cakedotavi

I've recently been playing a bit of Battlerite, which just came out of Early Access and is now free-to-play, and enjoying it quite a bit. The game structure is very similar to WoW arenas, focused on short rounds of between teams of 2 or 3 players. Heroes are basically built on the MMO tank/DPS/support trinity, but control like a WASD-based Lords Management (with a bit of fighting game meter-management layered on top). The action is tight and fast, forgoing all of the farming and laneing found in most Lords Managements. Instead, each round is basically just a single teamfight so you really do get to the "meat" almost immediately. There are some neat wrinkles, such as leveling up to unlock stronger abilities being replaced by earning meter with basic attacks and spending it on stronger ones, or a PUBG style "circle of death" closing in after 2 minutes to force an end to the match. The tutorial and sandbox modes are very well done, making it easy to get to know all the characters quite quickly. Monitization is pretty unobtrusive as well, with a rotating free hero system kind of like League's + unlockable cosmetics similar to how Overwatch handles it (earning crates of cosmetics as you level up your profile or specific heroes). As you can guess from the above, I'm enjoying this game quite a bit. Seems like a great way to get a few competitive rounds in when you only have half an hour on a weeknight, and don't want to commit to a longer game. Anyone else playing? What are your thoughts?

Hi folks. I can safely assume my PC will push either UHD or HFR at a workable framerate, (60 for UHD, 120+ for HFR) but of course I can't really do both. My budget for a new panel is about $800, give or take, and I am heavily biased towards the color reproduction of IPS panels; I likely won't consider a TN panel. How best can I decide between the two technologies? - Are there any shops that routinely have both available for an in-person demo in a game? (I live in Vancouver Canada but visit the Seattle area reasonably frequently) - Are there any recommended write-ups comparing the benefits of the two directly for gaming? (I've already read these two HFR articles) - Do you have any personal thoughts regarding the differences between the two technologies for gaming? Thanks!

Has anyone been paying attention to the hubbub surrounding the RTX 2080 and 2080 ti? This ars technica review does a good job summarizing things without too much jargon, and this comment seems to boil it down to a single (if over-simplified) sentence. I am shocked by the price tag ($1,200 USD for the ti - a consumer-grade card), and I find myself wondering if there will be some consumer backlash that leads to a price-drop. However, nvidia has never been flexible on price-points in the past and it does seem like there is a fair amount of actual new hardware on the boards... so I am not holding out hope for that, personally. It seems like if you want to game at 4k/60 or 1440p/144 nvidia is the only game in town, and they know it. I will probably get one, and then feel like a bit of an idiot for doing so As an aside, I know this is not directly video gaming related, but I don't see a better board so here we are.

From what I've been reading (example) the 1080 ti will keep you north of 4k/60 only in very well optimized games currently, like id tech titles (e.g. Wolfenstein 2). If you look at more difficult titles like AC Unity, Ghost Recon Wildlands, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, etc it is often in the 40-50 range (or lower). So yes, some 4k gaming at 60fps is certainly possible on the 1080 ti, but as far as I can tell it is far from consistent. I am willing to throw value out the window and pay a premium to get a more consistent 4k/60 experience. A bit of (limited) fiscal irresponsibility might be fun I am open to having my mind changed if you know something I don't about the 1080 ti performance however - I've not bought the 2080 ti yet.

Yeah the lack of supported games day 1 is a real shame. I saw one reviewer put it along the lines of "it's like if a car company had reviewers test a new race car, but the track wasn't ready so everyone was stuck doing laps around the parking lot." I think it really doesn't make sense for most people to upgrade right now, given the very costly increase in performance compared to the Pascal lineup ($/FPS gain is very high going from 1xxx to 2xxx compared to almost any earlier generation). However, if you simply want to hit 1440/144 or 4k/60 it seems like you really don't have much of an option... you just have to pay a (pretty ridiculous and frankly unfair) premium to do so. Unfortunately for my wallet, I think I am in the latter camp as I have both a 1440/144 and 4k/60 display that my current 970 weeps trying to power.

I can't wait to hear more about the rankings system. My inner tryhard is excited Edit: Uh, what?

Nice, that is great. This is the first weekend in ages I have no major commitments too. Awesome. I'm off to figure out how to get set for the open beta! I'll PM you my Battlenet ID and see you on there

We've had tons of wins together Can't win them all. Somewhat related, has anyone been watching the various Call of Duty: Blackout (their Battle Royale) footage that has been popping up? The beta for that mode started recently, and reactions seem mostly very positive. I was initially extremely skeptical about the mode, and am still far from sold, but the reactions I've been seeing have piqued my interest a bit. I've not yet been able to find a good example of whether the game is hitscan or bullet modeling however - I really hope it is the latter. Does anyone know if it is hitscan or not, or if there are any free opportunities to try it (assuming you're not pre-ordering)?

Man, this season continues to be just ridiculous. 11 games played, 9 wins (~82%). Good times.

Hah, while I totally agree with you I also feel "betas" are just limited time demos & back-end server stress tests these days, as opposed to actually really testing the game in any meaningful way. I am also really excited for the practice range - I've not played since I posted that 5 game streak, but should have some time tonight and this weekend to give it a go. Even though I've got a lot of hours played at this point (800 or something) it is still damn near impossible to really test out how different attachments interact to change weapon recoil patterns mid-match. The practice range should finally make this possible

Man, what a start to the season! 5 for 5 this morning. I really feel this is not sustainable, however...

Looks like someone did the heavy lifting for us: https://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/9a4v0k/soul_bind_interaction_list/

What do you think the most outrageous interactions are? Can it target allies? Does it double item abilities? Obviously high damage single targets like Laguna blade or finger of death can be strong but I'm sure there are better examples. Chain frost could be pretty great. If you can target allies an agha time laps could be hilarious on your 2 cores. Or shallow grave. If you can double items then like double dagon or double Euls could be fun. I wonder about alch granting ages...? That'd be broken. What would happen if you used it with replicate? Sunder? Duel? I'm sure I'm missing a ton - this is just off the top of my head on the bus.

Yeah I agree it was the best TI yet. I hadn't played dota in like a year before the event, but it got me to start playing again this past weekend. If anyone wants to see some really good games of dota I suggest LGD vs OG game 3 of the second last day, and games 4 and 5 of the same matchup in the grand final. All three were incredible, tense games.

Did anyone watch TI8? I was actually in the arena for it, and it absolutely exceeded my expectations. Really well run event, and some amazing games played on the main stage. Spoilers below for who won.

Circling back regarding switch performance, it has been pretty much totally fine for me through to just before the second boss (as far as I've gotten). If it gets bad later I have no idea of course. Once or twice I've noticed some minor slowdown, but nothing major (we're talking 40-50 frames instead of 60 for a few seconds) and quite rarely. I am pretty FPS-sensitive, so unless you are really tryharding this game I think switch performance is completely acceptable.

It is also on switch, though it sounds like there are some mild framerate issues there. Some people seem bothered, others seem to not really mind. Either way, be aware of that if you're sensitive to FPS drops. Otherwise it sounds like the switch version is great. I am about to try it this evening, and will share thoughts once I've made some progress.

One of the devs just posted a thread called "It's time to FIX PUBG" on reddit, and it basically sounds like they're spending the next 3 months purely bug-fixing and optimizing. They even have a pretty detailed site, which includes snippets like this: Pretty cool to see them just own some of their problems like that. I wonder if they will deliver?

Unrelated to the above, last season was fun Much thanks to eRonin for helping with that 13 kill game!

I watched a bunch of the PGI tournament - it was really good! Especially when compared to the gong show that was the first big tournament round about a year ago it was really well run. Casting and production was solid, but most importantly the spectator mode & scoring are vastly improved. As eRonin says above, tracers etc add a lot of information for spectators and make it much easier to follow the flow of the match, but also the way they manage the camera has been improved quite a bit and they were almost always always right with the action. On top of that, the changes made to swimming many patches ago + how they reward kills with tournament score now resolved the "sit in the water" playstyle we saw last year really nicely. Huge improvement overall. It was actually very watchable as an esport, though from a technical perspective there is still a long way for the game to go (desync etc).

I think the throwables changes are smart, at least on paper. Frags have always been far-and-away the best grenade, with smokes being a distant second and everything else being mostly irrelevant. The last patch increased frags "inventory size" (while decreasing the size of other throwables) which was a good start, but not enough to really tip the balance. I am excited to see how the molotov buff works out in practice - I think it really depends on how good their "fire spreading" tech is. Stun grenade buffs are nice too, and more straight forward. Overall, I am excited to see a more varied throwables meta coming. More importantly though, if the 60 tick rate preliminary results hold true that will be the biggest improvement to this game in a long time. Anyone who's ever gone "what the fuck, why can I not pick up this gun" has felt the pain of the inconsistent tick rate in this game.

I finally found a good guide to optimizing drop speed since the parachute patch a few months ago. Old news to some, but something I've been meaning to learn more about for some time as I am increasingly limited in my leaderboard dreams by not being first to the ground.

Also, regarding the weapon balance patch, overall I like it - I feel like SMGs and DMRs are the big winners. SMGs feel more viable now (especially if you have a SR or DMR in your other slot) thanks to ARs not being able to spray as well + taking longer to reload. DMRs are simply easier to kit out now that they also take AR attachments (really important for the SKS, SLR, and Mk14 especially given their small mag sizes), but otherwise don't seem to have changed much. I also really like the crate changes - every crate gives full level 3 kit, a crate gun, and often an 8x or better + a medical item. Especially considering that you *can't* get level 3 helmets any other way now, crates have gotten a *huge* buff. It makes the mid game a bit less boring, since it makes more sense to take a run at nearby crates now. If they also re-add new circle timings to address the rest of the mid game lull the overall pacing will be vastly improved between these two changes. About the only thing I *don't* like are the new grips. It just feels like there are too many now, without any material difference between them. Yes, the spray patterns are different, but it isn't like any of them fundamentally change how you use a gun, and some of them seem just downright bad, at least at first glance (light grip I am looking at you). I feel like grips need to be consolidated down to 3 or 4, with new attachments instead focusing on actually changing how you use the guns instead of this "distinction without a difference" business. It would be cool to see things like bipods, grenade launchers, bayonettes, etc over these minor number tweaks to existing attachments. Overall though, cool new patch that seems to have made the meta a lot less rigid and predictable.

Man, these repeated near-misses on a 3 win streak are heartbreaking... one of these days, god damn it

Oh man, just had a great round, including a 475m 1-shot K98 headshot - I literally said "oh baby" out loud to an empty room when I hit that. However most of this was the M4, which (as much as I know it is OP and needs a nerf) I am going to miss. The spray pattern with all the attachments is really satisfying to control, and a small part of me is sad that I will spend most of my time playing with guns that don't feel as good to handle now (save crate drops). It's the right thing for the overall game, but damn that gun feels good pre-nerf.