#hirezpaladins

[funkii4-blog]

I love this goddamn game so much dude

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It’s honestly heartbreaking seeing the unraveling of this game in real time.

(This is really long sorry I’m just passionate about pcotr)

I initially just started playing Paladins in late 2018 as a sort of substitute since Overwatch hadn’t come out on Switch yet; however i very quickly got really attached and have grown to love this game more than I could ever love OW. I used to play nonstop in high school (which isn’t really that far behind me but still). I have a bunch of core memories related to it, like when i sat on my floor in the middle of the night watching io’s reveal trailer and how proud i was when i 100% completed the community pass, quests and all.

But sadly that all feels so distant now. The game has changed so much it’s not really recognizable, and it feels like it’s suffering and being suffocated by its own developers. This update made that clearer than ever to me and its devastating to watch. U/mesprizero made a post on Reddit that explains it pretty well but i still wanna share some opinions of my own.

I never did much with the bounty store so I don’t mind that being gone, i got maybe 5 skins i liked from it total. Indifferent.

The first thing that irked me about this update was the departure of the Trials, i liked doing those to get rewards since the short format of the current event passes gives so little, especially for players that don’t pay for the full pass. One major change I’d make is bring the 100-level battle pass format back for sure. It feels like there’s next to nothing to work towards with how things are now.

I know we’ve all complained about how painfully basic Nyx’s design is (she’s the Queen of the Abyss for crying out loud), but her damage output is horrendous as well. I get she’s a tank and not DPS focused but even most tanks can sustain decant damage rates on their own. And her voice literally sounds exactly like Octavia’s, there’s nothing unique about her in that regard.

That brings me to the part of the update that was by far the most infuriating to me; the total removal of the splash arts. My discovery of that made me so angry; Thunderbrush and all the artists that worked on those with/before him spent so much time on the thousands of existing arts and they just casually all get shelved and replaced with incredibly lazy render screenshots of the models. It’s unbelievable, truly. I can’t properly put into words how much this pisses me off especially.

The new UI is fine, it could obviously use some polishing since its new but its not particularly bad to me. Indifferent.

Another thing that made me irrationally upset, the fact that Payload mode is straight up not available on the Switch at all. It’s pretty obvious the devs have seriously neglected its Switch players (textures don’t load most of the time & the game has reached a point where it constantly crashes), but this feels particularly disrespectful in a weird way. I never got to play Payload during its original run so i was excited to try it for the first time, only for the official twitter to state THE DAY BEFORE THE UPDATE that its not available on there, too bad. That just feels like a kick to the face as a Switch player, y’know? I know what you’re thinking, ‘just play on another platform’, that’s the thing, i don’t have another platform to play the game on. Switch is my only option. Not everyone can afford a gaming PC or another console, i certainly can’t. If you’re gonna make a game multi/cross-platform, please make everything on all the platforms the same. Is that too much to ask lmao

If i need to add stuff later i will, but i think thats it for now. As much as i don’t want to give up on this game I’ve held dear for so long, it’s become practically impossible in it’s current state. I have no hope left for it’s future. :((

[funkii4-blog]

Stuff from the 5th anniversary update show I noted since patch notes aren’t out yet;

- a heavy list of free anniversary rewards just for playing certain numbers of games

- a collection of blue/silver/black anniversary skins for Androxus, Maeve, Viktor, Seris, and Ying (Viktor’s using his pre-rework model)

- onslaught being rotated back in, tdm rotating out (new onslaught queue does not include koth, when it returns it will be its own queue)

- various balance changes, mainly to supports (Grover & Pip having damage buffs and healing nerfs, Rei having overall buffs, Jenos having overall nerfs)

- significant buffs to Atlas & Azaan

-new anniversary LTM: siege remix (the classic alpha siege format + maps returning)

- overall UI cosmetic/readability improvements, including to loadout selection and loading frames

- rework to the royal subjects talent (if I remember right it now adds an additional charge to poppy bomb but for less damage)

- ranked bans per team increased from 3 to 4

- hit-and-reveal passive added to Kinessa’s kit

[funkii4-blog]

I'm pretty sure one of Kinessa's voice lines is a CD-i Zelda reference and it greatly saddens me that no one else has seemed to notice