Battle Hard in the Pokkén World Tournament and Win $100,000 Gamers

Sorry ladies and gentlemen. I haven't blogged in a while. I been on a new job and training a lot. I'm back, and I come bearing gifts. If you're a fan of the Pokemon series or video games, then this is a chance to win $100,000 and be a world champion. Nintendo is really putting some money and creativity behind this project.  To sum it up, it's real life mimicking Ash Catchem's journey from Pokemon.  You get to travel the world and battle other Pokemon gamers to win a lot of money.

Show off your Pokémon fighting skills in the Pokkén Tournament Championship Series! This new series features competitions across North America and Europe, in which players compete for invitations and Championships Points toward a trip to the Pokkén Tournament World Championships this August in San Francisco, California. A prize pool worth over $100,000 is in store for the winning competitors in the Pokkén Tournament Championship Series!

There will be two age divisions: the Senior Division is for players born in 2001 or later. The Masters Division is for players born in 2000 or earlier. Note that not all tournaments will offer support for two age divisions.  Players can qualify for the Pokkén Tournament World Championships either by finishing well in a series event, by accumulating enough Championship Points, or by participating in the Last Chance Qualifier at the Pokkén Tournament World Championships.

Pokkén Tournament Championship Series Masters Division competitions are divided into major and minor events. In the Senior Division, all competitions will be equal. Not all events support two age divisions. In events that do not, all ages will compete together.

Masters Division major events feature:
1st and 2nd place finishers earn World Championships invitation and travel award
Top 32 competitors receive Championship Points

Masters Division minor events feature:
1st place finisher earns World Championships invitation and travel award
Top 16 competitors receive Championship Points

Senior Division events feature:
1st and 2nd place finishers earn World Championships invitation and travel award

To make sure there is a robust field of competitors at the World Championships, a Last Chance Qualifier (LCQ) event will be held on the Friday of Worlds weekend. Space will be limited. Check back at Pokemon.com/PokkenTournament for more details on the LCQ.

Masters Division Worlds Qualifying

A total of 64 players from the Masters Division will qualify for the World Championships. 16 players from Europe and 16 players from North America will qualify via event placing and Championship Points. The remainder of the invitations will be awarded to players from Japan and via the LCQ.

Senior Division Worlds Qualifying

A total of 16 players from the Senior Division will qualify for the World Championships. 4 players from Europe and 4 players from North America will qualify via event placing. The remainder of the invitations will be awarded to players from Japan and via the LCQ.
Pokkén Tournament Championship Series Schedules

Event information is subject to change. More events will be added soon. Check back for more dates and locations.

For more information visit
http://www.pokkentournament.com//en-us/championship-series/

The best thing about this tournament is that the consoles and game will be provided by event host, so there will be no hacking or cheating.  Also note that this is the first year of the Pokkén event, and it has a lot of big names supporting hosting its goals.  I feel that if this tournament is a success, then we will see more prize money. Also, I might come out of retirement and enter the pro gaming circuit again.  Hey, us old folks enjoy a match as well. Good Gaming!

Every Dark Souls 3 Class

Dark Souls 3 has 10 starting classes: Knight, Mercenary, Warrior, Thief, Sorcerer, Pyromancer, Cleric, Deprived, and the new Herald and Assassin.

I miss having 'builds' from playing the souls games. That's one thing I never felt necessary with Bloodborne. There was only trying different weapons and outfits. Little bit less depth there that I missed a lot.

Deprived is actually the best starting class. Not only do you get one more point in one of your stats, but you also start at level 1 - meaning it will cost less souls to level up early game, giving you more options early game as well as more end game stats to play around with.

It's the worst class technically. None of your stats are min-maxed. It's noob friendly though, besides the gimmick of not having much gear - which consequently is actually a a teaching assist, in turn, great for new players.

Anyway's you will never get those points back. Based on the build you aim for, it could be a ton of wasted points. Deprived has awful stat allocation. I'm not sure if you were trolling or serious, if you were serious it would be in peoples best interest if you didn't continue to spread misinformation.

The additional sub classes are listed below:
- White Knight
- Buddhist Monk
- Adept/Biotic Specialist
- Greninja
- Maritime Lawyer
- Double Puncher
- Zebra
- Necromancer
- B-Boy
- Sith Lord

Mass Effect Andromeda Delayed to Q1 2017

EA has plans for more fiscally successful games, so no Mass Effect: Andromeda this holiday year as promised. EA said in an investor call that the fourth main Mass Effect game will be released during the first quarter of 2017, which spans January to end of March. No surprise there.  I really haven't expected much from Bioware since they disappointed me with the development of Mass Mass Effect 3 and Dragon Age 2 and 3.

A sad fact is EA owns Bioware and can screw over Bioware however they want, like they did with DICE while making Battlefront. I have high standards for Bioware, however EA has been showing it is only interested in money grabbing lately and overlooking the quality that the Mass Effect gaming community was so fond of. I feel Mass Effect 3's under-developed ending was more likely EA's fault than Bioware's fault. 

That period represents the fourth quarter of EA's financial year - which begins April, ends March - and blockbusters earmarked for this period tend to come out as close to the end of March as possible. This allows maximum time in development while keeping the release within the financial year.

Mind you, Mass Effect 2 came out at the end of January and Mass Effect 3 at the beginning of March, so there's hope for a marginally earlier launch.

"We've got a great year ahead," said EA's chief financial officer Blake Jorgensen during a Morgan Stanley conference presentation - quote picked up by members of NeoGAF.

"We've got our Battlefield 5 first-person shooter game coming in the third quarter, and our third-party title that Respawn, our partner, built, it's called Titanfall 2.

"We have our Mirror's Edge [Catalyst] runner game this first quarter, and then we have Mass Effect [Andromeda], which is a sci-fi action game, in our fourth quarter."

Mass Effect: Andromeda was officially announced at E3 last year with a holiday 2016 release date, so this technically represents a delay. But with Titanfall 2 and Battlefield 5 both lining up for autumn 2016 - presumably Titanfall in Sep/Oct and Battlefield in November against Call of Duty - it makes sense to move Andromeda away.

7 Days to Die Alpha 14 Status Update and Release Date

The Fun Pimps are working hard on Alpha 14, and it has some great new content! Here are the highlights: Navezgane has gotten a lot bigger and better with a brand new improved height map with higher mountains and deep water, a new smoothing algorithm that makes the land and water much more natural, a multitude of new locations including the largest city in the expanded plains, and a bandit like shanty town and a huge lake with islands just to name a few.

Alpha 14 also has many new perks and improvements to our skills system, a great new damage and death system where zombies feed on your corpse, an introductory basics of survival quest, repeatable quest note challenges, a radiant buried treasure quest system for infinite digging for treasure fun, many new improved world textures and block shapes, a major rebalancing of block damage, leveling and XP, some good optimizations, random gen improvements, and so many bug fixes.

Here are a couple more shots that looked amazing. The Fun Pimps have completely rebalanced the game and fix every XML bug known. They’ve renamed every block and item in the game to a standard naming convention, so as a builder or modder the creative menu is like a dream now. All related items are in order and can be easily found. All blocks have a naming convention like color material block shape and further description. They extended all blocks from a master block. This means all balancing and bug fixing is done on about 10 master blocks and the nightmare of manually editing 1000′s of blocks is finally over.

Now the juicy parts! The block upgrade path is now fully balanced and we’ve added adobe so you can build a decent fort in the desert now. Also each weapon has been rebalanced from scrach with all weapon archtypes having a unique purpose. For example the pistol might not be uber powerful but it is now quiet so it would be useful to dispatch a few zombies quietly without alerting the entire wasteland. They resolved the issues where you could do 1400 points damage with a single shotgun blast because of stacked skill bugs.

Finally, they are working on chunk occlusion. They don’t have much occlusion now only LOD and models disappear at a distance. An occluder will hide hidden chunks like caves or when you are inside most of the outside will no longer render. This could yield some serious performance gains, so I’m really excited about this. They’re fixing bugs like maniacs and Alpha 14 is the last new save you will ever have to start. We’re committed to save game support from Alpha 14 forward.  Developers said Alpha 14 would be released at the end of February, and that day has passed.  I'm thinking a release date for Late March 2016.