Fans of Final Fantasy XIV will have to deal with not playing the game today, as maintenance extends throughout today and into tomorrow. But you can take the time before the release of patch 4.5 to read through the always-extensive patch notes, with the obvious caveat that these are only the notes for the first part of the patch. That includes the rundown of the new dungeons, trials, and alliance raids, as well as the details on Blue Mage which will be available in one week’s time. Blue Mage is the game’s first (and current only) limited job, disallowed from entering duty roulettes and most instanced content without a preformed party. They are also not used to progress the main scenario; think of the job more like a gatherer scooping up monster skills. There are also new furnishings, new attractions and rewards in the Gold Saucer, new custom deliveries, and various other balance adjustments, all of which can be checked out in the full patch notes. It’s been … [Read more...] about Final Fantasy XIV posts the patch notes for patch 4.5, A Requiem for Heroes
Infinite warfare patch notes
Vague Patch Notes: The complexity of classic preservation for MMOs
Here’s a fun question to kick things off. Should old black-and-white films be colorized? The key word there is “old,” because there are a lot of films made in black-and-white not because of an artistic decision but because that was the only way to make films. Between budget concerns and limitations of filming, for various projects, black-and-white was the only viable choice for making a motion picture or television film. In some ways, these projects were never meant to be black-and-white. Of course, at the same time, the question is worth asking because what they were meant to be isn’t really up for discussion. You could say that things like the Twilight Zone didn’t need to be monochrome, but you can also watch through the run of the series and see the many episodes in which directors wisely shot around these limitations to make shadows and darkness into active characters within the story. Would color rob these scenes of their potency? Should you … [Read more...] about Vague Patch Notes: The complexity of classic preservation for MMOs
Bethesda Publishes Extensive Fallout 76 Patch Notes
After criticism for undocumented changes in past patches, the Fallout 76 team is showing that it took the community's feedback to heart. Today's update notes are extensive and include a "highlights" section as well as detailed notes across a broad array of adjusted features, bug fixes and more. Key improvements in today's patch include C.A.M.P. construction and placement adjustments, push-to-talk functionality, new PC settings, 21:9 resolution support and the ability for S.P.E.C.I.A.L. re-speccing at level 51+. C.A.M.P. Construction Improvements: Small obstructions will now be automatically removed when you place objects on top of them, allowing you to more easily build when and where you want. C.A.M.P. Placement Improvements: You will now be notified when you log into a world and your current C.A.M.P. location is occupied by another player. If you stay in that world, you can place your C.A.M.P. back down for free. If you decide not to place your C.A.M.P. and join a new … [Read more...] about Bethesda Publishes Extensive Fallout 76 Patch Notes
Vague Patch Notes: MMO emulation as a paean for the dead vs. a mockery of the living
If you ever need to know why we’ll happily cover Star Wars Galaxies emulators and not Ultima Online emulators here on Massively Overpowered, the reason is very simple: SWG is dead. UO is not. And that tells you quite a bit about the different sorts of emulation and how fans can approach it, but we’re going to need a few more words to cover all of that. But before we dive wholly into that, let’s talk about Mystery Science Theater 3000. One of the interesting aspects of MST3k fandom is that there has been a sentiment around for ages, frequently put forth by the creators themselves, that fans should keep circulating the tapes of old episodes. Yes, this is for a long-running series that will also happily sell you its two-hour-long episodes in multiple formats and offer others on Netflix or Hulu, along with offering some for free on YouTube. The creators outright encourage fans to just pass along and copy some of the show’s most beloved episodes. … [Read more...] about Vague Patch Notes: MMO emulation as a paean for the dead vs. a mockery of the living
Vague Patch Notes: On balance and differentiation in MMOs
Do you like fighting games? I don’t. Let’s talk about fighting games. But bear with me because you’ll get where this is going. While I might not personally care much about fighting games, I still wind up spending a lot of time reading about them because that’s just the sort of thing I read for fun. And balancing a fighting game is honestly pretty difficult, thus it’s something that gets talked about a lot. It’s difficult enough that there are, in fact, two different ways to do it. This does have a lot of bearing on MMOs, though, where balance doesn’t get talked about nearly as much and tends to get talked about in rather dim tones when it is discussed. But in order to understand that you need to understand the difference in balance methods, why World of Warcraft players miss Mark of the Wild, and why balance matters in the first place. uniform approach (which is a term I’ve just created for this article). The idea here is that you give … [Read more...] about Vague Patch Notes: On balance and differentiation in MMOs