Riot Games has issued temporary chat ban to some of its more vocally rude League of Legends players, and according to lead social systems designer Jeffrey Lin, the result has helped many increase their win rates.
Speaking on the forums, Lin said most players rarely use the chat function, opting instead for smart pings.
“We find that many players never chat at all and only use smart pings and perform pretty well,” Lin wrote. “For a large number of players, chat restrictions actually increases their win rates, because being verbally abusive to teammates tends to make the team’s performance spiral negatively.
“We have considered restricting players from playing Ranked if they currently have a penalty, [and we] should have more information about this in the future.”
Earlier this week, the League of Legends team started handing out two week band to players who exhibited toxicity, with the most extreme cased being permanently banned from the game.
Lin said at the time that should the initiative prove effective, Riot would start rolling it out more permanently; however, every permaban case would be reviewed.
Chris Ziegler spent (almost) a month eating (almost) nothing but Soylent, a brown nutritional sludge and meal replacement. He wrote about the experience in great detail, but people still wanted to know more — a lot more, it turns out — about his life eating a science project. Here, Chris gets on camera to address some of the most pressing questions.
Destiny pulls together the best of gaming tradition to create something entirely new. Get used to it: you’re all going to be involved.
Activision knows what’s required to succeed in the modern premium games space, and it’s leading with an adventure the likes of which we have never seen before. Destiny is the real next-gen.
I’m not sure what I was expecting from Destiny. Borderlands in space, most likely, as had been many others, but after playing the beta I think that’d be doing it a gross disservice. Destiny is both the present and the future of console gaming, a Theory of Everything which seeks to explain, finally, how existing genre strands are to be pulled together in this generation to create whole worlds derived from the best, refined elements of all gaming science.
Destiny’s triumph is its ambiguity. Despite best efforts to explain it away as just another shooter, or a shiny Halo, or a Guild Wars child, or Diablo, it is, in fact, none of these things because it’s all of them. It’s something else. It’s first-person and third-person; MMO and single-player; FPS, adventure and RPG. Bungie has coated Destiny’s confluence with a UI so slick you can barely see the joins, but there they all are. Destiny is new-gen.
The driving factor behind its progressiveness isn’t new console hardware, but rather the realities of the modern premium games market. Big games now need big life-spans, and Destiny is designed to be around forever, on every platform, and to keep you and your friends invested from the first day to the last. It has one of the best shooter mechanics ever created coupled with all the greatest elements from every other core genre. You can dance, just as you can in MMOs. You upgrade just as you do in RPGs, and, of course, you level. We have some top-end story-telling and what have to be the most incredible visuals ever seen on console. The skies alone are worth the purchase.
Destiny’s hub element is The Tower.
Destiny’s irrepressible modernity even renders that unnecessary: it’s free. You can play it now for nothing up to level eight. Destiny’s “beta” is a phenomenon, sucking up a large portion of our traffic in the last few weeks, and pointing to a steel-hard success for Activision later this year. Throw criticism at it all day if you must, but don’t believe you’re fooling anyone. You’re going to buy it because it’s going to be massive. And it’s going to be massive because it’s the most successful genre fusion yet seen, parceled in graphics so spectacular you’d have to employ climate change denial levels of obstinance to stay away. Everyone’s going to play it. That’s the point.
Because while there’s no obstacle to old-gen players getting on board in 2014, Destiny is going to be around for a long time. Whether you’re in now, or this Christmas, or next year, Destiny will be a next-gen pillar because it truly is a new concept. Destiny hasn’t abandoned the past, but it has moved beyond it, and your rendezvous with it is inevitable. Activision knows what’s required to succeed in the modern premium games space, and it’s leading with an adventure the likes of which we have never seen before. Destiny is the real next-gen.
Be sure to check out our Destiny beta guide to get all the info on the test’s secrets, classes, pastimes and more. Destiny releases for PS4, Xbox One, PS3 and Xbox 360 on September 9.
A plane crossing Northern Africa crashed overnight with 116 people on board, Reuters reports that an Algerian official has said. The flight, AH5017 operated by Air Algerie, was headed from the capital of Burkina Faso to the capital of Algeria and disappeared about 50 minutes after takeoff, according to the BBC. Contact was lost just before 2AM GMT (10PM ET), shortly after the aircraft is reported to have requested permission to change course to avoid a storm. The plane was reported missing many hours later, with officials only confirming the crash after 1PM GMT. Almost half of the people on board were French citizens.
There are not yet details on where the plane crashed or what caused it to crash. The Washington Post notes that the...
Given people’s desire to dump money on all sorts of self-improving pills, superfoods, fitness trackers, and life hacks, it’s no wonder that Hollywood has taken to neuroscience’s most persistent myth — the idea that humans only use one-fifth of their brains. Way back in 1996, John Travolta gained access to the rest of his and learned to levitate things in Phenomenon; a few years ago Limitless’ Bradley Cooper took a “smart pill” and used his new brain power to get super-rich playing the stock...
Developer Kemco has made its roleplaying game (RPG) Band of Monsters free on mobile devices. Both iOS and Android versions can now be picked up instantly for an undetermined amount of time, instead of their normal price of $7.99.
Kemco has done so to thank its community for downloading another one of its RPG titles, Machine Knight, over a million times. That mobile game is free as well, in case you’re really into the pixel art 2D style.
In particular, fans of Pokémon-style gameplay should be looking to Band of Monsters. It features over 170 monsters that can be captured with a musical combat element.
Once caught, monsters can be used in battle against other enemies, which enhances the party’s experience. Throw in some tall grass where these creatures reside and you really have a ton of Pokémon inspiration.
Additionally, Band of Monsters allows you to breed your own crop of critters. By combining two monsters together, you can get a new one, which works similar to Shin Megami Tensei’s Persona system.
Be warned: You’ll need to cut through a lengthy introduction of the game’s premise for the off-the-rails monsters in the world and that at the hand of some cheesy dialogue. It’s going to take about half an hour of that, before you’re thrown into the pixel art world to catch your first squad.
Aside from regular play, Band of Monsters brings the Pokémon vibe home completely by offering competitive play against others online. Some in-game purchases are available, but they shouldn’t be necessary to complete a playthrough.
While commercial drone businesses gear up, large parts of US airspace are already off-limits to drones. A new map project called Don't Fly Drones Here takes a look at exactly where the remote crafts have been banned, through the magic of open-source maps.
Tek Syndicate, Austin Evans, Newegg, and Linus Media Group one day decided they wanted to break the world record for the “highest altitude terrestrial LAN-party”. Which mountain did they choose? Why, Mt. Elbert of course.
In the video below, the team talks about the trip, the tech they used, and there’s also footage of the guys climbing to the summit, where the LAN-party was held.
If you are thinking: “bah! it’s just the summit,” know that the altitude is 14,461 feet. I can barely make it up a small incline.
Tek Syndicate, Austin Evans, Newegg, and Linus Media Group one day decided they wanted to break the world record for the “highest altitude terrestrial LAN-party”. Which mountain did they choose? Why, Mt. Elbert of course.
In the video below, the team talks about the trip, the tech they used, and there’s also footage of the guys climbing to the summit, where the LAN-party was held.
If you are thinking: “bah! it’s just the summit,” know that the altitude is 14,461 feet. I can barely make it up a small incline.
The highly anticipated Wii U title Bayonetta 2 is going to launch in just couple of months and to get the fans excited for the game, Famitsu has released bunch of new screenshots of the game.
The released screens showcase the main characters of the game in all their glory:
Bayonetta 2 begins few months after the events of the first title as you will once again be put in shoes of the famous Witch.
The gameplay elements take direct inspiration from the previous title as you will be relying on the melee combat for most of the time and occasionally use the ranged pistols to take down the enemies.
There is also a feature in the game that slows down the time if you dodge the enemy’s attack right at the final moment. Utilizing this feature, players will be able to retaliate against the opponents at a better pace and take them out.
There is also a new feature added to Bayonetta 2 called Umbran Climax, which can be activated once you have the full magic bar, and this ability will make your attacks even stronger and combos will have an extra effect on the opponents.
Bayonetta 2 is scheduled to release on 20th of September in Japan, while the rest of the world will get it in October.
Out in the San Francisco bay, behind AT&T Park, a giant version of Dropbox’s “open box” logo bobs up and down in the waves. It’s actually a paddle boat, with the giant box built on top; inside, two of Dropbox’s employees are pedaling it around with no idea where they’re headed.
Meanwhile, the company’s nearby offices are humming with a bizarre but infectious energy. In one corner, a scooter retrofitted with two motorized wheels, a webcam, and a MacBook Air navigates between conference rooms...
Doug Creutz, an analyst from the group Cowen and Company, has lowered his forecast for the game Prototype 2. He had originally expected the game to sell 900,000 in its first year in the United States, but now believes the game will have problems to getting to the 500,000 mark. He has also reduced the estimate for Activision Blizzard's fiscal 2012 EPS to $1.01, from $1.05. The poor expectations for Prototype 2 is the main reason for that.
"We had been modeling the title to slightly exceed the 900,000 U.S. units the original title sold through during the year after its June 2009 launch," explained Creutz. "We now believe Prototype 2 could struggle to reach 500,000 first-year U.S. units."
Valve Corporation, the owners, took to the official Steam Community website to announce that the days of the closed beta for Steam music were over. Now it is the time for open invites to everyone who wishes to try out the new features and groove to the beat while playing some games, or not.
Anyhow, here’s the shortest of announcements that they made regarding the open beta:
“Steam Music features are now available to all users who opt into the Steam Client Beta. Give the new features a try, and of course, send feedback our way in the discussions.”
The news got viral immediately as, well, everyone loves music.
However, don’t get too excited about it, if I put it simply it is just an MP3 player. Yes it comes with the additional benefit that you will be able to access the player in-game and through the Steam overlay but then again, it isn’t really world-shattering.
That being said it does come with a tiny bit of convenience per say the use of the player while in Big Picture mode to churn out some custom tunes.
Also it could be used in the future to keep you up on the latest DLC soundtracks that you buy. Currently these soundtracks get moved to the Steam folder while the player could crank them up for you automatically.
It does make sense that Valve is offering such a service though, after all they have plans of launching Steam Machine and the Steam Controller too!
We don’t know about the future plans of Valve but for now check out the Steam Music open beta and tell us what you think.
