Former WoW designer tips hat to Marvel Rival's shifting meta as an antidote to MMOs with stale class design 'you have to change the meta continually' - Related to stale, them,, mmos, shifting, come:

Former WoW designer tips hat to Marvel Rival's shifting meta as an antidote to MMOs with stale class design 'you have to change the meta continually'

MMOs—at least, the big boys that have endured from the massively multiplayer golden age—can sometimes be considered a smidge stale. Many design elements are, in a sense, solved. The Holy Trinity took over years ago, dungeon finders are a must, and heaven forbid if you're running something suboptimal in a pick-up group of hypervigilant strangers, with insults about your mum already bound to a macro and ready to go.

As games like Wildstar (and the ravenous way in which WoW players devoured Classic) proved, the vibe of oldschool MMOs is forever buried under the age of information and Icy Veins. That's not to say people don't enjoy Classic, they clearly do, it's just different. Subject to the meta like any other game.

A former WoW designer, Chris Kaleiki, who has 13 years of Blizzard under his belt, reckons that the only real way to keep classes fresh is to take a leaf from MOBAs and Hero Shooters like League of Legends and Marvel Rivals. That's as per a recent interview Kaleki conducted with GamesRadar+, where he explains:

"The only solution I think is you have to change the meta continually. If you look at Marvel Rivals, actually, it's kind of interesting what NetEase did. They have teamups where two heroes get a bonus if they play with each other, like Storm and I think Thor get something... What they're planning to do, which I think is smart, is that every season or every now and then they'll just change them."

Essentially, if you want the meta to shake up, you have to… well, shake it up: "Players constantly have to re-evaluate and think through 'what is best, what is the new meta?' That's the only thing you can really do … players like it and developers like it. League of Legends does the same thing, they flip the board every time they do a season. This hero that was terrible before is now the best. DOTA does the same thing. That's what we've been seeing and I think it actually works pretty well."

I do think some shakeups are healthy for any game—I mean, that's mostly why Season of Discovery exists, it's a version of Classic that operates in the spirit of 'what if we took a big bong rip before designing anything'. At the same time, though, your standard tab targeting fare has a little more than 4-5 abilities. Part of why MOBAS can shunt their metas around with relative freedom is because each hero only has a few moving parts—with a bigger roster to compensate.

It's also much harder to do in one-class-per-character MMOs like WoW, where player attachment to a specific character is a thing—I don't think anyone wants their main, the thing they're comfiest with, to be dumped in the crash with a changing wind. In other words, MMO designers do have to be a touch more careful.

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As for Kaleiki's current game, Legacy: Steel & Sorcery—a PvPvE extraction RPG—he intends to shuffle the meta around by tackling resources, rather than abilities: "Maybe this season certain crafting materials are rarer than others and that can make different builds more common because you can create other items easier than you could last season."

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How to get the best ending in Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2

Staying on the straight and narrow is a tough task in Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 's medieval Bohemia. Henry is constantly tempted away from the honest path by violence, banditry, and a seemingly endless number of locked chests with all sorts of loot inside. This can make getting the best ending a real challenge.

This isn't one of those RPGs with a tonne of different endings—you'll find yourself in a similar spot regardless of what you do. There are, however, some key decisions you need to make if you want to get the most positive version of noted ending. Since some of these decisions are also made around 30 hours before the ending itself, if you were bad, there's not that much you can do.

Below I'll run through all the necessary choices to get the best ending variation. This guide will, of course, contain spoilers around key plot points in Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, as well as the ending itself.

After the siege of Suchdol is lifted, Henry wanders onto a hill above the battlefield and sits down to ponder his journey. Before long he's joined by apparitions of his dead parents who proceed to recount and judge the choices you've made in the game.

It's worth noting that this is the only version of the ending—what changes based on your decisions is what they say to you, whether they approve, plus at least one variation on the events at Suchdol itself which I'll go into below this list.

Here's what you need to choose to get the best ending variation:

Save Semine: You can either do this by finding out about Olda Semine's involvement with the bandits and not telling Von Bergow to prevent the raid, or you can side with Semine instead of Hashek if it does happen.

You can either do this by finding out about Olda Semine's involvement with the bandits and not telling Von Bergow to prevent the raid, or you can instead of Hashek if it does happen. Stop the Dry Devil from burning Maleshov: During the Dancing with the Devil quest when you attack Maleshov castle, you need to stop the Dry Devil from burning the town by fighting him and taking command.

During the quest when you attack Maleshov castle, you need to stop the Dry Devil from burning the town by fighting him and taking command. Don't take revenge on Brabant: When you sneak out of Suchdol castle into the Praguer's camp, you'll find that Brabant has taken Sam hostage. You'll have to best him in combat and then you'll get the choice to kill him. As tempting as this is, you shouldn't. This sadly makes the next section harder as he raises the alarm, but your conscience will be clear.

When you sneak out of Suchdol castle into the Praguer's camp, you'll find that Brabant has taken Sam hostage. You'll have to best him in combat and then you'll get the choice to kill him. As tempting as this is, you shouldn't. This sadly makes the next section harder as he raises the alarm, but your conscience will be clear. Refuse to kill Markvart Von Aulitz: Also in the praguer's camp, you can find a dying Markvart Von Aulitz in the Suchdol Inn. This is a fantastic scene but if you want the best ending you need to leave him to die instead of killing him yourself.

Also in the praguer's camp, you can find a dying Markvart Von Aulitz in the Suchdol Inn. This is a fantastic scene but if you want the best ending you need to leave him to die instead of killing him yourself. Be an honourable dude: That means try not to steal, murder, and rob people. The same goes for doing dishonourable deeds during quests. Henry needs to be a good guy in order for his parents to approve. It's possible that if you use an Indulgence Chest and repent that your parents might recognise this in the ending, but that's unconfirmed. superior to stick on the straight and narrow if you want mummy and daddy's approval.

If you do all of these, your parents will entirely approve of your decisions and shower you with praise. It isn't absolute, though. For example, if you save Semine and Maleshov but you were an unrepentant thief and murderer, your parents will praise you for the former while telling you that you were unfortunately a bit of a bastard.

The only other choice relevant to the ending is whether you escape with Sam after you defeat Brabant and this actually has a big impact on certain parts of the ending:

If you escape with Sam: You'll have to carry him to a horse in the praguer's camp, making that section harder, but Sam will live. The unfortunate downside is that with a wounded Sam in tow, Henry spends longer getting reinforcements, and so the praguers manage to break into Suchdol and steal the Sigismund's silver back.

You'll have to carry him to a horse in the praguer's camp, making that section harder, but Sam will live. The unfortunate downside is that with a wounded Sam in tow, Henry spends longer getting reinforcements, and so the praguers manage to break into Suchdol and steal the Sigismund's silver back. If you leave Sam: This makes escaping much easier and Henry is faster getting reinforcements, which means the praguers don't have time to steal the silver. However, Sam gets hanged in the praguer's camp since you left him behind.

It's a little up to interpretation, but the best result here is you saving your half-brother. Blood is thicker than silver or something like that? Either way, it'll lead to the happiest outcome.

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Just in case you've forgotten all about them, AMD posts a less-than-convincing argument as to why AI PCs are better than any other type of PC

The most commonly used tech phrase in the PC industry last year was 'AI PC' and, , we were promised that such computers would "save people hours weekly through built-in artificial intelligence." So far the interest in AI PCs has been somewhat muted so AMD has decided that the best way to solve this is to explain exactly why AI PCs are enhanced than non-AI PCs.

It's done this via a simple post on X, highlighting what an AMD AI PC can do advanced than a common-or-garden PC: "Handle AI tasks more efficiently with the world's most powerful built-in Neural Processing Unit (NPU), which supports the CPU and GPU for faster and smarter everyday use." On the other hand, non-AI PCs "can run AI tasks, but lack[s] an integrated NPU. AI runs on the CPU and GPU, but with less efficiency for multitasking."

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Well, there you have it. Surely that's all the convincing anyone would need to go out and buy a spangly new AI PC with an NPU-equipped AMD Ryzen processor, right? AMD clearly doesn't think anyone actually needs to know any kind of specifics about the 'faster and smarter everyday use' bit because we all want our PCs to be faster and smarter. Every day.

The CPU in my main PC has an NPU (it's an Intel one) but as of yet, it's not been used for anything other than running a single benchmark to see it being used. Last year, I sat through a press briefing from one big system vendor in which it spent a good deal of time explaining why AI and an NPU were going to make things so much enhanced.

I know how an NPU can be used but I'm still totally none the wiser as to what real, tangible benefit they bring to the PC industry as a whole. Let me clarify: With an NPU, one can run a small AI algorithm locally, without having to send lots of data to a distant cloud server, which means you retain far more privacy over your details and content that are being AI'd. Summarising your notes, for example, or improving your CV—that kind of thing.

But as AMD points out, your PC can do that without an NPU. It just uses the CPU or GPU to do it instead. Ah, but that's less efficient, you might say (or at least, AMD does). How much less efficient is it? Is it slower, a lot slower; does it involve a lot more power, draining your laptop's battery faster or using up more electricity from an outlet?

Without specifics, in the form of real-world examples being showcased in front of you, I can't imagine anyone will be nodding sagely at AMD's words and being converted into a champion of the AI PC. To be blunt, it's such a weak attempt at promoting AI PCs, that AMD has potentially done more damage than good.

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While X isn't well-known for inviting reasoned and well-balanced comments these days, the replies to AMD's post are not in the least bit surprising. "Scam," writes one user, whereas another expounds more with "I'm good with the non-AI PC. I can't really think of anything AI does which would benefit me as an actual creator." Only one reply was positive, though there was not a great deal there at the time of writing.

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To be fair to AMD, though, I don't think there's any reasoned argument that would make a tech-savvy buyer deliberately seek out an AI PC, even if they're a fan of generative AI or the like. The reason is that such individuals are already using their non-AI PCs to do all of this, either via the cloud or locally via the GPU. An NPU can be used to handle a RAG (retrieval-augmented generation) algorithm, to improve the results from a locally-run LLM but I've not seen any general-use software do this yet.

AMD's latest laptop processors are fantastic chips, and any one of those paired with an Nvidia RTX GPU will make for a potent computer capable of blasting through AI workloads. If your portable PC is on its last legs, then by all means, grab an AMD 'AI PC' and enjoy a blisteringly quick computer, that's equally capable of gaming and content creation. The fact that it will sport an NPU doesn't really add to that, though at least it doesn't detract from it.

Cutting-edge technology always needs a 'killer app' to make it really take off but we've yet to see that for the little NPU. Until then, it looks like we'll just have to put up with more half-hearted marketing exercises that will leave us all still wondering the same thing: What use is AI to me?

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