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Just like any popular multiplayer game, For Honor already has its cheaters using any means to win. Seems Ubisoft have decided they’re going to tolerate very little of that though, as there’s already been bans for cheating and quite a few of those for first-time offenses.
Posted through an update on the Ubisoft blog, Ubisoft have spelt out that they’re going to be taking the game’s name to heart and are not willing to put up with those who try to give themselves an unfair advantage. Already around 400 accounts have been caught and banned for cheating or hacking, while a further 70 have been banned for reasons of an offensive nature – including emblems, harassment and other misconduct all flagged up by other players in game.
“For Honor puts a huge emphasis on skill, so it’s important that it offers a level playing field – and to ensure that nobody has an unfair advantage, the developers have rolled out EasyAntiCheat, a program that detects and flags those who break the rules.”
Once an account is flagged by the program, there are then members of the dev team who will review the case to hopefully weed out false positives. If an account is found to be doing things they shouldn’t then a number of different courses of action are taken, “warnings, temporary suspensions, or permanent bans against identified players… fairness is hugely important to the game’s creators, so bans are being handed out to first-time offenders.”
Bans will be handed out on an account basis, not a hardware one, and there will be a system in place for appeals if players feel they have been unfairly banned from the game.
It’s time for your weekly look into some of the interesting stuff going on with gaming Kickstarter campaigns, starting as always with a little update on things I’ve previously covered.
We’ll start with the good news first as there’s quite a lot of it! Many of the previously covered campaigns have concluded with full met and in some cases very much bypassed goals. Among these are LEGRAND LEGACY, Tortuga 1667, The Pedestrian, Pitch Deck, Sundered, and finally, having made its goal in time – BEAUTIFUL DESOLATION. We look forward to seeing these campaigns progress into good games.
However, it’s not all good news. Project Life has 20 hours to go on its campaign as of time of writing, and it has made barely any of its target so I can’t see it succeeding which is a shame. The funding campaign for the Apocalypse Now game has now been cancelled and crowdfunding has moved to a dedicated site at ApocalypseNow.com with Kickstarter backers being able to grab a tier above the one they pledge to as a thanks for their support thus far. The campaign hadn’t been going well anyway, so we’ll have to see if this game becomes a reality.
Finally, there has been no change in the status of the Elite: Dangerous Role Playing Game, although it has now emerged that Frontier were not the ones filing the claim, but rather someone outside of the company. The matter is apparently ongoing and I will update if we get any further news.
First up we have a game that pays homage to 1940s murder mysteries.
Innocence is a survival horror-type game that is a throwback to the same classics of the genre during the PS1-era,and has two playable characters – one a female and the other a male. They are put onto a case located on an island that a year ago was the talk of everyone for the murder of a nine-year-old girl, only to be greeted by a great sense of supernatural uneasy that isn’t helped much by the island’s residents.
Innocence has a $7,500 goal, with stretch goals up to $20,000, and has made $21 so far. It has another 49 days to go.
Next up we have another game that aims to bring back the good old days of survival horror. I swear this wasn’t intentional on my part.
Daymare: 1998 is another survival horror game with people in the team who worked on Resident Evil games in the past and the sub-title of the campaign page describes this game as “Resident Evil 2 Reborn!” Third-person, with puzzles to solve, a need for strategic fighting and resource gathering, it’s pretty much what you would expect from this genre. The team behind it are hoping to get it released on Steam, PS4 and Xbox One if successful.
Daymare: 1998 has 24 days to go, and has made €25,740 of its €180,000 goal.
Next we have a game that I’ve been hearing about a lot this week on Twitter.
Shardbound is called a “tactical Collectible Card Game that gives streamers and their viewers exciting new ways to interact and play together on Twitch!” on its campaign page, which tells you which audience the developers are targeting with this game. Interactive gaming on Twitch is a big thing, and its nice to see another one in the works. The game has been in the works for 2 years and is currently in a private pre-Alpha testing phase.
Shardbound’s promotion has paid off, as they’ve already made their $50,000 and bypassed it. It has 25 more days to go though, so who knows where it’ll be at the end of that?
Lastly we have a game that sounds like a survival crafter game, but hold on.
SmuggleCraft is a game about hovercrafts. More specifically, it’s a quest-based hovercraft game in which you smuggle stuff, customise your craft and participate in a storyline with branching narrative. This is apparently a racing game, but it does seem like the developers wanted to make it more than just that which is nice. Smuggling quests can be legal or not so, and which ones you accept and even if you choose to follow through or steal the cargo for your own needs can have an effect on your narrative for the rest of the game.
SmuggleCraft has made $3,863 of its $15,000 goal, with 25 more days to go.
At the moment Microsoft are pushing their idea of cross-play between Windows 10 and Xbox One hard. ReCore and Gears of War 4 were both released as Xbox and Windows exclusives, with Play Anywhere also being a big thing they’re currently pushing. Halo Wars 2 will be the next, coming out on February 21st and according to Phil Spencer Microsoft are planning to focus hard on PC gaming in 2017.
His words were that Microsoft has a “bigger and more differentiated” first-party lineup for this year, with highlights including Sea of Thieves and State of Decay 2. Spencer believes that “2017 is going to be an incredible year for Xbox One and Windows 10 gamers” but they’ve still got a ways to go before they can overcome the reputation for PC gaming that ‘Games For Windows Live’ left them with years back.
Only time will tell if Microsoft can live up to the promises Spencer is making. I hope that they will somewhat, I really am looking forward to Sea of Thieves with the other station staff. If you want to read the full interview where Spencer talked about this, the full article can be found over at VG247.
It’s time for the yearly shake-up of Hearthstone’s meta, and as the Year of the Kraken goes out, the Year of the Mammoth comes – and fittingly with huge changes.
The most obvious of those are the rotation of certain sets of cards out from Standard to Wild. Joining Naxxramas and Goblins vs. Gnomes are the cards from The Grand Tournament expansion, as well as the Blackrock Mountain and League of Explorers adventures. This should see the Wild meta become vastly different from the one in Standard, as more sets are now Wild-exclusive. Adding to this, there will be a few of the Classic cards made Wild-exclusive owing to how often they pop up in play right now:
Azure Drake
Sylvanas Windrunner
Ragnaros the Firelord
Ice Lance
Conceal
Power Overwhelming
These six cards the developers feel contradict what they’re trying to do in the creation of Standard and Wild; to diversify the cards used and make the meta more interesting for players. Because these six were often seen as auto-includes, Blizzard feel that it’s time for them to rotate out into what they’ve dubbed their ‘Hall of Fame’ set of cards. While they had entertained the notion of allowing a full dust refund for these cards, they have decided that goes against their other goal of making Wild seem like fun – so if you own any of the cards that are going out in the Hall of Fame set you’ll get the full dust value of that card (up to the number of cards you can put into a deck) the first time you log on after the Year of the Mammoth has begun!
The next big thing for the Mammoth is that instead of going between Adventures and Expansions, this year we will have 3 inputs of expansions that add around 130 cards – which means a LOT of new cards coming this year. But for those who enjoy the colourful stories of Adventures (I’m one of them), never fear – the storytelling is coming to the expansions to help make them even better and cooler. These will be in the form of option single-player missions that expand the lore behind each expansions card set. Additional details about this new idea will be revealed at later dates.
Blizzard are also going to be trying to incentivize Wild, with them collaborating with third-parties to promote additional Hearthstone tournaments that use the Wild format, as well as an upcoming Heroic Tavern Brawl that will utilize it.
Also before the next expansion (theorized to be Un’Goro themed) Hearthstone will have for a short time, daily login rewards to claim. Dust, gold and packs will all be on offer, as well as “a few other surprises” before the expansion’s launch “to blaze a trail for everything our next expansion has to offer.” One of these could even be the new Hero that Blizzard are planning to release. New Rogue Hero Maiev Shadowsong will be available to gain after the next expansion launches, just by winning 10 games of Heartstone in either Standard Ranked or Casual modes. Given that all the others have required payment of some sort or to use another game, it’s nice to have one we can just earn by playing this game.
And that is basically what we can expect from the Year of the Mammoth, as far as Blizzard have announced. It sounds like a lot of fun is in store.
