DocRandal

Diablo 3 on PC or Console has pretty much been perfected to what it should have been on launch. If Blizzard can pull their usual hat trick and continue to offer more polished mechanics in updates it'll be around for the long haul. Using the Seasons (for skill/achievement runs) mechanism to test out new equipment/systems is a genius idea.

Having been around for the rise of MMOs and the critical reaction to them, (Ultima Online, and before that, DikuMUDs, up through the current batch of MMOs) I came to the conclusion that game devs and critics that cast pods eventually ran out of new things to say about the more successful (and mostly) theme park MMOs so they...just stopped talking about them, more than anything else (the other thing being burnout and the time pressure difficulty in actually getting to and playing endgame content when you're trying to write a review). Nice to see that eventually they've been gone long enough that there are some new things to mention in that game space. I'd still like someone to talk more about The Secret World and it's interesting (supergood?) take on questlines, but I can understand devs/critics just being tired of the MMO-space. The other factors being that there were so many other games to discuss with the rise of indie publishing, mobile games, game jams, and new funding models that allowed previously unfundable game development (e.g. Kickstarter), everyone just had other stuff to talk about. Which has been great.

This (the Enhanced Edition announcement) is excellent. I had this on the backburner for a while, but now I can wait until the game goes through the polisher. Kudos to Larian for putting the game through a final pass in prep for consoles and passing on the savings to the PC crowd.

Are the directional thrusters mapped to the buttons on the X52 throttle? I tend to use those all the time. Do you go to the keyboard for anything after you have the X52?

Credit: Ars Technica http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/05/psa-elite-dangerous-owners-now-get-steam-version-for-free/ PSA: Elite Dangerous owners now get Steam version for free. Players will be able to generate their own Steam keys on May 28 that associate with their account.

Credit: PCGamer Space is a big ol' place, and so it's pretty easy to hide things inside of it. Frontier, it seems, has used that to their advantage. They've hidden a selection of strange, alien-like artefacts in Elite: Dangerous, and the community is just now getting around to analysing them. Spurred on by the tease of non-celestial entities to discover, the community banded together in order to hunt down the mysterious artefacts. They even received some prompting from Elite: Dangerous's producer Michael Brookes, who suggested players "listened" to the cargo item. http://www.pcgamer.com/elite-dangerous-community-analyses-mysterious-unknown-artefact/ The article link has a soundcloud file which plays the SFX from the alien artifact. Shades of Encounters of the Third Kind. Also, if you are looking for these objects, be sure to be carrying 1ton of Hafnium in your hold or it'll start snacking on your ship.

AMA - David Braben going on in the Elite forums currently. Interestingly, he's mentioned that he put something potentially related to our old octagonal ship friends in the wings update for explorers to find. Also: Are there any plans for 1.3 to have any new/improved/balanced weapon modules? Many of us are curious at to the future of weaponry in Elite: Dangerous? DB: For some of the Powers we are looking at Power-specific modules and weapons. More info to come. <<< Announcement. ;-)

Powerplay update! I'll let Dr. Wookiee make with the verbose announcement, but it's semi-player controlled factions for structured PvP competition. (By semi-player controlled I mean the devs have ultimate control over what the factions do but the players can influence the direction they go in. Natural extension of the current community goals.) Market this as "EVE for consoles". Sells itself.

Evidently the fact that Wookiees live for about 4-500 years made it into the canon, and Chewie hasn't greyed prematurely.

I'll have to log in this weekend to make sure this hasn't already gone into GalNet, but I wish that the group effort campaigns were noted with a different color or somesuch so I'd always know which ones were going on. Hopefully Powerplay will address that.

What's this in my chest? It's…a new hope. *blaster bolt fired, Wilhelm Scream*

Elderly Wizards with beards, ranked: http://io9.com/elderly-wizards-with-beards-ranked-1697556399

You can have the cool Elite news job Wookie, I just got a pushed update a few minutes ahead of you it seems. Glad to see that they're overhauling the missions. Right now it's just not worth it to take them after you're out of a sidewinder, unless you're specifically building reputation. And that extra fuel tank will come in handy when you're refueling stuck explorers out in the middle of the galaxy with the coming drones. Who I will immediately name "PetMan" and "BigDog" Also, I agree 100% with the Ars Technica review of Elite:Dangerous. Reposted for emphasis: http://arstechnica.c...ve-ever-played/

From Michael Brooks on the Elite Forums: Looking further ahead we have the Powerplay update, the big announcement is still a couple of weeks away but I can reveal a bit more of what will form part of the wider update and that is a major overhaul for the missions system. This isn’t directly part of the new Powerplay feature, but does supplement it. We’ve been working on this since the game’s initial release to provide us with a mission system that will support the game as we keep adding new features and content and improve your experience with all missions. We’ve focused on a few clear goals for this revamp. The first is being able to provide a wider range of missions and in a method we can easily add to and increase variation within the mission type. We’re also adding the ability to select mission locations and targets (where applicable) in the galaxy and system map. Greater use of the player inbox will be used to support mission branches, making them easier to manage. One of the limitations of the current system is that missions tended to be a good option for starting players, but not so much for later on in the game. The overhaul will address this issue by making missions available for more experienced players as well as specific missions for higher ranks or status – such as being a Founder level member. The system will also expand the influence of reputation on missions to reward players who build a high reputation with minor factions. As with any major update we will take the opportunity to add some incidental improvements to the game. One such improvement is that the maximum loan value for ship rebuys will scale according to your Pilots Federation ranking, allowing a greater safety net as you progress through the game. For ship customisation you will also be able to fit more than one fuel tank to your ship – although this obviously takes up space you could have used on other modules! Thanks! Michael

Chanters are great off-tanks melee or ranged that provide passive buffs or debuffs and it's great to have at least one in the party. Focus on debuffing the opponents if you're in melee, and maybe using buff chants if you're in the ranged group for slight optimizations. The summon Incantations (or AOE stuns) end up being encounter finishers or can salvage a bad situation if you're in trouble,

Guess they figured out those server problems. Or maybe the server problems were "we need to make sure the servers are stable/beefy enough before we get too many more players".

So Dr. Wookie, what's the upcoming Powerplay update about?

Poopwater? Go ahead and run that Olympics mod - http://gawker.com/brazil-cant-clean-its-shit-up-in-time-for-the-olympics-1693447063 "Despite promises to clean the Rio de Janeiro bay in time for the 2016 Olympics, mayor Eduardo Paes was forced to admit this week that some of the athletes are just going to have to deal with competing in the raw sewage expelled by a large, poorly managed city. ... Paes offered assertions that the athletes will only compete 'in the cleanest part of the bay'" Poopwater! Come for the Olympics, stay for the dysentery!

Busby, I'm still using the cheapo Logitech but after some combat I may join you in the HOTAS crew. I'd like a comparison of the X52 and X55 as well. Cute Elite/Nvidia contest: The NVIDIA labs, in association with Reynhardt IntelliSys, are pleased to announce that prototypes of the GeForce GTX Titan Black graphics card are now available for purchase from one exclusive outlet. A masterpiece of engineering, the NVIDIA Geforce GTX Titan Black represents the cutting edge of display technology. It balances a sleek design with uncompromising performance and unparalleled processing power, making the Titan Black one of the most desirable display modules in the entire galaxy. To celebrate the pre-release of the new module, NVIDIA are offering 5 lucky pilots the opportunity to win a commercial grade GTX Titan Black. Winning the competition couldn’t be simpler. The first 5 pilots to sell a canister of NVIDIA GeForce GTX Titan Black Prototypes back to NVIDIA HQ aboard Godel Ring will be rewarded with a commercial model as soon as they become available. The only problem is NVIDIA isn’t saying where the prototypes are being sold. Happy hunting Commanders.

I just put together a Viper to check out combat. Is the bounty hunting at any resource extraction point roughly that good or do you have to go to sites with more combat activity? I guess what I'm really asking is "in an outfitted Viper, where can I go for maximal bounty hunting when I'm tired of running rare goods in my Cobra." Secondly, is going for a Type 6 Lakon hauler instead of a Cobra worth it or should I just go for the Asp on my way to the Type 9 Hauler (where I hear running normal goods becomes more profitable than rare good hauling)?

Outfitting an Asp for Deep Exploration and getting out there is another goal for me, once I finish outfitting my Cobra and get a Viper equipped for combat. I'm currently re-listening to the idle thumbs archive and will move on to other podcasts in my industry once I get into deep exploration as it sounds like there's time to think between scans. Love the fact that you can cannibalize modules to repair your ship now. 752 fuel/second sounds insane. It takes ~2-3 minutes for me to refuel at 55 fuel/sec in my cobra. I assume the Asp has larger fuel requirements and larger tanks.

Finally managed to get a few hours of Elite in last night to do some rare good trading - haven't played for about 3 weeks. The 1.2 patches seemed to make piloting a LOT easier for me. Is it me or did I just never notice that the navigation screen listed your origin > destination system + X Jumps while doing a long haul? The other thing I noticed is that I never got interdicted once, whereas three weeks ago I could count on getting interdicted every 3-4 jumps or so. Maybe I"m just flying through a calm spot in the galaxy. Third observation: Heat levels while scooping from stars are WAY down. I used to stay at 94-99% heat levels while getting 40-50 fuel/second...Now I'm getting 40-55 fuel/second at 65-75% heat.

Update from the Devs: Content: So what’s coming? A lot. Here are just some of the highlights: Misc: Hero color variants Town Events KS Backer-designed Trinkets, Monsters, etc Playable Classes: Man at Arms Arbalest Houndmaster Merchant Lord Tier, KS backer-designed class (available to all players – see KS page) Additional Bosses: Weald Boss: The Brigand Barricade Ruins Boss: The Gibbering Prophet Warrens Boss: The Formless Flesh The Cove: Full set of themed Monsters New Curios (Interactive Objects) Cove Boss 1 Cove Boss 2 The Darkest Dungeon …? The Darkest Dungeon, essentially the full endgame, will only be released at 1.0 launch. You will have to complete several quests in the Darkest Dungeon, and in so doing, you will progress the game’s story. Darkest Dungeon missions will test even your most battle-hardened veterans, and are non-retreatable! You will succeed and survive, or die trying – the ultimate challenge awaits! Don’t ask for any more details on it, cause that’s all we’re ever going to say At this point, I'm going to stop playing the game until release so I can enjoy the content fresh. Thanks in advance to all the beta testers.

Ex-Maxis developer starts Patreon to fund his creations in Cities: Skylines http://www.pcgamesn.com/cities-skylines/ex-maxis-artist-turns-to-patreon-to-fund-design-of-cities-skylines-buildings