The Ordocast: Episode 6: The Imperators Locker

[Esva]

 

Note: Sorry for the sniffles and the drone, Was kinda congested when I recorded this, Sorry =(

 

>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jFg3b8YX-U

 

 

 
Hello and welcome to The Ordocast, This is Episode 6 - The Imperators locker, and you may have noticed something odd and that is compared to the other five episodes the intor audio has changed and unfortunately it's not buy choice as the original Authors of the music decided it was no longer going to be royalty free and contacted the publisher who then contacted youtube who in turn have decided to auto monetise all previous episodes and all other videos on youtube that might have that audio to revieve royalties from ads placed so thats why it change, After all why should you guys have to watch an advert, that pays someone something thats made and distibuted for free anyway and I'm not about to start asking for donations or charging for an episode and never will So thats why the change is there, Hopefully it's a good change. Go to the poll in the post and cast your vote and if its a no we can try a different tune next time.
 
 

 
Kishoshima - SG:5
 
 

 
So as mentioned in episode 5 transmission from behind the lines the call went out for two new budding presenters to join me here on the ordocast and I'm happy to announce the first new member of the team so join me in Welcoming Koshima to the ordocast as a permanent presenter, So hold onto your butts it's going to get weird up in here.
 
Also Angelin01 is the winner of the Steam $30 bundle for the level design idea of a multilayer map for the upcoming Ordo Imperialis: Black Target game 
 
Congrats to you both.
 
 


 
Devs Want your ideas for mounts

 The SWTOR Cartel market team is looking for your ideas and suggestions for new mounts to add. Give feedback on the forums.
 
Ever wander the galaxy, come across a creature and think it would be an awesome mount? Perhaps the fierce Corrupted Geo Beast of Oricon*, or the massive but gentle Bormus of Balmorra? We want to hear about it!
 
Please use this thread to tell us what you would like to see implemented as a mount, be it creature, or vehicular! When offering suggestions, we do ask that you please be as specific as possible, and provide images when you can. The more information we have about exactly what you want to see, the easier it is for us to send our expert creature handlers out for investigation, or supply work orders to our manufacturers!
 
*Please be safe when investigating some creatures. A single misstep can lead to catastrophic results! Be safe out there!

 

 
Win/trade update from PvP Season 5

 

Hey folks,
With Season 5 recently ending, I thought I would give an update on what we have been doing to curb players who continue to win-trade. To recap from before, players who were caught win-trading were receiving actions ranging from a warning, up to having their character’s rating reset. Specifically, the character who we caught doing the win-trading itself. Depending on the character’s history, this can also include suspension time as well. Over the course of the last few Seasons, we have seen an overall decline in win-trading action, and we hope that you have seen that as well.
 
However, in a handful of cases, there are players who continue to win-trade even after repeated warnings and having a characters rating reset. We believe that players such as these are using one character to win-trade, potentially boosting a friends character, and then playing more legitimately on their other characters. This way, they feel they are avoiding punishment on the characters they care about, while breaking our Terms of Service on other characters. In lieu of this, for those handful of players we have added another level of action to curb this behavior. If a player is found to have had repeated warnings, character rating resets, and still continues this action, we are resetting the Ranked PvP rating of every character on their account. This is along with any suspension time which can accompany a Terms of Service violation.
 
This is all a part of our continued effort to keep Ranked PvP fair for all players. It has always been a minority of players participating in win-trading and we are happy to see that this has declined over time. We are seeing a similar decline in “trolls” as well, so keep reporting those players. Thanks everyone!
-eric

 
 
Game Update 3.3 - Togruta
 
Click Here for Patch Notes
 
 

 
Tempest Elemental Elite Specialisation 
 

Welcome back, friends, for the next reveal! I’m Karl McLain, and this week we’re here to talk about the new elite specialization for the elementalist. With the coming of fierce enemies and Elder Dragons, you’ll reach deep into the elements in order to harness some of the most pure and dangerous aspects of natural magic and even infuse them into sound.Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns™ will see the dawn of the tempest, a close-range specialization capable of blasting out damage and support as they charge into the fight against evil.
Pushing the Limit
While the elementalist has mastered the elements of fire, water, air, and earth, the tempest looks to extend the boundaries. With the design of this elite specialization, we’re aiming to add a more direct frontline support option that rewards precise positioning and the ability to turn a fight with sound decision making and deft blows.
Remaining attuned to an element for a period of time will now allow you the option to overload that attunement for a short while. Once you’ve attained a singularity with the attunement, you can reactivate it to perform a special channeled ability. These abilities are so chaotic and draining that they exhaust your current attunement, locking you out of it for a period of time should you move to another element. Before you ask, yes, the Fresh Air trait will refresh your exhausted air attunement and allow you to overload it much sooner.
Harness the Elements!
Each attunement will obtain its own overload ability, and here’s how they’ll work:
 
Overload Fire: Allow flames to leak out from your essence, building an infernal tornado over time that continuously damages and burns enemies while granting allies might. Successfully completing the ability leaves the tornado at your current location for a period of time.
Overload Water: Pull water into an aquatic bubble around you as you regenerate and cleanse conditions from yourself and nearby allies. At the end of the ability, your water bubble pops to give a larger heal to nearby allies.
Overload Air: Become a conduit of electricity, creating a nimbus cloud above you that repeatedly strikes nearby enemies, rending their armor. Successfully completing this ability leaves a lightning field at your location that strikes enemies in its vicinity.
Overload Earth: Rend the earth, bend it to your will, and take a ride on it, granting protection to nearby allies and crippling enemies. When you return to earth, deliver a tremendous immobilizing blast.
The Sound of Power
Specializing as a tempest will allow you to use eight new abilities as you wield their newest weapon—the warhorn. These abilities will assist in helping you both support your allies and create disruptive areas for enemies. While in water attunement, you’ll be able to unleash a moving water field that heals allies. Air attunement’s cyclone will pull enemies to a point, while its lightning orb will fire projectiles at all enemies within its path. Along with these and other skills, using a warhorn will also unlock the elementalist’s latent potential to share boons and extend their durations among allies.
 
Let Your Voice Be Heard!
With newfound abilities in audio mastery, you’ll gain the ability to use shout skills as utilities. Here’s the list of healing, utility, and elite skills you’ll have access to as a tempest:
 
Healing:
“Wash the Pain Away!”: Heal allies, and cleanse conditions from them. This healing skill is a bit more unique, as it heals allies for the same amount that you are healed for outside of the initial healing when activating the skill.
Utility:
“Feel the Burn!”: Sear your voice into the ground and cause continually growing flames to emit from that location.
“Eye of the Storm!”: Call the storm down on yourself and nearby allies, breaking stun on anyone affected and granting them superspeed for a time.
“Aftershock!”: Emanate a powerful earthen force around yourself, crippling enemies. After a short delay, an aftershock ripples forth, immobilizing enemies in its wake.
“Flash Freeze!”: Command the air around your foes to cool and harden, damaging and chilling your foes for a period of time.
Elite:
“Rebound!”: This is the only arcane aspect available to the tempest. Using this arcane shout will affect allies in the area around you, causing the next ability they use to have a 25% reduced recharge.
 
Bolstering the Tempest
The elite specialization’s traits will have multiple options to promote defense, support, and overloading your attunements. Let’s delve a little into the tempest’s minor traits and a couple of major traits you’ll see.
 
Minor Trait One—Singularity: This minor trait unlocks the ability to overload your attunements. You’ll see multiple traits that beef up your overload abilities, such as Unstable Conduit, which grants an aura specific to your attunement when you successfully complete an overload ability.
Minor Trait Two—Speedy Conduit: You’ll gain swiftness while overloading an attunement, allowing you to move more easily around the battlefield. You can enhance this movement by equipping the Lucid Singularity trait, which cleanses and then reduces the duration of incoming inhibiting conditions by 100%.
Minor Trait Three—Hardy Conduit: Gain protection when beginning an overload ability. In order to use these channeling skills for damage and support, you’ll occasionally need to soak up a little extra damage yourself. If you so choose, this trait can be bolstered by a specific major trait in the line called Earthen Proxy. The effects of protection on you will be increased from 33% to 40% damage reduction.
Elementalists, you are called upon to unleash the inferno, drive the uncontrollable torrents, rain hell and lightning upon your foes, and harness the earth and ride it into victory. The tempest cannot be stopped; your enemies cannot endure. Press forward!

 

 

 
Great Stat Reboot prep for F2P
 

WildStar’s upcoming free-to-play transition is bringing a whole host of changes. Possibly the most controversial, however, is news that all of a characters base stats are to be swept away. Bid farewell to Moxie, Finesse, Insight, and others, as a new foundation is being brought in to replace them. In order to understand why these changes are so crucial, we caught up with Steven Engle, Lead Designer at Carbine Studios, to learn more.
You can read Engle’s own thoughts on the subject in a blogpost over on WildStar’s official site, but the key message is this – the stat refactoring isn’t some kind of dumbing down. Instead, it’s designed to make gear choices and stat priority easier to understand, regardless of the class you choose to play. Rather than chasing Finesse as a Spellslinger or Moxie as an Esper, it’ll be Assault Power that we’re going after.
 
Those base stats aren’t the only thing that’s being revamped. Secondary stats are getting a sweep as well, with several being updated and new ones being added. And as for the rune system? The key takeaway is that we won’t be able to push Assault or Support Power through it. The power curve across gear iLevels is also being rebalanced, although those with Datascape-grade gear will probably notice little difference.
But why now, a year after launch? “It was player feedback, focus testing the early game, and developer feedback that led to the decision. We were receiving feedback across all of these channels that informed us; the old way we had our stats set up was confusing. For example, not only is Moxie a stat that you haven’t seen in any other game besides WildStar, it means something to one class but something entirely different to another. Even for a veteran player, that is hard to wrap your head around.”
This means that, when free-to-play launches some time this fall, characters will have six base stats:
Assault/Support Power: Depending on whether your bringing the deeps or throwing the heals, one of these will be the stat that you’re hoarding the most.
Armor: The more you have of it, the more incoming damage is reduced.
Health: Makes that green bar bigger. Great for those who are tanking, or who fail at moving out of the bad stuff.
Shield Max: The bonus crispy coating that wraps around your health bar. The bigger this is, the more damage it can absorb
PvP Power: Similar to today, this will be vital if you enjoy racking up the kills in arenas, battlegrounds and warplots. All PvP damage will be scaled off this stat.
PvP Defense: Also similar to now, this is the stat for those who enjoy being a moving roadblock. Just as with PvP Power, all PvP Defense will be scaled off this stat
Importantly, Assault/Support Power, PvP Power and PvP Defense are dished out in Ratings, which are then converted to a flat Power/Defense value. This helps to avoid situations where stat values start inflating significantly, and also allows for fine-tuning of how rating is converted into base stats during the free-to-play beta.
Having a common set of stat names across all classes has a couple of additional benefits. Firstly, it makes discussing stat priority much easier in a guild or group, and makes dividing up the sweet loot that much easier. Everyone ends up speaking the same stat language, instead of talking cross purposes about what stat does what.
For newcomers, the benefits are even more obvious. Only one tutorial on stats needs to be built, instead of subtle variations for each of the classes. It makes it easier to keep those vital new players, instead of bamboozling them with unfamiliar and inconsistent terms. And it makes it easier to work out what gear is an upgrade, and what gear should be salvaged or sold.
That said, I would like the old stat names to live on, even if it’s purely in WildStar’s lore and NPC dialogue. I can just imagine a Granok shouting out “That Esper, she’s got some moxie to her!” It’s a nod to the veteran fans and adds colour to the world, without causing gameplay-damaging confusion.
 
Aside from the six core stats, WildStar’s secondary stat system is also undergoing a change. Firstly, they’re being split away from core stats, meaning that a Spellslinger after critical strike rating will have no choice but to hunt gear with that stat, or add runes to get it. And since we won’t be able to stack Assault or Support power through runes, most of a character’s additional boosts will come through these secondary stats.
We won’t be short of choice either. The total number of secondary stats is being boosted from 20 to 24, with ten old classics (such as Critical Hit Chance) being largely unchanged. Lifesteal and CC Reduction can now be picked up as rating, and 12 stats have either changed how they work or are completely new. Again, Engle’s blogpost has the detail on all those changes but, to whet your appetite, here are a few examples:
Multi-Hit Chance: Like having an auto-replay, every time you attack an enemy or heal a friend, you get a chance to do it again. The potency of this new event is governed by the Multi-Hit Severity (another new stat).
Vigor: Good at keeping the health bar full? This stat acts as a percentage bonus on damage output, depending on your current health percentage. Great for those who know how to dodge, not so good for keyboard turners.
With this growth in directly accessible secondary stats, Engle also explained how the studio would provide clarity around them - who would want which stat and why. “[it’s] going to be on us to make paths for different classes to enjoy different stats in a meaningful way. The new secondary stats are going to be ways to customize how your player performs in a very easy-to-understand way. You’ll immediately “get” what each stat does by its description in the menus and how it works as you play.”
If the number of stats seems overwhelming, don’t worry, as it’s likely that only a subset will appeal to each class. In addition, you might not find some stats on your gear at all, as Engle explained. “We’re putting all of these stats into the game once the update hits, but they’ll be rolled out through progression. Players may see a particular stat on the character panel, but that stat may not be on gear until later game or even end game.”
 
The Balancing Act
One of the big fears I get around any stat refactoring is that it makes it much harder to work out the best possible combination of attributes to maximise a character’s combat effectiveness. A class’s spells and abilities respond to secondary stats in different ways, making optimisation a non-trivial problem. When a similar problem hit World of Warcraft, Ask Mr Robot sprang up as a tool to help guide players. In the same way, I’m concerned that the growth in secondary stats will cause a similar problem for WildStar, but without the fan-made tools to support it.
According to Engle, however, it’s more about providing players with options on how we want to equip our characters, rather than following a simple and narrow path. “We’re hoping it is more engaging than the current system of hitting the damage diminishing return point for player skills, then stacking critical hit. Gear is going to be affecting all of these new secondary stats, so it will give players the ability to enhance the stats they want or fill in any gaps they may feel are in their builds. The goal is that players will feel free by a wealth of options to play the way they want to play.”
The proof is in the pudding, which is why it’s vital that veteran players check out the free-to-play beta once it goes live, try out the new stat changes, and provide thoughtful, reasoned feedback on it. Carbine may be creating a colourful stats palette with which to gear our characters, or it may be creating confusion through obfuscation; it’s only through diligent testing that we’ll get the right result.
Ultimately, the change leaves me cautiously optimistic. From a logical perspective, much of the stats revamp makes sense, even if I’ll get a bit teary and nostalgic about Moxie and Finesse. The difficulty will be in balancing it all to provide players with meaningful choice, rather than the illusion of one. By decoupling core stats and secondaries the way they have done, Carbine just might make it possible.
 

 
 

 
John Smedley Steps down as Daybreaks C.E.O

 

 

 
John Smedley is stepping down as president and chief executive officer of Daybreak (the company that was once Sony Online Entertainment), the publisher confirmed to GamesBeat. Current chief operating officer Russell Shanks will step in as the new president of the company.
 
The CEO’s departure comes in the wake of a cyberattack that took many of his company’s game servers offline. But Smedley, who helped pioneer the massively multiplayer online model and free-to-play strategy on home gaming consoles, also isn’t gone for good; he is planning to take on a different role at the publisher in the future.
 
“I can confirm that John Smedley will be taking some time off from the company for the near-term and transitioning to a different role to be determined,” a spokesperson for Daybreak told GamesBeat. “Upon finalization of his plans, further communication will be provided.”
 
This transition comes at an interesting time for the executive, the company, and the wider industry at large. Smedley most recently made headlines for threatening to sue Julius Kivimaki, a cybercriminal and member of the cybervandal group Lizard Squad. One of the crimes that Kivimaki was partly responsible for was a bomb threat that grounded a plane that Smedley was flying on. Earlier this month, Kivimaki was convicted of more than 50,000 counts of computer-related crimes in Finland, but he didn’t receive any jail time, only a two-year commuted sentence.
 
Outraged by the perceived lack of punishment, Smedley took to Twitter to tell Kivimaki that he was “coming for” him.
 
While many fans of Daybreak games celebrated Smedley’s response, his actions also painted a target on his and his company’s backs. And on July 9, the remaining members of Lizard Squad began assaulting Daybreak servers with a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, which overwhelms a target network with junk data. This took games like H1Z1, Planetside 2, and more offline. So as Smedley takes time away from Daybreak, he is also potentially getting some space from the Lizard Squad harassment group.
 
But the former executive’s successful history in the games industry is about much more than stories of cybercrimes and DDoS attacks.
 
Smedley came to prominence in the mid-1990s when Sony put him in charge of its Sony Interactive Studios America (SISA) development team. He was charged with the creation of a role-playing game that would enable people to go online to adventure together at the same time. That project would eventually turn into EverQuest, which many consider as the game that truly kicked off the massively multiplayer online revolution.
 
In 1999, Verant Interactive (which formed after SISA spun off a few studios), Smedley finally launched EverQuest in partnership with Sony. It immediately exceeded expectations, both in financial and critical terms. The MMORPG won numerous awards, and it brought in hundreds of thousands of subscribers.
 
Over the next decade, Smedley would continue his work at Sony Online Entertainment and help the studio publish major MMOs like Star Wars: Galaxies, EverQuest II, and The Matrix Online. While those games were able to generate some excitement, SOE quickly lost the title of MMO king when publisher Blizzard Entertainment launched World of Warcraft in 2004. For years following the release of that game, most SOE MMOs (and MMOs from other companies) have been unable to match Blizzard’s success.
 
But SOE never disappeared — and it even managed to carve out a substantial niche over the last half decade. And that is directly attributable to Smedley, who started trying to turn SOE into a new direction in 2007. He started asking his development teams to think beyond the traditional MMO players and the subscription-based payment model.
 
Smedley’s early efforts started the effort at SOE that would publish successful games like DC Universe Online (a comic book-themed MMORPG), PlanetSide 2 (a shooter MMO), and H1Z1 (a zombie-survival MMO). The company is preparing to release a new EverQuest game that has fans of that classic franchise excited.
 
Then, in February, Smedley guided Sony Online Entertainment during its transition to Daybreak Game Company. The private-equity group Columbus Nova purchased SOE from Sony to operate the publisher as an independent company.
 
And coming out of that acquisition, Daybreak was looking strong. The aforementioned games like DC Universe Online and PlanetSide 2 were not only performing well on PC, but they have found renewed audiences on the PlayStation 4 console — a significant achievement for free-to-play games. And H1Z1, which is still in its “early access” phase, is growing larger.
 
And Smedley was hands-on and trying to make a better product right up until he stepped down. His last tweet before taking his time off was about fixing his zombie-survival game.
 

 
Star Wars: Knights Of The old Republic 2: UPDATE

 

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II came out for the PC in 2005, and arrived on Steam in 2012. Now it's 2015, and what has been brought to the attention of fans  it's been updated yet again. The changes were made as part of the release of the game for Mac, Linux, and SteamOS, but there are goodies in here for everyone.
 
KOTOR 2 on Steam now supports controllers, widescreen resolutions, 5K resolution—that's 5120x2880—and Steam Cloud saves, meaning you'll be able to access your saves from any Steam-capable hardware. There are also now 37 achievements on offer, and, most interesting of all, The Sith Lords Restored Content Mod, which was available back in 2012, has been rolled into the game via the Steam Workshop. The fan-made mod, which was first released to the public in 2009, fixes a number of bugs and also restores a significant amount of content that was cut from the original release.
 
It's a fairly short list of changes, but as updates go, sizable stuff. The addition of controller support and high resolutions means it will now be practical to KOTOR from your couch, the upside of playing the "complete" game without the attendant hassles of downloading and installing the TSLRCM manually is obvious, and come on, who doesn't like achievements

 
Tomb Raider: Rise of the Tomb Raider 

 

There wasn't much doubt that Rise of the Tomb Raider would eventually make it to PC—Microsoft even admitted their Xbox One deal was a timed exclusive just days after it was announced. Still it's nice to have confirmation that the sequel to Tomb Raider's 2013 reboot is heading our way, and even nicer to have a date: "early 2016".

That's only a short period after the Xbox One and Xbox 360 release date of November 10, 2015. For Playstation 4 owners it's much worse. They'll have to wait a full year—eventually getting their hands on the game on "Holiday 2016".

Rise of the Tomb Raider will launch on Steam and the Windows 10 store. For more on the game, check out the recent E3 footage.

 

 

 

ORIGIN

 

 

In an email sent to Origin users earlier today and yesterday, Electronic Arts announced that Origin Accounts will soon be renamed EA Accounts. The change will apparently have no impact on you whatsoever.

 

"In the coming weeks your Origin Account will be renamed to an EA Account to better represent all of EA's games and services. Your account identity, preferences, and order history will remain unchanged," the email states. "You will continue to use this account and the same login credentials to access all EA games, web sites, and services, including Origin."

 

An EA rep confirmed that there won't be any functional changes to the service. "We have changed our player account branding from Origin to EA to represent all of the EA properties and services our players use to interact with us," the company said in a follow-up statement. "Your Origin Account credentials are now your EA credentials."

 

Seemingly no need to be alarmed, then. This looks like a branding exercise designed to make Origin more obviously identifiable as an EA property. It's when they start using the corporate logo cattle irons we need to worry. Probably.

 

 

 

AMD 15.7 WIN 10 Ready

 

 

AMD’s Catalyst 15.7 drivers are out, and with them comes a batch of welcome updates. Windows 10 support is the headlining feature, which of course includes support for DirectX 12 as well. All AMD graphics cards back to the 7000 series will be compatible with DX12, though that doesn't mean every card will support every DX12 feature level.

 

The bulk of that driver meat comes in form of FreeSync support for PCs running cards in CrossFire mode. For those unfamiliar, FreeSync is AMD’s method for synchronizing your monitor and graphics card refresh rates as a means of avoiding screen-tearing without the hassle of V-Sync.  The drivers for FreeSync at launch left multi-GPU setups high and dry, but now CrossFire users can get in on the variable refresh fun.Virtual Super Resolution support has expanded heartily. AMD's take on downsampling was originally only available on the R9 285, R9 290, R9, 290X, and the R9 295X2. Now, those who own anything in the new Radeon R300 series, the Radeon R7 260 and above GPUS, and any of the A-series 7400K and above APUs can reap the benefits of VSR. The feature makes a game run at a higher resolution than the monitor's native resolution, and the image is then downsampled, which produces smoother edges, as more pixel detail is being crammed into a smaller picture.

 

Frame Rate Target Control launched alongside the Radeon R300 drivers in June, but has opened up to the new R9 Fury X and the R7 260 and above series. The feature allows for custom target frame rates—essentially hard caps. This has the potential to scale back on power draw on certain frame-intensive games.

Overall, it’s a nice to see AMD expand features previously locked out to specific GPU series, but it remains to be seen how these drivers and GPUs will handle Windows 10 and DirectX 12 until July 29 rolls around. We'll also be checking out how Catalyst 15.7 affects R9 Fury X performance, if at all.

 

 

 

 

SLIDE'N'GO

 

Video

 

 

>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYVy1EOSWXs

 

 

 

Visit them on KICKSTARTER

 

 

 

This random youtube video comes to us from Outsidexbox

 

 

>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kA6TCLqSWPU

 

 

Edited July 26, 2015 by Esva

[Angelin01]

Daybreaks H1Z1 CEO stepped down? Yup, bailed out of a sinking boat.