RabidRebel

Looks like the initial leaks about the operators were true. It's going to be a bitch having your drones hacked. How the new Rainbow Six Siege Aussie operators' gadgets work | PC Gamer WWW.PCGAMER.COM Deploy spike traps and hack drones.

Looks like Anthem is facing a rocky start with servers crashing on opening day and poor game design choices already fixed by similar games (Division, Destiny 2). PC Gamer indicated the game has potential but it is not fun right now. Too many loading screens, uninteresting loot, and odd quests make up some chief complaints. Full article below. Anthem's 8 biggest problems so far | PC Gamer WWW.PCGAMER.COM Some feel too big to be quickly fixed. SkillUP, a streamer, mentioned concerns on the above before launch too. His recommendation to not buy before day one seems to ring true here. May want to wait a patch or two if you're headed down the Anthem trail. Any of our Origin membership folks give this game a try yet?

Looking to grab a game or two of WW3 to check out 0.4? This might be the weekend for it. Get double XP and double cash for any match you play this weekend. Certainly helps to unlock a few new weapons like the new sub machine gun. Also starting to see a few of our old Recon folks popping onto that game lately. Want the best performance? Make sure you jump into Team Deathmatches. Warzone matches (conquest) are getting better, but they still have trouble at times. Team Deathmatch is just smooth and the gun play is better than usual. Make sure to do a double take on your body armor though. The lightest armor protects against very little now (pistol/9mm rounds).

Ubisoft has said preorder sales of Division 2 are 6 times higher than Division 1 on PC.

Ubisoft is doing so well this last year they are not going to layoff 800 people as was possible. They received significant bumps from games like Far Cry 5. Preorders for the Division 2 are exceeding Division 1, even though the game is not on offer via Steam. Ubisoft reports strong profits, doesn't fire 800 people | PC Gamer WWW.PCGAMER.COM Despite good financial performance this quarter, Ubisoft is "striving to provide a fulfilling working environment" for its employees.

Rainbow 6 Siege is preparing for its next update with new operators, but there are sweeping changes coming to existing ones. Capitao will be getting a huge area of effect increase to his fire arrows that will cover entire rooms (with less damage). Lesion's mines will do less (8 to 4). Dokkebai's calls will stop after 18 seconds and walking near a mute will stop them too (had to be standing on one to avoid the call before). Ash loses her ACOG to reduce her range play. Biggest change is breach charges. You will be able to place them faster and their damage model was changed. They will be less lethal overall with increased area of effect but less total damage. They will also do 1/3 less damage to the attacker side of the wall. New Rainbow Six Siege patch brings huge buff for Capitão, big nerfs for Ash and Dokkaebi | PC Gamer WWW.PCGAMER.COM Ash mains lose the ACOG, Capitão upgrades his arsenal, and a bunch of other big changes in this meaty update.

Devs accuse Sony of “playing favorites” with PS4’s cross-platform support ARSTECHNICA.COM Wargroove, Paladins makers say they're just waiting on Sony's OK to open up.

No link between violent video games and increased aggression in teens, study finds WWW.GAMESINDUSTRY.BIZ A new study from the Oxford Internet Institute claims to have found no link between time spent playing violent video ga…

Looks like you will be eligible for one of three free games if you preorder Division 2. You can choose Far Cry Primal, Ghost Recon Wildlands, or Watch Dogs 2. Not great choices at this stage in the game, but there if you are looking for one. Also, they announced the Open Beta will be March 1-4 for those who missed the Private Beta. Pre-ordering The Division 2 on PC comes with a free game WWW.POLYGON.COM Far Cry Primal, Ghost Recon Wildlands or Watch Dogs 2

Ubisoft has teamed with Mozilla to deploy an AI-based coding assistant to detect bugs in code as it is committed. Ubisoft already uses this software internally, but it is sharing it with Mozilla. They tout it cam find 3-4 bugs out of 5 before they even make it into the code. Link below for more details. Ubisoft and Mozilla team up to develop Clever-Commit, an AI coding assistant | TechCrunch TECHCRUNCH.COM Game developer Ubisoft today announced that it has partnered with Mozilla to develop Clever-Commit, an AI-based coding assistant that learns from your code base’s bug and regression data to analyze and flag potential new bugs as new code is committed. Ubisoft already uses this tool internally and Mozilla says that it will deploy it to spot […]

Activision announced that Blizzard will have no major releases in 2019. The only thing on the docket that is known is Diablo Immortal (mobile game) and Warcraft 3 Reforged. Activision says Blizzard has no major new games coming in 2019 | PC Gamer WWW.PCGAMER.COM Looks like no big surprises from Blizzard this year.

Well, no more spending renown for me now. I'll wait on those possible price drops.

I gave 0.4 a try last night. The game load speed is now on par with most titles today. Conquest mode is struggling from stuttering still, but TDM is glorious and beautiful with its smaller maps. The TTK now feels really good with this last pass. You're more likely to kill someone when you see them than before. Sniper rifles are back to being lethal as they penetrate all but the heaviest armor. I really like how the gun play feels now (at least in TDM). The server browser is up and running so you can now see players in a server, map, and ping. The game is headed in the right direction still.

Not surprising after we got news a few months back that they were ramping up their employee buyouts/retraining efforts. EA wont be far behind unless they monetize Apex Legends effectively.

What were your favorite moments from the Private Beta? I liked the end game content. The last mission on hard was challenging to say the least. Anyone else try the photo mode?

We're going to need you to upgrade that Bud Light to a real beer with that Spring Cleaning.

When you are more interested in making profit and taking home an obscene compensation package than running a company well, this happens. It keeps happening across multiple sectors. Some hotshot executive pounces in for millions of dollars to bring general managing package X that worked elsewhere. Stock prices uptick on the news but it's internally toxic to the company. Executive jumps off the plane with a golden parachute. Rinse and repeat. The company spirals because the people actually doing the work crater out, the product suffers, and the customers lose trust. No company is safe from this but yet what hotshot executive loses in the mix? None. They still get paid millions. Sadly, until we fix this cycle, the scrappy management staff who built the companies and deserve some payout will leave and the cycle will begin. EA is going to have to do some house cleaning to bring back a management culture that cares as much about gaming as they do their pocket books. There isn't an incentive package that can magically do that though.

Also, it looks like they stole Ready or Not's thunder by adding in physics for bullets penetrating walls. This includes velocity fall off, ricochet and trajectory changes. This feeds into armor changes that now offer only certain types of ammunition protection. HDPE will now only impact small arms. Steel provides protection up to some sniper fire. Should be interesting to see how that shifts the feel.

WW3 has recently hot fixed many crashing bugs for players. Hot on the heels of those fixes is patch 0.4 with balancing fixes, Moscow TDM map, and other new content. In response to community feedback, they are focusing on game stability right now. This has forced the Recon game mode back to 0.5. The patch notes are below. Please be aware many known issues will be resolved before full release. Many of the fixes are good news for hitreg, TTK, and other complaints. https://forum.worldwar3.com/index.php?/topic/7695-pte-04-update-patch-notes/

I dont think it is just BF V struggling to keep the hacks at bay. Yes, 3rd party servers with live admin help, but given the insidious level of some hacks, having the anti-cheat systems certainly help keep some of the entry points boarded up. I think the video helps demonstrate how to keep an eye out for the "subtle" cheaters in other games. I just wish more games with intense pvp had kill cams and/or spectate to allow more community policing.

Ran across this video by a streamer detailing how to spot a cheater in BF V and a call to the community to help take on the cheaters. Video is also helpful for spotting wallhack cheaters in other games too. Most of the video is of the streamer spectating suspected cheaters in BF V rather than just getting angry about getting killed. Hope it is useful, but it appears anti-cheat may still be off in BF V.

Kotaku posted a similar article frying EA on this choice. Even the game devs have spoken out about EA's choice, specifically saying they would prefer everyone play at once. PS4 users are irritated because they dont have the same choices as XBox and PC to gain early access. Anthem's Fragmented Launch Risks Ruining What Makes Online Games Great KOTAKU.COM Remember when games used to just, come out? They had a release day. On that release day, or potentially the night before, you’d go to the store, hand a person some cash, the same amount as everyone else, and walk out with a game that you could then go home and immediately start playing. That was nice.

The thing that worries me is a push for more profit to shore up disasters will likely result in a release of Anthem before it is actually ready. I've seen multiple concerned reviews about its status. They should take a little extra time to assuage the community they fixed the server issues at the very least. If Anthem fails, I'm not sure how this will play out for EA. Then again, not feeling too bad after what they did to the sim city franchise.

Info about the new event going on for the next 3 weekends. Rainbow Six Siege’s pick/ban event is the best thing in the game right now | PC Gamer WWW.PCGAMER.COM Fans are enamored by a new mode that adds an exciting competitive layer to Siege.

I'd agree that not all macros are cheats. Setting up a button to, let's say, perform a complex button series to change a gun setting isn't necessarily cheating. For example, in Recon, you have to equip your pistol, ADS, and hit a button to remove the silencer. The series could be mapped as a macro to make this change seamless at th start of a match. Where we are getting into trouble is people using them to perform unnatural and humanly impossible feats in PvP shooters. Can some of it be coded out with in-game delays? Sure. Might it make the game feel clunkier or not as responsive? Likely. The Division shows an example of this. People used to spam roll to avoid hit reg in the dark zone. Ubisoft modded rolling to require a few second delay between each. Now you get an awkward gap where it seems like you could roll but cant because of an invisible timer. They also suffered from folks making movement macros that gave them extreme advantages on hit reg detection just by moving unnaturally rapidly back and forth. We are now seeing this in Siege where Ubisoft has already said they have data supporting button spamming from macros. People have peak/shoot macros that can move faster than any human can see or hit reg may detect. They can squirm around with rapid crouch/prone/stand macros to avoid hits. They have ones that all but eliminate away and recoil. I've seen some that will fire your gun, switch to a side arm and rapidly fire that to empty without any hesitation. It has become an arms race as to who has the best macro software and the best setup. Like ESP, it isn't going to win you every fight, but it does sway the odds heavily in your favor. My hands physically cant move that fast to perform these functions. Even if they could, I would at least likely make a mistake or two. After all, I'm human. I'm not sure where you draw the line, but one needs to be drawn. I'm human and want to play against humans. I dont want to deal with macros that perform functions faster than my neurons can fire. We need game code that limits the possible response times. We need consequences for those abusing these in PvP environments. We are beyond people just having a macro to spam a resourcing mining key in an MMORPG. These are now elaborate, scripted, functions that are complex enough to rise to the level of hacks.