosaur Hunter) in high school. AJ has several projects under his belt, including “Chill Editions” for many of the games on the SEGA Mega Drive Collection on Steam. He hopes to bring more accessibility into the games industry for gamers with disabilities.

“Anyone who cannot use their arms and plays Mortal Kombat with their feet, and is setting up his own game studio is a winner,” said Russ Brown, COO of Trion Worlds. “The world needs more Alex James Ryans.”

(Source: Trion Press Release, Ablegamers)

ArcheAge Issues Warning Against Toxic Behavior


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Stomping down toxic behavior is all the rage these days, between Riot Games putting the kibosh and permanently banning certain players for life, to Blizzard pledging to tackle racism after the latest Dreamhack conference, Jagex taking on streamer harassment and KKK cosplay (a phrase that shouldn’t exist), and now Trion Worlds with ArcheAge. The game has become a lot less friendly and Trion’s customer service isn’t happy.

In a news post published yesterday, Trion Worlds has committed to taking a more hands on approach with toxic behavior.

We are going to be much more conscious about what we allow to be said in public chat channels. We know that some will do their best to test boundaries and try to skirt our intent and then appeal the action with a technicality. Ultimately if our determination is that your chat is contributing nothing except grief to a player or community we will take actions to prevent that.

So what does this mean? Well, you can call a boss a bitch but you can’t call another player a bitch. Personal attacks, using alternate accounts to harass a player who has put you on ignore, spamming the chat channel, physical threats, and more will result in action taken against offenders. Trion also reminds players that this only extends to in-game chat, and that the company can’t extend its reach to outside platforms (Facebook, Twitter, etc).

(Source: ArcheAge)

Rift $50 Starter Pack For New Accounts Only


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Trion Worlds is selling a $50 “Essentials Edition” bundle for Rift that includes all of the essentials that a character needs to get started. The pack includes all of the souls from Nightmare Tides and Storm Legion DLC packs, Primalist Calling with six souls, Planewalker: Water ability, 2 bag slots, and 2 earring slots. Objectively, and considering its contents, it is a good deal.

It will also only be available for new players, starting tomorrow (May 11th). Current players who wish to get their hands on this pack will have to do so before 8:00am PST on May 11th.

(Source: Rift)

ArcheAge Producer Letter Discusses Security, Servers


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ArcheAge senior producer Merv “Khrolan” Lee Kwai has posted a new producer letter for April 2016, discussing a range of topics from security to server structure. The post starts out by commenting that the western ArcheAge is only one update behind the Korean version.

So where does ArcheAge stand? You may recall Trion warning not too long ago that they would no longer be going easy on certain players for “minor offenses” and had sent a final warning to correct their behavior. The end result, naturally, is that not everyone responded and as a result players were banned. So far this year, 750,000 accounts have been banned for a variety of offenses from gold farming to bot use.

While some players took us up on our offer and corrected their actions, others didn’t and found themselves permanently banned from ArcheAge, regardless of their tenure with the game. It was hard but necessary for the integrity of the game, and players far and wide have expressed their support for our stance on hacking and exploiting.

Last year saw ArcheAge merging servers, prompting players to ask if more servers will be merged in the future. While Trion Worlds has no more mergers planned for the foreseeable future, the company instead intends on offering incentives for players to move/create characters on said low-population servers instead.

Our initial proposal is still in progress (and not final), but the goal is to highlight the appealing qualities of those servers to new players, players who are leveling, players who want to gear up in a less stressful environment, and players who may have trouble finding land. These ideas include providing boosts to experience or vocation, tagging them clearly in the server selection screen for new players, and allowing free inbound character transfers.

The letter goes on to discuss a number of planned updates, re-introducing rapid fire abilities that were altered from their Korean versions and moving event schedules to more reasonable timing. You can read the entire letter at the link below.

(Source: ArcheAge)

ArcheAge: Buy Credits, Get Backlash


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It must be Monday, because Trion Worlds is once again gating controversy over allegations of pay to win in ArcheAge. Last week, the company introduced a perk for the $100 cash shop pack that comes with a free hot tub (pictured above, courtesy of Reddit). So what’s the problem? Companies give these incentives all the time.

Well, the issue is twofold: First, the hot tub is more than just a cosmetic addition to your property. The pool allows you to remove the “clear mind” debuff given by beds, allowing the player to regain labor from sleeping for a second time in one day. You also receive plant decorations, but people don’t seem too angry about those.

Second, this appears to be the only way that players can obtain the hot tub, putting players who are unwilling to pony up the $100 within the next week at a disadvantage. The buff only applies to the owner, it is account-bound upon purchase, and cannot be obtained any other way.

I’ve contacted Trion Worlds for a response on whether the pool will be available in some other fashion.

(Source: ArcheAge)

Defiance Piling On Events This Month


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Trion Worlds is celebrating three years of Defiance with events aplenty this month. Starting April 1st and going through the 25th, players will be able to engage with the Midsummer Mutiny, Hulker Hell, New Frontier Harvest, Solstice Strike, and Colony Courtship events. Players are also invited to share their memories of the game on social media.

As part of the event, previous elite lockboxes and synergy crates are returning to the game store.

(Source: Defiance)

Trion Worlds Punishes Impersonation Scam, Community Explodes


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Trion Worlds has spent the better part of the past six or so months attempting to slowly detoxify the very virulent community whose actions they have actively coddled and defended as ‘in the spirit of the game,’ and that shift in management has come to a head once again with Trion reversing a trade scam against a high profile streamer during a charity event. The streamer was duped into trading expensive equipment to an imposter account during a charity stream for Doctors Without Borders, after which Trion reversed the trade and banned the imposter account.

Impersonating someone else, even if it’s by name, to separate someone from their hard earned goods is not allowed and has not been allowed in ArcheAge. In the past, there have been situations where a player impersonated another player and, in those situations, our Customer Service team has reversed the outcome of the scam no matter if it was items or gold.

Some of the anger seems to stem from the fact that the impersonation rule, while it has always existed, has admittedly not been publicized and may not even have been properly enforced until this recent incident. The majority of it, however, is coming from the ‘hardcore’ end of the community who view the idea of impersonating another player to defraud someone as fair game, with the usual attitude of ‘the victim deserved it for being stupid.’

We realize that this policy has not been made public in the past, but this high profile incident has made us realize that we need to publicly acknowledge and reinforce our stance on name impersonation within the game. This is not a new policy that was made simply for this stream — this is a policy that we as a company have had for the past year and beyond, and it is a policy that is referenced within our Terms of Use (11. Code of Conduct, Rule A.)

There are numerous false reports circulating that the rule did not exist before this event, and MMO Fallout has been able to confirm via archives of the terms of service that the rule has always been in place. Regardless of certain members of the community using wordplay, unaffiliated rules, and technical trickery as justification, it objectively was not allowed, even with ArcheAge’s lax stance on scams. The rule explicitly forbids creating a character with a name “belonging to another person with the intent to impersonate that person, including without limitation a “Game Master” or any other employee or agent of Trion.”

Still, there is plenty of valid criticism towards Trion Worlds for not bringing this rule to light until it happened to a high profile player, regardless of the fact that it existed prior to this incident.

(Source: ArcheAge)

Trion Worlds Promises Bans For Cheaters, Even Tenured Players


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(Editor’s Note: Trion World’s PR reps got in touch to clarify a few points to the story which have been noted below. A total of 983 accounts have been banned right away. In addition, they have stated that while money spent is taken into account to discern real players from throwaway/bot accounts, that it is only one factor and that time invested into the account also goes a long way to proving that the player is invested in the game. We thank them for getting in touch to clarify these points.)

ArcheAge’s new bot detection program has been enabled for a few weeks, with 983 accounts banned right off the bat and a number of other accounts put on notice. Trion Worlds has taken to the forums once again to claim that it will not tolerate anyone who cheats in ArcheAge…providing you don’t stop after this last warning. In addition, Trion Worlds will no longer take tenure (how much time and money has been invested) into account when banning for bots and hacks:

After this warning, anyone who continues to run the detected hack or bot programs will be subject to a permanent ban, regardless of their tenure in ArcheAge. Please note that we can also see when alternate accounts are associated with other main accounts, so making use of these tools on a throwaway account will lead to disciplinary action on your main.

Users who are casual botters will receive a warning by email.

Those players who appear to be mostly legitimate community members will receive an email warning them about this policy and informing them to stop immediately.

Trion’s previously light stance on casual bot usage stands in stark contrast to the company’s heavy handed punishment just a month ago when the company banned an entire raid of 53 accounts for using a glitch to defeat a world boss.  It also contradicts the numerous times that the company has claimed to be taking a zero tolerance policy on botting in ArcheAge.

The good news is that the new software aims to increase the rate at which cheaters are caught and banned while simultaneously reducing the number of false positives.

(Source: ArcheAge)

Guild Uses Exploit To Kill ArcheAge Boss, Loots Permanent Ban


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In a rather interesting turn of events, Trion Worlds has taken to the forums to discuss a recent high profile incident of a guild using exploits to kill a boss monster in ArcheAge. The Leviathan is a massive world boss in ArcheAge that is so powerful that it has yet to be defeated in combat in North America. Legitimately, at least. Videos began surfacing on the ArcheAge forums of the guild Rage Quit obtaining the first kill on a very clearly bugged boss, the Leviathan can be seen floating above water and stops attacking, not unlike a giant pinata. As one might expect from such a high profile kill, it didn’t take long to attract Trion Worlds’ attention.

According to senior community manager Seraphina “Celestrata” Brennan, all participating members of Rage Quit have been banned with no chance for appeal, a grand total of 53 players, while the guild as a whole has been disbanded. Accounts that participated in the event and were members of the council have had their membership revoked, while those who were found to be contesting the kill will not be punished. In addition, all loot generated from the kill has been removed from the game world.

First of all, our new policy on exploits is well-known at this point. We do not tolerate exploits or those who abuse them in our game. Any individual taking advantage of an exploit will receive a permanent ban. This is a non-negotiable stance. The Leviathan kill in question was clearly broken and floating to all bystanders in the videos captured, so the guild involved had full knowledge that something was wrong. They made the active decision to proceed forward with the kill regardless.

According to Trion Worlds, only one member of the guild contacted the studio to report the kill, and even then demanded compensation in return for the details. XLGames has been notified of the exploit and should be working on a fix.

(Source: Trion Worlds)