Skull and Bones’ Into the Dragon’s Wake kicks off a new season on August 22
Just when you finally got your pirate vessel fully insured, along comes a new ship and cannons to blow up your deductible. Yet look on the bright side of your sinking boat: You get a new Skull and Bones content update on August 22nd.
Into the Dragon’s Wake is about to arrive in Ubisoft’s naval combat sim next week: “Hailing from the Middle Kingdom, Li Tian Ning and Commander Zhang of the Dragon’s Claw make their prowess known to the Indian Ocean. Their arrival stirs tension between the Rempah and DMC in the East Indies, amidst a new seasonal story, world events and challenges.”
The update includes the Battle Junk juggernaut that can taunt other ships, an epic long gun named Divine Thunder, two new types of cannons, and special “immortal” armor for your vessel. Ubisoft is also introducing Imperial Jade as a trading resource, better controls, a new merchant convoy event, and a new third-person camera view.
Next up on Skull and Bones’ calendar after the patch is the Mooncake Regatta event, which is running from August 27th through September 17th.
#game #massive #preview
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Hunt: Showdown enjoys highest-ever player count after 1896 update
Hunt: Showdown enjoys highest-ever player count after 1896 update, but player complaints about UI are pushing down its Steam review score: 'I've never seen such a bizarre reaction to so much amazing content'
Grungy horror extraction shooter Hunt: Showdown just received its biggest update in years, with developer Crytek upgrading its engine, overhauling its UI, adding a fourth map called Mammon's Gulch, and introducing other meaningful tweaks. It's such an extensive rework that the game has even been given a new name—Hunt: Showdown 1896.
The first day of availability saw Hunt reach a new high for concurrent players: 59,968, which is 18,000 more than its previous high in October 2023. Likewise, at the time we're publishing this, more than 51,000 are in-game, chasing and/or being immolated by the new Hellborn boss.
By that metric, the shooter is more popular than it's ever been. But simultaneously, the update has drawn aggravated complaints from a number of negative reviews on Steam, 3,730 of them so far, which have pushed Hunt's short-term label to Mostly Negative, while its longer-term state remains Mostly Positive.
How can Hunt both be more popular than ever and be condemned by a higher-than-ever number of players on Steam? The primary bone of contention is its new pre-match UI, shown in the video embedded lower on the page, with many reviewers complaining that Crytek's changes have made it worse rather than better.
The most common complaint about the UI is that it takes considerably more clicks to do most things in the menu than it did before. "Looks fancy but is a nightmare to navigate" says user Shinigaben. "You need 3 or so clicks per action more than the old UI and it also just gives way less information on one screen without switching between various submenus."
If you've lived through a UI update to a major social media platform like Facebook or Discord, you know that the shift to a new way of presenting information often sparks disproportionate fury. Some Hunt players are under the impression that this more complicated interface has been designed for console first, with players also lamenting the much larger icons and apparent lack of basic keyboard inputs. It's worth noting that Hunt was originally released on PC in 2018 (Early Access), with Xbox One and PS4 releases coming more than a year later, in 2019 and 2020. This new version, however, launches concurrently on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S, so it is possible that the UI has been retooled with some compromises between those platforms.
Others accuse Crytek of redesigning the UI to push microtransactions to the forefront, with some comparing the new approach to the monetisation practices seen in games like Fortnite and Call of Duty: Warzone. "The first thing you see after loading ingame is them selling you skins!!!" writes user Asthmaschildkröte, with others saying that the UI pushes players to look at the Battle Pass. Personally, this doesn't resonate with us as longtime players of the game—Hunt's monetization is some of the least-burdensome and least prominent compared to its fellow service games.
It's worth noting that it isn't just the UI that's the object of players' ire. Some players claim that the update has introduced more performance problems than it solves. "With the update my performance has dropped to a level where I cannot play without stutters" says the evocatively named user Sloppy Steaks. Among these are a few complaints about bugs, and a handful of people claiming that the visuals have changed for the worse. These issues are far more sporadically raised than the problems with the UI, however, which seems to be mentioned in nearly every recent negative review left on Hunt's Steam page.
Anecdotally, playing the update last night, there were a couple of areas of the map where we noticed frame rates dropped (at one point our trio all noticed a drop of 10-20 fps, seemingly due to a visual effect that had triggered), but other than that our fps hasn't been significantly different than on last week's build.
It definitely seems like the UI has some problems that deserve some further consideration. But is the strength of the reaction justified? There are numerous reviews that praise the update generally, but ultimately deliver a thumbs down because of the UI. "New engine update has made the game itself much smoother for me. New map is really nice too. I like the increased verticality," says user Sir Fluffy McDuck. "HOWEVER, this new menu UI is such a pain." Furtive Pygmy, meanwhile, compliments Crytek on doing "a wonderful job with the update" but says the UI is "so bad that I simply do not wish to play anymore."
Can a menu UI (none of the complaints, to be clear, are focused on the in-match UI), be so bad that it truly ruins the experience of playing? Or is this another example of the PC gaming community disproportionately hyper-fixating on a facet of a game that they know will resonate in comment threads?
There are certainly some players who feel the latter is the case. "I've never seen such a bizarre reaction to so much amazing content," says Reddit user Redwood-Lynx, a "casual dad" player who praises the "incredible map" Crytek has added. "There has to be some kind of PC cultural quirk I'm just unaware of—being this aggrieved about MENUS is so beyond this old timers understanding. Did any of you actually play the game part? Does no one want to discuss the new weapons, the new boss, the new map, the new traits, the new balance changes, ANY OF IT? No, you just want to review bomb the greatest shooter of the last decade into oblivion because daddy gave your little console brother more attention."
As hinted at in the previous paragraph, this would not be the first time a game has struggled with misdirected anger from its community. Helldivers 2, perhaps the most mechanically ingenious shooter of the year, has been dominated by discourse over the balance of its weapons. Now, weapon balance can be crucial to the fundamental quality of a game. But Helldivers 2 is not an incredibly twitchy multiplayer shooter like Counter-Strike of Valorant, it's a cooperative PvE experience, a goofy Starship Troopers simulator with an emphasis on physics-based slapstick comedy. Balance is not really the point of Helldivers 2.
rom our hours playing Hunt's new update last night, the new UI, yes, does produce an amount of discomfort. Some years-worn habits now require more input—when you want to add several consumables to a character, you are pushed back and forth between the gear menu and the hunter details screen as you add each piece of equipment individually, which feels inefficient. A couple of actions are slightly smoother, like picking different life bar segments for your hunter. We can't dismiss that some players find the changes jarring, nonetheless, there is far more to the 1896 update than just the UI, and the manner in which those criticisms are being made does not paint a complete picture of the update's effect on the game.
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Ubisoft reveals full Star Wars Outlaws system requirements and PC-specific features
Uncapped frame rates, ultra-wide support, the good ray-tracing stuff: It's all here.
With two weeks to go before the arrival of Star Wars Outlaws—August 30 is the big day—Ubisoft has revealed the official PC system requirements, as well as a rundown of PC-specific features you'll be able to take advantage of if you've got the hardware to handle it.
You're going to need some pretty heavy hardware to run Star Wars Outlaws at its "ultra" setting, but it's reasonably forgiving at the other end of the scale. Of course, one of the great things about PC gaming is that you can fiddle: Turn this up so you can turn that down, until you find a balance of eye-candy and performance that makes you happy—or, at the very least, that you can live with until you're able to upgrade your rig.
Minimum
Visual settings: 1080p/30 fps/Low preset with upscaler set to quality
GPU: GeForce GTX 1660 6GB / AMD RX 5600 XT 6GB / Intel Arc a750 8GB (ReBAR ON)
CPU: Intel Core i7-8700K / AMD Ryzen 5 3600
RAM: 16GB (dual-channel mode)
OS: Windows 10/11 with DirectX 12
SSD Storage: 65GB
Recommended
Visual settings: 1080p/60 fps/High preset with upscaler set to quality
GPU: GeForce RTX 3060 8GB / AMD RX 6700 XT 12GB
CPU: Intel Core i5-10400 / AMD Ryzen 5 5600X
RAM: 16GB (dual-channel mode)
OS: Windows 10/11 with DirectX 12
SSD Storage: 65GB
Enthusiast
Visual settings: 1440p/60 fps/High preset with upscaler set to quality
GPU: GeForce RTX 4070 12GB / AMD RX 6800 XT 16GB
CPU: Intel Core i5-11600K / AMD Ryzen 7 5800X
RAM: 16GB (dual-channel mode)
OS: Windows 10/11 with DirectX 12
SSD Storage: 65GB
Ultra
Visual settings: 4K/60 fps/Ultra preset with upscaler set to quality
GPU: GeForce RTX 4080 16GB / AMD RX 7900 XTX 24GB
CPU: Intel Core i7-12700K / AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D
RAM: 16GB (dual-channel mode)
OS: Windows 10/11 with DirectX 12
SSD Storage: 65GB
One interesting thing is all these specs, as hardware writer Jeremy Laird wrote earlier this month when the basic requirements first appeared on the Ubisoft Store, is that "upscaling is the new normal." Even at the minimum setting you'll need to have DLSS, FSR, or some other upscaling tech in order to achieve Ubisoft's frame rate targets, and the game will be running at a lower-than-spec resolution and then be upscaled.
That's not a big deal in and of itself, but some lower-end GPUs may struggle more than expected—note, for instance, that Intel Arc GPUs are only listed in the "minimum" setting. Unlike Nick, I'm not a hardware guy, but it does make me think that maybe the smart play is to treat the "recommended" spec as the minimum, at least until the game's been out for a while and you can see how it runs for other people.
Anyway, speaking of fiddling, here's the lowdown on PC-specific features you'll find in Outlaws—again, the availability of which will depend on the weight of your iron:
Ray-traced global illumination, reflections, and shadows
NVIDIA RTX dynamic illumination (RTXDI) Support
NVIDIA DLSS 3.5 support (ray reconstruction, Frame Generation, Super Resolution)
Intel XESS 1.3 and AMD FSR 3.0 (upscaling and frame generation) support
In-depth customization options
Uncapped frame rate
21:9 Cinematic Display Mode
Multi-monitor and ultrawide support\
"In-depth customization options" is a bit vague, so here's a still from the new PC gameplay trailer to give you an idea of what's in store:
Star Wars Outlaws is set to come out on August 30, and will be available for PC on the Ubisoft Store and the Epic Games Store. You can get into it up to three days early by spending extra (a lot extra, really) for the Gold or Ultimate edition of the game (which also include the season pass and various extra cosmetics) or by subscribing to Ubisoft+.
#Games #Ubisoft #StarWars
Source: PCGAMER.COM
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World of Warcraft’s The War Within headstart is live – prepare for a long spoiler-dodging weekend
Depending on how much you shelled out for World of Warcraft’s newest expansion, this is either the best or longest weekend of the year for you. Early access for The War Within kicked off yesterday, with the world-first level 80 happening a shade over an hour later.
WoW players who don’t have access to the head start are advised to stay off the global chat channels, streams, and WoW fan sites as spoilers are being flung around pretty fast and loose right now. Those “left behind” can continue to enjoy the Radiant Echoes event, although this had a nasty (but now corrected) issue where the XP was pretty much disabled.
Meanwhile over in WoW Classic, Blizzard is consolidating all of its Season of Discovery servers to one PvP and one PvE realm per region with free character transfers available. “Most of the origin realms currently still have healthy populations, and we recognize that moving characters can be disruptive to player communities, so this is not a decision we take lightly,” the studio said.
Source: World of Warcraft, 2
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Game on: ABC News says Harris, Trump have agreed to presidential debate on Sept. 10
ABC News says that both Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and his Democratic counterpart, Kamala Harris, have agreed to meet in a debate on Sept. 10.
The network’s announcement on Thursday came shortly after Trump told a news conference that he had agreed to three debates with Harris in September on separate networks.
Trump is rejoining the ABC debate days after posting on his social media network that he would not appear on the network, citing a lawsuit he has filed. His decision sets up a highly anticipated moment in an election where the first debate led to a massive change in the race — with Democratic President Joe Biden ending his reelection bid and endorsing Harris.
“I think it’s very important to have debates,” Trump said Thursday. “I look forward to the debates because I think we have to set the record straight.”
On the social media site X later on Thursday, Harris wrote that “I hear that Donald Trump has fully committed to debating me on September 10. I look forward to it.”
At a private fundraiser in Paris on Thursday, Harris’ husband, Doug Emhoff, said he “cannot wait” to see his wife debate Trump. He was in Paris as head of the U.S. delegation to the Summer Olympics closing ceremony.
Fox News has also proposed a debate between Harris and Trump to take place on Sept. 4, and NBC News is angling to air one on Sept. 25. During an appearance in Michigan, Harris said she was “happy to have that conversation” about an additional debate.
Trump also said he wants his vice presidential candidate, JD Vance, to debate Harris’ choice for veep, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, on CBS. The network is discussing potential dates to propose for that meeting.
ABC says that David Muir and Linsey Davis will moderate the Sept. 10 contest. That’s the same date that Trump and Biden had agreed to their second and final debate, before Biden’s decision put that event in doubt.
Any debate promises to take on extra importance with polls showing a tight race between the former president and current vice president. While Harris has ridden a wave of excitement among Democrats since inheriting the mantle from Biden, she has yet to appear at a news conference or give an interview to a journalist.
Republicans are already making that an issue. Vance, in a post on X as Trump was in his news conference on Thursday, said Harris was hiding behind a TelePrompter. “It’s been 18 days since she answered real questions from the media,” he wrote.
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