Month: June 2018

Earlier this week, the Panorama UI has been released into the beta release of CS:GO. The Panorama UI has been anticipated for a while in the past few months. It’s supposed to be a much cleaner and more organized version of the old CS:GO UI which has been pretty much the same for the past few years. Supposedly, the new UI shouldn’t change any of the actual gameplay except the scoreboard. Additionally, it’s supposed to increase the framerate for most people.

From pictures and videos of the new main menu as well as the inventory and setting screens I can say it looks a lot better than the old UI. In addition to being a new sight, it feels and looks like a whole new game. On the main menu, there’ve been a few changes. Most of the main features are still there, but it looks a lot different. There’s now an animated character model that takes up around half of the screen. You can select a weapon for the character model to hold, and from what I’ve seen it looks like all of the weapons have different animations. Your profile, which includes your rank, medals, etc have been hidden to the right side of the screen and can be brought up by moving your cursor to that side of the screen. Your friends list has also been moved to the same side. Party lobbies have also been removed and now they’re just in the top right corner where you can still type, but now you can still change your settings without having to leave the lobby. The inventory menu has also been changed by being more organized and the case opening animation has also been changed. You can now more carefully inspect your weapons by rotating them on your own although it doesn’t seem like you’ll be able to rotate them 360 degrees.

The Panorama UI is still in beta, so its features can still be changed before the official release. Overall, I think this will be a good change for the game since Valve has been known to not really pay attention to their own game by adding useless things that don’t help the enjoyment of the game.

This week, Epic Games didn’t add too much to the game but there are still a few things to mention. Due to the lack of content I usually have to write about, I’ll also write my thoughts on the shotgun nerfs from past few updates.

The main part of the update this week is the new Thermal Assault Rifle which supposedly allows you to spot chests, air drops, players, and “more” easier. The way it works is that when you ADS your screen turns a different shade and only chests, air drops, players, etc will be a different colour. Since the name implies “thermal” some people thought you were able to see through walls, but you actually can’t. From what I’ve seen, it looks like it just changes the colours on your screen. You can still see exactly what you’d see if you didn’t have the thermal assault rifle it’s just easier to see things. In my opinion, I don’t really think the thermal aspect of the weapon has any real advantage as long as you have decent vision. However, it supposedly deals the same amount of damage as the SCAR rifles. The trade-off for the thermal ability and the damage is 15 bullets from the magazine. If you ask me, I honestly wouldn’t pick one up over a SCAR. I’ll probably use it for fun in a few games to see what it’s all about, but then after a few games, I’ll just leave it.

Before I write on about the shotgun nerfs, a few other additions are that most traps can now be placed on ramps and there’s been a new soccer stadium next to Junk Junction for the World Cup which is currently being held in Russia. I don’t think they’re worth elaborating on, but they’re just nice to know about.

In the past few patches, shotguns are usually affected in some way whether they’re buffs or nerfs. Last week, I wrote about the shotgun nerf and how I didn’t think it would change the way I’d play. However, I was quite wrong because last weekend as I was playing I noticed something was “off”. I usually us double pumps in my inventory which used to be very effective. When I played after the pump shotgun nerf last week, I’d been experiencing frequent single digit numbers when fighting opponents in close range (even when I’m in the same room as another player). Usually, anyone would be hitting triple digit damage numbers or at least double digits, but lately, all of my friends that all used to double pump have all been talking about how they’re kind of useless. At first, I thought it was just me being me and having bad aim, but after hearing from other people that play nearly every day it seems like the double pump strategy isn’t that effective anymore unless you’ve got really good aim and can constantly hit headshots. Even then I would be hesitant to still use double pump since it’s very possible to do damage in the twenties even with a headshot.

This week, the patch notes weren’t that exciting from my perspective, but the shotgun changes from last week were. I think I’ll give the double pump a chance for my next few games, and if it doesn’t work I’ll switch to a different strategy for close quarters fights.

This week Epic Games added a new Bouncer trap and also nerfed some of the shotguns as well as decreasing material available on the map. I will be writing about what I think of these changes and how they will affect the game. I have yet to play with these changes, but I am a fan of the game and enjoy playing it so these are my opinions as a player.

The new Bouncer trap is found in stacks of three and can be found in all loot sources (chests, houses, llamas, etc). They are to be placed on floors, ceilings, and walls. The will propel any player that is close enough to it in the direction it is facing. The player being propelled will also receive the same kind of effect of the Hop Rocks that were added in the Season 4 update so they won’t take any fall damage. However, the effect doesn’t last long so the player won’t get the perk of being able to jump higher. I’ve seen clips and videos of people using these new traps in different ways, and they do seem to hold the potential of being practically useful in some scenarios.

Shotguns, specifically the pump and tactical shotguns were nerfed. Previously when the game was first introduced, the tactic “double pumping” was extremely overpowered. The tactic involved having two pump shotguns in a player’s inventory switching between them for every shot being able to shoot very fast for shotguns. Epic Games increased the draw speed for the shotgun a while ago. This made double pumping impossible or at least ineffective although they were still capable of dealing up to 237 damage in one shot. A few weeks ago, they decreased the draw speed, but not to the point of the original speed. However, this week they decided to nerf the pump shotgun again by reducing the damage. Now, the pump shotgun is no longer capable of dealing a one-shot kill no matter the rarity. Although this will definitely change some scenarios, I still think the double pump strategy will still be an effective one. The tactical shotgun though I feel didn’t deserve the nerf it got although it wasn’t as bad as the pump shotgun’s. I thought the tactical shotgun was fine as it was, but I guess if Epic Games wants to there’s not much anyone can do.

A few other changes to mention are the damage trap changes and the material availability nerf. The damage traps used to do 125 damage but were nerfed to only do only 75. In this recent update, the damage traps now deal 150 damage which is double of what it used to be which surprises me. However, I don’t think this will change too much of the current trap meta (most effective tactic available). As for the material changes, the number of materials you get from llamas were reduced from 500 to a mere 200 per resource. The chances of finding resources on the floor have also been reduced by 33% as well as the amount of material you get by 33%. These changes to materials I find was completely unnecessary. The double pump nerf I can understand since it was a little overpowered, but I fail to see how building which is a crucial aspect of the game is overpowered. As long as you have materials usually the player with better building skills would win at least in the late game. Reducing the material availability will only make building in early game as well as build battles less common forcing players to farm for materials a lot more often.

Overall, this update has its ups and downs in my opinion and I’m very interested in seeing how these changes will affect my play style as well as others’.

 

In the past two weeks, there have been even more additions to the Fortnite Battle Royale game mode. The items that have the most attention at the moment are the new shopping carts and the jetpack. The jetpack was released a while ago, but I didn’t write about it last week. The shopping carts, however, were just added this week. I was able to use the jetpack a few times last week. However, like always whenever there’s a brand new addition, I haven’t gotten a chance to take a look at the shopping carts for myself.

First the jetpack, it can be found in the chests scattered around the map with a legendary rarity and takes up one inventory slot. The jetpack can only be in use for a while until it needs to recharge. However, it doesn’t have an unlimited amount of fuel. The recharge is more of a cooldown while there’s an actual amount of fuel the jetpack has. When all of the fuel is used up the jetpack is destroyed. It allows the user to fly by jumping whilst in the air. The jetpack can be used to travel faster or to throw an enemy off in the middle of a fight. Personally, I jump around a lot in-game, so when the jetpack gets activated if I press my space bar in the air it sometimes activates when I don’t want it to. This can be kind of annoying since it makes noise, wastes fuel, and I can miss a jump or accidentally hit something.

Next is are the shopping carts. Since I haven’t used them yet, I can only write about what I’ve seen from videos and the patch notes from Epic Games. From what I know, the shopping cart involves up to two players. One person can push the cart while another can ride as a passenger. The shopping cart can move faster than just normally sprinting, but it looks to me to still have some issues. The passenger can build and shoot while the person pushing the cart can only direct the cart to where they want it to go. In my opinion, it doesn’t seem too practical, but I have seen some interesting ideas of people using them in different ways. The shopping carts can be found around the map but can also be destroyed.

Another addition was mushrooms that can be found in shady wooded or swampy areas. When consumed they add five shield to the player if they aren’t already at 100. But other than those there isn’t much else that would be worth mentioning besides some new Limited Time Modes, but if you would like you can read more about the updates here.