Carzy Zarx’s PC Gaming Emporium - Catch Up on All the Latest PC Gaming Related News

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Tuesday news, part two:

Your League of Legends rank will reset less in 2025, and creepy XP-boosting flowers will now grow around your corpse thanks to the new theme coming in season 1
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/moba/your-league-of-legends-rank-will-reset-less-in-2025-and-creepy-xp-boosting-flowers-will-now-grow-around-your-corpse-thanks-to-the-new-theme-coming-in-season-1/
League of Legends developer Riot has released details on what to expect from the first season of 2025, and there's a lot to unpack. The first season will present a new map design, the trial of a new game mode, and a huge change to how often your rank resets, which I know the majority of players will rejoice over (spoiler alert, it's changing from once per season to once per year). Then there are character overhauls and the addition of a new enemy in the Rift. 

Conor McGregor cut from Hitman 'effective immediately' after jury orders him to pay $260,000 to a woman who accused him of rape
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/action/conor-mcgregor-cut-from-hitman-effective-immediately-after-jury-orders-him-to-pay-usd260-000-to-a-woman-who-accused-him-of-rape/
Hitman developer IO Interactive has announced that it has stopped working with MMA fighter Conor McGregor, who was added to the game as an Elusive Target in June, following a civil trial ruling that found him liable for assault against a woman who accused him of raping her in 2018. All content featuring his character in the game will be pulled from sale.

Former BioWare boss Casey Hudson is closing the studio he launched in 2021 without releasing a single game
https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/former-bioware-boss-casey-hudson-is-closing-the-studio-he-launched-in-2021-without-releasing-a-single-game/
Humanoid Origin, the studio launched in 2021 by former BioWare general manager Casey Hudson, is closing. Hudson announced the closure in a message posted to LinkedIn, saying that "despite efforts to shield the studio from broader challenges in the industry, an unexpected shortfall of funding left us unable to sustain operations."
>> G2ThaUNiT has made a thread about this.

If you think Stalker 2 is buggy, wait until you climb aboard Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/sim/if-you-think-stalker-2-is-buggy-please-take-your-seat-in-microsoft-flight-simulator-2024/
Last week I wrote about a particular bug in Stalker 2 and how similar it was to a bug I encountered in Stalker: Call of Pripyat way back in 2010. (...)
I ran into a similar situation in Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024's career mode this weekend. Things were going fine at first, with just a few amusing hiccups—the AI voice of the instructor mispronouncing the word "fuselage," for instance, or an NPC walking directly through the tail rotor of a helicopter: small stuff that I just smiled at.
But after getting certified to take jobs in a Cessna, I tried to do the same for the helicopter in career mode. That's when the wheels came off. Well, there aren't wheels on the helicopter. I guess the skids came off, then. (...)
I'm not the only one finding bugs in Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024: the subreddit and Discord are full of them. The image at the top of this article is from Reddit user LordCrumpets, who says "Mr. Smith made sure to get his money's worth on today's Flightseeing trip." He sure did. I only hope his scalp didn't get scraped off during the landing.
>> The image he talks about shows a man sit in a chair glued to the bottom of the plane.

'We don't have to worry about trillions of damage': Path of Exile 2 is trying to avoid Diablo 4's game-breaking damage numbers, director says
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/rpg/we-dont-have-to-worry-about-trillions-of-damage-path-of-exile-2-is-trying-to-avoid-diablo-4s-game-breaking-damage-numbers-director-says/
Action RPGs are complex and players are simple: They want power any way they can get it, even if it completely trivializes the entire game. Just about every Diablo 4 season has had something that does way more damage than it should, forcing Blizzard to play whack-a-mole to keep it balanced without pissing everyone off.
Jonathan Rogers, game director of Path of Exile 2, jokingly acknowledged Diablo 4's ridiculous damage numbers when explaining why he doesn't think his game will have that problem on a recent episode of the Tavern Talk podcast, which is hosted by streamers Darth Microtransaction and GhazzyTV.

Former Atlus artist raises a glass to Metaphor: ReFantazio character designer and their mastery of 'sex appeal' that transcends stereotypes
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/rpg/former-atlus-artist-raises-a-glass-to-metaphor-refantazio-character-designer-and-their-mastery-of-sex-appeal-that-transcends-stereotypes/
Metaphor: ReFantazio is a good-looking game—it might not have the highest-resolution textures at times, but in terms of character design, visual worldbuilding, and menu aesthetics? It's all downright peak. It's also really sexy apparently, but, like, in a way that transcends gender boundaries.
That's according to a former Atlus artist, who goes by LAM online, and who went freelance in 2018. He was joined by present art director and character designer Shigenori Soejima during a three-way interview on Denfaminicogamer, as spotted and translated here by Automaton.

Dragon Age: Origins lead writer says Shale was saved partly by his real-life burning hatred for pigeon poop: 'I wrote like the angry, angry wind'
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/dragon-age/dragon-age-origins-lead-writer-says-shale-was-saved-partly-by-his-real-life-burning-hatred-for-pigeon-poop-i-wrote-like-the-angry-angry-wind/
One of my favourite companions in Dragon Age: Origins is Shale. She's a deadpan, dry-voiced golem with a hatred for pigeons that does credit to her dwarven, grudge-bearing heritage. She was also a day-one DLC character but, while discussing her, series creator and lead writer David Gaider reveals that was mostly due to a lack of time, and the fact she was downright impossible to write.

A Destiny 2 bug was causing a niche exotic to delete raid bosses in seconds, so of course it's already been disabled
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/fps/a-destiny-2-bug-was-causing-a-niche-exotic-to-delete-raid-bosses-in-seconds-so-of-course-its-already-been-disabled/
The Destiny 2 damage meta is a fragile thing, twisting at the mercy of balance and efficiency and encounter design. You can go a long way in the game with a good grenade launcher and a decent one-shot Super, but the real sickos are out here doing unholy things with weapon switches, armour hotswaps and niche loadout combinations. And yet for a brief period yesterday, the meta loadout was a solved problem thanks to a Warlock exotic that basically nobody uses.

Even if Avowed does well, it doesn't sound like we'll get Pillars of Eternity 3, at least not from Josh Sawyer: 'I am more interested in doing original IP'
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/rpg/even-if-avowed-does-well-it-doesnt-sound-like-well-get-pillars-of-eternity-3-at-least-not-from-josh-sawyer-i-am-more-interested-in-doing-original-ip/
(… a fair bit down the article...)
Only a year on, though, he seems to have cooled on the idea a wee bit. RPG Site asked him the same question: would he make Pillars 3 if time and budget constraints weren't an issue?
"I don't know," he said. "I feel like now Avowed is where the Pillars universe has kind of gone. And it'll be interesting to see where the audience picks up on that, and maybe that's where the Pillars universe kind of goes in the future. So I think there's a lot of different possibilities of what to do in the future. I do think that I am more interested in doing original IP necessarily, than existing IP. But we'll see where the future takes me."