RabidRebel

I agree they will release it when it is ready, but going nearly completely silent for 6 months isn't helping them at all. We hardly know what we are waiting to get other than a known re-skin for the client. I'm more concerned about the platform losing even more relevance with gamers. It's more raising a warning flag that something doesn't seem right with the development strategy. It may be fine, but usually radio silence in game development world means not good things for seeing a finished product. We are seeing this right now with Ready or Not which promised to be a solid tactical SWAT-style shooter many of us were drooling over. I'm hoping my fears turn into elation in Q1 2019, but much further with no news may be bad times ahead for TS. Just something for us to keep an eye on.

Still no real word on TS5 after 6 months with the Q4 deadline blown. Just a snippet from a supposed forum manager on the official website in response to a now 20 page community complaint thread on TS5 with active replies from the community as of today. The current speculation was the announcement in June 2018 was when planning began and release is likely still months (years?) away. I would really like to report good news on this front, as I was sincerely excited back in June, but it's looking grim short of a mega/surprise announcement soon. If anyone sees/hears anything recent on TS5, please share with us.

A lot of the streamers we played against in Recon went to play this game for awhile. We took a look at the time, but it was in a bad spot then. Another game with a rough launch and balancing issues. I've heard it came around and is better now though.

Regardless of what we are playing, one game or many, it is still helpful to have a number of people around to play various games. Quite frankly, I've been enjoying rotating games lately, so jumping from one player ecosystem to the next has been nice. Axlerod hit it on the head for recruiting that I run into as well. I say join me (us) on Team Speak and it usually ends with a quip about getting Discord. Personally, I'm going to try bending like a reed in the wind by switching to our TAC Discord for these situations. I still prefer the sound quality of Team Speak, but I also recognize Discord is becoming a tech behemoth in gaming voice chat like Facebook, Twitter, or Google. It is really hard to avoid now and a majority of players use it. Not advocating for any switching. Just throwing in a couple pennies of thoughts into the discussion.

I used to love Mech Warrior 2. Nothing like setting up a mech that overheated in one shot but also killed anything with that single burst.

Ok. I had to get a mining permit to dig up anything on TS5. The TLDR, it's not looking good. TS users on the official forums are mad. There has been zero news, screen shots, or announcements. TS finally coughed up that they are creating a "micro site" soon to show off what they are testing. This was 17 pages into a topic thread on TS5. Other TS communities are reporting being gutted by Discord while they wait for TS5. Frustration is growing because the Q4 2018 deadline was blown and no real explanation has been provided. I'm not advocating a switch to another platform. I just wanted to report on what I found regarding TS5. TS5 discussion - Page 17 - TeamSpeak FORUM.TEAMSPEAK.COM Edit by moderator on Jan 19th This thread is about TS 5 questions, feedback, requests, sorrows or your complaints etc. It's not about posts on our social media accounts. Unrelated posts get removed or moved into off topic section. ------ original post below ------- TS5 Beta public testing ? Any information about this ?

IGN posted a confirmed list of 2019 games ahead. Not a thrilling list, but some possibilities. 43 Big PC Games Coming in 2019 - IGN M.IGN.COM We run down some of the biggest PC games coming in 2019.

There is rumor nintendo is caving to the pressure of its underwhelming hardware and will release an updated version this year. Report: New Switch hardware coming in 2019 WWW.POLYGON.COM Nintendo’s next version of the Switch could have an updated screen

I did a search for any news on TS 5 and it is crickets since mid 2018. A few forums are making jokes about a Q4 drop that never happened. The latest I found was the new years tweet from TS that included a hashtag for TS 5 is coming.

This is no good at all. I hope we can find a replacement service quickly so we dont end up on Discord as a fall back. Has anyone heard any news on TS 5? I thought they were talking end of 2018 for release.

PC Gamer is also railing on the state of blockbuster games for PC. From Fallout to Battlefield V, their writers were not impressed with the AAA title offerings of 2018. More than one end of year article there has lamented the state of games released. Some called for a new year's resolution to stop preordering all games due to so much disappointment. Others are saying big launches may be held back by the impending console upgrades. The gist of what I got was that indie games paved the way to some of the best releases for 2018 while major publishers fell flat on new releases. The content cycles of established games (e.g., R6SIEGE) kept some gamers busy and oblivious to the other crap that got released. Granted, their take is on PC games only, so some of the bitterness came from late PC ports or no ports at all. I'm hoping 2019 brings us some good hits, but even the games we indulged in 2018 didn't fully hit the mark. Far Cry 5's pvp was a train wreck. WW3 suffered launch woes that they are trying to recover from. Battlefield V has seen its share of controversy with TTK changes and lack of community support. I'm hoping the latter two implement significant community support in 2019, but we will probably have to keep our eyes open for the next big game too.

I think we all suspected they were going somewhere with the recent DLC in recon. Didnt even notice these references though, but I'm not a big game lore guru in shooters. I can't imagine we'll see anything until late 2019 on this front with Division 2 front and center with Siege.

Looks like the gaming world lost a CFO to Netflix. He was only with Activision for 18 months, but it'll be interesting to see if it influences Netflix's monetization schemes. Activision will be using their previous CFO in the interim, so little will change there for now. Netflix hires Activision CFO WWW.FOXBUSINESS.COM Neumann joined Activision Blizzard 18 months ago, and his contract hadn’t expired.

It looks like current owners of Escape From Tarkov can hand out a single access key each for a 14-day free trial of the game thru Jan 6. If anyone has been wanting to try the game, I have a trial access key to hand out. Major patch 11 just dropped with new content like a new map, NPC boss, and more. If you're a current owner, don't miss out on the free gift of additional equipment for your stash.

If you have played WW3 lately, you've probably seen some heavy swings in the meta game. Most obviously, quick join will almost always route you to TDM or the new alpha map. You will probably also notice the distinctive crack of the SCAR-H a lot. This weapon seems to be dominating load outs lately. Why? It's versatility is unmatched. This gun has a seamless single fire to full auto trigger set up that makes single shots easy to make while still able to throw lead if you keep that mouse button held down. It's range and power wont give you the sweet satisfaction of a single shot sniper kill, but you can still terrorize from a far, often picking off already damaged soldiers. With a secondary sight or a smaller scope, it downs in 2-4 shots in close range. It also has the bonus of doing heavy damage to tank optics, blinding the tank while still maintaining range. For 18,000 credits, it's a solid must buy if you're looking to build a long or medium range kit. The downside is it's really heavy. Be prepared to go light on your second weapon or on your armor.

Looks like Blizzard may be doing a little belt tightening too. They are expanding their employee buyout program. There are rumors the financial group is getting more involved in the day to day operations. More at the article below. Blizzard paying staff to leave in order to cut costs, according to reports | PC Gamer WWW.PCGAMER.COM The developer "has been trying very actively to find creative ways to cut costs," said one source.

It looks like enemy marking has been improved recently in the latest WW3 patch. If you hold ADS on an enemy and hit "X" (default), you will mark the enemy with a red diamond for your squad to see. You just have to have LOS on the person to get the mark. Think that odd pixel is an enemy? Spam mark on him and it'll let you know pretty quickly. I managed to rip an enemy offensive apart just sitting back in a house marking all of the enemy members running over hills on the new map. They came over the last hill only to get their unsuspecting head shot off. The bonus is you get 10 points for each mark and 40 additional points if your team kills them as a result. The red diamond is also an effectively targeting tool for those long range BS shots with an assault rifle. This isn't Recon, however, so be aware that the mark will very quickly disappear if your team loses LOS on the marked person.

It has an element of perma-death which does stoke the fire for being careful. If I remember correctly, how well you do on a particular character can influence the abilities of later characters. You just have to permanently retire the ones you lose to the swamp. The only downside from the videos I saw was that it is a 2 person squad.

You really should. Drastic improvements on performance. The new TDM map for Berlin is really good, despite the new conquest map being terrible in its alpha state (no textures). A lot of quality of life improvements. Still not perfect yet, but vastly more playable.

This is huge. I cant wait to try it. Cant believe they snuck in a surprise extra TDM map too.

I've been considering it. How do you like it so far?

I'm not sure why games shoot for the higher TTK for military style shooters. Almost every game I've played that has ramped up TTK has received negative feedback (e.g., The Division when enemies took 3 clips at end game, Escape From Tarkov when body armor made you god like, Far Cry with the crazy high TTK versus head shot). If I have the drop on someone, they shouldn't be able to take multiple hits, spin around and kill me... or get away easily to heal. It just starts turning games into run and gun arcade shooters. Not saying it is that bad in this case, but I hate seeing the news nonetheless. A lot of the fun is in the tactics, not just who can duck and swerve the most in a face to face shootout. Hopefully BF V reverses course on this one.

Patch 0.3 is going to PTE this week. This is a major overhaul for the game that includes a huge RAM usage reduction. The optimization reduced RAM needs to 3-6 GB. We are also getting a new map, ability to stay in server to keep gaming, minimum amount of players, the new respawn system in all modes, and a weight limit on builds to stop OP setups. The list goes on and on but they are scratching what was itching. Should go live to full production soon (has been a week in the past). Patch notes below. https://forum.worldwar3.com/index.php?/topic/6558-pte-december-update-03-patch-notes/

The Tl;DR is that the auto ban system for toxic chat in Siege was replaced with manual moderation today. Players using Toxic chat will be informed those messages were autoforwarded to moderators for review/penalty. The goal is to avoid play disruption from the instant bans. Rainbow Six Siege autobans are being replaced with manual moderation | PC Gamer WWW.PCGAMER.COM Racist and homophobic slurs in Siege chat will be forwarded to moderators for review, without being broadcast to players.

I would say VPN for the win, but China is getting pretty sophisticated in blocking people from content. Plus, with their social credit system, I'm sure somebody would rat them out.