We know you’re busy and might miss out on all the exciting things we’re talking about on Xbox Wire every week. If you’ve got a few minutes, we can help remedy that. We’ve pared down the past week’s news into one easy-to-digest article for all things Xbox! Or, if you’d rather watch than read, you can feast your eyes on our weekly video show above. Be sure to come back every Friday to find out what’s happening This Week on Xbox!
Forza Motorsport 7 Now Available Worldwide on Xbox One and Windows 10 PCs Today is the day! Get ready for the thrill of motorsport at the limit. Gear up for the most comprehensive, beautiful and authentic racing game ever made. Forza Motorsport 7 is here, available worldwide today on Xbox One and Windows 10 PCs, in three different versions. Standard Edition – This edition features the full version of the game running at a silky-smooth 60 frames per second… Read more
Xbox One X: What It Takes to Build a Console Peanut butter and jelly. Shaq and Kobe. Master Chief and Cortana. If there’s anything we’ve learned during our short time on this planet, it’s that collaboration is the driving force of creation (and tasty sandwiches). We recently heard from Bryan Sparks, Senior Designer, Microsoft Device Design Team, and Leonardo Del Castillo, GM of Xbox Devices Console Development to learn… Read more
Play Star Wars Battlefront II Open Beta During Free Play Days For All Weekend We believe games are more fun with friends. Starting Friday, October 6 at 1:00 a.m. PDT to Monday, October 9 at 11:59 p.m. PDT, you can play online in any game you own with your friends for free during our Free Play Days For All weekend on Xbox One and Xbox 360 — Xbox Live Gold membership not required. There’s more! If you’re looking for a new multiplayer experience… Read more
Bringing Middle-earth: Shadow of War to Life in 4K Next week Middle-earth: Shadow of War will launch on Xbox One and Windows 10 as an Xbox Play Anywhere title, sending us back to Mordor to fight all manner of orcs and other fantastically evil creatures. But it’s this Fall when the Xbox One X hits store shelves that we’re most looking forward to our return to Middle-earth. Not only has the game grown in scope from the 2014 classic… Read more
Assassin’s Creed Origins: Using All of Bayek’s Tricks in the Nile Delta Like no other game in the series so far, Assassin’s Creed Origins will push you to use every tool and tactic at your disposal as you hunt for the secret society known as the Order of the Ancients. In our case, this was something we realized during a quest in the latest preview demo, set in the Giza Plateau and in the Nile Delta — both of which looked beautiful running on Xbox One X… Read more
New Xbox One S Assassin’s Creed Origins Bundles Launch October 27 Step back in time and discover the beginning of the Assassin’s brotherhood with two new Xbox One S Assassin’s Creed Origins Bundles (1TB and 500GB) launching October 27. Experience a new way to fight by using powerful weapons to protect Egypt from epic enemies, while exploring the Great Pyramids and uncovering lost tombs across a vast and unpredictable land… Read more
Dishonored: Death of The Outsider Tips & Tricks Hey, Xbox gamers! The Tips & Tricks team is here with 5 tips for Arkane Studios’ latest game, Dishonored: Death of The Outsider. Death of the Outsider is a standalone DLC that takes place a few months after the events of Dishonored 2. You play as Billie Lurk: Daud’s most trusted assassin… that is, until her betrayal in The Knife of Dunwall DLC. Now, Billie’s out to find Daud… Read more
Party-Based Dungeon Crawler Battle Chasers: Nightwar Available Now on Xbox One When people see Battle Chasers: Nightwar for the first time, they’ve got a lot of questions. Is it a Diablo-style dungeon crawler? Is it more of a party-based tactical RPG? Is it action or turn-based? The short answer is: all of the above. It’s a bit of a hybrid. But understanding all the nuances of our strange brew, and why we made the choices we made, requires… Read more
Taking on Big Game in theHunter: Call of the Wild on Xbox One Here at Avalanche Studios and Expansive Worlds, we are incredibly excited to bring theHunter: Call of the Wild to Xbox One. It’s the first venture for theHunter franchise into the world of gamepads and comfortable couch gaming and we can’t wait for you to take a stroll in our virtual worlds. A lot of you have been asking to get the game on Xbox One and now it is finally here… Read more
Gears of War Pro Circuit Season 2 Announced with new expected prize pool of $2,000,000! Xbox, Gears of War Esports, and The Coalition are proud to announce Season 2 of the Gears Pro Circuit for Gears of War 4. Gears players from around the world can compete in marquee live open events for a starting $1,000,000 in cash prizes. With the addition of new regional events and grassroots tournaments, plus crowdfunding through Esports Supporter Packs… Read more
Feature: Four Horses Discusses the Process of Bringing Kid Tripp to the Switch
Not long ago Kid Tripp arrived on the 3DS eShop, an auto-running platformer that offers snappy but challenging stages. Some balked at its mobile origins but that was to do it a discredit; in our view it’s a well-constructed and fun game.
Four Horses produced that version and is now working on a Switch port, so we caught up with director and programmer Michael Waites to learn more about the process of jumping a generation in hardware, and why this was always a ‘console’ game despite its smart device origins.
How has the development process been on Switch?
So far, it is all going well. I’ve taken a little break from it to help out another publisher with a conversion of a Unity project but I expect to be back onto it shortly. Some of the work on the other project crosses over with Kid Tripp anyway, such as handling all the controller configurations that are possible and other aspects, which have inspired ideas to make Kid Tripp even greater on the Switch, so it is all good!
When did it start?
I started the conversion to Switch in the week of the launch of the 3DS version. Getting the game running with identical content to the Nintendo 3DS version was fairly rapid as all it involved was getting my in-house engine up and running on the Switch. All that remains is to get the Switch-specific functionality added.
What attracted you to develop for Switch?
I’m a huge fan of Nintendo, both the games they make and the hardware they release, so as soon as I heard about the Switch I wanted to own one for game playing. I love the design of the console and wanted to get set up as a developer as soon as possible as I have a few ideas for games that make some use of the unique hardware. Getting Kid Tripp onto the platform seemed to be a good springboard to getting hold of the development hardware, getting familiar with it and then going on to develop the ideas I have into full games.
What was your exposure and interest to the rumours of the ‘NX’?
Sadly no different to any other Nintendo fan. As a developer, I had no early access to the hardware or any information about it. It wasn’t until what seemed like an age after the launch of the hardware in March that I got access to the Switch developer site. In some ways, I’m happy with that because I did enjoy all the hype as a consumer.
It must be exciting to launch on Nintendo platforms that have huge popularity at the moment, one well established and the other in its infancy?
It really is. I never thought I’d be self-publishing a game on Nintendo hardware within a year of its launch, but that is going to happen. Plus, the 3DS has had a special place in my heart since its launch. Hopefully I’ll be able to develop and publish on its eventual successor, too!
The game is certainly charming visually, yet has elements and a degree of difficulty associated with classic platformers. How was this aesthetic/ gameplay balance approached (to appeal to different ages and skill types)?
I wasn’t involved in the design of the original game, so I don’t have too much information on that front. I do know that Mike Burns, the original creator, spent many hours with friends and family balancing and tweaking the levels based on their feedback. I’ll hand over to him!
Mike Burns: I started making Kid Tripp as a hobby way back in 2011. At the time there wasn’t a huge catalog of challenging, quality platformers on the iOS App Store, so I figured I’d jump in and help fill the void. I’m a big fan of New Adventure Island (the TG-16 one — I actually discovered it on the Wii Virtual Console!). It’s fast, colorful, and fairly tough. One of the cool ways that the Adventure Island games differ from the Mario games is that they kind of subtly encourage the player to never stop running. The more I played it, the more I realized I could beat pretty much the entire game without ever letting go of the right arrow on the d-pad. I think that’s what sparked the idea to bring that kind of classic platformer gameplay to mobile devices (via an autorunner.).
The decision to go with the game’s cute pixel art style was definitely influenced by games like Adventure Island and Super Mario Bros. (Bright, colorful pixel art just makes me happy!) The difficulty was a bit of a different story. The plan was always to make a tough game, but the funny thing is that I didn’t think the game was particularly hard when I first finished it up. I had spent about two or three years testing it almost daily, so by the time I got around to creating the final level design the physics were totally second nature to me. The thing is, because I designed the levels to feel challenging for me, personally, they ended up being super difficult for people who had never played the game before.
That said, I did offset the difficulty with some other design choices, so I think it worked out pretty well in the end. For instance, the player respawns practically instantly, and the levels are short enough that dying doesn’t feel like a huge loss of progress. The satisfaction of beating a super tough level is always just a few seconds away (which works great for holding a player’s interest), but it’s also really easy to just put down and jump back in later. I knew that that was a really important thing to have, especially for a game people would be playing on their phones.
With the ‘endless runner’ genre being linked predominantly with iOS, was this technically expanded and tweaked for consoles?
Michael Waites: The original game was developed as a console game that could be played easily on a touch screen with two fake buttons, so to a degree it already was a console game. Having said that, the game is considerably more difficult to play in two button mode as there are three controls – running, throwing stones and of course, jumping. We made the decision to split those controls fully for the console versions but retain a Hardcore control option that just uses two buttons the same as the iOS version. I don’t know if anyone really wants to use those “authentic” controls, but I didn’t want to make any irreversible changes to the original game.
How was the transition from one to two screens – from iOS to the 3DS, and now being able to transfer between home and portable with the Switch?
In some ways it was really difficult, mainly because we decided to just use the top screen – it is that decision which was difficult. We had some ideas for things we could put on the touch screen such as a permanent display of your current statistics and a little mini-map of the level with markers for all the places where you lost a life, but in the end we figured that it was additional work that would only delay the release without adding any value for the player. If you take your eyes off the top screen whilst playing, you tend to lose a life!
So, with that in mind, how did you decide on unique features for each system?
Since the game was already designed we were never going to be making any changes that would affect the content of the game, so unique features were never factored into the game. I was always going to be making use of the 3D effect of the 3DS, though. I personally don’t like getting multi-platform games on the 3DS that don’t utilise the 3D effect when they could do. For the Switch, the only thing I can confirm right now is that we are supporting all controller configurations – attached to the console, dual Joy-Con, single Joy-Con (left or right) and Pro Controller. We are experimenting with another feature based on the controller, but until we know if that is going to add value to the project are keeping it to ourselves!
We’d like to thanks Michael Waites and Mike Burns for their time.
Stardew Valley is a universally acclaimed farming simulator that was initially released on PC in February 2016, before eventually arriving on other consoles later that year. The last few months have seen little other than pure hype and excitement from Switch players, however, as they finally get to see this Harvest Moon-inspired fan-favourite for themselves (or double-dip to enjoy the experience all over again for a second time). Despite having a good amount of time with the game, it is clear that we are still yet to scratch the surface of what Stardew Valley has to offer its players, and we’ve already had a bit of a rollercoaster ride with the title.
The game might well be a farming simulator on the surface (you inherit a farm, start restoring it, plant crops, collect materials to build with etc.), but there is actually so much more to it than initially meets the eye. In a recent soapbox video we referred to the game as a “life sim”, and that is a perfect description; your activities go far beyond just farming thanks to a great sense of community that finds itself sitting at the heart of the adventure. In fact, there doesn’t appear to be any end to the amount of things available to see and do.
For starters, by wandering over to the main town you’ll start to interact with a host of non-playable characters in what turns out to be a rather tight-knit community. Each character you meet has their own personality, their own relationships with other characters, their own interests, and so on. You can offer to help out various town members in what are essentially side quests, you can build up your own relationship with individual people by giving them presents and visiting them often and, eventually, you might even grow so close to someone that you’ll end up getting married should you fancy it. You don’t move to Stardew Valley to work – you move there to live.
As we previously mentioned it is clear that, in the grand scheme of things, we haven’t seen anywhere near all of the things on offer here. One example of this is the fact that it took us 15 in-game days just to realise that there was a huge mine to explore just north of the town – fully exploring and excavating within it will likely take a scarily large amount of time to manage. Strolling around the valley will give you a quick insight into the currently unknown too; often we’d see areas that we can’t access yet or doors that remain locked, and an in-game calendar shows events that will be occurring in the town in the coming days.
It doesn’t end here, either – on top of the farming, side quests, and everything else mentioned so far you can try to earn as much money as you can, build various animal coops to look after livestock, have a pet, go fishing and try to collect every fish available, complete an entire museum collection, build up your combat level in the RPG-like Adventurer’s Guild, and more – it just goes on and on.
There is a point to all of this, though. After two in-game years you will be assessed on your achievements, receiving a score based on numerous factors. Pleasingly, your game doesn’t end there, however; you are free to continuing living this life away from the real world as much as you like, ever expanding on what eventually starts to feel like a second home. The portable nature of the Switch makes this version easily one of, if not the, strongest of them all – the structure of the game sees you play through ‘days’ at a time with a clear break in between each one, making it perfect for just having that quick escape. Luckily, the oddly addictive nature of watching your farm grow and grow will make you want to do just that.
There is one technical flaw at launch that needs to be mentioned, however. At the end of each in-game day it saves, and at present it takes a surprising amount of time – perhaps up to 20 seconds. It’s a tad frustrating when it first happens, but the days are long enough that we’ve generally looked past it; the rest of the game – pleasingly – is snappy enough.
Beyond that relatively minor complaint, playing Stardew Valley has been an enlightening experience. For complete transparency it is important to state that, for this writer, games of this genre and style aren’t often particularly appealing. Indeed, after the first couple of hours a mixture of boredom from the repetitive nature of farming, and confusion from not really understanding why nothing seemed to be happening, prevented initial enjoyment.
Somewhere down the line, though, everything just ‘clicked’. This isn’t a game designed to throw everything it has at you from the off, and it isn’t one to hold your hand either; everything in Stardew Valley wants to be discovered, but only if you put in the time and effort to find it. To experience this game fully you must be prepared to spend a huge number of hours living in its world – the more you put in, the more you’ll get out, and it can be so rewarding if you do.
Conclusion
Stardew Valley offers its players a chance to live a second life – one where you can forget the troubles of the real world and get excited over finding a particularly rare carrot. It is a truly magical experience; games can often be enjoyable but they don’t all manage to be as captivating as this. This is the sort of game that ideally requires a significant amount of time to be invested; the enjoyment doesn’t necessarily come from the day-to-day actions you perform, but rather from the general growth of pride, satisfaction, and sense of security as the days go by. Fans of games such as Harvest Moon and Animal Crossing will be right at home here and, for those who aren’t, there is a decent chance this game might just surprise you. For the asking price the risk couldn’t be more worth it.
In a world where humans can transform into automobiles, the Drive Girls are ready to hit the road and save the day! Play as five different Drive Girls and transform from superheroine to supercar and back again, as you smash through wave after wave of mechanised Bug enemies attacking the paradise of Sun Island. Combining action and driving into a hack ?n? slash bonanza, Drive Girls lets you burn rubber through the high-octane missions in the epic single-player campaign or enjoy local and online co-operative action for up to four players. Visit the garage between missions to tune, modify and customise your rides, as abilities and attacks can be enhanced with new parts and decals for stat-busting skill augments. Discover the unfolding story and enjoy interactions between the Drive Girls as they bond and get to know each other better, forming close friendships amidst the heat of the battle zone.
Escape from the living prison jail in Mary Skelter: Nightmares for the PlayStation Vita system. The Nightmare monster actively stalks the player as you run through the dungeon, so you must use the dungeons' gimmicks to impede its movements. This dungeon RPG features a turn- based battle system that includes class change, a strategic blood-licking transform system, and a blood-rubbing system to power up your party. As you solve the dungeons' mysteries and satisfy the prison's desires, you just might make it out alive.
FEATURES:
Walking Nightmares - The dungeon-crawling RPG genre gets a twist when special enemies can chase you through the dungeons. Lay traps to make your escape, or try to face them down.
Blood-drenched Transformations - Characters can transform with stronger stats and extra skills, but if they fight too much they may enter Blood Skelter Mode, where they go completely berserk.
Everyone's got a Job - Strategise your dungeon battles by assigning different classes to your characters, unlocking new skills, stats, and character portraits.
Posted by: xSicKxBot - 10-08-2017, 03:30 AM - Forum: Lounge
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The Overwatch League Welcomes Two More Teams!
SANTA MONICA and IRVINE, Calif. – August 10, 2017 – The Overwatch League™ today announced its latest team sales, with esports organization founder Jack Etienne of Cloud9 purchasing the team for London, and sports industry leaders Stan and Josh Kroenke purchasing a team for Los Angeles.
The Overwatch League is the first major global professional esports league with city-based teams, and will showcase world-class competitive play in Blizzard Entertainment’s hit game Overwatch®. Last month the League announced its first team sales to seven leading entrepreneurs and organizations from traditional sports, esports, and the technology sector, representing major global cities from Boston to Shanghai. With today’s announcement, the League now includes teams from Asia, Europe, and North America, including two teams for Los Angeles.
“The Overwatch League continues to have great momentum,” said Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick. “We’re thrilled to add Jack Etienne of Cloud9 and Stan and Josh Kroenke of the Los Angeles Rams, Arsenal Football Club, Denver Nuggets and Colorado Avalanche to our group of extraordinary Overwatch League owners around the world. They will enhance our ability to celebrate and reward players and fans in Los Angeles, London, and beyond.”
“Overwatch is a global game, with heroes – and players – from around the world, so it’s important to us that as many Overwatch League fans as possible have local or regional teams to root for,” said Mike Morhaime, CEO and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment. “In addition to broadening the competitive field for Season 1, we’re excited that today’s announcement helps set the stage for more epic intercontinental rivalries.”
“Building communities around the best competitive experiences in the world is incredibly rewarding, and the Overwatch League offers the chance to create something special,” said Josh Kroenke, cofounder of KSE Esports. “We’re impressed by the vision and strategy for the League, and we’re going to build a great team for Los Angeles that inspires fans near and far.”
“We applaud the creation of the Overwatch League, and couldn’t be happier partnering with an organization that shares our values and vision of serving athletes, teams, and fans,” said Jack Etienne, founder and CEO of Cloud9. “We are thrilled that Cloud9’s formidable fan base throughout Europe and the UK now has a local team to call their own, and can’t wait to start representing London in the Overwatch League.”
The Overwatch League is slated to begin later this year, with an official player signing window for Season 1 now open from August 1 to October 30, 2017. Details on player signings, salaries and benefits have been announced, with players earning a minimum of $50,000 each year, and at least 50 percent of team performance bonuses from winning playoffs and other league events going directly to players. Teams will provide players with health insurance and a retirement savings plan, as well as player housing and practice facilities during the season which will meet professional standards set by the Overwatch League.
More information about the League’s format and timeline, as well as new team announcements, will be shared over the coming months.
About Overwatch League™
The Overwatch League™ is the first major global professional esports league with city-based teams in Boston, London, Los Angeles, Miami-Orlando, New York, San Francisco, Seoul, and Shanghai. Overwatch® was created by globally acclaimed publisher Blizzard Entertainment (a division of Activision Blizzard – Nasdaq: ATVI), whose iconic franchises have helped lay the foundations and push the boundaries of professional esports over the last 15 years. Among Blizzard’s stable of twenty-one #1 games,* Overwatch is the fastest to reach more than 30 million players. Overwatch was built from the ground up for online competition, with memorable characters and fast-paced action designed for the most engaging gameplay and spectator experiences. To learn more about the Overwatch League, visit www.overwatchleague.com.
*Sales and/or downloads, based on internal company records and reports from key distribution partners.
Information in this press release that involves Blizzard Entertainment’s expectations, plans, intentions or strategies regarding the future, including statements about the expected start date of the Overwatch League, are forward-looking statements that are not facts and involve a number of risks and uncertainties. Factors that could cause Blizzard Entertainment’s actual future results to differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking statements set forth in this release include unanticipated product delays and other factors identified in the risk factors sections of Activision Blizzard’s most recent annual report on Form 10-K and any subsequent quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. The forward-looking statements in this release are based upon information available to Blizzard Entertainment and Activision Blizzard as of the date of this release, and neither Blizzard Entertainment nor Activision Blizzard assumes any obligation to update any such forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements believed to be true when made may ultimately prove to be incorrect. These statements are not guarantees of the future performance of Blizzard Entertainment or Activision Blizzard and are subject to risks, uncertainties and other factors, some of which are beyond its control and may cause actual results to differ materially from current expectations.
Posted by: xSicKxBot - 10-08-2017, 03:30 AM - Forum: Lounge
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This Week At Bungie – 10/05/2017
This week at Bungie, we know the score.
The banners that fly in the Tower tell a truth that we have all known for some time: Dead Orbit is the faction that rules the hearts of the most Guardians. Do they all think they look better in black? Or are they just a generally moody bunch? We may never know the true motivations that sent them into the wild to express their loyalty through action.
What we know for certain is that Arach Jalaal is the champion of this first Faction Rally. His victory was not undisputed. Each faction put some respectable points on the board. Once the 61 Million reward packages were counted, Dead Orbit emerged the most profitable faction by a margin of more than 2 Million. New Monarchy was a close second. Future War Cult was an even closer third.
As promised, Dead Orbit has a prize on offer. If you pledged to them, it will be a steal. If you did not, but you still gotta have it, they’re about to steal from you. That will be the price of your treachery.
Faction Rally will return. New Monarchy and Future War Cult, we’ll let you know when you’ll have your chance for revenge! Next week, however, we’re clearing space in the Tower for another special guest.
The Return of the Iron Lord
The Red War scattered the heroes of humanity across the solar system. One by one, they have been returning to the City. Now, Lord Saladin will hold court and reward the brave.
Begins: October 10, 2AM Pacific
Ends: October 17, 2AM Pacific
The game is Control.
As the first Faction Rally comes to an end, the Iron Lords are hosting the next ritual. Their special event has undergone some changes. The Iron Banner is still your chance to stand and be proven in the fires of friendly competition.
What’s different?
Combat will be between two teams of four players
Your fighting abilities, not your power levels, will decide the outcome
Bounties and Ranks have been replaced with an Iron Banner Engram
How can you compete?
Complete the Destiny 2 campaign – the only way to reach the Tower
Visit Lord Saladin in the Tower to begin the Iron Banner Quest
Fight in the Iron Banner playlist with Quickplay modes and matchmaking
What’s in it for you?
Earn Iron Banner Tokens in every match (earn more if you win)
Daily and Season* Milestones that track your progress to glory
Claim brand new armor wrought in the forges of the Iron Lords
Decorate yourself as a master of your competitive spirit. Form up into a Fireteam or let the fates choose your teammates.
You’re the Best… Around!
Combat against other Guardians not your thing? The ultimate PVE challenge also arrives in your Director on Tuesday at 10AM Pacific. The morning after the weekly reset begins a new invitation from Calus to join him for the Prestige Raid.
We do not expect everyone to be successful in completing this activity. Mechanical changes to the encounters are minimal, but they are there. The Prestige Raid is about mastering a more punishing sandbox. Our goal is not to provide a boon to your character progression, but there are unique rewards to help you shine. Consider this your invitation to prove to the world that you are among the very best of the Raiders who overlook the City.
World First will be counted. We can tell you no more.
Good luck!
Their Stage – Our Story
*There is that word again: Season.
There is a mention of seasons when you inspect your Clan. Now, we’re talking about it on the blog. What does it all mean?
We’ll be answering that question, and more like it, at TwitchCon.
Friday, October 20, 4:30PM Pacific
What do Seasons mean in Destiny 2?
What will change from season to season?
How many seasons can we expect?
When does Season Two begin?
The session will be streamed (I mean, of course it will be streamed, it’s TwitchCon), so everyone can tune in and see what we have planned to keep the Destiny community engaged. When the time comes, pile into the theater or click this link to join us virtually.
Servants to the Guardians
HELP.BUNGIE.NET is the central resource for any player who seeks the answer to a question about how to play Destiny. There is a running conversation there. Our mission is not to teach you how to win, but an entire team of support specialists is researching the issues you report. Before you can even ask a question, it may have already been answered in an article they have prepared.
This is their report.
Destiny Hotfix 1.0.3.1
On Tuesday, maintenance was conducted to support the deployment of Hotfix 1.0.3.1 to Destiny 2. Upon conclusion, there was a minor issue where some players were prompted to create new characters in an alternate service environment. No characters or items were deleted due to this issue. For resolution, closing Destiny 2 and relaunching the application would return characters to their proper state.
Event Vendors: Availability Issue
On September 26, Faction Rally vendors were not available in some Tower instances immediately upon the weekly reset. We are investigating the cause of this issue, as well as potential ways to address it. Similarly, Lord Saladin is expected to be impacted when Iron Banner becomes available on October 10. If you are unable to locate Saladin within your Tower after the weekly reset, we advise returning to orbit and launching into a new Tower instance.
Destiny 2 Error Code Investigations
At this time, we continue to investigate reports of CABBAGE errors that are blocking some players from progressing through the Destiny 2 campaign or returning players to orbit from alternate activities.
Some players have been able to reduce the frequency of these errors by following recently updated troubleshooting steps listed in the help article linked above. Some steps listed may need to be taken by an internet service provider to adjust security restrictions on network hardware. We will provide updates on this investigation when available.
Additionally, we are investigating elevated levels Newt, Beaver, Guitar, and Permissions errors impacting Destiny 2 gameplay. If you encounter these issues during gameplay, please post a report to the #Help forum detailing the following:
Were you in a Fireteam when this error occurred?
What was the activity that you were engaged in when experiencing this error?
Have you followed steps within the Network Troubleshooting guide to ensure proper network configuration for Destiny 2 gameplay?
As we continue to investigate the rise in these error codes, we advise all players follow @BungieHelp on Twitter or visit Help.bungie.net for updates concerning server status, known outages, and active issue investigations.
You Oughta Be In Pictures
Years ago now, we chose this playful outro for our weekly address as a way to let you know that we see you having fun, and we love you for it. The emblem that we grant to the winners is a nice keepsake, but the most important thing is that our Creations page continues to be a fascinating place to see the face of the community, and all the people who help to define it.
Movie of the Week: If you’re happy and you know it.
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Honorable Mention: Aesthetic: Destiny 2 – A New Frontier
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Honorable Mention: Destiny 2 Be Brave Metal Cover
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[Editor’s Note: I listened to the whole channel as I wrote all this. Thanks, man.]
Anyone miss Cozmo yet? I miss Cozmo. I’m so lonely here, with all of you, all by myself. He’ll be back next week, with his cats and his chill way of deploying the news. I’m always happy to grab the controls of the blog, but he has taken solid ownership of this community. I have his back, and he has yours.
As we continue to ride this wave, the game will tell its own continuing story. Your Milestones will reveal the mysteries of the weekly resets. We’ll plot some more distant milestones right here. There are a few mentioned above to fuel speculation. Destiny is a turbulent landscape that’s always changing, so our focus tends to be weekly. There is still a lot to talk about, and the game will serve up new challenges every time you visit that world. In the weeks to come, another wave of Guardians will join our community on the PC. We have more stories to tell and more destinations to explore before the end of this year.
On a personal note; just the other night, after we caught up in the Crucible, I had dinner with a dude I met as my teammate in a Bungie game eleven years ago. I am a product of the Bungie community. My challenge to every Guardian is to look to the human element in Destiny 2 to fuel your appetite for ultimate re-playability. The ultimate loot is the friendships that can grow out of a game like this. There will be more gear to add to your character (next week, even). The rewards that I’m talking about are the people in the community that thrives in this game. If you let them, they’ll make your hobby as a light-dealing hero on a starside campaign for glory even better.
Thanks to those of you who are helping us to drive that scene.
A Hat in Time is a 3D collect-a-thon platformer featuring a little girl with a lot of heart! Travel the universe with Hat Kid as you rival the evil Mustache Girl in order to save the world! Unlock new platforming abilities, more combat moves and spice up your attacks with badges attached to your hat!
Layton's Mystery Journey: Katrielle and The Millionaire's Conspiracy
A new adventure in the Layton series ?with a female protagonist: As the seventh main entry into the core Layton series, LAYTON?S MYSTERY JOURNEY follows Professor Hershel Layton's daughter, Katrielle "Kat" Layton.A new cast of leading and supporting characters:When Professor Hershel Layton (the protagonist of past Layton titles) goes missing, it's up to his daughter and friends to figure out what?s going on. Smart puzzle solving: As Kat, explore different environments and solve a collection of different puzzles that will get you closer to finding your father. Navigation and puzzle solving will be heavily reliant on the Nintendo 3DS touch screen. [Nintendo]
Inside the development of Conan Exiles: The Frozen North
A few months ago, Gamasutra brought Conan Exiles creative director Joel Bylos onto our Twitch channel to discuss Funcom’s hit online survival game. Recently, Gamasutra’s Bryant Francis and Kris Graft had the pleasure of speaking with Bylos again about the game’s launch on Xbox One’s preview program, as well as the design of the game’s new Frozen North expansion and what new features can be expected from it.
You can watch the stream embedded above, or click here to see it. And for more developer insights, editor roundtables and gameplay commentary, be sure to follow the Gamasutra Twitch channel.
STREAM PARTICIPANTS:
Joel Bylos, creative director of Conan Exiles
Bryant Francis, contributing editor at Gamasutra
Kris Graft, editor-in-chief at Gamasutra
Bryant Francis: The climbing mechanic and world traversal, can you talk about how it’s implemented right now?
Joel Bylos: We don’t have the leeway to give a paraglider, or anything like they have in Zelda, but basically any surface in the world is climbable, unless we deem it not to be, which we’ve done in some cases like dungeons, just to prevent people from exploiting certain puzzle mechanics. Essentially you can walk up to anything in the game, if you hold the jump button you’ll attach to it, you can do it right from the start if you like, and you’ll be pushed into a third-person camera view just to make that work, but basically you can jump up and attach to any of the rocks or cliff faces, and you climb then. Your stamina bar determines the amount of climbing time that you get, and so forth.
We had to refigure a large number of the rocks in the world to make their collision more precise, because otherwise the player would be floating in the air while climbing. And there was areas the players could reach now that would be outside of their theoretical reach before. Pretty much in this game you could reach almost anywhere by building there, we kind of knew what when we were making it, so we did take the time to make sure they looked okay when you got up to them, but now we had to make sure that the actual attach surfaces were fairly close to perfect when you actually got on them.
“We had to refigure a large number of the rocks in the world to make their collision more precise, because otherwise the player would be floating in the air while climbing. “
We had to make sure locations worked well with climbing. We had to make sure locations didn’t break with climbing, like in dungeons. We knew that some of our puzzles would break so we made some of the dungeon walls unclimbable. We tried to make that realistic by making them slick with water, making them difficult to climb.
A problem we had been trying to solve in the game was that people had been building these bases in places that were basically unreachable and then destroying their staircases each night when they logged off. In PvP, they would build a staircase up to their base […] on top of a very high rock, then they would delete the staircase so players could never get to their base to raid them. It was clever, but it amounted to an unraidable base game, so we decided to add climbing as a way of at least reaching those bases.
Kris Graft: It’s one thing to do this in a game like Zelda, that’s single-player, you can kind of take into account what players might do. But in a MMO game like this, you could be thrown some curveballs.
Joel Bylos: Yeah. But it’s a relatively robust system, it’s one of the most polished systems we’ve launched. It could use some animation polish but it actually works very well, players have not been finding massive exploits or anything like that. It also solved a problem with world traversal with people, who were up on high cliffs, getting down quickly. It’s never that fun if you have to find a way down, it’s much more fun to jump off a cliff. So we have this whole mechanic where you do what we call the ‘heroic plunge,’ where you jump off a cliff and spin and grab the wall on the way down, and you’ll just slide with both your hands.
Kris Graft: That’s how I jump off of cliffs as well.
Joel Bylos: (laughs)
Kris Graft: The other side of the climbing mechanic in Breath of the Wild is the paraglider. Did you consider putting that in, or could something like that be implemented in the future?
Joel Bylos: We’ve discussed things like that. We can’t obviously do paraglider. I mean we could but it’d be kind of lame, it doesn’t really fit the setting that well. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a movie called Yor: Hunter from the Future? It was like an 80s cheesy barbarian movie. In that movie he captures a giant flying lizard creature and uses it as a paraglider, it’s kind of amazing.
[embedded content] The unforgettable film Yor: Hunter From the Future
So we talk about things like that we talked about being able to skin certain creatures and maybe use them to do something like that. But we’ll see, we haven’t reached that point yet.
Kris Graft: Yeah. You previously said everything has to be ‘super violent,’ I think like skinning a creature, or capturing a creature and then forcing it to be your paraglider…I think that would fit in the Conan world, that’s just my personal opinion though.
Kris Graft: You hear a lot of people say that one of the major advantages of developing on console is that you just have one or two kinds of platforms to get it running on, and if it runs great one, it’s going to run great on all of them, because they’re all the same. And you have definitely found that to be true, right? (sarcasm)
“I was naive enough to actually think that. If it runs on one Xbox One S, it’ll run on all Xbox One S’s, if it’ll run on one Xbox One, it’ll run on all Xbox Ones.”
Joel Bylos: (laughs, sarcastically) Yes, that is definitely our experience. I was naive enough to actually think that. If it runs on one Xbox One S, it’ll run on all Xbox One S’s, if it’ll run on one Xbox One, it’ll run on all Xbox Ones. What we found was, for some reason it might be crashing for someone’s, and it could be not crashing on someone else’s, while they could be running the exact same console. They could have no external hard drives with basically the same setup as you.
So yeah we found that it’s been interesting with the console. I honestly believed that it would run the same for everybody. On the day of launch people were telling me it was crashing constantly. And I was running it at home, and I was crashing almost never, my minimum time-to-fail was like five or six hours. People were telling me they were crashing every minute, every ten minutes. From a development point of view that can be slightly frustrating, because tracking down those errors is also quite hard.
Kris Graft: How successful have you been at tracking down those errors? Have you been able to do that efficiently?
“When you’re testing for stability you have a MTF, a Minimum Time to Failure, which is basically the average amount of time any of them playing the game before they crashed.”
Joel Bylos: Yeah I think so. We’ve been patching every week, because there can be multiple causes of any crash, right? Patching everything as we go. Our minimum time to failure on every version, which is how our testing unit gives us feedback.
When you’re testing for stability you have a MTF, a minimum time to failure, which is basically the average amount of time any of them playing the game before they crashed, and that has increased from two hours to seven-and-a-half. Which is obviously a huge stability improvement. Which doesn’t mean on the average that people crash every seven-and-a-half hours, it just means that that’s the minimum before they force the game to crash.
Kris Graft: What reasons have you found that has caused a crash or a bug that you didn’t expect? Like, somebody had Daytona USA installed, and that was the reason that people were experiencing crashes.
Joel Bylos: (laughs) I don’t think we’ve found particularly other games to be the source. We did find people running external hard drives, was one cause, could have been one of the causes. Here’s some juicy stuff. Before launch, in Europe we had the rating to show full nudity. Dicks on consoles, essentially. The way we worked with Microsoft to figure it out was to have DLC that enabled nudity in Europe, so that people who could download that DLC, in Europe only, to get the nudity on their characters.
We had set this all up, we had tested this version. The version we were going to launch with we had tested for two weeks, it was very stable, it wasn’t crashing much, the coders had done a lot of things to it. And we had other versions that were waiting to be basically patched out later, because those were the versions that we’d been testing. And those versions [hadn’t] undergone thourough testing, at least not nearly as thourough testing as normal.
“Microsoft found that there were people getting around and getting the nudity DLC in places that they shouldn’t, and we had to quickly release a version that was newer, and hadn’t been tested well, and we had launch problems.”
So we had been working on them. And then about two days before the launch, we launched on a Wednesday and Microsoft called us on a Monday night, and basically they found a problem in their store, where people in the US were able to get around the region lock and get the DLC for nudity, because the trial had accidentally launched early. People were downloading the game in trial mode well before it was actually launched. A few weird things going on there. So basically people were figuring out a way around [the region lock], so we had to disable the nudity in Europe or else we’d get fined by the ESRB.
So basically we had to disable that version of the trial, that a bunch of European people had downloaded, that had nudity DLC as well. So we had to disable that, and release a build on launch day that had not been tested in the way that the other builds had been. So on the Tuesday night I had played for six hours with pretty much zero crashing and zero problems. And then on Wednesday we had to quickly change our version.
And so that’s shenanigans, but that’s what happens sometimes. It’s nobody’s fault, it’s just that Microsoft found that there were people getting around and getting the nudity DLC in places that they shouldn’t, and we had to quickly release a version that was newer, and hadn’t been tested well, and we had launch problems.
“Some people have twenty thousand hours in the game, and some people have a hundred, but they still have an opinion about this stuff, right?”
Joel Bylos: Today I did a temperature test with people. On Fridays we have a meeting with the entire team, where we just talk about what everyone’s been working on, so people all in the loop. Often what I do in those meetings is we thumbs-up/thumbs-down/neutral on a feature, just to see how people feel about things.
And so I did a temperature test today on the dev team, for several of the features that are left to complete for the game. So it was quite interesting. I was like ‘how do you feel about this feature,’ is it thumbs-up, thumbs-down, neutral, and there’s also, if you’could only pick one of these features on the list, which one would you do? And so, very diverse and interesting results based on the type of player that our devs are. And many of them are very different, there are people who play a game solely in PvE, they like to be on a server with other players, but they don’t like to do PvP. And they’re not interested in interaction on that level of continually struggling against other people.
There are people who literally are just giant jerks, who go around killing as many people as they can find on a server, and destroying people’s bases, and teabagging them. So it’s interesting to see what people feel about things and what they think is important for the game. And it’s super interesting because some [of our devs] have 20,000 hours in the game, and some people have a hundred, because it’s a product assistant, who gets coffee for the project manager. He might have only played the game for a little bit, he might have only been working a phone job for a few days. But he still has an opinion about this stuff, right?
Kris Graft: That was going to be my next question, about cutting features, about how you get to that decision, about which of your darlings you’re going to kill. Is it just super democratic, like that?
“I try not to do democracy in game development. Design by committee can work, but it’s difficult.”
Joel Bylos: No no no, I try not to do democracy in game development. Design by committee, it can work, but it’s difficult. I think it’s more like design by merit, so people come with really cool ideas and implement them, and then you’re like ‘oh yeah, that was an amazing idea. Great work.’
We don’t democratize it, what we do is, I don’t know if you saw that presentation where they were talking about their feature scorecards? We have a similar system, where basically we say, does this feature market the game? Will it sell copies in the market? Will people buy a game if they see a video of this? That sounds super cynical, but it’s one of many factors, these are all points on our scorecard. So as a marketing feature, is this feature going to cause the current community playing the game to be mad, or happy? Does it add value to that community or does it piss them off?
“We have a system where basically we say, does this feature market the game? Will people buy a game if they see a video of this? As a marketing feature, is this feature going to cause the current community playing the game to be mad, or happy?”
And does the dev team want to work on this feature? Are they excited about this feature? Does this feature meet other development goals by developing it? An example of that is, we have the slavery system with the thralls that you knock out and drag back to your base. That gives us 90 percent of the work for a pet system in the game, having pets that you bring back to your base. That would be an example of a feature that helps development of another feature.
So you have these questions, you give them a point scale, we rate them. I fill out those, I talk to the community manager to get the temperature of the community about each feature, I talk to the marketing team to see what they think, I talk to the developers and get their temperature on things. I make judgment calls on a couple of things like: is this a feature we can do well?
For example, climbing was a feature that I believed we could do well, and we did fairly well with it and I think it meets the standards for our game. And then there’s stuff like actual estimates, how much time will it take to implement this feature? And then all of those things we put together in a point score, and we look and say, ‘Look, this feature is a minus-six, it’s probably not a good feature to add to the game. This feature is a plus-seven, it’s a no-brainer, we should have it.’
Kris Graft: So it’s the exact same questions that you ask at different points in development, to make these decisions about features?
Joel Bylos: The discussions about which actual features to add to the game, that’s more of a discussion that I have with the executive producer. Once we have a list of features that we think define the vision of the game, that’s when we start asking these questions about them.
