Planetside Arena Already Adjusting For Low Population Matches


Planetside Arena Squads mode can handle up to 300 people per match, but at the rate the game is going Daybreak Game Company can only hope that the entire population of the game hits half that number. In the few weeks since the Planetside battle royale spinoff launched, the game’s population has plummeted and is continuing to drop. As a result, players are finding themselves in a massive arena built for 1,000 with not a lot of things to shoot at.

Thankfully Daybreak is on the case. This week’s update has brought with it changes to how the pain field works and where players drop in low population matches:

In order to escalate squad engagement more quickly during low-population times, we’ve made several adjustments to the location Squads drop in and pain field behavior. During lower population matches, Squads will deploy closer to the initial safe zone and in proximity to other Squads.  In addition, depending on match population thresholds being met, the time between phases and speed at which the pain field moves will vary – the lower the population, the shorter the wait times between phases and faster the pain field migration.

More update details on the official website.

Destiny 2 Explodes On Steam, Six Figure Traffic


This may come as a massive surprise, but Destiny 2 has launched on Steam alongside its free to play update and players are flocking to the game in droves. The PC servers have attained over 220,000 peak concurrency in the past couple of days and people seem to be pretty happy.

Current review scores for Destiny 2 put the game at a 75% “mostly positive” rating with a lot of the negative feedback surrounding players whose characters didn’t transfer over properly or people who have a problem with Bungie’s changes to characters (everyone starts out at 750 power now). Destiny 2 is currently #12 on the Xbox most played list and is no doubt doing just as well on PS4 if not better.

[Mobility] X-Men Update Comes To Marvel Future Fight


Netmarble today issued an update to the super hero mobile game Marvel Future Fight that unlocks the potential functionality for Magik and adds in all new X-Men Phoenix Five uniforms for Magik and Namor.

The update also includes a 40% discount on all uniforms from October 1 through 7. From October 1 through 9, agents can participate in the X-Men vs. Inhumans faction battle where players actions on the field add points to their faction to determine who wins and loses. Rewards including Colossus will be sent based on ranking and participation.

For more details, check out the official website.

[Video] Black Desert (Xbox) Gets Tamer Class


Black Desert on Xbox One just got handed a big new update as Pearl Abyss releases the Tamer class.

The Tamer makes her way to Black Desert. Accompanied by her legendary beast Heilang, the tamer wields a Shortsword and a Trinket to demolish her enemies. Those who are still standing once the tamer unleashes her attacks, are instantly met with the teeth of Heilang. Let’s find out more about the Tamer!

More information on the tamer class can be found at the official website.

Black Desert Sees Second Major Update


Pearly Abyss this week launched the second major update for Black Desert on Playstation 4.

The update introduces Awakening status for all ten classes, as well as two new classes and a new region. Awakening is a feature that permanently boosts a character’s power and allows them to unlock new skills and abilities. The two new classes being added are the Lahn and Ninja while the new region accessible to players is the Valencia desert region.

More information can be found at the official website.

Planetside Arena Launches On Steam


Planetside Arena is here. The battle royale spinoff by Daybreak Game Company launched today, September 19, 2019 and is available completely free to play.

Early Access launches with squad mode (12 player teams) and teams mode (3 players per team) with matches up to 300 players. The main call of Planetside Arena, the gargantuan massive clash mode, will be available in Q2 2020 when the game fully launches and will feature matches of up to 1,000 people. Hopefully the Daybreak team can keep the ball rolling until that time.

Check it out at the link below.

Source: Steam

Steam Library Beta Shows Life After Clickbait Spam


The new visual update for Steam is here! Well the beta is, anyhow. You can download the beta by going to your settings and opting into the beta branch of the Steam client. It’s very simple and doesn’t require any external downloads unlike the previous trick to get ahold of the early version.

The new Steam is all about ease of use. Click on any game and you’ll see all sorts of information provided by the developer. See your achievements, your trading cards, DLC releases, timed events. Anything your heart desires and more that you might have had to navigate through multiple windows to find before is now in one easy place. What isn’t there? The clickbait spam.

One big complaint that users have had of the Steam News section for each game is that Valve thought people really wanted to see clickbait spam from bloggers like Rock, Paper, Shotgun, PC Gamer, etc. It’s basically a glorified RSS feed that pulls stories based on certain websites that Valve trusts (for some reason) tagging their articles with the games in question. The result? An embarrassing deluge of articles that have little if anything to do with the game they are tagged in.

Well those of you unhappy with Valve’s handling of the Steam News will be glad to know that the clickbait spam newsfeed is officially gone as of the new library. It will be interesting to see how the traffic to the websites is affected once they are no longer getting free advertising on a massive platform for their clickbait.

Jagex Cancels Weapon Diversity Update, At Least For Now


Jagex today announced that they are cancelling the weapon diversity update, a project that had been in beta for the last month. The weapon diversity program was meant to differentiate weapons from one another on a more solid grounding, but the major impression was that the update just wasn’t transformative enough. Most changes were being made to weapon DPS which left players simply choosing the weapon with the most optimized damage.

In the end, we were unanimous as a team. The QA resource could be used on projects that we are currently working on (and planning to announce at Runefest), tightening them up and increasing our confidence in them. That came with a caveat: we still believed in the aims of Weapon Diversity, so we agreed that we would get our design team to design completely new utility benefits for weapons, which could be introduced over time rather than in one big clutch. For example, a quest might have a reward of a javelin; we would then take the opportunity to release a javelin effect to be rolled out for all javelins at the same time.

With their options being plough ahead, restart the project from scratch, or cancel it and focus on other major projects, Jagex chose to cancel. The good news is that while this project is dead, the spirit remains alive and is still being planned for the future.

Regardless of all of this, the aims of Weapon Diversity have not gone away: we still want to bring strategy back into weapon choice, and we believe that will make the gaining of weapon rewards so much more joyful.

Incidentally the weapon diversity beta ran alongside the bank rework update which was also temporarily cancelled only to be brought back, so those who had been looking forward to this update may not be completely disappointed.

Source: RuneScape

Black Desert PS4 Adds New Classes, World Boss


Black Desert on PS4 is launching a new update that will see two new classes, a world boss, and more content added to the game. In addition to the Dark Knight and Musa classes, players will also be able to take on the world boss Kzarka

Dark Knight wields intense power gained by burning nature’s latent energy. She wields the deadly Kriegsmesser for close range encounters, and uses her powerful, nature-burning magic for mid-range encounters. Musa was born with a tiger’s roar, and the power of that roar still echoes through his every action. His sword and bow make short work of anyone foolish enough to stand between him and his goals.

Guilds will appreciate the introduction of node wars and conquest, a small and large version of guild vs guild fights to take over land nodes across the game world. For more information on today’s update, as well as spawn times for Kzarka, check out the link below.

Source: Black Desert