#and twitter spaces where bat are on call like it’s discord but it’s also just a glorified hypradio!!!!!!!!

[akkivee]

twitter is not allowed to go down before kuukou’s done another twitter takeover!!!!!! it’s just not!!!!!!!

[sapphicrpc]

it's also worse if you're writing a trans man & he's gay like the fetishism is next level and so pervasive that it's basically impossible to call out. like part of why i don't generally ship in groups anymore is because of the way that i ( a trans masc person ) would be asked really invasive questions about my character's body/genitals

like bad rp experiences can really shape what you're comfortable with and personally i really struggled/struggle with how to bring stuff like that up to admins because i've had admins say stuff like "well those are valid questions" "i don't think that is transphobic" or get mad at me for not interacting with everyone if i try to just back out of a ship

so if you any tips on how to approach/handle that kind of interaction, i wld love to hear them

sorry that i've sat on this for a while because i wanted to give a really thoughtful response.

first of all, if you're reading this and you're thinking that the admins are right and there's nothing wrong with those kinds of questions/actions... just think about whether you've ever asked a cis person about their genitals? would you approach a cis man and ask about the size of his dick? no. if you're a respectful person you wouldn't and therefore you should extend the exact same level of respect to trans people. go do some basic research and do better.

as for advice? my god... this is an awful situation if the admins are acting like that. you did everything i would say you should do. go to admins, etc.

honestly? my genuine advice on this exact situation? leave the group and protect your peace if you're really uncomfortable. take some screenshots and put a callout post in the tags and let the mob ruin the group for being assholes. trust me - they'll do the work for you.

however what i would do, because i don't mind a bit of a fight. i'd make it an in character problem. play your muse but anytime they're faced with a question like that have them fight the person about it, have them defend themselves in character. if there's social media in your group have them go on a twitter rant calling them out, if there's no social media post a starter where they rant about being faced with transphobia. when someone is being creepy/fetishising, call them out. have your character respond like "wow you're really creeping me out right now, would you treat a cis person like this?" i GUARRANTEE you they'd panic because they're not used to being called out.

don't rely on crappy admins, fight your own corner yourself. cause some fucking problems. out of character send links to people with reading materials about why this is wrong. send them to admins. send them to members. kick up a fucking FUSS. i'd made their lives bloody miserable until they kicked me out or changed their ways if it was me. and if they kicked me out for calling out transphobia (because that's what this is, lets be honest)

anyway... i know that my methods are not for everyone, but that's my advice as someone who has no issues with being a problem to problematic people. equally, i understand wanting a safe space online because a lot of us deal with these problems enough irl that we don't wanna deal with it online so... in which case there are groups out there that WILL give you a safe space. admins that WILL take your side on this. i don't know what platform you like to write on but i can recommend discord groups that'd protect your safe space (because i or a friend admin them and i'd go up to fucking bat for trans people any day of the week)

if anyone else has advice for this anon please respond with it

[exilesofembermark]

Game Dev Update | 3.12.18

“THIS is what I see on my screen.” - Your Opponent

So proud of the Victory image from the UI work we’ve been doing, figured we’d better show the other side of the coin this month. Hopefully, you won’t see this screen too much (unless you’re playing me, in which case enjoy this screen-- remind me I said that on launch day).

Last update, we gave a follow-up to our publishing announcement, detailed the Exiles end-of-battle sequences, and introduced concepts for Archmage Edyrin Zaan, who played a key role in Embermark’s Collapse many, many years ago. This time around, we’ve got gameplay and crafting updates, a look at Edyrin’s cohort and warcaster friend Elle Manigold, info on our coming First-Time-User-Experience (your intro to the game) and a look at how we’re going to try and quickly tell you story elements as you pass through this fantasy world we’re working on.

CRAFTING EVOLVED

The crew here at Gunslinger is working at a fever pitch right now, implementing all of the learnings we’ve had over the course of the last several months about everything from combat (which has been detailed in dev updates here and here) to systems to the way players build characters over time. We’re aiming at a result that brings build strategies to the forefront, communicates what happens during battle in a much more straightforward way and increases the tastiness of loot.

And that’s what we’ll cover this time around-- loot and how crafting has evolved. The loot system is pretty straightforward-- A Common item-- say, a sword, has specific stats on it (how much damage it does, any affects to the player’s core stats like Strength). A Rare Item has a prefix-- say, Mighty. Making a Mighty Sword. That prefix has up to 2 stat effects as well (like a plus to STR and CON). An Epic item has a prefix and a suffix-- say, of Shenanigans and that suffix comes with stats or special effects of its own. Making a Mighty Sword of Shenanigans. Legendary items are bespoke designs and very special and delicious.

Before the current design pass, you could Craft random items for a specified slot (like your Chest or Head) as well as Salvage stuff you didn’t want and create items from specific recipes. You could also Upgrade items, which wasn’t super interesting-- it was just the equivalent of leveling an item.

To make the Forge more user-friendly and increase the fun part of loot management, we’re making the following changes:

Salvage is moving over into your main inventory in the Character screen, since that’s where you usually want to get rid of stuff

Everything you can make is now a Recipe, even the random stuff (so there will be a “Forge Random Sword” recipe as well as a “Forge Mighty Sword” recipe)

Upgrade is replaced with Transmute. So instead of simply leveling a sword from low to high, now you can change its attributes with a reroll, like changing the item’s STR buff into another stat like SPD or CON, depending on how you roll. This will be a feature with limits-- you won’t be able to turn anything into anything else. You can change one attribute, but that will lock the others. 

EDYRIN ZAAN - NOW IN COLOR

Last Update, we shared the sketch concepts for one of the pivotal characters of our fantasy drama -- the Archmage Edyrin Zaan, who started the wheels turning toward the collapse of the continent and the otherworldly shenanigans that made Embermark a forbidding, chaotic place. 

Now we’ve fleshed him out a bit, and he will be making appearances throughout your journey across the land (see the glimpse at the Narrative System below). Is he friend or foe? You may have a hand in deciding...

(btw, if you’ve been paying attention to the Dev Updates, that staff may trigger your imagination)

ELLE MANIGOLD: THE CATALYST

Edyrin didn’t come upon the dangerous practice of summoning-- or of manipulating Mystic power-- alone. He had help.

Enter the deadly warcaster, Elle Manigold, whose story will be revealed over time. Her upbringing, her power and her relationship to Edyrin all had massive ramifications on the continent that’s come to be called Embermark. Have a look at the visual development of this battlemage, who you may or may not fight (but you will definitely want her weapon).

THE TPWER HAS A BEACH BALL

Our friends at Industrial Toys (the studio Gunslinger was born out of) sent us a housewarming gift for the new space we moved into a little over a month ago. It’s a ridiculously large beach ball that caught some infamy momentum on Reddit, given its potential to inflict terror and bodily injury. We’re currently trying to figure out what to do with it. Suggestions welcome in the Exiles forums.

THE NOT-A-BAT

“There are no rats, bats, wolves or skeletons in Exiles.” - TheWizard on multiple occasions

Fine, I lied about the wolf thing (but see-- ours are cool). Well, this is most certainly not a bat. But it is a horrible flying face-eater, and you don’t want it eating your face when you encounter it in its various ecosystems (out in the jungle, deep in the caves, etc).

This nasty is well on his way toward giving us a base for flying enemies, so stay tuned for his color, model and flaps next Update.

THE FIRST TIME USER EXPERIENCE (OH, AND THE NARRATIVE SYSTEM)

We’ve been threatening testing for a while now, and while I’m not reporting a date for that yet (*sideyes the Exiles in the Discord channel), I am reporting a plan. With the gameplay evolutions and the PVE system coming online, it’s time for us to get the game ready for a new player to experience it. Thus, our next big milestone is a working First-Time-User-Experience (FTUE) that teaches the basics of the game and levels a character to about Level 10. With that comes a couple of new systems-- the Tutorials System and the Narrative System. 

The Tutorial System isn’t super exciting (I mean, I’m excited about it, but sharing the part of a game that many players go “can I skip�� isn’t what I’m all about right now, so suffice it to say, there will be one, it will show you what to do to get started and then it will get out of the way for your climb to heroism).

The Narrative System is more exciting -- to share, anyway. One of the ambitions of Exiles is to tell a sweeping fantasy story in many ways directed by players’ actions. The system we’re building to tell that story lets us do just that. There are three parts to it:

1) Trackable Items

Just about anything players do in the game is tracked-- the fights, the wins/losses, the enemies killed, the foes bested, the factions helped or hindered, the narrative choices one makes, the aggregate leveling done, the events outcomes, you name it. This provides the Exiles designers a bed of history from which to trigger events and tell stories about what’s gone on in Embermark. 

2) Talking Heads

Seen below, this is your paged spoken-word info. Characters will appear on-screen, point you toward important stuff (Quests, new map locations, events) and disappear. You’ve seen this a million times in games, but we’ll make it easy to digest quickly.

3) (Human) Written Episodes

After every Season (which is currently a month of real-world time), Episodes of Tales of Embermark will be published, outlining the ongoing narrative and player actions that went down during the preceding Season, creating a historic log from the beginning of the game and hinting at things to come. 

FROM BANDIT TO BOSS

Along with the FTUE comes a string of baddies for players to smash (or be smashed by). Wildewoods, the Zone that you see above and the training grounds for new players, has all sorts of nastiness to encounter, including wolves, ogres, elves (who aren’t really nasty, but they will shoot you with poison arrows) and a scheming band of bandits known as the Darkeye Syndicate. 

We’ve shared in the past our method of creating endless variation for NPCs (particularly humanoid NPCs), and this is the first in-game implementation of that system. The Quests we’re designing to onboard a new player will involve these thuggy outlaws, a semi-organized rabble preying on new Exiles and the folks in Wildewoods alike, all built off of the same model, using gear that’s reusable for player characters. 

And I couldn't resist a quick shot of the bandits’ Cutlass ^... cuz it’s got a skull on it.

And I didn’t claim there wouldn’t be spiders, did I? Cuz there are-- and they’re also going to chomp your face:

We just rigged it up yesterday (see video), so we should be incorporating our 8-legged enemies into quests and battles very soon.

DON’T FORGET TO REMEMBER…

We’ll keep sharing details as we head toward testing (remember to PM TheWizard on the Exiles forums with your device type if you want in on closed testing & beta later), and you can count on early impressions from the testers throughout our various channels.

If you haven’t already, follow along with Exiles development on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. And if you haven’t, I’ll find you. And SMITE you.

CONNECT WITH OTHER EXILES

If you want to hear about the game, ask questions or connect with others who are helping the development team think about features, design and narrative, hop into the Discord Channel for live chat and say hi– it’s a friendly crew with plenty of daily/weekly/sometimes-planned shenanigans.

BONUS: A BASHER

Because it’s not an RPG without a ridiculously large, painful-looking 2-handed basher:

BONUS BONUS: ETHEREAL VARIANTS, ANYONE?

Ethereals in Embermark aren’t from here. They’re from... over there. Thus, the Ethereal NPC we’ve shown in the past isn’t necessarily always going to be one of fire-- or of heat-- or of an elemental variety. Sometimes, they’ll be from/of/based on other makeups. Take a look at this video from our VFX crew (of one!) showing how many setups we might explore...

(and for those of you in a clicking mood, here’s that Ethereal dying-- he seems almost... surprised)

[aion-rsa]

Overkill's The Walking Dead Review: A Stumbling Zombie Shooter

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Overkill's The Walking Dead is not quite the spiritual successor to Left 4 Dead that we hoped. Our review...

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Release Date: November 6, 2018 Platform: PC Developer: Overkill Publisher: Starbreeze & 505 Games Genre: Cooperative First-person Shooter

Overkill’s The Walking Dead has the worst opening mission I’ve played in years. With no direction about where to go or how anything works, you’re dropped into your group’s camp with three other survivors to seal the gates and keep a horde of walkers at bay. Between the confusing process of having to go around the camp for additional planks to fortify the gates, and less than optimal combat, you’ll probably fail this mission more than once unless you start off with an experienced group.

The good news is that the missions get much better after this unusually poor opening, but fundamental design issues stick around for the entire game, holding this back from being a great co-op shooter. Certainly, it doesn't reach the heights of the genre's standard, Valve's Left 4 Dead. 

Further Reading: The Walking Dead's Most Shocking Deaths

Overkill’s The Walking Dead is based on the comics with the input of creator Robert Kirkman, but isn’t connected to any previous Walking Dead games or the TV show. Instead, you play through 10 missions as one of four (and later six) brand new characters, each with their own attributes and skill trees. While walkers are the primary concern in these missions, you’ll also regularly face off against the Family, a rival group of hostile survivors.

The story is told through cinematics between missions, but it doesn't reach the heights of the comics or the show's better seasons. Honestly, if you removed The Walking Dead license, it would be hard to tell this game is even part of the same universe. You’re a survivor. You have to build up your camp. That’s about it. There's not much to Overkill's The Walking Dead apart from any other zombie story -- of which there are already too many. 

The Walking Dead franchise has always been known for its great human characters, but that just doesn’t translate to this game, and things only improve slightly during the actual missions. The Walking Dead has a serious identity crisis. It's obvious that the game is heavily inspired by the (sadly dormant) Left 4 Dead series and mission structure is liberally borrowed from Overkill’s own Payday 2, but there are also elements of Dying Light and Call of Duty’s many zombie modes.

Unfortunately, these different design philosophies never gel into something better than a bland, often-frustrating mess. The first problem is the combat. Gunplay just feels too light and unsatisfying, no matter what weapon you’re firing. Melee combat is even worse. Whether you’re using a baseball bat or an ice ax, you just keep swinging until the walkers go down. Over and over again. It all feels the same. And since you want to stay quiet to avoid alerting too many walkers (measured by your “horde meter") and ammo is a little scarce, there’s a lot of melee combat.

Further Reading: What's Next for The Walking Dead's Rick Grimes?

The game also emphasizes stealth gameplay, but you can’t really run past zombies as you can in other zombie games like Dying Light and Dead Rising. Try to avoid a sizable horde and you’ll quickly find yourself overwhelmed. If your three teammates meet the same fate before anyone can respawn, it’s mission failed and you have to start all over, even if you’re 30 minutes into the mission. A frustrating penalty, to say the least.

Further compounding these issues is the fact that there’s no built-in voice chat, which is a very odd choice for a cooperative shooter. You'll want to use Steam VOIP, Discord, or another chat app to communicate with your teammates or you're more than likely doomed to fail. The lack of built-in voice chat in a game that leans so heavily on teamwork is just one way Overkill's The Walking Dead is fundamentally flawed right out of the gate. 

Overall, the game is at its most frustrating when it starts to get fun (and it does have its moments) but stumbles on itself with a strange design choice or an uninspired combat section. There just aren’t many reasons to stick around beyond the first season's worth of missions (a second season is out later this month if you do want more).

On the more technical side, the graphics are just fine. They get the job done, but certainly don’t stand out in 2018, even playing on ultra settings. There’s also very little interactivity with objects in the environment. If you shoot or hit a crate, it just sits there as if nothing happened. Music is a little better. During quieter moments, the score even nods to the classic 28 Days Later soundtrack, but the harder rock music that kicks in during combat is forgettable.

Further Reading: A Spoiler-filled Guide to the Whisperers

A co-op zombie shooter set in The Walking Dead universe from the makers of the excellent Payday series sounds like such a good idea on paper, which is why it’s so shocking that the final game is so deeply flawed. It’s like if George A. Romero had been tasked with making a Resident Evil movie and the final result was Plan 9 from Outer Space.

Overkill’s The Walking Dead is about as enjoyable as the last couple seasons of The Walking Dead TV show. There’s something here for the hardcore franchise fans, but little reason for everyone else check it out.

Chris Freiberg is a freelance contributor. Read more of his work here.

2.5/5

The Walking Dead

Steam

Review Chris Freiberg

Nov 9, 2018

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