The Gears of War’s franchise’s latest launch, Gears 5, is free on Steam until the 12th of April, HypeBeast reports.
Microsoft is hoping that Gears 5 will attract some sales at least some of those who will try this free-to-play weekend.
Dota 2: Broodmother Winrate Skyrockets as Smurfs Find a New Hero After Meepo Nerf
A new patch for Dota 2 was rolled out yesterday which saw some drastic changes in the picking phase of the game and several hero changes. The most notable change however, was the massive nerf that Meepo received in 7.25c.
Meepo has forever been an amazing hero in the hands of highly skilled players. At the same time, it was also a favorite pick among boosters and smurfs due to his incredibly fast farming speeds and complex battle mechanics. Given a significant gold and experience advantage, Meepo could also 1v5 most games and end games before enemy carries even come online.
This pubstomper was brutally shut down by Icefrog in 7.25c as his base agility was reduced by 7 and the level requirement for his ultimate was increased from 3/10/18 to 4/11/18. These small changes might not seem game changing at the first glance but can prove to be devastating for a hero that relies solely on coming online fast and ending the game before the enemy gets a chance to retaliate.
Soon after this patch was introduced, as expected Meepo’s winrate fell quite a bit. But surprisingly enough Broodmother, in spite of receiving no direct buffs had a drastic increase in winrate. The only reasonable explanation to this is that smurfs and boosters in the game stopped using Meepo and switched to Broodmother instead. Brood relies on similar mechanics as Meepo and can solo win games relatively quickly in the right hands.
With the Meepo players switching to Brood now, the sudden spike in her winrate was inevitable. This further shows how Dota needs better ways to deal with their smurf problem. Boosters and smurfs are regularly found in Dota ruining games for newer players, who eventually lose interest to the point where they quit the game and look for easier alternatives like League of Legends.
Ramzes to Stand-in For NiP as They Drop Universe From Dota 2 Roster amid coronavirus outbreak
The unfortunate global pandemic had Saahil “Universe” Arora dropped from Ninjas in Pyjamas’ roster. The Indian-American player from Wisconsin used to play as a second support along with ppd for his former team.
The organization announced that stand-ins Roman “Ramzes” Kushnarev and Milan “MiLAN” Kozomara are to replace Universe and the offlaner Rodrigo “Lelis” Santos, who might also be dropped from the squad due to the ongoing circumstances.
The team changes are due to the global lockdowns that are currently going on as a countermeasure to stop the spread of the Virus. NiP being a Swedish organisation, had to replace Universe – an American – and Lelis – a Brazilian – who would face obvious ping problems in European servers.
As announced by NiP on Twitter, “Due to the situation with COVID-19 and the consequent move to regional competition, we are forced to restructure our line-up in @DOTA2 to ensure continued practice and competition.”
They also didn’t forget to bid a goodbye to The International 2015 winner, “Thank you for everything @UniverseDota and we wish you all the best – It was a pleasure to work with you!”
Since Ramses previously played as an offlaner for EG, they might need to find another offlaner now due to the same reasons. In fact, with more and more tournaments being held online, many of the professional teams might need to make drastic changes to their rosters to cope up with the situation.
OG N0tail Saves Enemy Zeus Twice, Then Dies
Johan “N0tail” Sundstein is a professional Dota 2 player and currently plays as a position 5 support for team OG. N0tail is currently the richest esport personality in the world with estimated earnings over 6,883,393$. He is also the coach of the team OG seed.
The 26-year-old Danish pro was streaming a game of Dota 2 and decided to gank an enemy Zeus with his teammate when things went south real quick. The Twitch clip which now has almost ten thousand views catches the hilarious moment as it unfolded.
N0tail was playing Vengeful Spirit and wanted to gank the enemy Zeus who was farming creeps near the river. He saw his ally Snapfire approaching the Zeus from behind and directed her to go for the kill. The Snapfire launched herself in the air to stun the fleeing Zeus and would be successful in her task, but N0tail swapped the Zeus to safety due to their miscommunication. N0tail was frustrated but still wanted to kill the Zeus who was now trying to escape from the other side of the river. The Snapfire now tried using her shotgun to slow him down but once again, a misplay from N0tail swapped him back to safety. The teammates of the Zeus soon decided to join the party as they chased down N0tail’s Venge to death.
Although the situation was a little embarrassing for the 2 times TI winner, the stream couldn’t possibly get more entertaining for his fans who burst out into laughter as the entire chat room was filled with “LUL”s and “KEKW”s.
Shroud says VALORANT is easier than CSGO
With Valorant’s closed beta release on 7th of April, a lot of content creators and streamers got to try their hands on Riot’s tactical FPS game. Former CSGO pro player Mike “Shroud” Grzesiek gave his opinions on Valorant, which mainly revolves around the simplicity of the map in the game.
Shroud mentioned, “The time to kill is one-to-one with CS. It just seems easier because the game is like 1.6, where it’s just bland, super simple. The walls have nothing on it”. He further added that, “the characters pop in the game”
As per Shroud this simplicity makes it very easy to target and takedown the opponents. He believes that skilled CSGO player’s accuracy and mechanics will help them a lot in getting those headshots in. Former Overwatch pro “xQc” had a totally different opinion about Valorant. He felt that due to agent’s abilities, the objectives of the game became aggravating and that there is so much going on in a Valorant game as compared to a CSGO game.
xQc further added by saying that, “It’s fucking annoying dude as in CS, you rarely have a wall that has 3,000 HP, two lines of Viper shit, glowing fire, and flying people. There’s none of that in CS.”
Even after so many differences in both the games, many streamers found out the striking mechanism of both Valorant and CSGO to be somewhat similar, like similar recoil mechanics in both the titles.
When Shroud initially played Valorant he got confused because of the vivid abilities he saw in the agents of Valorant. He even mentioned that due to the addition of the abilities, the game could be difficult to watch as compared to CSGO. However, Shroud did commend Riot on the map designs in Valorant.
So after a month, when Shroud played Valorant again and after listening to his comms with his team mates on Mixer we can say that he found the game to be fun and enjoyable. He was even communicating well with his entire team on the agent’s abilities and how to use them.
xQc can be potentially wrong when he said that, “washed up CSGO pros wouldn’t thrive on a game like Valorant”, and it seems like Shroud has an upper hand in this entire discussion regarding Valorant’s simplicity and mechanics.
Researchers reveal probable pictures of future gamers and it looks terrifying
Researchers from OnlineCasino.ca have created a model named “Michael” which shows the physical changes that a gaming addict might have to go through over the next two decades if they don’t change their lifestyle and daily habits. Michael can be seen in the image below with a hunched back due to poor posture, dark circles under his eyes that are bloodshot due to sleep deprivation and from hours to continuously watching the screen.
Michael seems to have pale skin and vitamin D & B12 deficiencies. He is also obese due to the lack of exercises and has ulceration in hands, and weak arms because of holding the gaming controller for hours. Due to poor blood flow, Michael has varicose veins and swollen ankles because of sitting down on the chair for hours. He also got hairy ears due to poor air circulation.
Michael’s shoulders has also turned around and got indent on his head due to wearing the headphone for years. Thanks to global reports based on the physical impacts of gaming addiction, this model displaying how addicted gamers could look like was made possible.
Researchers have given five tips to stay healthy to the avid gamers:
Featured Image Credit: OnlineCasino.ca
How to reduce lag and improve FPS in Valorant
Every online game has a major problem with it, it can be either lag, poor FPS or the game performance overall due to your PC specs. In a tactical FPS game like Valorant, these factors can really hinder your chances of pulling off a perfect snipe on the enemy players, or getting yourself sniped by a headshot.
Valorant is sure to have one of the most dedicated servers in the regions they are launching the game initially but yet they are not immune to any of the frame rate drops or lag, so how to solve these issues if you face any?
Is it the lag or the FPS initially?
Lag is not the only reason for reduced or lower FPS while playing the game, always troubleshoot and check your internet connection and give preference to wired internet connect instead of a wireless one. Also, keep a check if any program is consuming your internet connection while running in the background such as Epic Games Store, Steam, or your windows taking updates without you knowing about it.
Is your system even capable of delivering good FPS? (PC Specs)
If your PC doesn’t have good specifications, chances are while playing Valorant you will experience frame rate drops and even some lag. Mentioned below are some of the requirements to run Valorant on PC:
- CPU: Intel i3-370M
- CPU SPEED: Info
- RAM: 4 GB
- OS: Windows 7/8/10 64-bit
- VIDEO CARD: Intel HD 3000
- PIXEL SHADER: 3.0
- VERTEX SHADER: 3.0
VALORANT Recommended Requirements
- CPU: Core i5-4460
- CPU SPEED:
- RAM: 4 GB
- OS: Windows 7/8/10 64-bit
- VIDEO CARD: GTX 1050 Ti
- PIXEL SHADER: 5.1
- VERTEX SHADER: 5.1
- DEDICATED VIDEO RAM: 4096 MB
Sometimes, restarting your game or your system helps greatly in improving the performance of the game. One way to ensure good performance overall is to clear your system’s temporary files on a regular basis (trust me it works wonders!). How to do them?
- Press Windows + R button, a “Run” command window will pop up.
- Type: temp, %temp% and prefetch one by one in that Run command window.
- For each command, select all the files after the folder opens up and delete all the files (these are the temporary files made by your system which slows its a performance).
- Some files will show an error (they will not get deleted) so don’t worry about them.
Doing this once a day in the morning before you start gaming will show great results (tried and tested procedure).
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Paytm First Games teams up with SuperCell to launch Clash Royale in India
Paytm First Games, the country’s leading gaming destination, today announced its entry into Esports with SuperCell to bring the globally popular ‘Clash Royale’ Esports tournament to India. The mobile gaming tournament will be organized from 10th to 12th April, and 512 players will compete to win a prize pool of Rs. 4 lakhs. To participate in the tournament, gaming enthusiasts across the country will be able to register from 6th April onwards on Paytm First Games app.
Developed & published by Supercell, Clash Royale is an extremely popular game across the world and can be played live by two or four players (1v1 or 2v2 format). The tournament will be organized in an online, single-elimination format and will feature all the top Clash Royale players in India. This will be India’s biggest esports tournament both in terms of participation and prize money.
With Clash Royale, we are entering into e-sporting leagues and bringing the best of global mobile gaming for Indian fans. We believe that this will serve as a great stress buster during the lockdown period and will engage gaming enthusiasts. To further add to the excitement around the tournament and make it more popular, we will broadcast the final rounds live on YouTube and Paytm Inbox.
Sudhanshu Gupta, COO, Paytm First Games said
Paytm First Games is already India’s fastest-growing gaming destination and sees more than half a million daily active gamers on the platform, spending anywhere between 30 to 45 minutes. It has witnessed 200 percent growth in the last one month, with over 75,000 new users joining the platform every day.
VALORANT Shatters CS:GO’s All-Time Peak Viewer Record
Counter Strike is a legendary esports title by Valve which has been in the scene for over 20 years. The game has defined an era in esports and changed the way gaming is perceived throughout the world. However, fans of the franchise were left in awe as a title from Riot Games which hasn’t even been officially released yet managed to destroy the all-time peak viewer count of CS:GO in only a few hours of its closed beta release.
With the initial announcement of Valorant – codenamed ‘Project A’ – back in October 2019, fans were getting the idea that the first person shooter was a direct challenge to the other titles in the genre like CS and Overwatch. The game promised several features like 128 tick servers, good quality anti-cheat and performance optimization for low-end PCs, and with the release of the alpha stage of the game, it became clear that Riot is about to keep their promises.
All these factors ensured the success of Valorant as an esport title, but if you had told someone that the game would surpass CS:GO’s all-time peak concurrent viewer count within a day of its closed beta release, they’d probably call you insane. Both fans and critics watched in pure disbelief as the number of viewers on Valorant streams kept increasing on April 7th, eventually matching the world record set by Fortnite and League of Legends.
CS:GO had a record of 1.13 million concurrent viewers during the 2018 Eleague major, which didn’t take long for Valorant to crush as they proceeded to set a benchmark of 1.7 million viewers across all the streams on Twitch.
A key factor which accounted for most of the viewers is the way Riot decided to distribute beta keys among fans. Instead of signing up for their newsletter, fans had to link their Twitch and Valorant accounts and watch specific streams in order to be eligible for a drop.
Even with the remarkable success of Valorant’s streams yesterday it is still unclear how many viewers were really there. It has been brought to light that a lot of people have been creating fake accounts and staying on the streams just to get beta codes as drops.
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VALORANT PATCH 1.14 Update is out now. Check it out right now.
Sony reveals new PlayStation 5 DualSense controller
The news came out in a tweet only mere hours ago and it’s already making a buzz.
Sony’s new PS5 controller has now incorporated haptic feedback for greater sensation and now it’s called DualSense. Sony assures that they have retained everything from the original DualShock 4 of PS4 so fans don’t have to miss on anything. Although, there are some nifty changes in design and functionality to go along with the upcoming PS5.
The all-new DualSense is now being shipped to developers so they will be completely able to make use of it’s ”unique features”, and their games to be PS5 ready.
”We adopted haptic feedback, which adds a variety of powerful sensations you’ll feel when you play, such as the slow grittiness of driving a car through mud”,
“We also incorporated adaptive triggers into the L2 and R2 buttons of DualSense so you can truly feel the tension of your actions, like when drawing a bow to shoot an arrow.”
Sony’s team added in a blog post on their official website.
Sony claims it has tricked the angle of the controller than what it was on the original DualShock which results in the controller feel smaller and to accompany this change the grip of the controller is updated as well. Apart from these, the new controller is lighter on the inside, the battery lasts longer and there’s a new built-in microphone so you’re always on the go to get going to play online with friends.
“DualSense marks a radical departure from our previous controller offerings and captures just how strongly we feel about making a generational leap with PS5. The new controller, along with the many innovative features in PS5, will be transformative for games – continuing our mission at PlayStation to push the boundaries of play, now and in the future. To the PlayStation community, I truly want to thank you for sharing this exciting journey with us as we head toward PS5’s launch in Holiday 2020. We look forward to sharing more information about PS5, including the console design, in the coming months.”
Jim Ryan, President & CEO, Sony Interactive Entertainment
The original share button is now replaced with ”create” button and the reason to this change is specified as “With Create, we’re once again pioneering new ways for players to create epic gameplay content to share with the world, or just to enjoy for themselves, ” the team said within the blog.