Papersky

The best Smite Skins?

papersky — Sat, 28 Nov 2020 11:55:13 GMT

If you have played the game Smite, you will know of the great character design that this game has to offer. It is a game about you playing a god of your choice.

Almost every god is well designed and has multiple skins that you actually can acquire with Favor(some skins) - an in-game currency that you don't have to buy with real money. Favor is a currency that you earn over time. That is a big plus for the Smite developers, Hi-Rez Studios.

However, most of the very special skins can only be unlocked with Gems, the valuable in-game currency that is harder to get and people spend real money to get them. Remember that Smite is a free-to-play game and needs to have some source of income.

Smite is known to be very user-friendly on this. They frequently offer discounts and make big skin/god bundles, so that you can buy the skins for a fraction of the cost of what it would cost normally.

Skin Types

Smite has several types of skins for the gods.

Standard skins: Regular skins that will always be available in the Store to purchase.

Exclusive skins: Skins that are related to special events like- promotions, holidays, treasure chests and events.

Clan skins: Special shadow skins that can only be obtained from the Clan Store.

example of a clan Skin(Shaddow Thor)

Limited skins: Unique skins that are only available for a limited period of time. If the time is over, it will be really hard to get them again. They will be locked until Hi-rez announces a super special event.

Skin Tiers

The skins in Smite have different tier classes. The higher the tier class, the higher the level of detail.

Tier I: A Tier I skin costs usually 100 Gems or 9.500 Favor. This skin is normally just the normal character in another colour.

Tier II: These skins cost 250 Gems(normally), and will have little changes in the characters design and colour.

Tier III: 400 Gems is the normal price for this class. This tier class has a full change of the character and often includes new animations.

Tier IV: These skins cost normally 600 Gems. Full change of the god, new animations and a new voice pack.

Tier V: This is the highest tier possible and offers only special limited skins.

Example of a Tier V Skin

Mastery Skins

If you play a god a lot, you will get something that is called the "God Rank". The highest god rank is 10.

The mastery skins can only be acquired if you have the matching god rank.

There are 3 Skins for every god.

God Rank I - Golden Skin
God Rank V - Legendary Skin
God Rank X - Diamond Skin

What are the best God Skins?

A thread on the Smite SubReddit had the users discussing and voting for the current best Smite skins.

I will show here the Skins that were named the most. Note: This is not a ranking. The order is randomly chosen.

Super Chronos 64

Solar sentinel Ra

Stormbringer Zeus

Can you get Skins for free?

Yes, you can get skins for free in Smite. Smite gives you randomly skins if you earn chests. The only problem is that you will not get to choose the skin. It is all randomly, plus they will not be very "valuable".

So if you want to have free skins you will need free Smite gems. Well and that is not soo easy to get either, but a blog post on this site shows you also that it is not too hard.

Smite Gift Card. Source: freegenday.com

They actually offer free Smite Gems on their webiste for a good cause — online scam prevention.

Get Smite Gems and Skins on Reddit

From time to time, you will find people on the Smite Subreddit, who give away Skins and Gems. Some just do that, because they don't need the gems and skins and some do it to find more people to play with.

Red Dead Redemption 2: Second most successful game of the year in British retail sector

papersky — Mon, 29 Oct 2018 11:17:41 GMT

Red Dead Redemption is back!

Last Friday Red Dead Redemption 2 was released for Playstation 4 and Xbox One. According to the latest news, the new Rockstar Games title is already the second most successful title in British retail, which of course only counts physical sales and no digital versions.

It's no surprise to most players that the new Red Dead Redemption 2 from Rockstar Games is also a huge success in retail sales of physical copies. The new title has already achieved the second best sales launch of the previous year in Great Britain - only the football simulation FIFA 19 was even more successful.

RDR2: More successful than Call of Duty: Black Ops 4

Somewhat strange is that there are no exact figures on actual sales, only comparisons with other games. Red Dead Redemption 2 is said to have sold twice as much in retail as its 2010 predecessor. This is remarkable because digital sales play a much bigger role today than they did eight years ago.

In addition, Red Dead Redemption 2 is said to have achieved the best start of a game for Playstation 4 and Xbox One that is not a FIFA or Call of Duty title. But Call of Duty: WW2 and the new Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 are said to have been beaten anyway. Only to the largest success from own house Red Dead Redemption 2 does not come near, because Grand Theft Auto 5 was bought in the first week directly two million times in the retail trade. According to Eurogamer, RDR2 is far away from this.

Even if the actual sales figures of Red Dead Redemption 2 cannot be determined in this way, Eurogamer still announces that 68 percent of all sales are accounted for by the Playstation 4 version. But since the Sony console was probably sold twice as often as the Xbox One, this distribution is not really surprising.

Will this graphics chip change the gaming world?

papersky — Wed, 05 Sep 2018 08:41:34 GMT

Nvidia presented three new graphics cards at Gamescom: the RTX 2070, RTX 2080 and RTX 2080 Ti. The cards are based on the new Turing architecture and are designed to advance ray tracing technology. I will show you what Ray-Tracing is all about and what the new graphics cards can do.

Nvidia brings professional ray tracing to the consumer market

The biggest innovation in RTX graphics cards is support for ray tracing - a technology that calculates light distribution in real time and makes games look more like movies with more realistic shadows and cinematic effects.

The technology is often used in computer-generated image (CGI) films and series because it produces very lifelike and lifelike results.

It has been under discussion in the gaming world for a long time, but has not yet been realized due to the high hardware requirements. With the RTX 2000 graphics cards, it is now available to the general public for the first time.

Ray-Tracing is made possible by Nvidia's new Turing graphics architecture, which uses a new calculation model. Until now, graphics cards have used rasterization to simulate the behavior of light. It calculates 3D environments from back to front in layers, obscuring objects further forward. Rasterization cannot therefore track the light itself and how it is reflected by the objects.

A good example of this are mirrors and glass, which so far only reflect light very inaccurately in games. Ray-Tracing, on the other hand, can accurately calculate mirror images and track the light even when it breaks into glass.

The biggest step forward is that Nvidia has succeeded in creating a calculation model for ray tracing that can be processed in real time by the new graphics cards.

Don't forget that Ray-Tracing has only been possible with tens of thousands of Euros of expensive workstation graphics cards.

"[...]the biggest leap we've ever made in a generation." -Nvidia's CEO Jensen Huang

New graphics cards with more power

Even the smallest model RTX 2070 should deliver more power for ray tracing than the top model Titan Xp of the last card generation.

The RTX 2080 Ti is the flagship of the new series with 4352 CUDA cores and 1350 megahertz (MHz) clock frequency. With 11 GB video memory, the card has 1 GB less than the Titan Xp, but it is the faster GDDR6 memory type.

The RTX 2080 and RTX 2070 also have GDDR6 memory, but only 8 GB of it. The RTX 2080 has 2944 CUDA cores and 1515 MHz clock frequency, while the RTX 2070 is equipped with 2304 CUDA cores and 1410 MHz clock frequency.

Both models consume significantly more power than their predecessors due to the larger chips, only the RTX 2080 Ti remains within the 250-watt power consumption of its predecessor GTX 1080 Ti.

How the new RTX 2080 Ti looks like

How important Ray-Tracing is for Nvidia is shown by the fact that the manufacturer specifies the theoretical computing power of his new graphics cards primarily in RTX-OPS instead of traditionally in GFLOPS.

RTX-OPS are used as reference values for ray tracing performance. According to Nvidia, the RTX 2080 Ti delivers 80,000 RTX-OPS, about six times the performance of a GTX 1080 Ti.

First insights at Gamescom

At Gamescon Nvidia showed first insights into the technical possibilities of the new Turing processor. Developer demos were presented, simulating reflections and light in closed rooms, but also a few Ray Tracing optimized games were shown.

Tomb Raider impressively demonstrates the realistic interplay of light and shadow in nocturnal environments, while "Metro Exodus" is particularly good at seeing how realistic shadows are represented with ray tracing.

The most spectacular was the "Battlefield V" demo, which showed how much better ray tracing works compared to previous rendering technologies. Explosions and fires were realistically reflected onto surrounding objects such as vehicles, people, surfaces and even weapons.

Nvidia has already announced 21 games to be patched by the developers for ray tracing. That doesn't sound like much, but the technology will probably only really get going in future titles. After all, the manufacturer is working together with Microsoft to implement its new DirectX Ray-Tracing API (DXR) in Windows 10.

When will the new graphics cards be released?

Manufacturers Asus, EVGA, Gigabyte, MSI, PNY and Zotac are already offering the RTX 2080 and RTX 2080 Ti for pre-order, delivery will start on September 20.

Nvidia's own Founders Edition graphics cards are as expensive as the free trade models. On the Nvidia side, the RTX 2070 is listed for 640 Euro, the RTX 2080 for 850 Euro and the RTX 2080 Ti for 1260 Euro. The prices for free trade are not yet fixed in Germany, but should be 100-150 Euros among the Founders Edition cards.

"FIFA 19" vs "PES 2019" - which football game is better?

papersky — Sun, 02 Sep 2018 08:18:04 GMT

Just in time for the start of the new Bundesliga season, the next big duel in the gaming world will begin- "FIFA 19" against "Pro Evolution Soccer 2019". And as every year, fans passionately discuss which football game is better.

I have mixed opinions about these 2 games. Over the years, both versions have changed considerably and the annual updates are now in the starting blocks: "PES 2019" will be released on 20 August, "FIFA 19" will follow on 25 September.

Who is ahead this year? Here is my first impressions of the Gamescom games fair, where I played a few multiplayer matches of each game.

Pro Evolution Soccer 2019

As with "FIFA", the same applies to the annual "PES" update: the changes are in the details. In 2014, Konami completely changed the graphics engine to make stadiums and player faces look more realistic. The whole game system was radically redesigned, it took some version numbers until the game feeling was round again.

Even though some fans suffered from the rebuilding and switched to "FIFA": The 2019 version of "PES" shows that the switch to Konami's Fox Engine has paid off: The ball physics are great, the animations are as soft as butter and the stadiums with their light effects and shadows are a feast for the eyes.

Is the game too slow? Nope - it's just more realistic and "FIFA" in my eyes is a bit too fast, compared to a real football match. Realism looks different. I also accept the criticism that many situations in "PES" are too dependent on chance only to a limited extent: Yes, there are often curious situations in the penalty area - but there are also curious situations in real football.

There is also a plus in realism with the now clearly more visible exhaustion of the players towards the end of a match. Simple passports don't sit exactly or shots on goal from a good position pass the box after all.

There is an understandable criticism of the defence system: With the push of a button, the opponent can quickly swindle the ball, similar to earlier "FIFA" parts. Here the EA competitor shows that it can also be more demanding.

And in terms of licenses, "PES" is slowly falling into the third division: the Bundesliga still doesn't exist, even from the English Premier League there are only a few teams like Liverpool or Arsenal in complete outfit. Also missing now are the licenses for the Champions and Europa League and from the cover no Ronaldo yells at me, but Barcas Philippe Coutinho or alternatively football pensioner David Beckham.

Conclusion

Compared to its predecessor, "PES 2019" uses a magnifying glass to look for innovations. But it doesn't matter: Last year Konami's football sim played itself much softer in my eyes than the wooden "FIFA" kickers, which also look even worse. But I think it's questionable whether you'll have to pay another 60 euros for it: "FIFA's killer argument with the many licences may still justify a new purchase every year, given the meagre "PES" supply, this argument is hardly justified.

Fortnite: How to get V-Bucks without buying them in the shop

papersky — Thu, 30 Aug 2018 16:59:59 GMT

V-Bucks are required to purchase the fancy skins in the Fortnite: Battle Royale item shop on PC, PS4 and Xbox One. But you don't have to spend money to get the in-game currency. We show you how to get V-Bucks for the Battle Royale-Mode for free!

V-Buck Gift Card

What are V-Bucks? V-Bucks are the real money currency in Fortnite. In PvE mode, you can use them to buy lamas that contain various items that will help you move forward in the game. In Battle Royale mode, V-Bucks are required to purchase cosmetic items.

As a pure Battle Royale player, it's not easy. V-Bucks can hardly be earned by normal playing. Although the Battle Pass drops some V-Bucks, if you don't pay any Bucks for the pass, the amount is minimal.

Fortnite: Prices to buy V Bucks in the shop for PC, PS4, Xbox One

You can buy the skins, gliders and harvesting tools with real money, but in many cases, this is quite expensive. A legendary skin burns a hole in your wallet for 2,000 V-Bucks or the equivalent of 20 euros when you buy V-Bucks in the shop for real money.

The prices are

1000 V-Bucks (10 Euro)
2800 V-Bucks (25 Euro)
7500 V-Bucks (60 Euro)
13500 V-Bucks (100 Euro)

There are 2 Major ways to get free V-

Bucks. The first one is to win them through giveaways and sweepstakes. Be aware o

f scams on this one. Luckily there is one website out there which combats both problems, the demand for giveaways and teaching a younger audience about the dangers of online scams.

Freegenday.com lets you win 100.000 V-Bucks, if you read their articles about online scams. They clearly can't force you to do that, but it seems that they have implemented a way so that you just have to stumble across the articles.

We say that we need more websites like that. This is also one rare site that hosts the sweepstakes. Most of giveaways are now solely on video platforms like youtube.

You can also earn money by playing V-Bucks for free in Battle Royale mode - but only indirectly. This is the second method and needs more description.

Get V-Bucks for Battle Royale for free through Fortnite PvE mode

To earn V-Bucks that can be spent in Battle Royale mode, you must play PvE "Save the World". Epic will make the PvE content available for free in the course of 2018.

Unlike V-Buck sources that eventually dry up, the following methods remain consistent until Epic should patch or remove them.

Method 1 - Earn V-Bucks through Daily Quests

What's it about? The easiest way to get to Bucks is through your daily missions. Each daily gives you 50 V bucks. There are also bonuses for completing multiple missions in a specific area:

3 Plankerton missions: 60 V-Bucks
3 Bru Valley missions: 75 V bucks
3 Twine-Peaks missions: 100 V-Bucks!

This is how it works: Ideally, you do your dailies every day. If you don't have much time, it's enough to gamble for a good hour every three days and watch as you complete three missions. The mission "Daily Scouting" should be diced again if possible, as it takes a long time and costs you valuable time.

So if you play "Save the World" just to earn bucks for Battle-Royale, you'll have the best return here.

That's the yield: if you effectively pull your dailies through, you can tap 50 V bucks per hour on average. Up to 1,500 V bucks per month are possible.

Method 2 -Farm events

What's it about? In Fortnite: Save the World, there are events in addition to the regular quests. You can select it in the main screen. There you'll find a quest line and story that will give you rewards per milestone. Among them are V-Bucks.

This is how it works: You just work your way through the event quests and collect the bucks when they come. However, each event quest takes about 2 to 3 missions, which takes quite a long time. Therefore, the event questing is only worthwhile for people who enjoy the PvE mode or are interested in the story of Fortnite.

That's the loot we want to see: A complete event offers you about 300 V-Bucks.

Method 3 - Complete limited missions

What's it about? Every 6 hours (4 times a day) special, time-limited missions appear on the map. In addition to valuable resources, 30 V bucks are occasionally offered as a reward.

Here's how it works: Pick out the missions that give V-Bucks and make sure you complete them as quickly and effectively as possible. Ideally, with friends or teammates, it'll be faster and you'll make the mission easier.

That's the spoils: You can only collect rewards for 3 such missions a day. Therefore, the maximum yield is 90 V bucks per day. You can make 2,700 bucks a month if you go through with it consistently.

Method 4 - Daily login reward

What's it about? Every day you get a reward when you log in. These can also include V-Bucks.

Here's how it works: Log in and dust the following V-Buck sums after the first 70 days:

Every 7 days: 150 V-Bucks

Every 28th day: 300 V-Bucks

Every 112th day: 800 V-Bucks

That's the loot: By persistently logging in you'll get to 3,500 V bucks in 112 days. This is slow but productive.

This way you can at least dust a few V-Bucks to a limited extent.

You can also farm V-Bucks in PvE mode using the following methods, but unfortunately, they are not unlimited. Eventually, these sources of Bucks will run dry.

Challenge missions also bring 50 V-Bucks, but these rewards are only available up to level 10.

At the milestones in your collection book, you can really get your money's worth. You can earn 500 V bucks here. Enter everything there that you have double or do not need. In addition to the V-Bucks, you will also receive lamas, building plans and resources.

In larger story quests you can even earn 100 V-Bucks - these are the Storm Shield defences

Using the various methods, you'll quickly get a decent sum of V-Bucks, which you can trade in for cosmetic items in Battle Royale mode - without spending a single cent (except for the game, of course)!

No new apps for Windows 8

papersky — Tue, 28 Aug 2018 07:47:10 GMT

Microsoft has announced that it will not release new apps for Windows 8.x and Windows Phone 8.x from November 2018. Submissions from developers will also no longer be accepted.

Microsoft is slowly but surely saying goodbye to Windows 8.x, a rather unpopular child of the Windows family. In a blog post, the company announced that app support for Windows 8.x and Windows Phone 8.x will be discontinued from November.

Specifically, Microsoft does not plan to accept any more submissions for new apps from external developers as of October 31, 2018. However, the latter still have the option of publishing updates for existing applications.

The Beginning of the end?

Starting July 1, 2019, Microsoft will not ship any further app updates for Windows Phone 8.x or below. App updates will then only be made accessible to users of Windows 10 devices. Finally, Microsoft will also stop distributing app updates for Windows 8.1 from July 1, 2023, which will then only be available for Windows 10 users.

With this announcement, Microsoft is taking a further step away from Windows 8 and towards Windows 10, and as the official update times show, since January 9, 2018 there have only been updates for Windows 8 for critical vulnerabilities as part of extended support.

The deadline for this extended support ends on January 10, 2023 in the case of Windows 8; users of Windows 7 will be confronted with this earlier: With this operating system, extended support will only run until January 14, 2020.

What happened to the duel Xbox One vs. PlayStation 4?

papersky — Thu, 23 Aug 2018 09:12:23 GMT

Analysis of the success of the PlayStation 4 and Microsoft's (non-)success with Xbox One.

We are in the eighth generation of consoles and somehow everything is different from the generation before. The Xbox 360 was many years more successful than the PlayStation 3.

Sony did everything right with the PlayStation 4, but the Xbox One is far behind. Nintendo's success with the switch gives the Xbox One the rest.

The success of the PlayStation 4

The PlayStation 4 is about to beat every seventh-generation console in sales. After all, more than 70 million consoles have been sold to gamers on the planet so far. Of course, the success of PlayStation 2 (155 million units sold) is not in sight, because this generation of consoles will not last that long. But the PlayStation one with 103 million copies sold is within reach. To refer to the seventh generation: The PlayStation 3 sold "only" 87 million times in its lifetime, the Xbox 360 an estimated 85 million times.

"Cover-up" on the Xbox One sales figures

On the other hand, the Xbox One - which we would now like to discuss in more detail. For the Microsoft console, there are no more official sales figures on the part of the Redmond company for a long time.

They don't talk about it anymore. According to NDP Group figures, Xbox One has sold an estimated 35 million units worldwide. Japan is certainly not the hot spot, but the Xbox One and its "upgrade console", the Xbox One X, is also struggling in Europe.

After all, Sony keeps supplying its gamers with exclusive titles, whereby Microsoft has long since shared its exclusive titles with Windows 10 gamers with the "Play Anywhere" program - probably in order to increase sales to its expensive in-house productions.

Maybe you also want to be a "PC" after Microsoft Poland accidentally leaked mouse & keyboard support towards the end of 2017.

PlayStation 3 versus Xbox 360 was more exciting

The fight PlayStation 3 versus Xbox 360 was not decided for a long time. In the early years even the Xbox 360 was clearly in the lead and only through price reductions on the hardware itself could Sony slowly catch up. The PlayStation 3 was a lot more expensive and it felt like Microsoft had the lead.

The reason for the failure of the Xbox One was actually carved at the beginning of its announcement before the console was even available for purchase.

But more about that later.

In the early 2000s, Sony was at the zenith of success with the PlayStation 2, the most successful video game console of all time.

Microsoft's first work, the Xbox - a huge black X box with oversized controllers and Nintendo's purple game cube, the Gamecube, weren't bad on the road, but they couldn't do anything against the sovereign power of Sony. The PlayStation 2 was the first console that could also play DVD's, unlike SEGA's wonder console, the Dreamcast and Nintendo's Gamecube.

The Xbox could play movies with a remote control - just like a DVD player and stayed in the race - but clearly, behind the PS2 The SEGA Dreamcast was at the beginning even a glimmer of hope for the battered video game hardware manufacturer SEGA, but with the launch of the PS2 everything was over.

Sony's arrogance helped the Xbox 360 to success

The Xbox 360 appeared on the world market at the end of 2005, the PlayStation 3 followed a year later and in Europe only in March 2007.

Again - so one believed - at Sony, one could assert oneself with a console that could read and play the new format for movies, the Blu-ray. But the technology was expensive and it was not yet clear which new media format would prevail: The Blu-ray or HD-DVD.

The problem was that Sony had misjudged the hardware and had to give the price to the end customers. For example, the 20 GByte model cost a whopping 500 euros at the start and the 60 GByte model "unbeatable" 600 euros. Too much for one console, as you can see on the Xbox One X. For the next two years, Microsoft had to roll up the market with its far from cheaper Xbox 360 "easy game" and break the dominance of Sony.

More and more different PS3 models came onto the market, which caused even more confusion. No one knew anymore which console variant he really needed. Only when several exclusive games such as The Last of Us came onto the market, marketing was improved and the final price of the console was lowered, the success of the Xbox 360 could be "broken" and the race to catch up could begin.

Microsoft's arrogance made PlayStation 4 a success

I didn't run out of ideas for this headline, but it should show that Microsoft made exactly the mistake that Sony once made with its PlayStation 3.

Namely to believe, only because one had had a "high flight" with the previous console to create this also with the next console. Just because the name "Xbox" is on it doesn't mean anything. Sony had to go through that with PlayStation.

Just like Sony, Microsoft launched a successor console, the Xbox One, which was expensive and had a wealth of features that were largely unnecessary and only served to keep the price high and destroy the "mission statement of the console".

Despite a fire of criticism from the media and fans, Microsoft had no inhibitions about making the same fucking mistake as Sony once did.

It took many years - actually, it still continues to correct the errors and repair the damage. There are a few "individual successes", but they are rare. In the meantime, Sony had taken over the market with its PlayStation 4. Nintendo's Wii U was just a side issue and we know how this story turned out, but this is more about the Xbox One.

"No Fireworks" for the Xbox One X

With the start of the Xbox One X Microsoft has learned nothing new again.

If the marketing had been changed as Sony once was and a "firework of innovations", i.e. exclusive games, then one could have turned the tables. It would have been possible to repeat history and break the success of the PlayStation 4. But no. You release an upgraded console, the killer for the PlayStation 4 PRO, the most powerful console on the market today, and you don't make anything of it.

A few enhanced updates or no updates are no real reason to buy for the masses. How many people really have a 4K TV at home? If good and playable games had been introduced to the market, this would certainly have been more successful than high degrees of resolution and fast image movements.

Who knows how Microsoft really thinks and acts in the background. There are already rumours not to bring out a console in the real sense, but to convert to Azure cloud technology.

In times when the super-fast broadband Internet is not available everywhere, especially in Austria and Germany - when it comes to connection possibilities for households it looks more disastrous than in countries such as Angola, Puerto Rico or Ecuador, makes the matter a failure again with a security guarantee.

Why old games are better than new games

papersky — Sun, 12 Aug 2018 14:37:12 GMT

Today's games are huge, detailed, expensive, becoming more and more realistic graphically, seem endless through hundreds of quests and hours of play, and have a huge community behind them that meet in the multiplayer game.

You can spend hours riding across the prairie, driving across an entire state or chasing criminals through Bolivia without even fulfilling a mission. But why can't games today capture the flair of games from 10 or 20 years ago to stay in our memories?

The past vs. today - a striking difference

There is a small but subtle difference between new and old games that can make game worlds fall into oblivion or burn them into your memory: The minimap or the navigation device!

In Gothic from 2001, the place where you had to solve a quest was described in detail. You had to remember exactly who the client was, where the described place was and where the client was again.

That is, games were a cognitive challenge for gamers, which even trained the brain. Unlike today's agents.

One is led bluntly from A to B to nameless conversation partners with an arrow over the head, so that one does not overlook them. You don't know where the person you are looking for, the cave or any other place is. Instead, a short sentence in the sense of "do something" with no less information and the player immediately knows where to go and what to do.

With maps that have a size of an entire federal state, this hustle and bustle can be very frustrating, because once you have arrived, you can scan the surroundings at the push of a button and thus immediately find the treasure you are looking for or the person you are looking for only has to switch off at the push of a button combination.

Fights or stealth mode are often the only challenges in the game. The rest of the time and this takes up a large part of the time, is pointless roaming around and looking at beautiful landscapes. However, this makes it impossible to remember places, places or entire cities.

Even 15 years after Gothic I know what it looks like in the old or new camp, I know striking places in the swamp camp and the paths that connect them. I can still walk through the old camp in search of Diego when I close my eyes. I still know old names like Lares, Lee, Wolf, Xardas or the greeting of God "For Innos". I still play this game in my mind, because I got to know every place and every character and had to memorize these details.

That won't happen to me at Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Wildlands or Assassin's Creed Origins. Even if Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed Origin takes a step in the right direction and omits the minimap. However, there is a kind of compass that shows you the direction and, worse still, it is the icon that shows the exact location of the person/place. That's why next year I don't know a single name or exactly what it looked like in Egypt or Bolivia, despite extremely in love detail. And this is solely due to the fact that you no longer have to use your own brains to remember places or people.

The game world of Gothic is far from the scale of today's maps, which is not necessary either. It is not necessary to make the cards bigger and bigger. On the contrary, the bigger the game world is, the more there is to overlook. It is more advantageous to develop a smaller world and get the player to explore the area than a huge map, in which one only steers on an arrow in the minimap or even gets the way prescribed and flies over the detailed landscape.

This small but nice difference, to leave the map out of the game, manages to integrate the player more into the environment and to let him recognize places if he passes them a second time.

Gamers do not need a babysitter

Furthermore, there don't have to be hundreds of quests to fill a game. As described above, it is enough to integrate the search for the location or the person into the quest with clues and location descriptions, especially since repetitive missions quickly become monotonous and the lust disappears after only a few hours.

The player's skills are no longer trusted, otherwise, there would be no such "help at the push of a button". It is unusual that targets are automatically aimed at, game scores are automatically saved every second and that the health automatically heals by itself.

Why are players no longer left alone on a single mission? I remember looking for Xardas tower for hours, only with the help of a detailed map which I had to open every time with "m".

The level of difficulty has become much easier and less demanding in recent years. It's not for nothing that Dead Rising 4 integrates additional levels of difficulty into the game at the request of the community. The answer is simple: publishers don't want to frustrate their customers because that would be bad for business. That's why they are quickly showered with trophies and rewards without really doing anything.

The aim is to activate the reward centre Nucleus accumbens by releasing dopamine, the happiness hormone. Even when such searches border on frustration, there are always forums for particularly difficult quests that exchange information and give tips. So thanks to the internet, you're not alone anymore.

Former hobby, today job

However, the Internet is not exclusively conducive to gaming. Of course, competing with other players on the battlefield is tempting for many gamblers.

What is destroyed, however, is the individuality of the player to identify himself as an outstanding hero in the game. One becomes only one of many, who is rarely at the top.

This makes the game extremely difficult to play. For example, why doesn't the new Star Wars Battlefront have an offline mode where you only fight bots for supremacy, as was the case with the old Star Wars Battlefront for PlayStation 2, instead of players who bought better weapons and abilities with real money?

Why are there not unrestrictedly the same modes offline as in online mode? I bought all parts of Battlefront, for months I played only the two parts for the PS2, to escape into an unreal world where you can be the only hero makes sense in games.

Instead, it is only developed to make as much profit as possible from the players. Fun is no longer important. Games are also becoming e-sports worth billions with tournaments, leagues and paid players. Not for nothing, most football clubs have their own teams for EA's Fifa.

Young people get apartments and are paid to represent their club at Fifa and do nothing more than gamble 6, 7 or 8 hours a day just to get better and better and stand out from the huge crowd of players.

Sounds like a dream come true at first, but I doubt that these guys still have fun with Fifa. For normal gamblers with the main occupation during the day, it is therefore completely impossible to advance online in league 1 without frustration.

Where did the classic co-op games go?

It is noticeable that new releases of the last few years hardly contain a classic co-op mode, as is the case with Resident Evil 5 and 6, whose story is split-screen, ALL WITHOUT INTERNET.

I understand that in times of digitization, even video games have to adapt, especially video games! and that there are many possibilities to meet in the game from home and to measure against others in the MMO.

MMO, however, has gradually replaced the classic co-op (i.e. the cooperative game together against opponents). If there is a co-op mode in today's games, then it is more co-op elements that are offered in addition to the singleplayer and online mode, as is the case with GTA 5 or Call of Duty (Zombie mode).

Why can't I play the stories of the current games together in the split-screen on ONE console? If you ask publishers, you won't get a satisfactory answer without the words "money", "margin", "profit" or "costs". An extensive co-op mode is an absolute purchase reason.

Nevertheless, games and consoles theoretically sell twice as well if everyone needs the game and the console to meet from home in the game world. That's probably why Halo 5 doesn't have a split screen anymore! I have never played Halo alone before, but always with a friend and even four of them together it is 100 times more fun than against 64 strangers.

But the trend is slowly returning to playing through the story online in co-op mode. Examples are Ghost Recon Wildlands, Destiny, or Far Cry 5, but it's absurd as mentioned above that the old Star Wars Battlefront parts are sometimes more extensive than the new ones.

The first parts offer the same offline modes as online, have a lot more worlds and heroes/rogues to choose from. I hope there will be more co-op possibilities in future games, because some titles are predestined for it like GTA, Uncharted, Call of Duty and similar series.

It is simply much nicer to experience the story with a friend, which also promotes social interaction. Nevertheless, there have been a number of really good co-op games in the last decades.

Release despite bugs

Thanks to the advantage of the game's connectivity to the Internet and the ever faster bandwidth, publishers are not in a hurry to bring a game to market error-free or the pressure of a fixed release date is simply too high for developers to eliminate the last bugs.

Finally, all gamers are connected to the World Wide Web and can download a patch as big as some games a few days later. Think of Wildlands with patches over 10 GB, which didn't change noticeably and didn't correct the errors I noticed.

This makes it impossible for the four of us to meet for a spontaneous session in Bolivia when everyone has to download an unnecessary patch for hours.

This turns spontaneous sessions into organized meetings that require anticipatory action.

Another prominent example is that of the long-awaited successor of Stronghold Crusader, whose first part appeared over 15 years ago. You wouldn't even declare such games as beta test versions anymore.

The first part was coherent and nothing was missing. Even the graphics in 2-D had more ambience than its successor, which is proof that more technology is not just better, but how to implement it. Even today, after more than 15 years, I still find little loving subtleties that I had never noticed before. Stronghold Crusader II offers a veritable firework of bugs, with the developers even going one better and simply omitting valuable tools like the architect's view (spacebar), which makes building the wall in a 3-D world more difficult than in a two-dimensional world.

This game urgently needs a 10 GB patch. The list of bug-contaminated releases continues: for example Batman: Arkham Knight, which even had to be taken off the market, or Tony Hawks Pro Skater 5, which received a day-one-patch just one day after the launch, a patch to fix all bugs, which was even bigger than the game itself.

But even after Day One patches, there are still disastrous bugs or bizarre slicks. In the past, the pressure on developers was much higher, because undiscovered bugs (and they can happen) were difficult to fix.

My suggestion

Leave out the minimap or navigation and trust the abilities of the players again. This benefits everyone, both players and developers. The developers put an enormous amount of time and love into the details of the game worlds and want to be appreciated. Games want to be discovered and explored with your own eyes and not ended as quickly as possible.

Test

papersky — Sun, 05 Aug 2018 16:59:15 GMT

Test post!

HI

papersky — Tue, 17 Apr 2018 09:07:01 GMT

This is a test

Hey

papersky — Sat, 27 Jan 2018 15:48:44 GMT

Hey

Still here

papersky — Wed, 24 May 2017 13:15:37 GMT

still alive

I like you!

papersky — Mon, 01 May 2017 20:02:15 GMT

very much